I went to Fabricland this weekend. I went there for two things. The first one being this vest and tie pattern.
And the second being the wine coloured fabric.
The white floral fabric wasn’t what I was looking for, but it was so pretty I bought it. It was on sale for $5 a meter. The tie pattern was on sale for $10 and some cents, and the velvety fabric was in an end bin on sale for $10.20 from $40.80! I want to surprise my spouse with some homemade ties. I haven’t found fabric for it yet, but I know I’ll have fun looking. The velvet fabric is for a project. I have a silver-plated brush set and I want to make a pretty box for it. I found an empty cutlery box at a thrift store and now I just need some foam. I’m going to make a long skirt with the floral patterned fabric. So I went to Fabricland for velvet fabric and the tie pattern. This is also what I left with:
A huge pattern haul of 29 sewing patterns. They were in the discard bin and half off of the discarded price! They were all $3 or less! Some were even $1! I frequently browse the thrift stores for fabric and now I have a huge supply of patterns for them.
These four patterns are my favourite, the blue shirt being my absolute favourite. I love all three of these dresses. I doubt I’ll ever wear the formal dress, but it’s so beautiful. Heck, I’ll wear it at home for a romantic date night. The striped dress pattern is so fantastic because it’s not the fabric that is striped, it’s the pattern. I love it! The other dress is very cute too and also practical. I will be making that one soon if I have the fabric for it.
Out of all of them, this was probably my least favourite, but I will still make it. It might turn out to be one I love. I don’t have a shirt like that. I have enough patterns to last me a long time now. I was going to sew this weekend, but instead of the rain that was supposed to happen today, we now have sunshine. So, nature awaits us and our pups. I hope you all are having some sunshine today. Sewing will have to wait!
I’ve been thrifting and I’ve found things I love. I found fabric, kitchen gadgets, a wooden box for a future project, and, thread. For this post I’m going to focus on the two pasta gadgets I found and if you want to see the rest of the items, you can see them in the video I posted above.
I’ve had pasta on the brain lately. The last week I’ve been eating a lot healthier and I wanted to indulge this weekend. One of my favourite finds was this ravioli maker. It was five dollars and was a two-piece set.
I put it through the dish washer and it came out discoloured, but I’m sure it’s still fine.
There is a recipe on the back of the box, but I went with one I found online. I made sweet potato ravioli from Whitney Bond. I used both her pasta recipe and the sweet potato filling. It was SO GOOD!!!! 100% make again for us.
I didn’t read the instructions on the maker and didn’t realize I had to oil the ravioli maker plates first. You can see by the ravioli on the left how important that step was. I was super frustrated after the first batch. Everything stuck and I couldn’t get them off without mangling them. Lol, I remember saying to my spouse “No wonder this was in the thrift store. It sucks”. It didn’t suck. It was fantastic (once you oil it). After I applied oil to the plates and tried again it made a huge difference. The ravioli popped out so much easier. I still have to use scissors to separate the raviolis, but they came off the plate wonderfully.
To flavour the ravioli, I toasted walnuts in the pan and then heated up butter and tossed the ravioli with the butter sauce. I think the recipe site used the same ingredients for the sauce, but I just tossed this stuff into the pan and guessed at the measurements. I added a couple dollops of goat cheese to the top of it, but the goat cheese really wasn’t necessary. I’ll probably leave it off next time.
The spouse and I had a lovely lunch date. I even lit up the newly polished candelabra for the first time. It would definitely be more romantic for evenings in the dark, but I was too excited to wait. There will be many more romantic candlelight dinners in the future for this candelabra.
There was some dough left to try in the other pasta maker. This one was four dollars and I was really excited to try the macaroni plate. This thing sucked. It sucked bad. The pasta didn’t go through the plates very well because it kept getting sucked back up into the tube and not extruding. It could be as simple a case of the recipe I used was not meant for this extruder, but I’m not going to try again. It’s going back to the thrift store. And hey, they don’t even need to retag it!
This weekend the forecast called for storms. Instead there was sunshine and warm weather.
Saturday started with a dog walk, coffee, and a bagel at the local cafe. My spouse and I ended up spending most of Saturday doing yard work. The lawn was mowed for the first time and the garden was weeded. It was so nice to have it done and it looked so much better. We went to the local greenhouse to get some veggie plants. I know you’re supposed to wait until after the May long weekend, but we were too excited. While we were there I saw a tree that grew my favourite flavor of apple.
Honeycrisp! I bought that tree instantly. I love love love those apples. We got into the parking lot and it hit me…. How are we going to get this tree into the car?
Well, we did! I ended up sitting behind my spouse and we put the tree into the front seat and loaded the trunk up with the veggie plants. The tree made it home with all branches intact and we promptly planted it. We collected a lot of fallen branches from the yard and put them in the fire pit, and later that night we had the season’s first smores.
We bought Dandies Marshmallows from Healthy Planet and used Celebration cookies. They come with the chocolate, so it’s seriously easy smores with all the perfect amounts. They were so freaking good. We had smores and watched the bats fly overhead. I still plan on putting a bat box up somewhere, but I have no idea if they’ll use it. I went to bed around 8:30 that evening. I was wiped out.
Sunday I tried to make friends with the chipmunk in our yard bribing him with peanuts. He came as close as an inch away, but he was not there yet. By the end of Summer, I hope to have him eating out of my hand. I toss him some peanuts whenever I see him, so he is starting to pop out when he hears us.
Late afternoon we went on the first kayak trip of the season. I saw turtles! I haven’t seen a single turtle since I moved here and this weekend I saw at least 10 of them; painted and snapping turtles. There were some fish in the water that I had never seen before either. They looked like a suckerfish and had light and dark brown bands running down their body. I think they might have been northern hog suckerfish. They looked very similar anyway. It was fun and I think I will enjoy swimming there on a hot summer day.
We finished the weekend off with sunburns and a beer. The thunderstorms held off and I’m hoping to fall asleep to the sound of rain and thunder.
I polished the candelabra last night. If you want to see a video of the before and after, click the youtube link above. Sorry about my dogs running around in the background!
I picked this candelabra up at an antique shop. I was super hopeful it was silver plated. The way it looked here, I thought it was made out of some other metal and wouldn’t get shiny (the one shiny candle holder at the back of this photo was polished by myself. I was too impatient to find out what it looked like under the tarnish to wait until I had taken a photo before I polished it).
Here is a closer look at the tarnish. I spent less then an hour polishing, washing, and drying it. I took it apart completely and found out it can be put back together to make a single candlestick, three arm candelabra, or five arm, as shown in the photos. Pretty cool! I will likely never take it apart though.
It polished up to almost a mirror shine and I love it!!! There are still a couple dull spots, but it was only the first time I polished it and I’m sure they will buff out the next time around. I really didn’t expect it to come out so well. I really love it. I can’t wait to pick up some candles. Romantic dinner at home this weekend????
I’ve been on the prowl at the thrift stores for an electric pasta maker that makes fusili or trecce. It would be awesome to wait for a homemade pasta dinner to light up the candelabra, but I think it’s going to be a while before I find one. I’m sure I can think up something else for a romantic dinner at home. Mood lighting! I’m so happy with my find and so pleased at how well it was restored.
I went on a bender and I loved it. I love antique stores. I could spend hours browsing through an antique mall. There are so many hidden treasures. Shopping at a thrift store is like that too, but cheaper. I could happily do either one That is how I spent last weekend. I will post a video of the treasures I found, below.
I found some amazing things. I’ve been looking for a candelabra for months now. I found this one:
I found it exactly as you see it, in a pile, for $28.00. I originally wanted one with a lot more detail and possibly in brass, but this one was in pretty good condition and it looked like it could be polished to like-new condition (I will post it again once I polish it).
I’ve been hoping to find a silver-plated brush/comb set in good condition. I did! It was in FANTASTIC condition!!! The brush seems to have ALL the bristles and the mirror is intact (and yes I fully plan on washing it and using it). I have plans to make a proper box for this brush set (also for a future video/blog). It was $12.95 and I was so happy I found it. I think it’s beautiful and I can’t wait to make the display box it deserves.
I spotted this tiny little perfume bottle for $1.99. It was full of a super strong perfume. I found this out when I opened the bottle in the car. It gave us a headache (both of us are sensitive to artificial fragrances). I’m going to wash it out and use it for essential oil blends I plan on mixing myself. FUN!
My other fantastic find (the above are all from Cobbletoq Antique Mall in London, Ontario) are these keys. I bought the very bottom one, the one that looks like it belongs to a queen. I’m 99.9999999% sure this key opens a lock to somewhere/something magical. It has to. I have a thing for unique/old keys and this one fit. I like to pick it up and imagine all the magical locks it opens.
This was one of the items I didn’t buy. It was from Memory Lane Antiques, in London. I have been looking for a soup tureen for years. It was only $15! It was huge and it was an almost, but not quite. I’m not into cherubs at all. It was so close to perfect, and just enough to make it a miss. Such a shame. I think someone else will love it very much though.
I bought a few more things that I posted in the video above that I didn’t take photos of. There is a set of salt and pepper shakers and an inkwell, from an antique shop in Grand Bend (Dale’s Antiques, I believe). My spouse really liked that store. He bought a vintage hook set to put the dog leashes on (I will have to give an update on our rescue dog! Yes we still have him and he is an angel. He’s in his furever home).
Also shown in the video is a sprouting jar. I don’t know why I felt the need to get another one, but I found it at a thrift store. I have a sprouting lid for mason jars and it works fantastic, except for the seeds that gel. They don’t drain in the mason jar and I think this will work much better.
As for the Amazon purchase, I bought a fog machine. It’s a strange item (which is probably why I loved it). Every year I plan on going all out for Halloween and every year I miss the opportunity. Usually, I run out of time. I have a fog machine now (although I still haven’t tried it to test it out) and I’m going to make a go of it this time around. I will decorate like Halloween vomited a spew of tacky, oversized decorations all over my home and it’s going to be incredible. As for the real reason I got the fog machine: A slightly creepy, nighttime, summer tea party, with fog. And hey, the candelabra fits in there too! I think it will be fantastic fun.
I’m in my 40s and have been a receptionist for almost 20 years. It’s been a decent job. My employer will be retiring within the next few years and I’m not sure what I’d like to do when that happens. I know I would like a career change, but I have no idea what. Browsing through online college and university programs a lot of the courses required highschool classes I didn’t have, like chemistry, physics, and a bunch of math courses. I did a little searching around and found out there are highschool classes online for Ontario. It costs $40 a class. I thought it would be free, but I’ll pay to have the convenience of not having to attend actual highschool again.
I’m starting with a science class. It’s a good place to start. Science impacts almost every aspect of our lives. Health, agriculture, energy, robotics, so much more. It has made our lives much more comfortable, convenient, and healthier.
A career in science would fascinating, particularly Botany. I love plants, it would be enthralling to get to know them better. Maybe even go, full mad scientist? Like creating orange trees that can survive an Ontario Winter? A very cool thought, but would probably have some potentially environmentally devastating consequences… which would also be something I could learn about back in school. Why you shouldn’t create a hoard of enironmentally devastating, killer, jack frost, orange trees.
It’s been two and a half weeks since we brought Otis home from the airport. The first week was hard, the second much easier. Now that we are all fitting into our routines, it’s been wonderful. Otis was 27.8kg this morning at his weigh in and is now over 61lbs! He seems much happier and has been amazing with the puppy.
He wags his tail in a circle like a helicoptor. When he hasn’t seen you in awhile he makes cute little happy grunty sounds. So many cute little things he does. He’s still very skinny with lots of loose skin. When he eats and leans forward over his bowl, his face sags forward and wrinkles up like a sharpei. He is also a significant drooler and his eyes are still droopy. These things might all be from being so underweight.
After his weigh in, we went down to the Stonetown Cafe and got our usual breakfast of coffee, and egg and cheese sandwiches on an english muffin. We got the dogs and sandwich to split too. It was longer that Otis is used to walking and he was quite stiff afterwards. We’re trying to not push him too hard, but also want to build up his muscles
Both Otis and the puppy have been sleeping all afternoon. It’s been rather nice. I love how much they love each other. Quite often they sleep curled up together. It makes my heart happy. The both of them are very affectionate towards us. Otis frequently asks to be pet and loves belly rubs. I don’t think he’d welcome a big squishy bear hug yet, but he trusts us more and more every day. I am so happy Jay wanted to stand by him. He’s a sweet, stubborn, wonderful dog. I’m so glad he’s part of our family now.
I cooked a few times this week and what I made turned out really good! The photo above is the Black Bean Mole and Salsa from the Speedy Bosh! cookbook. It was a really unique recipe with some ingedients I didn’t expect (like chocolate and oranges). It was good too! The recipes in the book look really interesting and not so typical. I’m really looking forward to trying more of them.
This next dish, I used a sesame sauce recipe from The Complete Book of Sauces with broccoli, zucchini and rice. It was also a success! It was also a quick make and that is something I can use in my life. Our routines are all upturned after expanding our family with the two dogs and quick and easy is what I’m looking for.
For this egg and sweet potato dish, I went off roading. I based this creation roughly off this recipe here. I left the bacon out and used different veggies. I cooked everything in my air fryer except for the egg, which I did in a pan. It was also good. I loved the ease of “set it and forget it” using the airfryer. I love that appliance.
Three successes! I’m still terrible about getting takeout instead of cooking during the work week. It’s my planning that’s causing me problems. I need to set aside the time to know what I want to cook, get the ingredients and prepare it. Otherwise, I’m going to keep eating unhealthy. These three dishes I was super proud of. If I could keep cooking this way, I think I would be doing myself a huge favour.
I bought this book at bookoutlet.ca. I love writing people and this book caught my interest. It’s a memoir of an American girl and a boy from Zimbabwe and how they became best friends through their letters to each other. Martin was top of his class, but his family was struggling financially and he was no longer able to attend school and Caitlin’s family sent them financial aid. This happened a long time ago, but I was so surprised by how little went so far over there. It made me think that I would be able to help someone too.
My spouse Jay and I decided to sponser a child, but we didn’t know which agency to use. I searched on Google and I noticed some of them seemed to really force their beliefs onto the children/families they were sponsering. I preferred to use an agency that allowed the families in need the freedom to practice their own belief system. There were also a couple things I wanted to be able to do as well. I wanted to be able to write my sponser child and I wanted to sponser an individual instead of a community. I’m sure there are pros and cons to either one. I didn’t know where to start and I found a really helpful website: https://www.evanforry.com/child-sponsorship-programs/. They let you know which agencies allow you to communicate with your sponser child and whether or not you’re sponsering a community, or individual child. The summary chart at the bottom of the post was super helpful.
We decided to go with Children Incorporated. A child sponsership program that wasn’t affiliated with a religion and would allow you to communicate with your sponser child through correspondance. We are now sponsering an adorable 9 year old girl from the Philippines. We are so excited to learn more about her. An email with more info will be provided to us soon and I can’t wait to read it. For only $30 a month a big difference could be made in someone’s life.
Back in January/February we answered an ad for an animal in need, on Petfinder. Petfinder is a website that lists the pets available at multiple animal rescue agencies. It’s a pretty awesome website you can add filters to and find the kind of pet your looking for. It’s not just for dogs either, it has many different types of animals: cats, dogs, pocket pets, barnyard pets, lots. I’m going to post a copy of the ad I answered, below.
COAT LENGTH Long HEALTH Vaccinations up to date, spayed / neutered. GOOD IN A HOME WITH Other dogs, children.
Petfinder recommends that you should always take reasonable security steps before making online payments.
Meet Sable
This is Sable. He was living in a school yard in Turkey. He was so nice to everyone and always so happy to see everyone and some people were not very nice to him. He was very skinny at the time but since being rescued he has gained weight. He is about 6 years old. He is your typical golden; not a mean bone in his body. Very easygoing, loving, happy and gentle. He is good with other dogs. __________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sable, now Otis, was a stray in Turkey, living at a schoolyard before he came to the shelter. Besides what was listed in the ad, this is all we know about him. We chose him based on the description of his temperament. We wanted a dog that was safe for Ollie, our puppy. To avoid stress on the dog, once they are adopted they go straight to your home from the airport. I believe this is called a blind adoption. You don’t meet the dog before you bring them home! EEP!
Otis was flown from Turkey to Pearson Airport by Homebound Houndz (the rescue agency we used). The flight was close to 11 hours long and he was held up in customs for another three hours. That is a LONG time for a dog to be in a crate and I’ve no doubt the whole experience was pretty stressful for him.
Once the dogs are cleared and ready to leave the airport, they bring them out in crates to the arrival gates where you pick them up. It’s a pretty busy road and I was really nervous about him panicking and running into traffic. There are volunteers with the agency that are there to help you and I am so greatful for that. They stayed really late with us while we waited for our dog to clear customs and got the dogs collared and leashed. They have you bring food and water for the dogs because after a long flight like that they are ravenous.
I was shocked by the condition Otis was in when he came out of the crate. They warned us the dogs would be smelly, and dirty (they are in an outdoor shelter and unable to give the dogs baths before they come (if you get your dog in Winter, which we did). We were warned by the rescue agency that our dog was extremely underweight. Otis was all these things, dirty, smelly, and emaciated. He was much skinnier than I had realized. I tried to give him water first, he didn’t want it. He stuck his head in the bag I had brought with me. He wanted the food. I had about two cups of dog food with me and he ate the whole thing. All this was happening on the sidewalk at the airport. There were people walking by constantly. At one point someone with a large cart of things needed us to move so he could get through. I was very nervous about moving the dish of food away from a starving dog, but Otis let me. He just followed the food.
It was around 10pm at this point and we were super tired and just wanted to go home. After Otis finished eating we opened the car door and patted the seat for him to get in. He came willingly and without any coaxing. Jay drove and I rode in the backseat with the dog. Otis wanted to sleep most of the way home, but would occasionally nudge my arm for snuggles and pets, while I told him about all the fun things we would do together. We made one pit stop to go to the bathroom (he never went in his crate on the plane WOW) and then we continued the rest of the way home.
We had planned on introducing our puppy Ollie, to Otis on a walk outside. We had not anticipated the delay in customs. We didn’t get home until after 1am. We were so tired we were reckless and just let them meet each other right away in the house. For the next hour we watched with knotted stomachs as the dogs met for the first time. It wasn’t a dream meeting of waggy tails and puppy snuggles. We basically watched Otis hump Ollie for the next hour. They didn’t seem to be trying to kill each other and we were exhausted. We decided to go to bed, I had a train I had to catch in four hours. They must have settled down soon after because we didn’t hear them for too long. Neither of us slept well that night.
While I was getting on the train and all during the day, my spouse was sending me photos and updates. There was still a lot of humping going on, but the two of them were getting along okay. Otis got along pretty well with my spouse too. He was so dirty he looked wet and he smelled really bad. I remember we had a huge snow storm that day and I was worried about the trains not running and not being able to get home. I also briefly fell asleep at my desk!
I was finally able to give him a bath the next day. He was a dream in the bath. He just stood there while we scrubbed him. The water coming off him was pretty nasty. You can see how skinny he is. Even after the first bath he was still waxy feeling and we would want to wash our hands right away after touching him. He had so many mats in his fur. Both my spouse and I slowly brushed them out during the next few days. He’s looking so much better.
We did have an incident on the way home from the vet’s office after a weigh in. Otis got some snow, or salt in his paw and we tried to help him out by trying to dig it out. It was extremely naive of us to think we could just go ahead and do that. Otis had only known us for less then two days, he was in discomfort, and we were both looming over him. He snarled and snapped at us. I was so surprised. He had been so sweet and gentle so far. We didn’t have his trust yet.
I was ready to call it quits after that. It’s really scary to have a large, adult dog snap at you (even if he is all skin and bones). I spent the rest of that weekend in tears and full of regret. What a mistake I had made! I was in over my head and so overwhelmed. What had I done! How had I thought adopting a strange dog from another country was a good idea!? My spouse was horrified that I was ready to throw in the towel. He loves Otis and wanted to give him a second chance.
It’s now a week and a half later. Otis is still here, he’s had a second bath and has been a real sweetheart. He’s gained over 2kg in the last week. He started out weighing 23kg and today he is weighing in at just over 26kg. My spouse was able to put his boots on with no problems and he was pretty good for the vet too. No snapping. This morning I was sitting on the floor and he climbed into my lap for snuggles! I’ve read that it’s pretty normal to feel regret after getting a new dog and usually it passes. I think we’re going to stick with it and I think it’s going to be okay. I love him too.
Lobster Shorts 