A million years ago I had a birthday party. I hope everyone else enjoyed themselves as much as I did, because I had tons of fun.

We had a hotdog bar. There were several types of hotdogs and sausages, plus TONS O’ TOPPINGS. We had: guacamole, mashed potatoes, corn salsa, mustards, hummus, various cheeses, caramelized onions, beer mushrooms, sour cream, basil mayonnaise, bacon, salsa…. and probably more that I’m forgetting. IT WAS AMAZING.

Brian had a great idea of passing his hotdog around and letting everyone put toppings on for him. It ended up with a little of everything, plus a lot of sriracha, and a strip of watermelon. Haha. He still ate it.

Rosemarie and Lauren made me an awesome taco piñata. It looked sooooo cool!!!! Only problem was it was TOO DURABLE! We broke our mop handle and broom handle in the process of bashing the piñata open. But it was worth it for the amount of entertainment gained. I’m glad we didn’t get evicted for Rob being on the roof, especially considering we were being so loud we had a lot of witnesses from the other building. :D

We also played games. PS the above picture shows our answers for “How many acres is Central Park in NYC?”. Apparently Rosemarie thinks that Central Park is only slightly bigger than our cottage property, hehehehehehheeeee. Wits & Wagers and Cards Against Humanity are always fun times.

We really need to have people over more often.

I decided a few weeks ago that I was wasting away too much time on the internets and I should try to do something more productive. I happen to work right across the street from a Michaels so it wasn’t hard to get a bunch of craft supplies and get started. Here are my current works in progress.

OK well this one is pretty much done, but I still need to iron and figure out what to do with it. Frame? Cardboard? Decorative pillow? (probably not the last idea).

My sisters-in-law always post lots of cute cross stitches on Instagram and they inspired me to try it. I do remember doing cross stitch at some point when I was like… 7, but I don’t think I even finished the kit that my mom gave me at the time. Cross stitch designs are pretty awesome these days… not so many cats in baskets, haha. Now I have to figure out what design to do next.

Granny stripe afghan. My mom taught me to crochet when I was little, I think I made about 3 squares and then quit. I guess I have more perseverance these days because I haven’t lost interest at all yet. This thing is massive… about 7 feet across!! King size! It’s exciting having it become more blanket-like every day. But each row takes me 30-40 minutes, so I still have a looooooong way to go.

I’ve been stopping at Michaels after every shift at work to buy another ball of yarn with a 40% off coupon. I hope I get some shifts next week because I’ve caught up and need more colours at the moment.

Australia Ticket To Ride. This project started off as just Sharpies on poster board, but then I accidentally drew a super ugmo points thingy on the side and had to paint over it to forever rid the world of its hideousness. Then when we tested it out ~some people~ couldn’t tell the difference between the yellow and green, and the orange and red, so ~apparently~ I have to redo that. And then if I’m redoing the tracks I might as well make the states look better (who makes the land part of a map blue). So basically I have to paint over the whole thing. But the water part looks pretty cool painted, so I’m excited about the whole thing. I just have to stop being so lazy and get my paints out some day.

Until next time… can someone wash my paintbrushes for me?

Oh my. It’s been a while since I last blogged about regular life stuff. I’ve got TONS of stuff to talk about!! The next bunch of posts might get a little random in here.

Way back in December Lesley came over for another dinner and games night. Rosemarie was still living with us at that point so we got to test out my homemade Ticket To Ride Australia with FOUR PLAYERS. It worked! But Scott and Lesley kept mixing up the yellow and green so apparently I need to do some touch-ups on the board. ;) We still need to make nice tickets as well. I’ll post the whole thing when I’m done (probably in about 8 years at the rate I’m going).


We made stuffed crust pizzas for dinner. Scott made the dough, then we stuffed the crusts with cheese strings and/or hot dogs (!!). If you make these, be sure to pinch the dough tightly shut around your stuffings so they don’t leak out. I had chopped up tons of other toppings so we could each make our own custom pizzas. Plus lots of mozzarella of course.

The pizzas came out deformed, but delicious. DIY stuffed crust works, although I would probably just stick with the cheese strings in the future, the hot dog was wayyyyyyyyyyyy too salty (who woulda guessed).

This was also the night that I learned how to make margaritas at home. My latest favourite drink EVER. On the rocks, with fresh limes. There is an Asian grocery store down the street that often sells $1 bags of slightly old limes, perfect for squeezing! Anyway due to several PITCHERS of margaritas, no other pictures were taken this evening, haha.

I LOVE DAYS OFF!

Not that I’ve done much with my time. Mostly all I’ve been doing is watching tons of Bob’s Burgers and Suits and making and eating food, haha.

We haven’t done Christmas yet. We’ve made up our own arbitrary holiday and it happens on January 1st. This means we could wait for boxing day sales and get MOAR PRESENTS for less $$. The day is also going to involve the polar bear swim, an egg hunt, a big meal (not sure what yet), stockings…. basically just all the fun parts of other holidays.

Did I ever write about how our TV broke and was deemed unfixable by the repair shop? Well that happened. We went to Costco on Boxing Day morning to replace it. I was expecting it to be a madhouse, but actually it was totally quiet. I have never seen Costco so empty, it was lovely. We ended up getting a cheap 32″ TV. It’s nice being able to watch TV during daylight hours again.

I don’t work again until 2014. I have two and a half weeks solid of training in January but then I’m not on the schedule after that. I’m sure I’ll pick up some shifts here and there but I think I’m not going to be very busy for a while. Perhaps I’ll go back to nights at the data centre? We’ll see we’ll see.