do you know this guy?

cause it's my dad. HA HA FOOLED YOU IT'S NEIL GAIMAN THE AUTHOR! and he's gooooood.

like serious adult writer good but also rich fairytaleteller and hilarious and frightening and many many more positive sounding descriptive words.

i know i tend to lose some people in my affinity for the realm of make believe and that a normal reaction to me recommending something is often 'hey is she trying to trick me into reading an encyclopedia on unicorns?' but trust me, he's great.

plus he wrote that coraline book that's a movie now. also neat.

weird (and politically incorrect) names of people in the book i'm reading

wheelchair wanda
dead dave
jean-claude

diabee-ties

jeremy says that most honey comes from bees who are force fed sugar and that you should try to buy honey that comes naturally (from flowers) because it's better for the bees and it tastes better and you're supporting a more ethical bee business.

those poor bees. i hope they have good dental coverage!

i feel bad for the bee wives when their bee husbands come home from work and crash after a days worth of sugar highs and the bee wife has to be like 'please eat your vegetables' and the bee husband is all 'NO. I WANT A MISTER BIG BAR'.

t-goodness-i-f

ooooo it's FRIDAAAAAY!

and even though it started out rainy and now it's all windy lou who all i see is sunshine and my friends,( saturday and sunday), just down the road on their way for their weekly visit.

tonight we will prepare for their arrival by putting up streamers and balloons and a welcome sign. maybe i'll bake them something so they'll be tempted to stay into next week.

WELCOME WELCOME WELCOME! i love you guys and holiday monday the very most.

delicious dinner

- toasted ham and smoked gouda on rye

- pea soup

- sliced tomatoes with italian parsley (this part was just for me. jeremy only likes tomatoes for throwing at stand-up comedians).

don't you think sandwiches can make such a delightful meal?!? i love how the bread is like a dinner jacket for the things that go inside.

stephanie gerkins used to be part of a sandwich club and i remember thinking how cool that was when i first met her and we were in those early stages of friendship courting. or maybe i just wanted to be part of her club.

i was lured in under toasted western pretenses!

where do we go from here

every year jeremy and i watch all seven seasons of buffy the vampire slayer and we start around november and she takes us pretty much right through the winter and the early dark nights and the times when it's way too cold to do anything but stay indoors and watch vampire tv.

we pause it and discuss things and we analyze these people like we know them and we really do know them they just don't know us which is their loss really cause we're like SO COOL.

last night was the series finale and we always make a big deal about it and get champagne and cheers each other and say 'good run' and shake each others hands and blare the theme song really loudly and wave our arms around in the air. the last ten minutes or so of the last episode is always so intense knowing it's the last ten minutes of the last episode and that soon we will be saying goodbye to our imaginary tv vampire friends for another 9 months.

now we're looking at each other like empty nesters. we shrug our shoulders and say, 'what do you wanna do i dunno what do you want to do?'

probably tonight we'll mope around a little bit or reminisce about the characters like 'remember that time when buffy killed angel' or 'remember when buffy came back from the dead the second time' or 'remember when spike got his soul back and went crazy when the first evil was playing mind tricks on him'.

maybe we'll peer in at the living room couch from the kitchen like how parents look in at their kid's room when they've gone off to school. maybe we'll turn it into a weight room or a library or a music lounge.

or maybe we'll just leave it as it is and if buffy wants to come home for an odd visit between now and next november, she'll feel she's still welcome. i hope she doesn't expect us to do all her laundry.

would you like some wine with this cheese?

today every time i think about how jeremy asked me to marry him and how i get to be with him forever and how there's no one else in the wide world i'd rather be with, well i just feel so happy inside i want to run around throwing candy in the air, singing and hugging strangers including the homeless.

I LOVE YOU JEREMY!! and i love you friends and i love you family and i love you readers (who are really only friends and family and that person from matchstick marketing that one time).

skipper

me and jeremy want to move to british columbia and live on a houseboat. don’t you think that would be a neat? we could fish from our roof! and swim from our stoop!

maybe one night we would untie ourselves from our moorings and just float out to sea.

i bet the stars would be amazing.

i bet you’d feel indescribably small.

and i bet it's impossible to find a place that would deliver you a pizza.

oh boy

this little person is so cute. and she's my relative so whenever someone's cute and they are related to me i think it must be correlational which is a science thing i learned about in school that means she gets her cuteness from me or i get it from her or when someone rings a bell someone else drools.

she turned four years old this weekend which is one finger less than a whole hand.

remember turning TWO hands old? that was serious stuff. i remember living all my days waiting for someone to ask how old i was so i could flash all my fingers in the air like i'd won a prize.

i still do that now but like two and an eighth times so people just assume i'm having some sort of attack.

letters

dear lily,

i am writing to inform you that i still get very good use out of my bridesmaids dress from your wedding.

yesterday for example i wore it almost all day. i watched a movie in it, i did the dishes (pictured here), i took the garbage out, i read my book, i did some jumping jacks . . .

jeremy asked that i take it off before we went out to the store to buy ice cream bars because he said it was 'too cold'.

probably he was just embarrassed to be so 'under dressed'.

love,

me

FIRE IN THE HOLE!

when i arrived to work this morning my plastic army man had fallen off his post (my computer stand) and the collection of rock salt that acts as his fort walls had been strewn about my desk.

clearly someone is trying to sabotage my army of one.

i need to call a meeting! and then declare war!

unless it was my army man who caused the upset himself as a way of sending me a message. but what could the message be? he needs a holiday? he's sick of holding up his plastic bazooka? learn to write and/or speak army guy! your silent stoic manner is not exactly helpful in situations like these.

i guess i could get him a sin card and a benefits package and .83 vacation days monthly and see if that's enough to avoid any future plastic army man temper tantrums.

savannah's silly heart cake

oh hi! it's just me at 7 am and i'm up icing a cake for my niece's birthday party.

i may have finally found something to distract me from the oh so tempting wake up jeremy game. although he did come out here once to see what i was doing cause i don't think i've ever entertained myself so early and for so long before.

it's a christmas miracle! in february!

step one: wear a nightgown that matches the colour of the icing you'll be making.

icing is really easy to make. it might even be easier to make than to purchase especially if you purchase it and use the self checkout aisle at the grocery store cause sometimes that is not so easy.

doesn't this look like gum? or taffy? or big dollops of pink marshmallow moosh? it's none of those things but that's a fun game.

i named the cake silly heart because i tried to make normal hearts with the icing bag thing and the outlines turned out all wacky so i went with it and named it and now you know the tale. when life gives you lemons (badly outlined icing hearts), make lemonade (squiggly arty icing hearts that look intentional).

you can tell it's morning cause i have my morning face on. sometimes my morning face looks angry if it's a weekday but now it looks happy cause it's saturday and i'm decorating cake.

time to go show jeremy my work! i mean, time to wait patiently until he gets up and then show him!

x

yep, it's this topic again

if me and jeremy were vampires we would be these vampires cause not only are they cool and attractive and the best and most interesting characters on buffy, they're also a lot like us.

for example drusilla is crazy and talks mostly in riddles and nonsense and spike is like a badass rockstar a la sid vicious and i can't count the number of times i've had to talk jeremy into putting down the bottle of peroxide.

they're madly in love, or just mad, but we totally identify with them. as much as one can identify with made up characters playing made up creatures. which, if you're us, is actually quite a bit.

rah rah rah

it's really hard for me to finish things.

i can come up with a bajillion wacky new ideas on any given day but most of them have a little life in my head and maybe make it out on paper and after that they die and i give them a funeral and put them on a raft and set them on fire with flaming arrows like they did in medieval times.

so this part time school business to finish my ece diploma is totally unchartered territory for me. in all my 28 years i don't think i've ever once gone back to something i've abandoned and picked it up again, (unless it was a peanut butter sandwich).

ever since i realized this last night in class when i was supposed to be listening it has made me want to finish with even more determination cause on top of the obvious reason that it will be good to get my diploma, it will be like an obstacle and i'll have hurdled over the obstacle like how those olympic people run and them jump over those things without falling on their faces.

GO ME GO!

and if i do fall on my face i'll just stick the finishing things idea on the burning raft with the all the rest of stuff i've started.

in my dreams it's summertime

i was sitting in my backyard, the one from my childhood, on one of those old school lawn chairs with the aluminum frames and the plastic webbing - ours were yellow and white.

and the sun is high up in the sky like it's the afternoon but like it's gonna be afternoon for hours to come yet. and the heat is washing over me and i can feel it in the dream, that real heat feeling when the sun is holding you down and warming you up from the inside out.

jeremy isn't with me, i'm sitting alone, but i'm thinking of him with me eyes closed and my smile on and my feet without shoes in the grass, and i'm wondering where he is.

i hope he's on the neighbours lawn in his own summertime dream and later on we'll meet up for a bbq.

and the boy loved the tree

when i die i want to be buried under a tree so i nourish the tree and the tree grows with me in it and jeremy can go visit the tree and maybe make a bench beside it or maybe if he isn’t too old to sit on the ground without breaking something he can lay under me and we can be like the boy and the tree in that shel silverstein book. minus the part where the boy chops the tree down to sell for money in the city.

is this a weird topic? i don’t think so, i find it comforting. i like to think of my life as a whole with a beginning and an end - a circle. it’s especially nice to talk with jeremy about it because he’ll be there with me through it all. from now until then and all the growy, wrinkly, shrinky ages in between.

aw i bet we’ll be so small when we’re old. like people might mistake us for garden gnomes.

i know these conversations seem a tad premature but also not. like it wouldn't surprise me to wake up tomorrow beside jeremy and we're 95. life seems to blink by so much quicker when you're holding hands with the one you'll share it with.

snow squall mixer (byob)

what's an isolated flurry?

anti-social snow?

i guess it's good if it's isolated cause i bet snow storms are what happens when precipitation decides it wants to party.

come with me if you want to live

did you know that these things are called fascinators?! i had no idea!!

i wonder if the terminator feels slightly less masculine almost sharing a name with a small feathered hat.

bake me a cake as fast as you can

that poem isn't very nice is it? bake me a cake as fast as you can? rude! i find that when someone is baking you a cake you should be thankful and patient and offer to do things for the baker like clean their dishes or kiss them a lot on their cheeks.

jeremy baked this delicious lemon cake for me for valentines day. it was light and fluffy and an excellent companion for my tea, (tea even said so). also when we cut a slice from it, it looked like pacman.

when we first got together we used to bake allll the time. really delectable stuff too like creme brulee and double fudge brownies and jer's (now famous) oatmeal chocolate chip cookies so it was a really thoughtful gift in memory of when we first started dating. HOW SWELL!

i love jeremy and his baked goods.

if a recipe called for two cups of jeremy i would make them 'rounded' cups not 'leveled' cups and i'd probably put in three cups even though it could potentially screw up the recipe.

be mine, valentine

if you want to know what i did friday afternoon when work let out early for the long weekend, this is it.

it took a few hours to cut and glue and marker and hole punch and tape this bad boy together but jeremy's eyes at 7:00 am on valentines day morning when i pulled it out from under the bed made it all worth it.

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY SWEETIE! let this giant red cellophane rose taped to the front of your card always be a reminder of just how much i love you.

xx

an entire post about my hair

ACK! EE-GAD! IT'S HORRIBLE! LOOK AWAY! ha ha just joking. it's not like i was mad at my old head or anything it just was time for a change.

i contemplated pouting for this 'before' picture but after practicing various frowns in the mirror i realized i don't know how to pout without putting my bottom teeth out which just makes me look angry.

AFTER!

i took about thirty million photos once i returned from my hilites/haircut/skin whitening procedure. what do you think?! pretty?! subtle. this was really the only light where it looked like there was a difference but i think maybe cause there's already some red in my hair it wasn't as dramatic as i was expecting? it is very natural so maybe that's a sign of a job well done. or my colourist mistook some toothpaste for hair colour which explains the fresh minty smell.

HA HA jeremy loves picture day.

i like how his caramel skin and my white rabbit in a snow storm skin look together. i wonder if we have babies if they'll be in between the two of us in colour and then together we'll be like a skin colour rainbow. mr dark, mrs translucent and little baby half tone.

as you'll notice here, i had the moustache done up the same colour as my hair for a more convincing natural look.

my new hair this morning. STILL AT IT! see how it's kinda different but not really different but nice? basically i feel like someone's just turned the lights on upstairs and now my head's a more inviting place to be. come on over and pay it a visit! i know it can't wait to meet you.

oh you shouldn't have!

even though i know madeleine didn't make this specifically with me in mind i still saw it from across the room (on her blog) and felt it was all mine.

which really is the mark of a great artist don't you think? to reach you on that personal level?

it's like when i listen to michael jackson telling me billie jean is not his lover and i say to him 'it's ok michael, i know, you don't have to explain your life choices to me'.

HOLY HANNA BARBARA LAND this lady can make some good food and dress it up even gooder. i don't know if i want to eat this stuff or wear it as a hat.

happy weekend everyone! i wish you all banana crepes and chocolate roses.

retraction

jeremy has brought to my attention that perhaps it isn't the best idea to show our address on my blog so if you're a pervert, nutbar or wackadoo that isn't our real address but if you're a nice person, friend or relative that is our real address and i love mail.

this is not a wedding blog

but this is!

even if you're not getting married or you don't want to ever get married or you hate being married i think everyone would love this website.

just look at this picture that was posted on it today!

it looks like a doll. from the 70's. who's starring in a soap opera.

jeremy always makes fun of how models have their lips partly open in pictures. he says it's because people look at them and think 'sex'. i look at them and think 'she probably just wants a french fry'.

anyways, cute site. the weddings they feature on it are pretty and young and full of fresh ideas. i love to harvest fresh ideas and mix it with some lemonade and sell it for 25 cents a cup.

dyin' ain't much of a living, boy

last night jeremy made us peppercorn steaks and we watched 'the outlaw josey wales' which is a western from the 70's directed by and starring clint eastwood. for those of you who do not know that clint eastwood was the most attractive man on earth when he was younger, i suggest you watch this movie and get ready for your pupils to turn into little hearts.

i think steph might have already written about this film and/or clint's almost offensive attractiveness. this movie reminded me of her a lot so either i have a memory of her commenting on this material, or she just loves cowboys so much that whenever anyone shoots anyone and has a stubbly beard, i automatically think steph.

here's 8 more reasons to watch.

1) many many people die. and it's not like i'm all YEAH DEATH! i just think a western movie should have its fair (large) share of shoot em up and this has a plenty.

2) the bum's costumes. kinda like clowns? without the bright colours? ha ha this is probably just how transient folk dressed back in the olden days but i liked it. they did nice work with layers. and top hats.

3)clint eastwood spitting chewing tobacco on everything (travelling salesmen, scorpions, dogs etc)

4)chief dan george!! this guy is so cool and canadian and never studied acting but clint eastwood really loved him so he hired him anyways and when chief dan george would forgot his lines which apparently was often, clint eastwood would mouth them to him. clint eastwood is so nice!! (and handsome).

5) how pretty sondra locke is. she's like a deer crossed with mia farrow crossed with sunshine. i found it hard not to stare at her when she was on camera but you can stare all you want really cause she's on the tv and you're on the couch eating potato chips.

6) "well you gonna pull your pistols, or whistle dixie?"

7) all the drums in the score. this movie made me want to march around in a serious and dangerous fashion.

8) the olden days. more than once in this movie jer and i found ourselves envious of people's simple lifestyle, (not including the parts where their homes were being burnt by the union soldiers). it may have also been a filming technique but the colour of the land and how the homes and the people and the horses all seemed to be part of each other, rather than clearly defined others, was so harmonious in a live-off-the-land kinda way. the little cottage they go to towards the end of the movie is so cute i want to tear my nose off, sell it on e-bay, and make one just like it with the proceeds.

so saddle up your quarter horse, shine up your spurs, and put this movie in ye olde dvd player! tell your boyfriend you're sorry about the drool.

we've got mail

yesterday we received two letters addressed to 'jennifer and jeremy' and it made me so happy partly because it wasn't a rogers bill but mostly because it seemed a formal thing, the two of us, addressed to 'we', me and he. i love him so tremendously.

HEY, THAT RHYMES!

which is besides the point.

amen.

something wonderful happened

my big boss at work is this giant nincompoop who rarely comes into the office and when he does i always put on my best employee face by closing down microsoft paint and crunching integers or whatever it is i do so even though he's a doofus deluxe, we get along ok.

today though he decided to call and yell at me at volume level three thousand for something completely out of my hands and before i started to make an attempt at defending myself, i realized two things.

1) this wasn't a discussion. this was him being a bozo and enjoying the sound of his bozo voice berating me.

2) i didn't care.

and it was positively the most liberating moment of my life.

as he went on and on about whatever and blah blah blah and who knows what, at one point stopping to equate me to a dog, i realized i am completely better than him.

not just cause i can do drawings or say more interesting things or because i would never yell at people in such a manner, but yeah, also cause of those things.

normally i would turn red and stutter and maybe cry afterwards but there was none of that this time and it made me feel like a real life super hero.

so scream on, bozo boss! your words can't hurt me. and thanks for calling rather than coming in so i could continue making doodles of alligators while you rambled.

tune in your retinas to channel 4

technology news people expect that in as few as ten years we'll be able to watch tv through a contact lense which is really neat but what if you couldn't turn it off and you had to go through your day watching weird cheers reruns?

it's like when i was little i used to have nightmares about not being able to turn off unsolved mysteries even though i had unplugged the tv and i couldn't escape that serious man in the trench coat. YIKES! i wouldn't want to have to poke myself in the eyeball just to stop the horror.

will it come with a little remote i wonder? or would you just blink to turn the channel? jump up and down for auto tracking? shut your eyes to pause?

at least you wouldn't have to miss any of your show if you went to the kitchen to fix yourself a snack, so that's one good thing.

i love being a girl

if anyone ever wonders why some ladies pay hundreds of dollars for dresses it's because they write descriptions for them like this.

A LAYER OF SUNNY YELLOW?! i don't even need to try it on! name your price!

CLOUD STREWN SKY RENDITION?! i'll take two! and one for a wall hanging!

BREEZE-BLOWN RUFFLES? oy oy oy, it's like fashion smut.

letters

dear musing moon dress,

won't you be mine?

your name, your description, the little whimsical bows on your shoulders IT'S JUST ALL TOO MUCH.

i'd pair you with a sweet little cardigan or no cardigan at all if it was a warm day and i was picnicking.

maybe i could wear you as my day after the wedding dress! i'll throw you on and jeremy will swoop me up in his arms and mount his trusty steed and we'll ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after; just you me and jer.

makeover

google! you look so pretty today! normally you’re all primary colours and letters but today with the pastels and the dreaminess!

i bet you got up this morning and thought ‘what a dreary day i’m going to kick it up a notch by putting on my spring outfit’ and i say bravo you!

you look like a warm breeze in a meadow.

what are you trying to say?

jeremy made this using this here website and what you do is you put in whatever words you want to make art out of and then you push a button and bingo bango presto chango!

jer made this one by compiling all the emails that i've sent him over the last week or so. words you use often appear bigger than those used less often so good thing i call him 'sweetie' a lot and not 'jerk nose mcarthur' or this would be really embarrassing.

the grand prize winner in the blurry but oh so dreamy picture category

burger review

steph's boy can cook a mean burger. and i don't mean 'mean' like the burger is verbally abusive i mean like it's so tasty it doesn't even need any toppings.

it has bacon inside the beef and bacon on top of the beef and cheese and sauteed onions and mushrooms and a special ingredient which is probably love because when i bit into the burger i loved it and i loved ryan for making it and i loved steph for making such a wise boyfriend/burger choice.

i love you delicious burger! even though i didn't finish you i hope you know it's only because i ate a pound of sushi as an appetizer. next time i will not pre-eat so i can eat you in your tasty tasty entirety as you so deserve.

how to: make sushi on saturday

step one: invite layla over

step two: do what she says

step three: bring the sushi over to steph's house later on saturday night and eat it

it was actually not at all difficult! and the rolling it up part felt really cool, like putting a seal in its rubber suit and rolling it around on the table only the seal is tiny and stuffed with rice and avocado which is maybe not the most appetizing metaphor but it's accurate! try!

ha ha ha my face. i think jeremy sees a lot of this face when he's trying to tell me something or when he's telling me not to touch something hot or just probably when he's saying anything ever.

layla was such a good teacher. when i said "how did i do" on my first one she said "really fantastic you just need to add more rice here and here" which is the mark of a good teacher when they say something nice first before they correct you. where's my job well done sticker though? or at least where's my certificate of participation.

i kept eating bits of the avocado that weren't the right size for the sushi roll. i'm such a perfectionist. also i'm such a person who makes up excuses to eat tasty looking food ingredients.

this photo is slightly blurry because i got so fast at rolling the sushi i started rolling at warp speed. it was crazy. i slowed down when my hands were smoking though cause i didn't want that to affect the fresh flavour of the roll.

et voila! looks just like real professional sushi eh?! jeremy cut it all nice on angles and stuff so basically between the two of us we can open a fancily cut vegetable roll sushi joint. screw layla! just kidding we'll mention her in the 'our story' section of the menu.

make a left on gingerbread lane

so i'm collecting addresses to invite people to this thing we're having in october and all of the ones from jeremy's relatives across the pond seem too adorable to be real so either they're making them up or england really is just as cute as a button on a navy pea coat.

here are a few examples. i may or may not have made up the last one.

Rye Cottage, Watch House Green, Felsted

Bardfield Hall Cottage, Braintree Road, Great Bardfield

Cute Cottage on the Hill Surrounded by Other Hills and Sheep, Fezzywinkle Street, Foggy Fish n Chips Ville

cute head, baby

look at me! with sophie!

oh it's so much easier to hang out with babies when they can be in charge of holding their own heads up isn't it?! i think so. it's like if i'm going to pick you up and carry you around and make entertaining noises the least you can do is take responsibility for the weight of your noggin.

i think when i have a baby i'm going to carry it around in a bubble wrap sleeper so if i drop it i won't have to worry PLUS it will make that fun popping sound when it bounces around on the floor.