relishing summer

Stum­bled upon a farm­ers mar­ket in the neigh­bour­hood where I used to go to school, it even has a cafe! So I’ve made it a goal to vis­it when it opens every Wednes­day, get some veg­eta­bles for the week, stop by the cafe (that is also part of the farmer’s mar­ket), and take some time to draw. Like I did when we were on our trip to Chica­go :D I’m fore­see­ing a very busy Sep­tem­ber, so it’s nice to have the time to rel­ish summer.

Photo 2013-07-31 6 52 16 PM

Trea­sures from the earth! Rain­bow chard — uni­corns’ favourite veg­eta­bles! :D But con­trary to what I thought and what the farmer seemed to be telling me, rain­bow chard isn’t a species in itself, it’s actu­al­ly a mix of dif­fer­ent kinds of chard. But any­way, I’ve nev­er had chard and it was very sweet.

Photo 2013-07-31 7 32 36 PM

We sautéed the chard and the radish togeth­er :D

Photo 2013-07-31 4 36 30 PM

And here’s the draw­ing I made at the cafe. About shar­ing space, shar­ing resources and sup­port­ing each oth­ers’ growth.

Photo 2013-07-31 3 44 28 PM

The farm­ers mar­ket is in front of a church and the cafe is inside the nice court­yard of the church. I should take more pic­tures of it next week.

John Street Farm­ers Mar­ket! I high­ly rec­om­mend vis­it­ing if you’re in the neigh­bour­hood :D

May your week be filled with sim­ple joys.

 

sweet!

perler bead earrings

 

After post­ing about the per­ler bead ear­rings sev­er­al days ago, I imme­di­ate­ly made a pair :D They look so sweet! And so quick to make. Kind of have a lacy look to them.

It was a very small craft project but it made me real­ly hap­py. There are so many things that I want to make and I post them on this blog, but I rarely make any of them.

The next day Mike and I went to Greg’s Ice Cream :D mmm crunchy malt.

Wish­ing every­one an awe­some start to the week!

 

april flowers

 

I love bloom­ing trees. They make the city look hap­py and new.

 

 

 

The African vio­let on my desk is doing real­ly well this spring — look at this bou­quet! It’s real­ly too gen­er­ous, I rarely fer­til­ize it (I do talk to it though), but every time I trim the leaves it pro­duces more flowers.

 

And tulips are out in the near­by park!

 

And a very cool float­ing flower table decor at a cafe Mike and I went to.

 

And they had star­ry ceil­ing lights.

 

Wish­ing you a great start to the week! :D

 

 

from the lake

Inspired by an idea I saw on Pin­ter­est a while ago — using white ink on dark rocks — I paint­ed these a few days ago. I found the stones by Lake Huron in the summer. 

This one is inspired by the bar­na­cles I saw in Hong Kong on the rocks by the seashore. The stone has some fos­silized corals in it.

 

This one has a tiny shell embed­ded in it :D

 

I paint­ed the out­line with white acrylic and a tiny Chi­nese cal­lig­ra­phy brush, and then coloured inside the shapes with fine tip markers.

On a sep­a­rate note, today Toron­to saw the first offi­cial snow­fall of the sea­son! It was the feath­ery kind of snow too and it stayed on the branch­es for a while. The red berry bush I showed you the oth­er day looked gor­geous cov­ered in snow, but I left my cam­era at home! Oh well… maybe it will snow again tomorrow…

Hap­py Thurs­day, everyone!

 

november movember

Can’t believe it’s almost the end of November! 

Mike’s been fundrais­ing for Movem­ber, and last night while video-chat­ting with my sis­ter and my par­ents on Google+ I noticed a new mus­tache fea­ture! XD (It’s kind of a face recog­ni­tion thing where the mus­tache fol­lows the per­son­’s face on the screen.)

So the screen shot above is me with a fake ‘stache and Mike with a real ‘stache. There are even dif­fer­ent kinds of mustache…

 

FUN! :D Do give it a try if you use Google+!

Speak­ing of Novem­ber, I cel­e­brat­ed my birth­day last week. Mike made me a cake :D

 

… and he got me a plush lla­ma! (the chick­en noo­dle soup was just ran­dom­ly thrown in there for the photo…)

I’ve been want­i­ng a plush lla­ma for a long time! Mike’s the best :D

A cou­ple more weeks and we’re into Decem­ber! I usu­al­ly start Christ­mas craft­ing around Octo­ber, but have been too busy with school this year. I can’t wait till the semes­ter ends in the sec­ond week of Decem­ber — I’ll be doing noth­ing but craft­ing, drink­ing tea and eat­ing Tof­fifee. Mmm. 

Have you start­ed Christ­mas craft­ing yet? 

Wish­ing you a hap­py Wednesday!

 

 

 

river stone

I was inspired by the long chain neck­laces that a friend always wears. So while down on Queen Street West for a school project last week, I quick­ly stopped by my favourite bead store to look at their stone pendants. 

I bought this one because it remind­ed me of Nia­gara Falls — the emer­ald green algae under­neath, the rocks on the cliff, the gush of waters roar­ing down.

 

It’s drilled through the mid­dle length­wise so I put a piece of wire through, made a dou­ble-loop at the top for the chain and a coil at the bot­tom to secure it. Not sure if that makes sense… my brain’s kind of fried after a day of writ­ing… here’s the back of it so you can see what I mean…

 

I also did­n’t have one long chain so I linked two togeth­er, like so…

 

Ta-da!

 

Makes me hap­py to look at it because it reminds me of water, and the won­ders of cre­ation. It’s the small things that help me get through crunch time >_<

Hope you’re hav­ing a good weekend!

 

 

those crafty squirrels

Fol­low­ing the post about my leaf draw­ing of squir­rels and acorns ear­li­er today, Mike found an inter­est­ing arti­cle about red squir­rels dec­o­rat­ing their nests! :D

Red squir­rels dec­o­rate their pile of food sup­ply (spruce cones, in this case) with paper…

 

… leaves and grass…

 

… and moss.

 

An overview of a large pile of cones dec­o­rat­ed with paper and oth­er found objects…

 

A boun­ty of but­ter­nut and cones! :D

 

And our friend, the red squir­rel, stop­ping for lunch.

 

Cheers!

 

today’s awesome finds!

Buttons! 

My mom gave me a box of craft sup­plies that some­one else gave to her, and in the large box of sup­plies there was a small box of but­tons. I just tucked the box of but­tons into my craft draw­er for the longest time and only today did I look through it. There were these deli­cious-look­ing green and pink but­tons just beg­ging to be made into some­thing, but I did­n’t know what… and then I went brows­ing on Pin­ter­est and guess what I found? This post on Home­mak­er’s Jour­nal about mak­ing but­toned bob­by pins! It’s such a sim­ple idea but it’s absolute­ly perfect.

I’m in the process of try­ing to grow out my bangs so I use bob­by pins to keep my hair out of my face, and hav­ing a nice but­toned bob­by pin rather than a plain old bob­by pin real­ly bright­ened my day. It’s the small things, you know? :D

 

Also in the box of but­tons was this antique Hong Kong $5 coin, from 1976!

It’s a decagon! (new word I learned today thanks to Google :D) Nowa­days $5 are round, I’ve nev­er seen a 10-sided $5 coin! And here’s the queen on the flip side, of course.

 

That was in the morn­ing. So then I thought, I must wear one of these pret­ty but­ton bob­by pins out some­where. I planned to vis­it the thrift store some­times this week for some back-to-school cloth­ing. I was debat­ing whether I should just take it easy at home or ven­ture out. The bob­by pin gave me the moti­va­tion to go out (it’s the small things, really).

And guess what?

The thrift store was hav­ing a one-day 50% off cloth­ing sale!

So with under $20 I got 4 dress shirts and a cardi­gan. I was real­ly hap­py with the dress shirts, which aren’t all that excit­ing but some­thing I need for work-relat­ed occa­sions (I’ve learned that adding a cardi­gan does­n’t real­ly make a graph­ic tee look more pro­fes­sion­al). But the cardi­gan need­ed some work, because it was too big. (I wish I had tak­en a “before” pho­to with me wear­ing it).

I want­ed a neu­tral colour cardi­gan for a cou­ple of upcom­ing wed­dings, and I do like this one because of its lace pat­tern and the del­i­cate-look­ing col­lar. It was a size-large.

So I took in the sides and the sleeves…

… and cut 5.5″ off the hem, and then re-hemmed it…

… and TA-DA! A cropped cardi­gan! :D

 

I’m quite hap­py with it, though I did­n’t know how it was going to turn out because I’ve nev­er sewn sweaters with the sewing machine before. I was a bit con­cerned that it would all stretch out. But over all it did­n’t stretch much. The cardi­gan was just kind of shaped fun­ny… it was kind of twist­ing (you might be able to see that a bit in the pic­ture) and would­n’t lie flat when I tried to line up the seams. But I think it looks alright! :D

Oooh, and check this out…

The tag on the cardi­gan was all bunched up so I had to stretch it out and pin it like a but­ter­fly spec­i­men to take a pho­to (because the tag says “no iron­ing”, I think). But can you see that it says it’s made of 20% poly­ester and 80% acetate? 

I did not know that one could make cloth­ing out of acetate. By acetate does it mean acrylic? Hmm. I won­der how old this sweater is…

Oth­er awe­some find today that’s not pic­tured: tik­ka masala chips! Mmm curry.

Have a won­der­ful day, friends!

 

 

 

 

 

weekend wonders

This past week­end we vis­it­ed my par­ents. My dear sis­ter is head­ing to grad school in Hong Kong (!) for a year and she is leav­ing lat­er this week, so it was good to spend the week­end with her.

But every­one was busy in the morn­ing so Mike and I went off to have Hong Kong din­er-style break­fast spe­cial, with real­ly run­ny eggs and extra strong tea. (Next time I’ll have to request that the eggs be more cooked :S)

 

Lat­er in the after­noon we picked heir­loom yel­low toma­toes from my par­ents’ toma­to bush. 

It took me a while to spot some in the bush, but they weren’t ripe.

 

My mom, on the oth­er hand, had found quite a few in a minute or two.

 

It’s real­ly not easy to spot the ripe toma­toes, giv­en the size of the toma­to bush. But I think Mike found one here.

 

Then we went to the Chi­nese mall to find Angry Birds cap­sule toy machine! :D

 

Cap­sule toy machines are def­i­nite­ly one of my favourite things!

Though I kind of cheat­ed here… Mike got the yel­low wood­peck­er from the machine and I got the white egg-shaped bird, but my very favourite was the blue ice birds. The shop that owns the cap­sule toy machines also sells the Angry Birds plush­es out of the machine, but charges a bit more, of course, for the con­ve­nience of choos­ing spe­cif­ic ones to buy. *sigh* I’m such a suck­er for plushes.

 

:D

 

Hap­py Mon­day, everyone!

 

 

 

Â