Cockroach Love mug

Just posted the above handmade mug in my Etsy shop. There's a red heart on the other side of the mug. :-)

This was made of porcelain clay, thrown on a wheel and trimmed by Luisa. I painted the piece, then gave it back to Luisa. Luisa then fired it in a kiln, glazed it with a clear glaze, then fired it once more. The mug is food safe, microwave and dishwasher safe.

Why a cockroach? Because they're fun to draw. Plus imagine the expressions of delight and envy on the faces of your office mates when you bring this into the office! They'll all be bugging you (HA! PUN NOT INTENDED!) to tell them where they can get one too!

Reno pics

Woohoo, indoor renovations are finished! Today is the first day in about three weeks where I'll have ONE WHOLE LUXURIOUS UNINTERRUPTED day to work.

In case you're curious about the chaos details and pics...

As some of you may remember, we used to have a spiral staircase in the living room when we first moved in:



We decided to take it out, however. As cool as it was, it was purely ornamental and took up much-needed space in a relatively small house. Plus there was another staircase a few feet away. So we took it out and put a floor in instead, making more space available for Jeff's home office.



Over time, however, Jeff realized that an open concept office may not be such a great idea after all. Then he came up with the great idea of switching our bedroom and his office upstairs, and adding a door to the new bedroom as well as another window. The following photo is what our new bedroom looks like. The far left corner below is the same corner shown in the photo above. Note the extra window!



We took the bookshelves out and moved some of them into Jeff's office, on a new wall :



And the room that used to be our bedroom is now Jeff's office. His office is pretty bare right now, with a temporary desk until he has a chance to get a real desk:



I get a walk-in closet and Jeff gets doors for his upstairs home office, so we're both pretty happy. I was nervous about the open concept upstairs when we first considered buying the house, mainly because of noise and privacy issues. Having doors to all the rooms may be less esthetically pleasing, but it's sure a lot more practical.

Without doors or with open doors, noise carries REALLY well in our house...this morning I had forgotten to close the door to my basement office, and Jeff mentioned he could hear the sound of my spoon clinking against my cereal bowl from two floors above. Fortunately he was already awake. :-)

Tonight we're going shopping for blinds as well as hardware for my closet.

We LOVED our renovators, by the way -- thanks to our friends Alison and Jeff for the recommendation.

And huge thanks to our friends Ray and Walter for their help, advice and muscles.

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Crina and Dan get married

Happy birthday to my friend Reid today!



Went to my cousin's wedding yesterday. You may recall my post about participating in Relay For Life last year with my cousin Dan and his now-wife Crina. They got engaged since then and...(drum roll)... are now husband and wife. :-)



It was a wonderful wedding. The ceremony took place at the top of the Sutton Place Hotel, with a scenic view of Toronto all around. The ushers and bridesmaids danced down the aisle instead of the usual march, and the bride came down the aisle on the arm of her father as friends and family held flowers overhead.



I wished my Aunt Agnes could have been there; she died from breast cancer eight years ago. A small bowl of roses was placed near the front in her memory.



In lieu of wedding favours, Dan and Crina made a donation to the Canadian Cancer Society. Crina and her mother are both cancer survivors, by the way.



One of my personal highlights from the wedding were the speeches. The speeches are always one of my favourite parts of weddings because it's a time when you can usually get more of an insight about the friends or family who are getting married; it's a time of sharing and reminiscing, of tribute and caring. It doesn't matter if the people making the speeches are professional speakers or not as long as what they're saying is from the heart.



Many congratulations to Dan and Crina! And a special thanks to my Uncle John, who asked me for a dance. :-)



You can see more pictures from Saturday in my Flickr set.

English Country Dancing at Fort York

So on Friday night, I went with my friends Cathy and Ardelle to do some English Country Dancing at Historic Fort York, Jane Austen style. Cathy's been part of the group there for years but I only became interested after attending a dance workshop at Balticon.

The regulars were all dressed in historic costume. The women were lovely in their gowns, their skirts swirling around. And though I felt a bit sorry for the men in their wool suits, I have to say they all looked quite dashing and Colin Firth-like. Don't believe me? Check out the photo on the left that I took of my dance partner, Joel.

Ok, maybe that's not QUITE what Joel looked like but it's close, I swear! And he sewed his entire outfit (except for his shoes) by HAND. I managed not to step on Joel's feet during the dances, though I kept threatening to accidentally knock him over.

Melanie, the woman who taught us the steps as well as calling out the dances, also provided interesting historical info along the way that helped explain how certain dances developed. Music was provided on a wooden flute by Michael, who also wore a costume.

Anyway, I had a huge amount of fun and have asked Cathy if I could come next time as well.

For more info about the events at Fort York, see this page.

Will Write For Chocolate updated

Click image for a bigger version.

This strip was inspired by Allison's cat, Kara, who was spastically cute and distracting at Urban Tapestry practice earlier this week.