Tuesday 30 April 2013

WHY ARE WE GOING IT ALONE?

Lately I've been thinking a lot about connecting with people.

I have always been someone who has a lot of friends.  More specifically, I've had good friends.  People I can tell things to, vent to.  People I know things about and they know things about me.  They know how I feel about things, how I react to things, and what keeps me going.  Since we've moved here I haven't always felt that way.  There are people I talk to, but not many people I have made that deeper connection with.  This winter has been particularly difficult with school being so draining that I feel like I rarely see my husband, let alone anyone else.

I've been talking to friends about this recently and I'm not the only one who feels this way.  It seems hard to be on that deeper level with people.  A lot of times I feel like people are silent about their problems and it's almost "shameful" to have personal struggles.  I don't usually post thoughts like this on my blog, but I feel the need to get a thought out there.

And no, I'm not about to post a personal confession or anything like that.  That's exactly what I'm trying to say... Get out there and talk to a real person about it.  Don't keep quiet.  Don't post it on facebook.  Don't email someone about it.  Talk about it.  To a real person - face to face.

You don't have to be alone in your problems.  Here is what happens when you go it alone... When you don't share your life and your struggles with others:

1. You don't get any support.  If no one knows about it, no one can help you.  And not even in the sense of offering advice, just in the, "Hey, that sucks.  Sorry you're going through that.  I don't understand cause I've never been there but I want you to know I'm here for you."

2. You feel like you're the only one who has ever been through this.  Who knows?  When you share things with people, you might find out they've been there too.  "I think I'm going to lose my job."  "Oh really?  That's awful.  That happened to me a few years ago."  You're not the only one out there who has feelings and whose life isn't perfect.  You're pretty much the majority. :)

3. When someone else goes through a difficult situation, they feel like no one else has ever been there.  How would they know you've also been unhappy in your marriage, struggled with addictions, been unhappy for no good reason?

Do you see?  It's better if we share it.  We can help each other.  Hopefully we can give each other a little of God's love, because He's the one who gets us through things.  Prayer and hope are essential, and sometimes God will reach you through someone who is entirely human...and that's the whole point of the matter.

Something to think about.


Thursday 25 April 2013

MINT CANDY APPLE

I spent last weekend in Quebec City for a conference and although I spent most of my time studying, I did go on a few walks through the old city and managed to sneak in a tiny bit of shopping.  I didn't come away much but I found these great pajama pants at Simons.  Funny thing is I actually remember this store from my last trip to Quebec City...in grade eight.  There is one Simons location outside of Quebec, in Edmonton.  It's a nice little store.  Anyway, back to the pj pants.  I thought it was quite cute because my toenail polish matches them perfectly, (my toes are Essie Mint Candy Apple).  How cute are the pants?

Tuesday 16 April 2013

MASTER BEDROOM: POST THREE

Have you ever had a small project that escalated quickly?

Initially I really wanted to paint the ceiling in our bedroom.  The old ceiling was white (which is fine), but it's a bit boring and I like to think of the ceiling as another wall.  I picked out a cream/pink coloured hue from Behr called "Palatial."  Sounds nice, doesn't it?  It is.

Not sure if you can tell from the photos but the ceiling is indeed Palatial.

Once all the furniture was out of the room I could see just how poorly the walls had been painted.  Not to say the previous owners were bad painters...but the previous owners were bad painters.  And that white trim wasn't looking so white in places.  And we had always talked about ripping the carpet up.  With all the furniture out of the room, this was the time, wasn't it?  (I am not a fan of the light fixture either but that seems more expensive and difficult to change out - I wouldn't be doing that one myself - so it's there indefinitely.)  We're actually thinking of adding crown molding at some point in the near future but I'm not making myself any promises.

Here it is - another post of my tiny project turned slightly larger project.



Thursday 11 April 2013

CAMOUFLAGE BIRTHDAY CAKE

I was away for a rotation when hubby had his birthday so two weeks ago I decided to make it up to him and bake a cake.  I have a delicious chocolate cake recipe that I've made a lot recently, so I went with carrot cake.  (I don't use nuts or raisins in mine.)  Carrot is actually the only kind of cake I like so obviously our wedding cake was carrot. :)

I thought it would be cool to do a camouflage cake so a quick Pinterest search came up with a fab option.  Hers is much more professional than mine, but mine wasn't a disaster either, which is why I'm posting.  For my first try it turned out ok and I came away with a couple of tips.  I found this tutorial if you ever want to try to make a "petal cake" yourself.


The things I learned making my first petal cake:

1. The icing has to be really thick.  If it's gooey at all it will just run all over the place.  You can tell in this photo the darker brown frosting was closer to the correct consistency while the beige is getting a little droopy down near the bottom because it's too soft.

2. You can use cocoa powder to make different colours!  Genius!  I'm not sure why this never occurred to me before, but adding cocoa to my bright green frosting made olive green.  Adding cocoa powder to my white frosting made beige and adding more made brown!  Simple, I know.  I just never thought of it before.

3. Have a piece of paper towel or clean dish rag nearby because I had to clean the spatula after every swipe.  Maybe if the frosting had been thicker that wouldn't have been a problem; I'm not sure.

Hope this inspires you to try a new cake technique!  Or ask me to do one for you.  It only took me a gazillion hours.

Monday 8 April 2013

MASTER BEDROOM UPDATE: POST TWO

I had a week off!  It was fantastic.

This is basically never going to happen again in my life, so I took advantage of the time off to make some changes to our master  bedroom.  You might remember I recently had bedroom drapes made and we also made lamps for our nightstands.  Last week we decided to rip up the old carpet to see what lies beneath...  I also wanted to paint the ceiling a tinted shade.  And of course, while all the furniture was out of the room I realized how terrible the walls and trim looked.  Whoever painted the walls last should have done an extra coat, and the baseboards were looking kind of grungy.

I thought I would post how to get a super clean line using painter's tape.  It's not as easy as you may think!  In my case, I'm going to describe how to paint baseboards with a clean line.  Here's my step by step guide as per this blog's advice.

1. Paint the baseboards.  As annoying as it is, you will have to scrape.  When I originally painted the trim in our living/dining rooms, I believe it took one coat of primer and two or even three coats of paint.  Don't skimp!


2. Put your painter's tape around the top of the baseboard and paint the bottom colour around the edge of the tape to create a seal.  This step is crucial!  All my other attempts at painter's tape have failed because of this.  Without creating that seal with a coat of the bottom colour, the wall colour will bleed through.


3. Now you can paint your wall colour over top and feel free to overlap onto the tape.  Step two ensures it won't bleed through.  You're a paint master...a master painter...  I kept the same wall colour as the previous owner simply because they had half a can of paint leftover in the basement and that made this project less expensive.


4. I waited until the paint was at least partially dry so it wouldn't drip once I removed the tape.  It made such a clean line!  Extremely satisfying.  Seriously.


Isn't that amazing?!  Stay tuned for a few more posts in the coming days.  I actually have some projects saved up to blog about!