FREE HUGS

My friend sent me this today. I just thought it was nice.

Look what I made!

So, in the last little while, I have become an uber chef, in my opinion. At least compared to my past attempts, which were few and far between, aside from the necessary heating of frozen food and making SideKicks noodles.

When Julian and I left Regina, his parents sent a box of tiny little apples with us...with those apples I created....


In July I found out that I had high cholesterol and in an attempt to eat better, I bought some fresh salmon and made a delicious fish dish with it. Unfortunately I did not have a camera handy at that time and so last night I had to recreate the event. With pictures to prove it.


See? That's me next to the gourmet meal...


Making good food makes me feel grown up.

Kokopelli

A few pictures of the namesake of the choir I was in for the last 3 years, Kokopelli. We took these while we were travelling through Utah and Colorado in the Spring. Click on the pictures to see them nice and big.


This is a petroglyph of a "flute player" that we saw in Dinosaur, Utah. To me it looks like Kokopelli without the hair.


This is a pictograph of Kokopelli we saw on a road side pullout in Colorado. It looked like a large chunk of the rock was about to fall off which is why they had that cable across to hold it on and to discourage vandalism.


This was in Colorado. The board explaining about Kokopelli has been vandalized. As you can see there are mysterious brown stains on the Kokopellis' phallus' (phalli?)

and then there were three...

posts about wedding dresses. Am I a little bit obsessed about this, or what? I'm already having wedding dreams (the dress dream wasn't the first one...there was one where we were getting married and hadn't done any more preparing than we have done right now, a while ago) and there are still over 10 months until the wedding!

anyway, let's hope blogger will let me post pictures today!


the full dress



me trying to make a decision...



from the back...i love the how the train looks...and how it's detachable :)

So, just so we're clear...this is the dress I didn't get so no comments about how it's so much prettier than the other one, okay?

dress dream

So last night I had a dream featuring my wedding dress. I was at my parents' house and someone else (someone I know, but I can't remember who) was trying on my dress but it didn't look quite right, so they asked me to try it on again. Once I had the dress on again, I was surprised because there were a few things about it that were quite different than when I bought it. First of all, it was mostly red. I straightened out the train on the dress to see that it was more cape-like than train-like, all red satin with a white satin strip in the middle that was embroidered with red thread and came down from my shoulders.

The dress seemed to be morphing continuously and imperceptibly because I noticed when i looked down at the skirt that not only was it mostly red, but sort of like a patchwork quilt with a bunch of different squares of colours all sewn together. Each square was made of a soft t-shirt like material. There was one white patch on the dress and I was reminded that that's what I had thought my whole dress looked like before and felt confused about how I could have had such a harsh error in perception when I originally tried the dress on. I was a bit upset at how different the dress looked now that I had it home and immediately started to think of ways that I could alter it so all the patches were this shade of white. I took a closer look at the white patch and noticed that I could see a faint pattern through the material. I flipped up the skirt (at this point I was no longer wearing the dress) to see that there was a pattern on the other side of the material. The white piece of material was actually taken from an old CYMC t-shirt. In fact all of the squares of my patchwork dress had been taken from t-shirts with different designs on them, most of which were from Comox Valley based organizations, like Fleet Beat dance studios and Rainbow Youth Theatre. As I kept looking I also saw patches that were made from covers of the Suzuki violin books we used when we were learning how to play. I was so surprised. The seamstess who made this dress must have been from the Comox Valley and had some sort of connection to violin too. What were the chances that I, of all people, would buy this dress in Regina and not notice these details until I got it home.

Then the dream got totally turned around and non dress-related, and I was asking my brother, Tim, a question and he was purposely ignoring me to make me annoyed. I stormed away to tattle to my mom about his annoying and brotherly behaviour. My mom was in the dome eating a piece of ice cream cake and was commenting how it wasn't as good as the other ice cream cake. I guess Shelley and Tim had both made ice cream cakes that day. My mom was eating a piece from Shelley's cake when she made this comment, and Shelley happened to be coming up the stairs at that moment to see that it was her cake that Mom didn't like as much. She burst into tears and I was thinking what a jerk Tim was for getting us both upset like that in the span of 30 seconds. Even though I had to admit that his cake was pretty darn tasty looking and he had no control of what my mother might say in the presence of my sister.

The end.


Anyway, not related to either parts of my dream, by request, here are some the pictures of the dress that could have been. The real dress that I tried on in Regina that was a strong contender in the competition to be MY dress. But wasn't.

okay...so it seems as though I can't upload pictures right now. I wrote this post this morning and left my computer for a few hours and the upload picture guy was still whirring around...so I give up for now...check back later.

The dress...

So on the long Labour Day weekend, Julian and I took a trip to Regina to visit his family. It was a very busy few days we spent there because not only were we visiting his Mom and Dad, but also one of his sisters and her four children (aged 12, 9, 5 and 3) who have recently moved back to Regina from Sacramento, and are currently living in Julian's parents' house. It's a busy household.

One thing on my list of "things-to-do-while-actually-in-a-city" was to visit a bridal store that carries Alfred Angelo dresses so that I could get my measurements done and possibly even try on the dress that Ashley has chosen for her wedding in December. So on the Tuesday that the 3 older kids went back to school, Julian, his mother, his sister, his youngest nephew and I went on the task of looking at bridesmaid dresses. The lady at this store was mildly interested in us, took my measurements, gave me a similarly cut dress to Ashley's bridesmaid dress to try on and spent the rest of the time on the phone. So I tried on that dress, while Julian's mom and sister found a few wedding dresses they liked for me to try on. Did you think we could go into a bridal store without trying on at least a few dresses? Meanwhile Julian was exiled to the corner of the room and eventually took the little guy for a walk to get some ice cream. Sadly, everything I had in mind for my ideal wedding dress happened to look a bit crappy on me. I think I still think like a small breasted girl.

So after about an hour of trying on stuff that didn't really fit and wasn't in my price range, we were on a roll and decided to go down the street to the bridal store that sells consignment dresses. After a long long time of trying on many many dresses, I got a little tired of being there. Plus I had tried on a dress that I was pretty sure was MY dress. So we went home for a little while for some food and some time to think about whether I just wanted to buy the dress that day.

Later that afternoon when the neices got home from school we took them back to the store to get their opinions on 2 or 3 dresses that we had liked. But my heart was already set on one. And I would have gotten it...if we didn't happen to notice yet another dress. One that fit perfectly and matched my description in my mind of what I was looking for, and more. After an hour of trying on the two final dress competitors (the first one that I was the "you-were-meant-to-wear-me-because-i'm-gorgeous-and-elegant-but-need-a-few-alterations" dress, and the last minute "let's-just-try-this-on-just-in-case-it's-perfect" dress) I left the store with a dress, because it was closing and we were leaving Regina the next morning. I just couldn't let the fact that I wanted both of the dresses so badly keep me from not getting a dress at all and very possibly missing the boat on the search for the perfect dress.

And just becuase I like to live on the wild side, I'm actually going to let the internet see my dress. Or more likely, just Ashley :)

So now comes the risky business: attempting to post pictures of my wedding dress in a way that in the unlikely event that Julian came to this website and tried to read it, that he might not actually see the pictures. So if your name is Julian, please do not read this. Stop now! Go away! Because I don't like you!

okay...so this is where I try to make links to pictures of my dress. Wish me luck!

This is a side (read: boob) view: No peeking if your name is Julian!

and this is from the back: For serious! Don't look!!!

We took a few more (better) pictures of the dress in the store, but they are on Julian's sister's camera. If I ever get those I will post them as well.

*Edit - If you click on those links and it just looks like a bunch of scrambled characters, then try refreshing the page. Unless your name is Julian. If it is, that was my super fancy security feature to keep you out...yup...that's right.*