Sharing the love

Hi there blog peeps! Don't have much of a post today. There isn't much else going on until the summer hits and even then it will all be arts and crafts and baking with the kiddies. However I have a couple peeps I wanted to share with everyone, although I don't know how many people are actually reading this blog. But you know, every little bit helps! So here is the link to Knotty Knit Wittz and here.

I also realize as I am sharing this information that I haven't yet shared my own business here on my blog. Myself and my friend run a photography business, BulletProof Photography and recently I did a bunch of photos for a brand new online store called Knotty Knit Wittz. The owner lives here in my own building and  makes some amazing products for all ages. So head over and check out her merch, maybe hit up that like button! And if you are in the southern Ontario area you should maybe check out my page too, and keep us in mind for your next photography need!

Next on the block is a guy I worked with years ago, Michael Rennick. He's an amazing traditional artist, based out of Toronto, Ontario and educated at OCAD. He had just recently made a Facebook page to promote his work and I want to help him out by sharing the love!

Also, check me out with the linkage, every time I post a new blog I discover new stuff I can do with Blogger. Seriously some awesome blogging script going on right here! I love it! Next post, potentially some short bread cookies made with four year old assistance, or possible chocolate lasagna! I know that'll get you comin' back! :D Ciao for now!

Crafty Fun Times

Lifetime update! Did I mention in my last post that I had chosen my courses for this September? Well I'm far too lazy to look back and check so in case I didn't here they are (potentially again) Biological Anthropology, French and Latin. Bio Anthro because it is the coolest branch of anthropology, french because that's going to be my minor and Latin to spite my dad, lol also because its cool as hell. Just wait, Next January, all new Latin blog posts! Ooh, that's gonna be so awesome. So aside from I'm super excited to be going to school! I do have a few things to say about the process of applying and all that fun stuff, especially relevant to those people interested in applying years after they have graduated high school. However, I shall save that for tomorrows post. For now, ON TO THE CRAFTY TIMES.

Homemade crayons (or How to make and even bigger mess with all the broken crayons in your house):

First and foremost, this is not at all my idea. I absolutely saw this on the internet somewhere and now I can't remember where. Hold on maybe I can Google and find it again. Alright, that's not happening. It turns out that a million people have done this and then blogged about it and I can't for the life of me find the original blog post that gave me the idea. But anyways, so I got this idea online, the post I saw was for making star shaped homemade crayons. Well that's boring, so I made fruit shaped ones! Its easy, little bit time consuming, but the kids thought I was like a wizard.

You will need: 

1 silicone ice cube tray

a whole pile of broken crayons

a knife

an oven

some newspaper (Spread underneath your work surface for easy clean up)

Step One:

Peel all the paper off the crayons, this one is a job for the kids since in my house at least this is their favorite thing to do with crayons. 

Step Two:

Chop up the relevant colors into itty bitty pieces with a knife. Now if you are doing stars or generic shapes like that you can mix up the colors and really do whatever you want. In fact you could also do that with any shape I guess no one is going to bust down the door and say Hey! How dare you make a purple apple! However for this particular project we tried to use true to life colors to make the fruits look proper.  

Step Three: 

Fill in the mold. I used a combination of getting my fingers all waxy, trying to bend the paper and pour the bits in and also using a funnel. However you want to accomplish this step I promise you it will be ultra mega messy and result in little tiny crayon bitties all over what ever surface you are working on. Wishing I'd thought of the newspaper idea yesterday, and not today as I'm writing this blog.

Please ignore the lousy focus on this photo, the lighting in my living room is terrible. 

Step Four:
Put in the oven. I put mine in at 250°F for maybe 10 mins and just checked on them frequently so as not to fill my house with the smell of boiling wax. It should also be noted that I took my crayon mold out of the over after the wax had melted and added more wax bits because the molds were only half full. Once the wax melts and fills in all the air pockets this will happen, so if you want to get bigger, fuller crayons be prepared to do this all twice. I also noticed that once melted the wax moved around a lot in the mold when I tried to move it, which was a pain for the pineapples since I wanted those colors to stay separate so I recommend putting your mold in a bigger glass/Pyrex/metal baking dish.

Step Five:
Remove from oven. Now this worst part, the waiting. All there is to do at this point is to wait until the crayons are nice and cooled. I put mine in the fridge for a good 30 mins especially because some of these ones, like the pears were pretty deep I didn't want to run the risk of the bottom still being soft.

Tada! 

Step Six: 

Behold! 

Pop out crayons and watch children be amazed. My four year old got the hugest kick out of this project. Also I probably should have mentioned this before but you will never again be able to use the silicone tray you used for this project for anything but making crayons. 

Also one last little aside, I really love the fruit crayons. They are neat and the kids loved them. Far more interesting than boring old star crayons lol. However, it should be said that only one of the pineapples survived intact, the other two lost their tops in the crayon removal process. Other than that little speed bump this was a great project, it kept me and two four year olds occupied for a good while yesterday afternoon. I hope I have inspired the rest of you to go forth and be crafty! Until next time...

Real life times

I promise! Also I'm just terrible at posting titles that are even remotely entertaining. Gonna have to work on that one. Anyways, this blog post is the boring kind so if you're not into that sort of thing feel free to move on to the next blog. I won't be offended (much) ha ha.

When I started this blog I listed off all these things I was going to post about. Kids, weight loss, university, and the trials of trying to juggle all of these things in one life. Which is lots of fun (not) let me tell you. Well I was thinking last night that I have done a lot of not blogging about that stuff and maybe I would toss out an update for anyone who is the teeniest bit interested. I suppose I'll start at the top and work my way down.

In my first post (I think) I mentioned wanting to blog about my children mostly because sometimes children can be funny but also trying. The other reason I wanted to write about them was because my eldest has Aspergers Syndrome, and I have found whilst trolling the blogosphere that while there is a great community of moms/parents out there who are all experiencing much the same thing I am, there is also a lot of perfect parents. Or so it seems. This is a hard topic to broach because its going to make me sound like a terrible person, I think, but I find that so many of these other parents of ASD kids are so very understanding and wonderful with everything related to their child's specific needs that I just feel inadequate. Where are the insecure moms? Where are the moms who get frustrated with behaviors that we know are out of our child's control but that doesn't make it any easier to deal with? *waves hand in the air* Here's one! Right here! I'm far from perfect, and while I like to think I'm doing a good job, the best I can anyways, its hard to stack up against these "perfect" personas all over the internet. So I stopped reading blogs of parents with kids on the spectrum, because it just made me feel like crap. I thought however that I can't be the only one in this position so if there are any other parents out there feeling lost, totally insecure about their decisions, and generally just a little bit crazy with the pressure to be the wonderful, understanding, endlessly patient human being, please comment, because you are not alone and it would be nice to know that I am not either. And next.

I have absolutely fallen off the weight loss wagon. I actually ended up going to get my thyroid checked because I was having so much trouble with it. However it appears my thyroid is ok, I also don't have diabetes or high cholesterol so I'll just have to try and get back on the wagon. But its hard ok? That makes me sound like a whiner I know, however once again I know I'm not the only one struggling with this and dammit its discouraging when your weight yo-yos like crazy even though you are exercising and all that. It makes it real easy to just give up and pig out on potato chips. And next.

Possibly the only thing that is actually happy and awesome right now (please don't take that sentence to mean that my children are not happy and awesome, because they most certainly are.) is that I'm one step closer to actually going to school in September and I'm so freaking excited! I chose my classes on Monday night so I now have an official schedule and all that. Of course this means I also now have an official tuition payment to make but I'll cross that bridge with the bill actually comes in. So for anyone interested I'm taking Biological Anthropology, Latin and French. The Anthro and French because those will be my major and minor respectively, when I transfer into the degree program next year. And the Latin because I think its cool, and also to spite my dad who told me Latin is a dead language and why would I take it. Well dad, its gonna be a lot less dead when I start spouting it at you all the time and refusing to translate. Muah ha ha ha.

So that's all my life time updates for the time being, I promise the next post will be more rant-y less serious life stuff.  On that note though, part of the reason I started this blog was to connect with other people in similar life situations, so please anyone reading this who feels any resonance with these topics, comment and I'll answer. Until next time.