summer shoe

I love these Campers. If only my feet didn't resemble sausages at the moment....



These though? Well these little darlings might just fit someone else I can think of. Someone we might meet in about a month and a half...

kitchen vignette

Hello perfect kitchen.

*via Home Sweet Home

how soundly would you sleep?

....cuz I know I'd be a wee bit anxious about any sudden movements. Love the aesthetic though...

wedding succulents

A wedding bouquet made up of only succulents = so pretty.

*via Craftzine*

river and sky

Here's where I'll be this weekend -- bring a tent and come on out to the River and Sky Camping and Music Festival!! Tis the prettiest festival around.....

too early for christmas?

I hope not cuz I'm already totally smitten with these deer bowls over at Mex Chic.

family tree

Love this idea for a family tree. Simple, unique and lovely. I might have to "add to cart."

*courtesy of Cozy Blue's Etsy shop*

vinyl cafe

In case you missed it on Sunday, this week's edition of The Vinyl Cafe was especially fantastic. Recorded on Manitoulin Island (our little island backyard), it had great music courtesy of Jim Bryson and a Dave and Morley story about losing their dog Arthur that made me cry and cry. Click here for the podcast if you feel like busting out some tissues.

portland wedding love

I know I fall in love with a lot of weddings but this one might be my most favourite wedding ever. Kelly and Joseph had a wedding in the woods in Portland and it is cut straight from the cloth of my fantasy wedding. As a little girl I never, ever dreamed of my big white wedding in a church with all the trimmings. I only ever wanted a small, homestyle wedding on the dock of our family camp. That was never able to happen as my grandfather sold the camp when I was in my early teens - something I consider to be one of our great family tragedies. But I digress.

This wedding is exactly the wedding I would have wanted.

Of course there would be dogs....

I love the idea of a wedding party travelling through the forest.

I love the way her bouquet looks like she picked it on the way to the ceremony site. I'm also ultra in love with her perfect birdcage veil.

Picnic blankets everywhere -- best idea!!

And this. This is my favourite wedding photo of all time.

Photos by the truly gifted Leah Verwey.

weekend round-up

Strange weekend I think. Typically I'd have spent this entire weekend at our city's annual music festival, the Northern Lights Festival Boreal but this year there were about 50 different things that kept me from being a festival bug for 3 days.

Friday we pretty much spent our entire evening running a pile of errands that we'd been putting off. Picked up some more flowers and herbs for the garden, bought the best skirt ever that I'm thinking I might wear for the entire rest of this pregnancy and just did a whole host of other tiny things. Got home in time for this lady to make some toast and crash out. I know, I am a wild party.

Saturday we made it out to the festival for the day at least but I was pretty under-whelmed with the whole experience. They had to change venues for this year and I just felt like it was really lacking in the atmosphere that usually makes the festival so wonderful. Being a huge fat pregnant lady didn't really help me get into the spirit of the whole thing either though so it was kinda an uphill battle for me from the start. With the extreme heat, zero shade, and no chairs I was just not a happy camper at all. I tried hard but just couldn't bring up the festival love I'm afraid. Headed home around supper time for a giant sun-stroked fueled nap and made it out again for the festival after-show at the Townehouse which perked me up considerably. A little Cuff the Duke will make any gal smile I think. Oh and we also watched Moon with our dinner -- what a great movie!!! Clearly talent does run in the Bowie family....

Sunday I slept in like crazy, we took Sadie to the lake for a swim, ran some more errands and were home in time for the World Cup Final game. And snacks!! Yay for Spain! Ole indeed!! Finished off the night with a truly delicious dinner courtesy of Marc (he made one of Mario Batali's recipes for beef with these super yummy vinegar potatoes) and some True Blood watching.

dogs = awesome

A Corgi who only likes to be spoken to in an English accent. Love.

maxi summer

This summer I've found myself living in maxi dresses for a few reasons: 1) They will fit me through this entire pregnancy. 2) They are insanely comfortable and cool in these sweltering heat waves. 3) They allow me to sit on the ground however I please without having to worry about giving anyone a crotch shot. 4) They can be easily dressed up or down. 4) No part of the dress is squeezing me, pinching me, flying up in a wind or otherwise exposing any area of myself that has swollen with pregnancy. All in all, the maxi dress might be my summer pregnancy essential. Here are some over at Modcloth that I'm currently coveting even though I only have about 10 weeks to go.

sloppy joes

So with every pregnancy comes strange cravings and mine, while there hasn't been anything ridiculous like ice cream and pickles, I am finding myself wanting foods I never usually eat. Like hotdogs for instance. Normally I never eat hotdogs -- I don't like them, I don't agree with them on a moral level, I just generally think they're despicable. This pregnancy I've had 2, one of which I bought on the street. Go figure.

Sloppy joes is another one. Last week brought a viscious sloppy joe craving and I remembered seeing what looked like a delicious recipe in that Ellie Krieger "Foods You Crave" cookbook that I have and happen to love (blogged about in the past here and here). So out came the book and out come some pretty damn good sloppy joes -- and healthy to boot!

I highly recommend this recipe if you're looking for some childhood comfort food that's also easier on the waistline.

Recipe here!

weekend round-up

Well it was the Canada Day long weekend (not technically but yes if you were smart enough to take the Friday off) so there were lots of good times/good food/good naps to be had if you knew where to look!

Thursday being Canada Day I was found where I can be found every year and that's the annual Canada Day multi-cultural food fair (after a nice morning hike with Sadie of course). We noshed on some African stew, some Korean dumplings and some Filipino noodles and veggies and topped it off with a gigantic homemade ice cream sammich. Followed that by an afternoon of sunny patio drinks with some friends and you've got yourself a pretty decent mid-week holiday!

Friday I was off solo (Marc being one of those silly folk who did not take the day off) so after my morning conservation area visit with Sadie (again!) we hung about the house being domestic and trying to shake the pregnancy dizzies I seemed to be saddled with most of the day. Evening saw us having dinner with friends Ben and Fran (Ben's in town all week working on his next short film) and their Aussie pal Christina. A very detailed dinner conversation focused solely on ice cream sent us careening to the nearest gelato place post-dinner and thankfully we made it there with mere moments to spare before they closed up shop for the night. Summer night gelato might be the best summer idea ever.

Saturday was the beginning of our crazy heat wave. And by crazy I mean crazy. Way too hot for this gal and her baby belly to be sure!! Thankfully, Marc had early morning blueberry picking plans so he brought Sadie along with him into the bush thus tiring her out for the rest of the day. And he came back with 4 litres of berries after only 2 hours of picking! These blueberries are mostly destined to become perserved blueberries in brandy for the winter but the rest of them have been ending up in my new daily smoothie routine and some even ended up in our dinner that night -- Marc made a pretty delicious blueberry balsamic BBQ sauce concoction!

Sunday guess what? Still way too hot for this mama-to-be but a last minute invite by some friends to join them at the shady, breezy conservation area with the pooches and kidlets proved to be a nice reprieve from the stifling heat of the "city." Jeniva has a lovely Portugese water dog and a brand new 5 month old Chihuahua named Lupita that is just the cutest thing. Watching Sadie eyeball Lupita was pretty adorable I gotta say. The end of Sadie's snout is the same size as Lupita's whole face!! Anyway, Sadie decided that that day was her day to finally learn to swim and as she launched herself off a dock you could see her re-thinking her plan for sure. The thing with Sadie is that she'll happily go into the water but when she can't touch she begins flailing her front feet like she's fighting her way out of hot lava while her back legs do nothing at all and she sinks like a furry black stone. This time, after really giving herself no other option, she flailed her front feet like crazy and slowly, verrrrry slooooowly, made it back to shore, soaked and terrified, but on shore. Oh Sadie, a Labrador you are not....

Here's a pic of Sadie before she decided to launch herself off the dock. Back when she was having fun with the whole swimming thing.

So all in all, a pretty great weekend if not a little on the warm side. Boo to back to work!!

hot Bunny Radio Playlist for July 1st -- Canada Day!

CKLU 96.7 fm

6-8pm (18:00-20:00)

italics denotes a new release

* denotes Canadian talent

Our annual Canada Day show!! All our fave new and old Canuck greats!!

CLICK HERE FOR PODCASTY GOODNESS OF TONIGHT'S SHOW!!!!!

• The Beauties -- Tired Fired Blues -- The Beauties *
• Broken Social Scene -- Chase Scene -- Forgiveness Rock Record *
• Royal Canoe -- Saw An Arrow -- Co-Op Mode *
• Forest City Lovers -- Keep The Kids Inside -- Carriage *
• The Acorn -- Cobbled From Dust -- No Ghost *
• The Salteens -- Don't Break My Heart -- Moths *
• Eric's Trip -- Run Away -- Forever Again *
• Sarah Harmer & Jason Euringer -- Blue Moon of Kentucky -- Songs for Clem *
• Jason Collett -- Sorry Lou -- Here's to Being Here *
• Cuff the Duke -- Take My Money and Run -- Cuff the Duke *
• The New Pornographers -- Failsafe -- The Challengers *
• The Sadies -- A Simple Aspiration -- New Seasons *
• The Constantines -- The Long Distance Four -- The Constantines *
• Danny Michel -- Tennessee Tobacco -- Valhalla *
• Hayden -- The Van Song -- In Field and Town *
• The Wooden Sky -- Call If You Need Me -- If I Don't Come Home You'll Know I'm Gone *
• Gordon Lightfoot -- Steel Rail Blues -- Gord's Gold *
• Immaculate Machine -- You Destroyer -- High on Jackson Hill *
• Feist -- Past in Present -- The Reminder *
• The Statues -- Fine Tuned -- Aux *
• The Band -- Ophelia -- Best of the Band *
• Sunparlour Players -- John Had a Bell & Whistle -- Hymns for the Happy *
• Teenage Head -- Tearin' Me Apart -- Teenage Head with Marky Ramone
• Jim Guthrie -- You Are Here ( Do You Exist?) -- Now, More Than Ever *
• Nathan Lawr -- Bury Me Blues -- Secret Carpentry *
• Joel Plaskett -- Every Time You Leave -- Three *
• Rock Plaza Central -- Anthem for the Already Defeated -- Are We Not Horses? *
• Amy Millan -- I Will Follow You Into the Dark -- Masters of the Burial *
• The Weakerthans -- Confessions of a Futon-Revolutionist -- Fallow *
• Chad VanGalen -- Molten Light -- Soft Airplane *
• Julie Doiron -- Yer Kids -- Woke Myself Up *
• Two Hours Traffic -- Close Up To Me -- Isolator *
• Metric -- Stadium Love -- Fantasties *
• The Queers -- Punk Rock Girls -- Don't Back Down *
• The Arcade Fire -- Keep the Car Running -- Neon Bible *

happy canada day!

Hope everyone is as happy as this guy is on Canada Day!! Mine is going pretty darn great if I do say so myself! Bit of a lay around this morning with Marc which has been pretty rare these days considering usually by the time morning rolls around my bladder is well-past "explosion" mode. Followed that by a great morning hike with Sadie where she managed to get good and muddy then washed off nice and clean in the lake, back home to freshen up and walk downtown for our annual multi-cultural food fair (where we stuffed my patriotic face full of African stew, Korean dumplings, Filipino fried noodles and veggies and a very Canadian giant ice cream sammich), then on to sunny patio drinks with some friends, home for a quick nap then off to do my annual Canada Day edition of Hot Bunny Radio.

Phew....