lomo monday

digital tiltshift (not exactly lomo...): seattle sounders game, september 2009

the almost last weekend of summer

What an amazing weekend I've had! Usually I'd like to end with a video in a post, but I'm just too excited about this one and need to put it up front. Jeff and I were fortunate enough to meet Jelly Jells while we were in NYC this June when we were hanging out with my friend Kaiti (the girl he skips off with in this video). This video is pretty new and I'm sure most of you haven't seen it yet. I hope you love it as much as I do!

Super busy weekend! Saturday I had to get up for the community garden work party. It was a hot morning so after a couple of hours of attacking weeds in the sun I was ready for a low key afternoon and dinner with Jeff and my friend Stephanie. We had a great Vietnamese noodle salad with cucumbers fresh from the garden and peaches and raspberries for dessert. 

the holy mountain inspired necklace

Saturday was also exciting because I saw a stranger wearing some of my jewelry at the fabulous Regional Assembly of Text. She mentioned that she liked her Sadie earrings so much because they reminded her of the film The Holy Mountain. We watched it last night and true to what she predicted, it did blow our minds. You can totally find it online and you should watch it. We did Holy Mountain inspired crafts while watching: I made a necklace, Jeff made a friendship bracelet and we made some collages with stuff I picked up at Urban Source. Good to make stuff with a crazy movie playing, it gets the creative juices flowing.

peach rosemary jam

Today was busy too, I met up with my brother's lovely girlfriend Kiki and we made Martha Stewart's rosemary peach jam (sooooo good) with rosemary from the community garden and zucchini chocolate cakes. The zucchini was the 16" long one they gave us at the UBC Farm on Friday, and the toasted walnuts we put on a few came from a trade that I did this week: one of my home grown cucumbers for four amazing organic peaches and a bag of toasted organic walnuts from the Okanagan. I love this time of year! I also stopped by the Blim Market this morning to check out the wares of local artisans and bakers. There was some seriously tasty stuff there and some beautiful jewelry, clothing, and art, too. You should go next time! I'm going to be there with new Sadie pieces Sunday, November 28!

zucchini chocolate cakes

Finally, tonight we're really missing the guilty pleasure movie club as Jacqui and Blair are out of town, but we've found CB4 on a movie channel, so that's sort of making up for it. We'll be back is session next week when Blair is sure to have a stellar pick for us. We might have some new members, too! Tomorrow I'm off to Seattle with my mom, despite having so much to do before school starts in a week and a half or so: annotated bibliographies to research and write, grad project topic to write a proposal for and I desperately need a haircut, among other things. I hope I can find the time over the long weekend! It's also Jeff's last week as a postie before he heads back to school this fall! Wish him luck, though I'm sure he'll love everything about his new endeavour. Wacky D from CB4 seems like a great end to a Sunday post:

weekend worship

my street, that sky

Oh man, the second last weekend before school starts, I guess the countdown has begun. I've got a few things that need to be done this weekend: gotta make something with the giant zucchini the UBC Farm gave us tonight (we also got green Romano beans, beets, arugula and a pattypan squash!), meet up with my friend Kiki to make some peach rosemary preserves, weed the garden, and head to Urban Source for some collage supplies (I have projects in mind). Next week my mom is here and we have lots of exciting things planned!

Sorry for double garden posts, but here are some photos that I took tonight. So much is happening over there right now that I can't resist documenting everything at the height of the harvest. Fall colour and texture is showing up everywhere: flowers are turning into seed pods and leaves are falling. Not fair. I want more summer!

august abundance

This time of year Vancouver offers up a plethora of amazing, delicious abundance: $2/lb blueberries from Richmond, blackberries in every and park (a good and bad thing, in my opinion), flowers blooming, a ridiculous number of tomatoes and cucumbers in my community garden plot, plum trees, cherry sales, rosemary and bay trees, and the biggest salmon run in nearly 100 years. So, with peaches and strawberries in the freezer, blueberries in the fridge and plans to make my favourite peach & rosemary preserves this weekend (a concoction known as "Dignified Fun" in certain circles...), I also thought I'd share some photos that I took last weekend in the Maple and Cypress Community Gardens. You've gotta love this city in August!

grape arbour, maple community garden

chinese lantern plant, great latin name: physalis alkekengi

"a very nice plate-rrrr"

lavender vanilla waffles, organic yogurt, and hand-picked blackberries

lomo monday

taken with a Holga in Millersylvania, Washington 2009
fun times with Carrah and Jamie

guilty pleasure: mermaids

Tonight it was my turn to choose our guilty pleasure movie. I chose Mermaids, that 1990 gem starring Cher, Bilbo Baggins, Wynona Ryder and the extremely adorable Christina Ricci, who's only ten years old in this film. Man is she cute, in fact, I think she's one of the main reasons that I love this movie so much. I've always thought that she looks like my little sister Kate and between her and my early childhood idol, Wynona Ryder, this movie is kind of about my sister and I in an alternate dimension. I'm happy to say that every time Kate watches this movie it makes her think of me, in fact, the copy that we watched tonight was given to me by Kate herself! Thanks!

Jacqui correctly identified the ultimate guilty, perhaps not pleasurable, moment in this movie when Cher hooks up with Bob Hoskins and is eating pretzels, drinking soda, and smoking in her weird double bed. Ugh. Yet, the redeeming moments are everywhere: magical undersea bedrooms, pastel colours and big hair, and, of course, one of my favourite soundtracks ever! I've always thought this music would be perfect tunes to pack your house to before a move and the irony of that is not lost on me (you gotta watch it to know why). Tonight all agreed, it's a movie worth revisiting every now and then, heartwarming, funny, a little dramatic, and of course, it goes perfect with oer d'oeuvres (had to look up the spelling of that one). Make some marshmallow kebobs and settle down with this one some evening -- you won't be sorry! Next choice is Blair's...can't wait to see what he comes up with for us!

Spoiler alert! This is the last (and possibly best) scene of the movie:

weekend worship

I can't believe how fast August has gone by, here it is, the third last weekend before school starts up again and I feel summer slipping through my fingers. Not to be so dramatic about it all, but the question I find myself asking is do I make it count, do everything that needs to be done, all the stuff I'd hoped to do, or do I relax, because I won't be able to just chill out for an entire weekend in the near future? What would you choose?

This week was great. Started out with a visit from a friend that goes waaaaaaay back with me and her super fun son. We had many naps, had amazing sushi at  Iki, went to the Aquarium and hit up Granville Island a couple of times, mostly for the doughnuts at Lee's, a destination that Camilla and I had found the week before. Heather and I highly recommend the apple doughnut. Runner up? The honey glazed. The one that we shared was still warm and had an amazing texture that you'll have dreams about.

Finally, as the weekend started and things settled back down on the departure of our fabulous guests Jeff and I found the time to bake some salted butter chocolate chip cookies. Now, I don't say this lightly, these might be the best cookies that I have ever, EVER made and if you bake one batch of cookies this month, it should probably be these ones. This is the first recipe that I've used off of David Lebovitz's blog, and I'm super impressed. The combo of salt and sweet is perfect and I just happened to have a big block of really high quality chocolate in my cupboard (leftover from who knows what other project) and it made these cookies incredible. We used toasted hazelnuts which also had the perfect amount of give and richness to them. Do yourself a favour and make these!!!

After devouring about 10 of these cookies we headed to the Richmond Night Market, which is actually remarkably accessible by bus, where Jeff drank a dessert drink called "six colours". Others indulged in fresh young coconut juice, yam fries with wasabi mayo, deep fried bananas, kettle corn, and nine quail eggs wrapped in bacon. Yum.

Time to make plans for the rest of the weekend. I know it involves a quick trip to the post office to send off the crystal pendant to the winner of the New Canadian Modern giveaway, taking some boots to the cobbler (we'll see how that goes), and hopefully seeing the new Joan Rivers documentary. I may or may not have time to sew something this weekend. My mom sent me a bunch of old pattern books for the craziest stuff: a vest for all sizes, knitted hats, and my favourite: "SheetCraft" (see excerpts below). Perhaps that's all I really need to do to make this weekend count. I feel like if I spent an afternoon Sheetcrafting myself, as the pamphlet suggests, I'd never forget what I was up to in late August 2010.

jellies at the Vancouver aquarium

salted butter chocolate chip cookies with toasted hazelnuts

six colours at the Richmond Night Market

SheetCraft a bedroom, or two

SheetCraft yourself

kits beach

I love Vancouver in the summer.

recycled jewelry

I've been making these necklaces lately out of thrift store finds and vintage pendants and chains. Inspired by a crazy necklace that my friend Camilla was wearing when she came for a visit from Montreal, I've been collecting a variety of interesting chains to use on these super long necklaces (about 36"). Pendants are made up of upcycled earrings, necklace pendants and beads and vintage pieces that I've found on sites like Etsy. Camilla's necklace had so much stuff on it that it maxed out the chain. I like to think of these ones as works-in-progress. If you found another awesome thing you could easily add it. Click on any of the photos to learn more about the pieces on Flickr.

lomo monday

holga on the coquihalla near merritt, 2008

guilty pleasure: a river runs through it

This week's choice for the guilty pleasure movie club: A River Runs Through It, a fly-fishing coming-of-age drama starring a young Brad Pitt and Craig Sheffer, a man who apparently was in a short-lived, not often remembered TV adaptation of Teen Wolf in the '80s. I had actually never seen this movie before, in fact, three out of four of us had never seen it before, and I have to say it's pretty good. I think it's in that category of movies that you watched as a child, despite knowing they were meant for your parents. You know, a middle-aged kind of movie you found yourself liking despite the fact that you were a good thirty years younger than the target audience (guilty pleasure). I'm sure you've seen it, so I'm sure that you remember that there are multiple tense moments where you're sure it's all gonna come to a head and then...well, wait until the next near disaster! An excellent choice for a guilty pleasure movie club. Way to go, Jacqui! We've now covered the remember-you're-mortal drama and the '80s skateboarding/organized crime movie. What's next? Well, actually, that's up to me. Any suggestions?

weekend worship

my little friend poet and a stack of books I want to spend some time with this weekend

It's supposed to be 30 degrees (that's in Celsius!) here all weekend, as good a reason as any to get outside. I'm hoping to
hit the beach, weed my garden, and go berry picking (blueberries, maybe raspberries?). I'm also really looking forward to starting a new book, one that I bought a while ago from the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes is the book of essays and images that accompanied an exhibit of the same name. I really wish I could've seen this show in person, it looks like it was amazing. I'm hoping to find some interesting ideas that will help me shape my upcoming grad project since our site is essentially suburban. Nerd fest. And since we're talking about the suburbs, if you haven't seen the paintings and prints of Leah Giberson (I noticed one in the September 2010 Martha Stewart Living), you should check them out. Her practice involves painting over photographs of suburban landscapes and editing out the context
of homes until all that's left is an empty, empty place. I like it!

leah giberson's westlake viridian print

This is also the last weekend of the Sadie giveaway on New Canadian Modern. Check it out and enter to win a gold-dipped crystal pendant. Have a great weekend!

stuff that happens

Well, I promised a post about dinner last night, so here it is: Grub on Main Street is amazing! This was my third time eating there and it was just as good as every other meal I've had at this great little restaurant. Also Jeff, Camilla, and I discovered that they serve punch. I definitely recommend the Prohibition Punch. Ginger beer, gin and I can't remember what else. The cucumber, pears, and strawberries absorb the flavour of the ginger beer and become spicy and refreshing. So good. You should go before summer's over and the backyard's closed and punch seems like a weird idea. Afterwards we went to see Step Up 33D, which I think got two out of eight thumbs up. You can decide for yourself on that one.

my friend used to live in the place right behind grub. main street has changed.

prohibition punch

the herbivore appetizer platter

the vegetarian entree. this was an amazing dish!

good times with an old friend.

wearing an ugly smoking jacket in portland will apparently get you
a cool sticker like this from fashion-conscious cops. weird.

sadie giveaway on new canadian modern

Hi everyone, just wanted to let you know about a great opportunity to win a gold-dipped quartz pendant from Sadie. 
Just head over to New Canadian Modern and enter the giveaway. Good luck!

lomo monday

taken with a holga: astoria, oregon may 2009

Plastic cameras take the best photos.

guilty pleasure: gleaming the cube

Tonight our guilty pleasure movie club had its inaugural screening. The idea is that everyone gets a chance to choose a movie that they loved when they were kids and make other people watch it with them. You have to hope that it stands up to another viewing, that people won't fall asleep while your pick is playing, and that it's still available somewhere to rent.

The choice tonight, a brilliant one by everyone's account: Gleaming the Cube chosen by Jeff. Probably most impressive is that Jeff managed to find a copy of this movie in Vancouver. It's limited release on DVD was YEARS ago and none of the rental places that specialize in hard-to-find movies had it. Second most impressive? We still have a VCR and Jeff was able 
to uncover this gem at Limelight Video on VHS.

As one reviewer tonight said, Gleaming the Cube is both entertaining and riveting. Christian Slater is 20 in this movie and looks about 15. Tony Hawk has a sweet hairdo and an even sweeter ride. Fabulous 80s fashion abounds and there's a dramatic side to the plot, too.

Highlights? Well, there are a lot of highlights in all of the actors' hair, and I also enjoyed watching Jeff wait for the movie to rewind afterwards. Remember that? Be kind.

weekend worship

This is a new feature that I'm going to attempt to keep up even after school is back in session in a few weeks. The problem is, when school is on, weekends just don't count as weekends any more. Regardless, here I will chronicle our weekend adventures, blog finds, etc. It will essentially be the space that I use to air all of the randomness of the week in one post. I'll include lots of photos and as many inspirational finds and features as I can. I hope you find something you like...

thesis research has begun, but is punctuated regularly with time wasters like photo sessions and magazines!

lemon pound cake from Solly's makes me miss Nova Scotia.

I am part of the UBC Farm Student Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program this year! A CSA asks members to support small-scale farming by sharing the burden of the initial cost of inputs and reaping the rewards of the outputs. In other words, I paid $150 up front in May and since the season is going well and vegetables are being produced I now get approximately $10 worth of fresh produce from the farm every Friday until the middle of October. This is an amazing program. The produce we get is literally picked by volunteers the day that we pick it up at the farm centre. We have been given so many crazy and amazing greens, as well as beets, beans, carrots, basil, garlic, and more! I love that every week we get to visit the farm, discover new plants, and find recipes to make gourmet, inexpensive farm-fresh meals AND we're supporting the farm. They have a regular CSA program for the general public, too, which is $25 a week. If you're in the Vancouver area check it out for next year, if not, there's bound to be a CSA in your neck of the woods, too (perhaps for salmon, honey, fruit, who knows what). And if you're not so into the CSA thing, you can always find other ways of supporting the UBC Farm.

In the meantime, does anyone know what to do with Ruby Streaks?

Here's a really ugly website that will help you find CSA programs in your area. Look around, though, there are lots of good ones out there!

UBC Farm poultry: you can see their leader in the back there with the bright red comb

garlic chandeliers at the UBC Farm Centre

And finally, take a look at this performance by one of my current favourites, Robyn. She's kind of awesome, don't you think?

new york inspiration: part deux

best birthday cake ever from the momofuku milk bar in midtown

who says you can't have fun with a busted collarbone

the high line

sidewalk in the flower district, so cool and refreshing

paley park