Life has been a blur

I have been in hiding. Yep. Hiding.

I was busy planning this little party. By little, I mean a wedding with 250 of our closest friends. I don't think I even know 250 people.

And my bank account has gone into cardiac arrest. It's alive, barely.

It's all over, I showed up, he showed up, and nobody died during the ceremony or reception. He is now Mr. Melinda Gibson, making it a great day overall. 

Bonus Round: I didn't set my dress on fire, I didn't even spill anything on myself, I had my hair done and *gasp* I wore make-up.

There was music, drinking, eating and generally good times.

Now I can come out of hiding and blog about what you have all been missing. 

Jam.

Cookies.

Rum Balls.

Driving Lessons.

Rod Stewart and so so so much more.

Soon. I promise.

xoxo

DIY is for Masochists

A few short days ago this was me...

This was the relationship I was having with my computer at the time...

This is was what I secretly (ok, not so secretly) wanted to do to my computer...

Typically I get along quite well with my computer, well until I decided to design my own wedding invites. All ended well but many many hours in front of my computer and many many late nights put a serious damper on our relationship.

I am happy with how they turned out in the end and I was even able to utilize one of my favourite folds thus avoiding the need for a million and one separate inserts. Just the invite and the RSVP card. Taa Daa!

We wanted something quirky so we decided to get the talented Ashley from Birds of Ashmae to do some custom artwork for us of both the Church we will be getting married in and the Waterfront area where we will be having our reception.

We also loved the crazy water colour portraits from Zsu Zsu Illustrations so much that we decided to use them again on our invites.

Really a labour of love - this is especially true when I feel like I did a gazillion sample print jobs with the print shop.

We spent so much time designing the invite, it would be a shame not to carry the entire theme throughout the whole product - leading to us design and order custom stamps from Canada Post. Surprisingly - custom stamps do not cost a whole lot more than your regular old run of the mill stamps. This allowed me to showcase some of the Polaroid photography I recently did of the Port Credit Waterfront. 

Base art for the custom stamps - taken with my Polaroid Land Camera

The Assembly War Room

Awwww,  how disgustingly sweet

I am into string these days

Dill-icious

Shower season has begun.

Not only do you get showered with love, affection, and frequently gifts - t's also an opportunity (for me at least) to show off some of my dazzling domestic skills. I used the opportunity to make dilly beans to distribute to my friends and family as a thank-you gift.

Point of Clarification: When I refer to me or I, I really mean David and I. That guys worked his butt off making dilly beans and jam. Good way for me to off load all the tedious tasks.

The dilly beans I made last year got rave reviews, so I am hoping for a repeat performance. Fingers crossed.

Dilly beans are just about the easiest thing in the world to make - just takes a little time.

Ingredients

• Green beans
• Dried chilli peppers
• Fresh dill
• Fresh garlic
• Pickling Spice (store bought or homemade)
• 2 1/2 cups white vinegar (5%)
• 2 1/2 cups water
• 1/4 cup pickling salt
• mason jars (wide mouth jars work best)

First, sterilize your jars (I use a boiling water bath unless I am at David’s and then I use his dish washer because I am LAZY)

Then wash and trim your green beans - feel free to add yellow beans as well.

Some people say to blanche the beans - but I find they aren't as crispy if you do, so instead I put them in a pot and pour hot water over them and then immediately plunge them into cold water.

Pickling Spice

• 2 tbsp celery seed
• 2 tbsp mustard seed
• 2 tbsp pepper corn
• 2 tbsp dill seed

Combine vinegar, water and salt in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil

To each sterilized jar add:

• 1 clove garlic (cut in half)
• 1 dried chilli pepper
• 1 tsp of pickling spice (store bought or homemade – see ingredients above)
• Piece of fresh dill (the young dill tastes best – in my opinion)

Make sure to wash and pat dry your dill
(one of the tedious tasks assigned to David)

Pack the beans into the jars - you will no doubt have to trim some to ensure that you have at least 1/2 inch of headspace.

These bad boys seriously need a trim

Pour the boiling brine over the beans, making sure to leave that 1/2 inch headspace. 

Wipe the rims and apply the lids (which have, of course, been sitting in a small saucepan of hot water to soften up) and rings.

Process for 10 minutes in a boiling bath - we are talking 'rollin' with my homies' kind of rolling. That water better be moving! 

Rollin' with my homies (sippin' yak all night, yeah)

Proud Mary keep on burnin'
Rolin', rollin', rollin' on the river

The beans will look shrivelled but worry not they will re-hydrate and look awesome. I compare it to newborn babies, not so cute on day 1 but freakin' adorable afterwards. 

Before moving them – let them sit for 24hr and store them in a dark cool place.

Not exactly a dark place
but how could I take a picture of the finished product in the dark?

We dressed them up to make sure that they would be worthy to hand out to our friends (with a Caesar recipe attached, naturally). 

 

Queue Caesar...

This was basically my lunch

There was leftover brine, so David made me do this. Disgusting.

Why for the love of God?

I Spy (vs. Spy)

Camp with 23 girls!

This is me at the start of camp, all doe eyed and bushy tailed - way before the complete and total fatigue set in. Sunday night after camp saw me in bed by 7:45pm.

Late nights, totally exhausted BUT totally worth it in the end.

If you are on a diet, however, you should not , I repeat, should not come to camp with us.

First there were S'mores

We set up a S'mores building station

Each girl was given a sugar cone and coated the inside with chocolate syrup. A spoonful of chopped up bananas, a spoonful of semi-sweet chocolate chips and marshmallows to top it all off. Wrap it in tinfoil and place near the camp fire to toast. We got rained out so we had to bake them in the oven. In the end it doesn't matter how you make them, they always turn out perfect.

Sickly sweet & delicious

Then there was some delicious dirt pudding

After a spaghetti dinner (complete with garlic bread and caesar salad), we had dirt pudding for dessert. A chocolate pudding cup, oreo cookie crumbs and gummy worms. We added whipped cream - the girls told me that whipped cream has nothing to do with mud, dirt and worms. I told them they were clouds. They thought that was stupid.

It wasn't all food and more food. We also had a theme. Spy camp. 

The girls were broken into 4 smaller groups and were told to give their team a name and to come up with a personal alias. They really got into it, some great team names (Agent Girl Guides, Super Secret Spies, Midnight Sneakers, and Ninja Spies) and even cuter aliases (C-Girl, Agent Awesome, Agent ROA).

The girls (and their stuffed animals) went under cover, disguising themselves in hats, scarfs, and sunglasses.

We also set up an obstacle course, this was to test their laser dodging ability.

Testing their Speed & Coordination

Some Midnight Fun

Originally we wanted to do glow-in-the-dark bubbles but our night time fun got rained out. As a back up plan we played glow-in-the-dark win, lose, or draw.

We did your typical camping stuff too - arts & crafts, hikes, catching little critters and lots and lots of gimp bracelets 

Hiking

Beautiful Rolling Hills - generally rain free, lite on the bugs, and only a few tears. So all and all a great week-end.

 Arts & Crafts

We made little sani buckets to pin to their camp hats. Reminds them of the enormous fun they had washing dishes and cleaning toilets. Because who doesn't think that's fun!?!

Pop Tab Bracelets

Lots and lots of gimp - don't want to brag but I am kinda a gimp master

Catching Stuff

There were frogs, toads, snakes, grasshoppers and anything else they could get their hands on.

Engaged in Questionable Activities

Some people love the idea of engagement photos and some people hate, dread, loath, despise engagement photos with the fire of a thousand suns. 

I mean, who really likes getting their photo taken other than models? ok and movie stars, and teenaged girls, and ok ok so there are lots of people who LOVE getting their picture taken. I am not one of them.

I like when (by accident) someone takes a picture of me and it doesn't make me want to barf or go into a rampage ripping up and deleting every copy I can get my hands on. As you can tell, my standards are low.

Back to the engagement photos - we reluctantly agreed to have them done a) because they were included in our package and b) truthfully there is no better way to see exactly what you are getting on the day of your wedding. 

These shoots give you and your photographer an opportunity to get to know one another and get comfortable with each other ahead of the big day. Who wants to find out at the wedding that your photographer is a big jerk and you and your photographer do not get along at all? That would be bad news.

If you were wondering, our photographer happens to be all kinds of awesome. 

We followed some simple rules:

• Photos needed to represent the real us (so no cigarette smoking, martini drinking, Mad Men-esque posing for us)

• We needed to be comfortable during the shoot

• Minimal props (and when props were used they truly represented us and our personalities).