• Listening to: Love As Laughter - Crosseyed Beautiful Youngunz

First of all, I’m just tickled pink that you guys are enjoying the new playlist. :D

Claire and I are conspiring. And it’s big. It’s really exciting. I can hardly contain my excitement, in fact. So I’ll let you guys know what it is when I can. ;)

I should be starting to work on the Easter Egg Hunt soon. That is, if I’m going to do it again this year. Though I suppose I should. Some years it’s been WAY more successful than it was last year, but then last year I’d only just re-opened the blends site after about 6 months of hiatus, so who can really blame people?

After the last post, I’m afraid this one is really quite boring, actually. Sorry, folks!

• Listening to: Florence + the Machine - Drumming Song

My blog, I mean. It’s been a while. haha.

As for an update, there’s been so much going on that I actually don’t know where to start. My house is warm again, Jordan is about 10 pounds heavier, and I’m succeeding relatively well with respect to my New Year’s resolutions. (I’ve developed a particular fondness for grapefruit juice.)

If I were going to give a music update in one word, it would be INDIE. And Florence + the Machine is seriously my new favourite. She’s just something else. If you haven’t heard her music, check her out immediately (if not sooner). You won’t be sorry you did.

Oh wait, you can check her out on the new playlist. Yes, that’s right, Jade finally got off her butt and put together a playlist for you guys, mostly of indie bands. It’s the best of the best. Really. Clickety-click below to listen and download:

Because I’m probably going to be in serious trouble if I don’t say this, keep in mind that I’m making these playlists to promote the bands featured, not just to “give you free music”. If you listen to the songs and love them, please buy them. :)

And just because it’s been so long since I’ve blogged, I’ve got lots more art for you guys. You know, in case you need some to look at. (..??) Enjoy! :)

Everyone go check out Claire’s site, Fiction to Film! And while you’re there, Follow them on Twitter, because there’s a contest going on for their Twitter followers! :)

• Listening to: Barks...if you can call them that yet

Meet Jordan. She’s 8 weeks old and enjoys chew toys and rolling around in the snow. Her profession is being cute.

My brother brought her home this evening and she’s all we can do, think or say.

PS: Ecko is jealous already.

• Listening to: Idlewild - A Ghost in the Arcade

I need a new layout for my blog. Big-time. I just haven’t had time to do it, considering I have 10 orders on the design site and the Emma site is also in serious need as well. Maybe by March? haha

So I had a wicked Christmas–thanks for asking! ;) How was everyone’s? Lots of yummy food and family time and presents, I hope. Christmas gets me so excited, but this isn’t news for anyone. And it was a really awesome Christmas, one where I got to hang out with my baby cousins, bigger cousins, amazing aunt and the rest of my family that I see all the time. It was really awesome, and my baby cousins are growing up so fast that soon they won’t be baby cousins…

And everyone who knows me knows that material possessions are about the last thing I have any use for (unless we’re talking about fashion magazines, that is). But I got seriously spoiled this Christmas in a way I totally wasn’t expecting. My Mom decided to get me my first iPod, sort of as a Christmas present and sort of as a graduation present. I’ve never had one before. Really. It’s one of the “touch” ones, which I have to say is very cool, I just don’t know what half of the stuff is for yet…

And magazines! haha…I’m the worst for posting pictures of every single magazine I get, but whatever. :)

In case you’ve been wondering what that weird background is on all the photos of magazines that I post, it’s the not-so-pretty but oh-so-warm-and-loveable blanket on my bed. :)

It’s about time for New Year’s resolutions as well, and here are a few of mine:

1. MAKE time to work on my book.
2. Get my driver’s license.
3. Get some actual exercise (because I’ve been a lazy bum and my body hates me right now).
4. Finish reading all of the books I’ve started before starting any more!
5. Eat more veggies.

I feel like those are good places to start, since I’ve been living on eggs, bread and clementines and sitting on my butt and doing a whole lot of nothing but designing. I think once I finish this lot of orders, I might take a break from designing for a month or so, because I’ve just had enough for now. Not that I don’t love it. I’ve just had enough. And it’s one of those things that takes up most of your waking hours if you’re currently doing it.

Comment with your New Year’s resolutions, yeah? They might give me (and the other readers) some ideas on how to fix our bad habits! ;)

• Listening to: Alanis Morissette - No Pressure Over Cappuccino

[EDIT] I lied. Merry Christmas! :) [/EDIT]

Love, Actually is one of the best movies ever. If you haven’t seen it, run to the video store and rent it immediately. Especially around Christmas.

Two sleeps till Christmas! (I’m going back to my kid days, when my friend used to measure time in “sleeps”.) Christmas is pretty wicked, so I’m all giddy like a schoolkid. :D

Did a whole lot of baking yesterday with my friend, who it was really good to see. We made a whack of cookies, and today I made stollen, which (for those who don’t know) is this amazing German Christmas bread with nuts and fruit in it. Mmm.

Tomorrow we need to make 3 pies, which will be pretty fun, since pies are one of those things we don’t get to do too often. It’s for the family Christmas thing, which we’re actually not doing at our place this year. It actually feels kind of strange, since we’ve done Christmas for about 9 of the past 10 years. But still, it’s one less thing to worry about, and I still get to do what I do best: bake. (I’m in charge of desserts!)

And just for Lucy & Jen, I’ve got the new round for FLR Blends in the works! It’s probably not going to make it up before Christmas, but I’ll get there sooner rather than later. ;)

Since I’ll be baking all day tomorrow and probably won’t blog, Merry Christmas!! :)

• Listening to: Josh Groban - You Are Loved

I’m feeling funny right now.

I’m really, truly, deeply in love. With everyone and everything. It’s really cool, actually. There may be some imbalance in my brain, since sometimes I’ll swing a little too widely for it to be entirely normal, but it’s moments like this that make me not mind.

Tomorrow morning I get to see my second best friend (as in…I have two of them) for the first time in two and a half months. We’re going to watch Love, Actually, bake the most amazing ginger cookies, exchange Christmas presents, and spend the vast majority of the day together. Life is good.

I almost want to say that I’d like to feel like this all the time, where I’m totally content and adore everyone around me. But then I’d be always–and never–happy, and at the end of the day, I suppose I need the downs. But I’m thoroughly enjoying this. And to think this high is totally natural would just rot someone like Derek’s socks off (and that tickles me pink).

Maybe it’s just Christmas. ‘Cause I’m just a big kid at Christmas.

Thanks for reading. :)

The Spain post.

I got tired of everyone asking how it went. KIDDING! No, it was actually so much fun that it’s all I talked about with everyone for about a week after I got back! Let’s just start from the top, shall we? Never fear, I’ll do the abridged version! ;)

So we left on the Saturday morning (the 21st) and drove to Montreal for the flight, and then spent about 10 hours on two different planes. The good news is that we got to the Montreal airport really early and I got to salivate over all the international Vogues they had!! :D

Once we got to Spain (Madrid), it was about 8am Spain time and 2am Canada time, so we were ready for bed. But we had to start the day all over again, which was really rough. We went out and wandered around, saw the royal palace and its gardens…

…and an Egyptian temple nearby that was apparently given as a gift to the king eons ago. We ended up staying in this super cute granny-run inn downtown, where the lady didn’t even speak English but she was so cute that I just wanted to say, “awww!” every time I saw her! We went out to get some dinner that night and I remembered this place that we had gone to about 7 years ago when I went on a really awful class trip to Spain. We managed to find it and it was totally worth it. It’s essentially a cave, in the side of a hill leading up to the main square, and when you walk in, there are about three tables in the place! But the back room, where we ended up sitting, was full of about 20 young people sitting down and having a beer. A few minutes after we got there, one guy pulled out a guitar and they started singing at the top of their lungs in Spanish, clapping and having a grand time (and, consequently, we were having one as well!). By the time we got back to the hotel, we fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows!

The next day, we took a train to Toledo, where even the train station was something of an attraction! It’s a re-creation of the same kind of arab architecture you find throughout Spain, which is pretty cool. Even the train station washrooms had their own little separate building! (By far the fanciest outhouses I’ve ever seen!)

We had a really good time in Toledo, even though I got us seriously lost and we got really tuckered out! You see, Toledo is built on a hill, so to get into the old town, you have to climb a really big hill and enter the city walls. Unfortunately, I didn’t know there was a wall, and I just climbed the huge hill, didn’t see what I was looking for, and kept on walking. We actually walked around (with our luggage!!) for about 2 and 1/2 hours. Finally we found our hotel, checked in, and thoroughly enjoyed the charm of Toledo. It has really narrow streets and very few sidewalks, so you take your life in your hands walking around, but everything is so beautiful and there’s no trace of a new development or re-built building in the old town, which is really great. We saw the cathedral…

…and the little church of “Santo Tome”, where there’s an amazing and really famous El Greco painting out front (The Burial of Count Orgaz).

In the morning, we went to Cordoba, which turned out to be my favourite city of the trip (and my Mom’s too, if memory serves me). We totally fell in love when we got there and spent so much of our time just wandering, going to bakeries & shops, and finding the different attractions, since everything is so close in the old town. We went to the Mezquita (mosque) and it was so beautiful.

There were also orange trees everywhere! (Which, we found out, was typical of just about everywhere in Spain. On the highway, all you could see were fields upon fields of orange trees!) Just outside the city walls…

…we sat on a bench for a few minutes to enjoy a little park. A little old man came and sat beside us and told us that the mosque and such wasn’t the real old town. He was a retired architect and he said that if we wanted real history, we had to see the Califate’s bath houses and the ruins outside of Cordoba (called Medinat Al-Zahra). The latter we were planning on visiting in the morning, but the former we’d never heard of. So we went to the bath houses, which were fascinating, but where we weren’t able to take any photos (sorry, folks!).

We went to the hotel, where we were on the first floor with a little indoor patio…

…and we sat down to read for a while before bedtime. The next morning, we went to Medinat Al-Zahra…

…which was incredible! You actually got to walk through the ruins of this ancient city!

Once we returned from the ruins, we went right to the train station and got on a train to Seville. The only problem is that once we got there, it was about 5pm and apparently everything closes by then! So we didn’t really get to see anything and just ended up having some dinner and going to a flamenco night, which single-handedly made it worth it to go to Seville!

The next morning, we got up bright and early and were at the train station by 9am. We asked the man at the counter for the first train to Granada and he told us it wasn’t until noon. Disgruntled, we sat down to wait, but got bored, so I ended up buying a magazine or two in a little shop. When we got on the train, it took over 3 hours and we realized that the man at the counter thought we wanted the cheapest train (the slow one), which went through every town on the way! We finally got to Granada at about 4pm and we just barely made it into the Alhambra before closing time! All in all, it was incredible, even though it was almost impossible to get any good pictures. It’s one of those things where you just have to be there…

That night, we got really lost in the city, trying to find a restaurant. We had ended up with a really mean bus driver who we’d asked for help, but who had detoured without telling us and left us in the middle of nowhere. Because of the detour, we couldn’t find our bus in the other direction, so we ended up walking back to our hotel, which was outside of town and about a two-hour walk. We were both almost in tears by the time we got there (at 1:00 in the morning), and slept really well!!

In the morning, we picked up a rental car, since we had to drive to a lot of the rest of the places we were visiting. We named our rental Juanita, because we name our cars like nerds. :) She was a grey Citroen.

We drove through Murcia, then up the coast a little to a small town called Xabia (or Javea…for some reason, it has two spellings?). It was really beautiful, and right on the water! Because I’m an idiot and procrastinator, I told myself, “I’ll take pictures of the water later,” and then never did, so I have no pictures to show you. But it had lots of character, and we ended up finding markets and bakeries and such to nibble, which always makes me happy. :)

The next day it was off to Valencia! On the way, we stopped a little past Valencia in a spot called El Puig, where there was this really neat monastery with a printing press museum. The museum was awesome, but when we came back out to leave, our car wouldn’t start! So we stopped some nearby police officers, who called the rental company and got some help on the double! The only problem is that right before the guy arrived, the silly car decided to start, so we looked really stupid!

In Valencia, we had no map and had no idea where our hotel was, so we figured we would try to find the train station (which was on the little map in the guide book) and ask Tourist Info for a map. The only problem is that we got very seriously lost and by the time we got to the train station (over three hours later!), Tourist Info was closed! We got some directions to our hotel from a cab driver, got lost again, and finally got to our hotel at 12:30, after driving around for a total of 5 hours! We were so pooped we went to bed, but only an hour later, Mom became violently ill. I tried to help, but what can you do in that situation? We were up all night, between my Mom being sick and me trying to help clean her up/comfort her, so we ended up sleeping most of the next day, particularly since my Mom was still feeling pretty cruddy until about 4pm. We went out for a quick dinner and short walk, which is when we saw the cathedral (or church?)…

…and then Mom went back to bed.

The next day was Tarragona, where they had this really awesome small-town vibe and the really beautiful Roman Ampitheatre…

…which we got to enjoy during a really beautiful sunset, as you can see! Next, we headed to Barcelona, where we spent three days and ridiculous sums of money shopping on Las Ramblas. Las Ramblas is this huge, long street with stores and restaurants on either side and a walking path down the middle that’s large enough to have more stands on either side! You also get buskers, which do everything from posing as angels to impersonating Edward Scissorhands and it’s really interesting to watch them.

We also saw the Sagrada Familia, the amazing church by Gaudi, as well as his Parc Guell. They were both highlights of the trip!

The mosaic you see there is actually a bench designed for the park that is made of ceramics but remarkably comfortable, I guess because it contours to the shape of your body. We also saw lots of those cactuses on the way into the park, and it seems like the cool thing to do in Barcelona is carve your name into a leaf on a cactus. Ouch!

That’s more or less the trip, to be honest, and it was a pretty good one! We both had fun and I got to practice my Spanish a lot. Maybe we’ll go back again sometime!

Aaaaaaaand the post wouldn’t be complete without a photo of all the awesome foreign magazines I got while in Spain! :D

Hope you enjoyed the low-down! :)