The chakras are realigned, my chi is in balance and all is right with the world. Ah, the restorative effect of a good long walk on a sunny fall day. A baby sleeping for 2 hours helps. And so does finishing an assignment for TO Life a day early.

So I treated Henry and myself to a leisurely two hour stroll in the big buggy. In addition to the two MacLarens, this is my other ride. It belonged to our lovely neighbours, who have lived here 40 years. They pushed three babies around these streets in this pram in the '60s. It's still in perfect condition. Lovely and fastidious neighbours.

Some photos from my walk...

Housekeeping ain't no joke, Louisa May Alcott wisely observed.

That annoying overwhelmed feeling of late is in part due to my house having reached the point where I simply cannot do another thing I need to do, deadlines be damned, until I've wrestled the hateful 50-foot snaking central vac hose out of its closet and sucked up everything in my path (and Steve wonders why there are so many missing socks. Ha.)

Remember that Flintstones episode where Wilma, determined to get a maid, smudges dark circles under her eyes and feigns exhaustion? It worked, Fred relented and, if I recall correctly, they got Gina Lollobrigida. A few weeks after Stella's birth I pulled a similar move, albeit more sympathetically: if I'm going to breastfeed this baby 18 times a day there is simply no time left to vacuum. And so we got Svetlana.

During our three-year relationship I learned something important about myself: I'm not a very effective boss. I don't like telling people what to do. Svetlana came, initially, with a translator. And things were good. She'd arrive, I'd make her tea then leave and return to a magically tidy and sparkling home that smelled like lemons and pine and a good deal more elbow grease than I've ever put in.

Alas, as happens in all close relationships, standards began to slip over the years. An errant dust bunny. A bit of crusty jam welded to the kitchen counter for 2 weeks. Suspicion that the tub had been Windexed but not actually cleaned. Long distance phone calls to Ukraine. But mostly I hated becoming one of those women who complains about their cleaning lady. So we parted ways, amicably, three months ago and I vowed to clean the house myself.

So today. House dirty. Need to vac. Conundrum: Henry is afraid of the vac. Can't do it while he's sleeping. Can't do it while he's awake. A snippet of my scintillating morning conversation with my husband:

Me: The house is pretty dirty, huh.
Him: Yeah. Pretty dirty.
Me: Henry's afraid of the vacuum.
Him: Probably because he doesn't hear it very often.
Me: (choking on coffee) What? What does that mean? Are you insane?
Him: (calmly) What? Svetlana's coming Monday. What's the big deal.
Me: Do you live here?

Sigh. What use is Calgon when the tub is dirty?

Hello. My name is Nicole and I'm overwhelmed

Funny, when I worked for someone else and not for myself the week leading up to vacation was a thing to savour. Even the simplest thing like buying sunscreen out of season felt decadent and exciting. Now? Holidays loom rather than tantalize. Vacay in ten days and there is much to do. Much to do.

As much as I hate to, for sanity's sake I'm going to defer adding this gorgeous new blanket to the site until I return November 18. I love the olive, red and chocolate brown combo. It's so modern. In the week I've tucked it around Henry's stroller I've had three people stop to ask where I bought it. I always feel a bit goofy saying "well, as a matter of fact... " Especially if I'm rockin' yoga pants - not convincingly - and a Tim Horton's at the post office at 8 am. You know?

So if you like it, love it, have to have it before the end of November, send me an email. I have this olive combo, a baby pink and pale blue option. They're a very reasonable $35 and I think they'll sell well. Oh, and they're handmade for honeybunch in fleece with wool felt.

today's work in progress

Homemade halloween costumes are one of my mother's legacies. Back in the day my sisters and I would look down our noses at kids who wore those cheapy store-bought ones - you know, the kind with the moulded plastic mask with the eye holes that were always slightly off kilter. These slipshod Batmans, Holly Hobbies and Luke Skywalkers smacked of carelessness. Of last-minute candy-grabbers. Of a lack of creativity - the biggest sin in my 8-year old worldview. My mom's costumes weren't particularly elaborate. A loopy mophead dyed red was the capper for one year's Raggedy Ann costume, a floor-length bridesmaid gown with leg of mutton sleeves and a fabric-covered cardboard bonnet during my Laura Ingalls Wilder phase.

Of course store bought outfits today are as professional and well-constructed as anything you'd find on a film set. But still. I am unable to take the easy road. So Halloween prep is in full swing. Stella wants to be a cowboy. It was a knight originally but when she couldn't convince the neighbour to be her dragon all bets were off.

Last night I hot glued this great fringe I found on a $3 tablecloth to a thrift store jean jacket. Today I tackle the pants and figure out how many warm layers I can stuff into the jacket in case the cold weather continues. Henry? He's going to be a spider.

This house is around the corner from mine. If you could zoom in on the sign in the window you'd see it reads "another AFFORDABLE new home for sale." It's listed for $1.2 million dollars. No, we don't live in Kuwait, so, yes, the sign has caused a bit of a stir in the neighbourhood.

Of course we're pleased that our decision to buy an unfashionable 1960s bungalow in an unfashionable part of town looks prescient three years later. The bulldozers moved in shortly after we did, and modest houses on big lots like ours are being demolished and replaced with new, affordable homes like this one.

At the time it wasn't an easy decision to buy our house. I had fallen for a cottage in High Park with a pretty front courtyard, wide plank floors, and a cute banquette in the kitchen. Unfortunately, Steve, who is average height, kept hitting his head on the stair bulkhead, our king bed wouldn't fit in the master bedroom, and a dodgy slopy-floored addition had our estate agent biting her lip. Far too much to overlook, of course, but at the time I was deeply conflicted. Silly. We've been so happy here, bad '80s kitchen and all.

how it might go down

I love that line. It's so Hollywood. So kids-on-The-OC-in-trouble. I never expected to hear it in a conversation I was part of. Here's how it happened.

I spent many nice July days working on the Entertaining Guide for Toronto Life (now out in the November issue). I interviewed caterers, florists, stationers and a fellow named Arnie the Ham who delivers singing telegrams as a tuxedo-clad gorilla. But my favourite assignment was "the host with the most" - a round-up of entertaining tips from fashionable party throwers around town. One of my sort-of idols, Lynda Reeves, was on the list. I'm a big fan of her magazine. In fact, I have just about every issue from 1995 on. At the handful of media-type events I've attended where Lynda's been present I admired her from afar. She sees everything and everyone without one second of unneccessary or accidental eye contact. Fierce. I'd work for her if she didn't scare me.

After vetting the interview through her assistant Ryan, actually arranging a time to speak was no simple matter.

Ryan: "Lynda's very busy with taping right now so here's how it might go down. We might call you and say 'Lynda's available in five minutes, can you be available?"
Heart sinking. Dude, I have a 3-year old and a 3-month old rattling around this house. There's very little, short of fleeing my burning home, that I could pull off on five minutes notice. But the conspiratorial "here's how it might go down" had me hooked. Me: "Yes, of course. I'll wait to hear from you."

It played out like a scene from Three's Company. You know, where Jack has a date in the kitchen and one in the bathroom and he's frantic but managing to keep them separate. After waiting all day the phone call came just after five. I have call display so in the seven seconds between the first ring and call answer kicking in I handed baby H off to my mother in law like you'd pass the cashier a frozen turkey, stuck a freezie in Stella's hand and ushered the three of them on to the porch, locked the door behind them, pounced on the phone, exhaled and in a very oozy, breathy Jack Tripper kind of way, said "hello, this is Nicole."

Unlike Jack, I ultimately pulled it off. Half an hour later I hung up the phone triumphant. I had interviewed my sort-of idol and she had no idea I was sitting cross-legged on my bed with grass-stained feet, shooing my kid away from the window with a grimace and hand gestures the entire time. Love it.

aprons

I've been collecting vintage aprons for a few years but never did anything with them. They're too cute to cut up for fabric, often they're too fragile or impractical to actually use in the kitchen. So they sit, along with the dozen or so tablecloths, pillowcases and other bits of fabric I've picked up here and there, waiting for a good idea to come along. I saw this adorable clothesline on flickr and copied it for Stella's room.
The cute pineapple bed, by the way, was scooped up for $35 and painted my favourite creamy white.

I had no idea the corn maze was spread across 12 acres when I agreed to push a stroller through its narrow, dusty rows on an unseasonally hot and windless day this past weekend. Or that there was only one way out. Or that my brother-in-law would insist on finding the 22 hidden checkpoints so we would win a prize. It's Hanes Farm on Hwy 6 and I suggest you bring a GPS or at the very least a periscope or compass if you intend to finish in under 2 hours. It's also open at night - they rent flashlights. The rustling cornstalks were creepy enough at high noon, I can imagine how deliciously spooky it'd be in the dark.

uhhhhmmmm

Stella often delays bedtime by asking random but intriguing questions. Tonight she queried "What does god eat?" My answer "Um, clouds?" was received with a dissatisfied laugh so I've got to give that some consideration. I also overheard her asking her nursery school teacher "who made you brown?" So what good timing to crack open the new issue of Cookie mag and learn I'm not the only bemused but totally stumped parent: author Wendell Jamieson is compiling a Q&A of kids' seemingly unanswerable questions in his book Father Knows Less. You can submit yours here.
The question he's received most often? "what's inside your eyeballs?"

can't wait to show you

Naturally everything I sell makes its way through my house on route to my office and storeroom. Usually Stella intercepts the boxes and gives the contents a critical once over, occasionally she'll ask for a closer look. But this box was different. "Oh mama, what's this?" she whispered. Then there were squeals, yelps, giggles. Arms flying, hands digging into the box and before I knew it, a kitchen full of felt food and a three year old pleading with me to play restaurant with her.

I'm so pleased to be working with the amazingly talented and creative Hilary Seabolt, who designs and creates by hand these magical goodies from wool felt. Would you believe she sews every donut sprinkle by hand? It's even cuter in person, and already a beloved toy in our house.

Minnow (isn't that a great name?) and Sarah, the gals at SavvyMom, asked me to be part of their $15,000 dream nursery giveaway, happening at the Baby & Toddler Show later this month. I've given them the pick of anything I sell or make so we'll see what they end up including. It's a pretty awesome contest: doula services, photo shoots, furniture. All kinds of swag has been ponied up by the best kid companies in Canada. You can enter here or here.

You can get like a 2 kg tub of Oxyclean for $6 at Target. I buy several at a time because it's the only thing I've found that can ususally get out whatever winds up on this kid's clothes (reminder: donate smocks to daycare).

I wasn't prepared to toss this brand-new T in the bin after one day at nursery school. It came home with some pretty permanent blue stains on it that even my beloved Oxyclean wasn't shifting.

But sometimes life hands you an opportunity. Sitting on the hard bare wood floor outside your kid's room night after night after night while they fall asleep (monsters, lions and bears. Oh my) gives a person lots of time to think, sew, maybe learn to crochet. Oh yes, I now crochet. And so Saturday night I came up with a solution to this double-jointed problem. Something that would pass the hour or so I spend sitting on the hard, bare wood floor outside Stella's room, and something that would reinvent that poor stained t-shirt. The apple is made from a scrap of denim, the stem is grograin ribon and the leaf is a bit of wool felt. All wobbily stitched on with embroidery floss. But isn't it cute?

The rubber duck, by the way, is Stella's latest ploy to get us to buy her a pet. She's been gingerly carrying this sodden thing around all weekend in a desperate attempt to prove she can take care of a live animal.

I Heart Sundays

Our grass desperately needs cutting. The artemesia is overgrown and covering much of the front walk. We have not put away summer clothes and shoes. But apparently we don't give a damn because we spent yesterday hiking, collecting (fern leaves, acorns), and, later, buying sweet potatoes, homemade jam and weird gourds at a farm stand. What a lovely day.

warm and cozi

It is the sign of a deeply disorganized home to unearth a bottle of Pol Roger beneath the hill of laundry that's been perched on top of the clothes dryer, well, for quite some time evidently. I don't know what stresses me more, that a perfectly good bottle of bubbly has been shaken and heated to oblivion or that I have no recollection of buying or receiving it, thus, the laundry must have been there a very long time indeed.

So the topic of yesterday's Daily Candy was most welcome. Cozi. It's a new freebie web tool from Microsoft that whispered all the right things in my ear: centralized contact info, a family calendar (no more "what Doctor's appointment?") and a communal shopping list that everyone can add to so I'm not the only one to blame for 8 jars of dill pickles in the pantry but no toilet paper. All wonderful things that will save me time, make me organized and, if I'm lucky, help us get to the bottom of the laundry pile faster. Naturally I signed up on the spot. Step one is to add in family members and their coordinates. I input my husband and 2 minutes later got this reply: "why r u spamming me?" Ah, young love. Next it's Stella and Henry's turn to be cozi'd. About 20 minutes later and I've managed to assign colours to each family member, schedule my hair appointment, Stella's twice weekly Karate class and upload all 800 photos so all my unflattering, not fit to print photos can scroll before me every 5.2 seconds. Fantastic. (reminder to self: summer sun highlights are not the same as real highlights and generally start to look crappy at the same time my summer "freckles" revealed themselves to be, horror, age spots.)

So we're cozi'd. I'm not sure it's going to live up to its promise. Time will tell friends, time will tell.

A stack of these tiny chairs were found in the storage room of a primary school that was relocating after decades in the same spot on the lakeshore. I guess someone years ago decided wood chairs weren't comfortable so they were all replaced with that moulded plastic stuff. Imagine. But goody for me. I bought them all. I painted this one for my little niece, Maya, and delivered it last week to her new house. My sister bought this sweet but unloved house and moved in a week ago. Against the carpet removal, floor refinishing, replacing trim and doors chaos inside, I love that my sister found a few minutes to make the pretty urn you see peeking out of the corner. I know the neighbours must love her for that.

I do have a few chairs not yet spoken for, so if you're interested in a cutey little chair for your cutie, contact me.

cozy cozy cozy

Two weeks ago I was absolutely not ready to say good-bye to summer. Linen skirts, soft t-shirts, bare feet on warm patio stones. Can't. Let. Go. But then today came along and changed my mind. That fall wind that turns blue sky grey then blue again - all within the hour. Love it. It was the perfect day to try out my brand spankin' new JJ Cole stroller cozy. I bought the original Snuggle Me. It's less streamlined and less fashionable than the new Urban model, which looks and feels like a trekking in Nepal-type sleeping bag, but I like the faux sheepskin lining. And so, evidently, does Henry. He curled right into it and fell asleep - something he rarely does on walks. He looked so cozy and yummy, the way sleeping babies do, that I kept right on walking and walking and walking. I love fall.

what we bought

This is our painting. It's not, by the way, askew. I am.

As you can see, it's gold foil, textured and scrunchy in places, with photos of monkeys, and nice pink drippy splotchy paint circles here and there. It's covered in a thick coating of resin which makes it really glossy and luminous. We call it "Monkeys with Pink Circles" Isn't that clever? We also call it October's mortgage (oh well).

It's quite large - about 4-feet tall and 2 feet across - so it certainly says "hey you! over here! look at me!" just the way real monkeys would. Stella's convinced they're people. And even though I know people just don't have tails, if you look at them closely and long enough you might just believe that they could.

Steven Nederveen is the artist. You can see his other stuff here. I might need to have the gold fish on white instead of groceries...

in my dojo

Oh dear. We're beginning to think karate lessons were a bit premature.

Make your own (virtual) tape here
http://www.says-it.com/cassette/index.php
So silly. But fun. And free.

Another Fantastic Rationalization

We went out for pizza and came home with our first real piece of art. I feel so grown up. It was a completely spontaneous purchase made at the excellent Queen West Art Crawl today. And while walking to the bank machine, I had an anxiety attack thinking about the much-needed bathroom reno I was probably now forsaking this year, but those scandalous Elastoplast-coloured tiles will have to wait because this quirky, colourful, amazing painting makes the whole house look better. I love it.

With the three-year old hanging out with Grandma for the night, we fixed a pitcher of gin and tonic and set to reconfiguring the living/dining room to find a suitable spot for our big purchase. Lamps, tables and mirrors were relocated, a forgotten armchair relegated to the basement resurrected, my grandparents' antique sideboard (it goes with nothing but I cannot part with it) moved and moved again. Sure, the baby's swing and playpen and Stella's craft table and armchair are now stacked in the kitchen (and they're not coming back) but we eventually found the perfect spot and hung it.

We spent the next two hours admiring it from different vantage points: "Go out in the hallway and then come in from the dining room so you can see it with fresh eyes" "Now sit on the bench. Isn't it cool?" "I want to have people over." And so on. We were practically experiencing Stendahl syndrome by the end of the night.

It's funny. I can buy a $30 pillow at HomeSense and have total buyer's remorse when I get home, but I'm really pleased about this thing that we certainly cannot afford, hadn't budgeted or planned for or even considered, that we can't sit on or store things in, that doesn't spin or light up or otherwise amuse young children. It's the first non-functional object we've bought since we married five years ago. And I'm so glad we did.

A Work In Progress

I bought a stack of old window panes on closing day at the market last year with the intention of doing all sorts of interesting things with them over the winter. Putting pieces of thrifted and vintage fabric or old illustrations behind the glass or maybe painting them. I'm finally getting around to doing something with them. I think this one is going to be a headboard. I was planning to make it for Stella's room, but these fabrics, which I love--they're so soft and faded--won't work, so this will be added to the store when it's finished. Somewhere, somewhere, I have a bowl of lovely old painted metal hooks that I'd like to put along the bottom to make this functional and pretty. My two favourite things.