today's the day!

they're inducing jess today; stay tuned to my twitter feed for updates!

prayers sent her way for a safe & speedy delivery for both jess and the new lil peanut are most appreciated.

xo

la silence

i'm excited that today will be a day to get things done.

this weekend: i'm not sure what my plans are exactly, but with any luck they include jess going into labour before her get-induced deadline of monday, and then hanging out with the new lil peanut.

if not, i'll be cleaning out my car while toronto's still enjoying the warm(ish) weather, and will get rolling on that side table that i bought at a garage sale back at the beginning of the summer. i'm thinking it'll be a pretty black laquer. mm. before and after pics to come.

things have been pretty quiet on the interwebs for the past few days while everyone in the states enjoys their thanksgiving turkey - what are you planning on doing for the rest of the weekend?

so. pretty.

i quite enjoy wandering through other people's flickr favourites - here are my most recent "discoveries".

how do you find the prettiness that you do - do you have any strategies?

1. errant æsthete, 2. bench Monday! 4, 3. off duty, 4. W H I T N E Y & D A N, 5. Plums in blue bowl, 6. carefree, 7. pdx_6070, 8. pdx_6073, 9. pdx_6079, 10. Orange & Grapefruit Slices, 11. Sasha Pivovarova, 12. "Do you believe in fairies?...., 13. Up close, 14. ribbon storage, 15. colors...., 16. Stuff, 17. many kinds of oranges., 18. a blurry self portrait..., 19. Purchase #3 - $12, 20. hello orange., 21. today's pickins, 22. squam peeps, 23. Hope rises, 24. Untitled, 25. Untitled, 26. Delancey, Ballard, Seattle, 27. found objects - keys, 28. Child's world., 29. Teatime, 30. orange + gray, 31. beets, 32. give me, 33. istanbul diaries XII, 34. tirana diaries XI, 35. "Photography is just another way of keeping a diary!", 36. busy

java, moleskine and a little bit of quiet time

how is it only wednesday?

yesterday: awesome. it's funny how little things like changing your routine justalittlebit can help to shake things up just enough. after work, i met up with my mom to buy a christmas gift for my brother, but had half an hour prior to meeting her to kill some time. instead of wandering the shops aimlessly, i resolved to buy a hazelnut coffee and a slice of triple chocolate loaf and sit down to watch the world go by.

i have a tiny moleskine journal that i carry around with me so i did a little bit of writing and coffee sipping, nibbling on my cake and watching a small lineup of kids coming to have their santa picture taken. just a few more evenings like this - just me, myself and i, snuggled up with some me-time and a cup of coffee - and i'll be back to feeling like my old self again.

i also registered for a two-night course at my church, which i'm excited to check out; finally decided on a graduate diploma program i'm going to apply for, and no - jess hasn't had her baby yet.

she was due yesterday, but the doctor said it'd likely be another week or so. if she doesn't have it by next monday, they're going to have to induce, and apparently you don't want that. fingers crossed, please, that this lil peanut decides to make an appearance before then?

ps - one month til christmas!

funk-free zone

oh, wow. what a day.

not one to wallow for long, after getting a few things done at work yesterday, i helped mike finish up the last of his first big christmas card order and then we watched downloaded episodes of last week's fringe and flash forward.

today: things are going to be better. i don't know what exactly i'm going to do yet, but it's going to be better.

images via jennifer jeffrey (times two!) and finally, tanja tiziana

slowing slowing down

when i started out reading blogs three years ago and writing my own almost two years ago, one of the biggest things that struck me - and likely one of the biggest reasons that i enjoyed it - was the amount of thought that my favourite bloggers put into their creations and their blogs.

those blogs that i most connect with are the ones that have posts that highlight a mixture of different areas of their life, their projects, their job, their kids, their plans. they're the ones that are real and genuine; the ones that make me feel like they're blogging for the sheer enjoyment of it instead of just pumping out posts.

{that is, of course, not to say that those of you who post frequently or quickly are being thoughtless about it - quite the opposite. some of the most memorable posts i've read have been uber concise and therefore all the more poignant}

i feel like, in the past few months, i've somehow lost that. with all of the craziness at work in august and then most recently, i've been reflecting on how much i let my day job take over my entire life. when things are busy, i don't make plans with any of my friends. i don't draw. i don't cook. i don't paint or write or do much else, really, than think about what's next on my to-do list. which is ok, really if that busy-ness lasts only for a week or so, but when it starts stretching into a four-month span of having my blinders on to everything but my day job, it starts to affect things. like life.

which, needless to say, makes a girl end up feeling as though her list is running her life rather than the other way around. it's a feeling that i don't like to get.

i need to take some time to rejuvenate. whether it be stepping away and finding something new to work on, or just getting rolling with the laundry list of ideas that i have floating around - some partially started, others not so much - i'm not sure what i want that to look like yet. but i'm feeling a bit lacklustre lately and am looking for ways to spice things up.

i need to slow down. i keep forgetting to do that.

what do you do to get yourself back on the wagon?

xo

ps i got my wireless network up and running again. hopefully no more router problems for me for at least another four years.

photo found here

dear blog spammers (and a peek into what i've been up to lately)

please stop spamming my blog. i can't read japanese or russian, and nor do i require viagra. i still refuse to re-enable word verification for people leaving comments, but man is this comment moderation thing is getting to be a bit of a pain in the butt. three spams a day? come on dude. you need to get out more. learn to cook or something, hey?

thank you.

all the best,
courtney

ps - however, the conference went very well, thanks. i'll be posting photos up later this week, but i've taken an additional two days off work in order to unwind after weeks of eating, sleeping and breathing conference planning. it was a ton of fun, so i'm sad to see it go. today, mike and i went on a driving adventure. tomorrow: christmas shopping with a very pregnant jess. it's gonna be interesting, i tell you!

images: top - the york u student conference coordinators along with staff advisors ross and i pose with the ryerson u delegates. bottom - the student and staff delegation of the 4th annual Canadian Conference on Student Leadership. woot!

whirlwind + peanut butter cup brownies

four more days til the conference, then i'll be back to a regular blogging schedule after that. promise.

until then, i came across this recipe for peanut butter cup brownies and think it sounds absolutely fantastic. it might be the first thing i do after the conference is finished on the 15th.

or maybe it'll be the second thing, after having a big long nap.

Ingredients

• 2 sticks unsalted butter, plus more for the pan
• 8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
• 4 large eggs
• 3 cups sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• kosher salt
• 8 large peanut butter cups, cut into pieces

Directions

1. Heat oven to 400° F.
2. Melt the butter and chocolate in a pan over low heat.
3. Using a mixer, beat the eggs and sugar until pale yellow and fluffy. Lower speed and pour in the melted chocolate and vanilla. Mix in the flour and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Fold in the peanut butter cups.
4. Scrape into a buttered 9-by-13-inch baking dish. Bake until the tip of a knife comes out clean, about 35 minutes.

enjoy. and please, if it's before sunday, eat an extra one for me.

ps - i managed to do a little 25-minute belly photoshoot with jess this weekend. it felt a little bit rushed, so i'm going to see how they look after a bit of photoshopping. will keep you posted.

recipe and image from here

sneaky peeky

here's a preview of what no internet connection and no cable can get accomplished. (taken from my iPhone, so please excuse the darkness and the pixellation.)

bonus: i think i figured out what the issue was. only problem is, if i'm right, it's gonna cost me a new router. crapola.

hello, operator?

so my wireless router is down. again. we had a power-out a few days ago and it hasn't been working since. I've reset both the router and the modem but to no avail - I'm officially disconnected and am left to blog from my phone. does anyone else have this problem?

tonight, am going to work on my Christmas cards since, for all intents and purposes, I'm Amish. maybe I'll start a quilt or raise a barn with all of the spare time I now have.

any recommendations on ways to either fix my router or spend my evenings?

in the meanwhile, I'll be tweeting up a storm. not quite Amish, I know, but it provides a little entertainment on the bus ride home at least.