After the wedding, starting the next day and ongoing into phone calls long after the wedding, Cinnamum has been saying that I could be a wedding planner. (This I knew). She said she saw me working not with ‘your regular bride’ but someone ‘like you, who wants an alternative wedding’. Now I am very flattered that Cinnamum thinks I could do this professionally (and I’m working on trying to get that started, I’ve always known that my chosen career would transition well into wedding/event planning) but I got very confused every time our wedding was referred to as ‘alternative’. I don’t see our wedding as alternative. Cinnamon Buns doesn’t see it that way either. Alternative is probably one of the last words I’d use to describe our wedding! I never asked mum about it, or said that I disagreed, because I was just happy that she enjoyed it all and didn’t think it was all a hot mess.

Ok, not everyone has their picture taken in a bookstore, but that isn't crazy-crazy, is it?

Reasons why I don’t think we had an “alternative” wedding:

• I wore a large white (well, ivory) dress
• Cinnamon Buns wore a suit & tie
• The building we were in was (once) a church!
• We had coordinating rings
• We had matching amounts of attendants in matching outfits
• We fed our guests dinner
• There were chairs, tables, and centrepieces at the reception
• There was a bar
• We did a ceremonial cutting of a dessert (Ok, it was a pie, not a cake)
• We had a first dance with each other, then our respective parents
• People toasted us with lovely speeches
• There was music and dancing
• We ended up married!!

Then I started trying to think of what I would call an alternative wedding. I wouldn’t classify a wedding as ‘alternative’ because they differ from the list I posted above… those just seemed to be the stereotypical ‘weddingy’ things we did at our wedding. The best example of ‘alternative’ I could come with was: a scuba wedding.

(Photo from here)

We definitely didn’t do that. We didn’t make all our guests dress up as pirates (although BM K did when she married GM E, and it was awesome). I personally love the idea of a brunch wedding, but I could see how some would call that ‘alternative’ as so many people seem to get married and have a dinner reception. I wouldn’t call an Elvis wedding in Vegas ‘alternative’ – Elvis weddings in Vegas are an institution! (And I kinda want to do it even now that I’m married already!) I would call a wedding that had, say, fire eaters, burlesque dancers, and poi spinners both ‘alternative’ and ‘awesome’. I just can’t describe a secular, dinner-time-wedding-followed-by-dancing as alternative.

I thought it was just mum for a while, until I got an email from one of my high school girls who came who called it ‘quirky’. Ok, I can see where you’re coming from on quirky, I guess. I suppose it seems less quirky to me than most people because I’ve been soaking up wedding blog stuff for years now. And I assume the same goes for you guys reading this!

So… do you think the Cinnamon Bun wedding was ‘alternative’? Where is your line for ‘alternative’? Is there even a line any more, now that wedding blogs are so rampant, and showcase all types of weddings?

Original content posted @ Did I have an alternative wedding?

Original content posted @ Nice Day For A Bike Ride

If you look at the drop-down over on the left, you can see exactly how many I have! I want to streamline, because with tags, I don’t need a category for every knitting project. Now instead of ‘Dollar and a Half’ being a sub-category of ‘Sweaters’, I can just tag it ‘dollar and a half’.

I’m undecided on if I should just have a giant ‘KNITTING’ category, or have ‘Knitting’ as the parent, and the children be sweaters, socks, shawls, mitts etc. Thoughts? I also realize that this whole debate could be moot, due to the popularity of Ravelry, but I still want to have my kniting on this blog. I like writing here better than mashing everything together in the project description.

The other categories are doing fairly well already, I’ve got ‘Baking and Other Food‘ for all kitchen-related things, ‘Wedding‘, ‘Etsy‘, ‘Fashion‘, ‘My Home‘, ‘Papercrafts‘… those all make sense and don’t have 500 child-categories.

It’s going to take a while to go through and edit everything so it’s pretty, but it is something I really want to get done. I also want to categorize the 100+ posts in the ‘uncategorized’ category.

This post doesn’t fit anything I currently have as a category, and I’m loathe to add a new one, so I’ve filed it under ‘life’.

How many categories does your blog have? How many is too many? What do you do with category vs tag?

Original content posted @ Category vs tag – how do knitters do it?

Original content posted @ Cute Shoe Day!

I finished something I was knitting! Cue the confetti canons! I started knitting this shawl on our honeymoon. I hemmed and hawed for a while about what project would fit my needs for honeymoon knitting, and once I decided on Veera’s Colo(u)r Affection, I hemmed and hawed about whether or not I should take the third colour with us. We were packing light, but I didn’t want to knit more than I expected and then be stuck with a knitting project I couldn’t knit on anymore in the middle of our Costa Rican vacation. In the end, I brought colour #3, and I did end up using it, if only on the plane home. We arrived back here about 9 hours before I started a crazy two months at work, so it took a while to finish it. It didn’t help that the stitch count got up to over 400+ stitches on each row. I had to do the bind-off in two sittings! I bought the yarn in a kit from the Plucky Knitter, in the “Careless Whisper” colourway.

I gave it a good soak in some warm water with some Eucalan, then laid it out to dry. Then, I made P take a walk with me out to a new bridge in town (verdict: I think it is pretty, I think it is useful. Good job, city council!) to take some photos of the finished shawl. I also made sure to wear the coat I had in mind while knitting it. I realized after looking at all the pictures that one of my favourite things about this coat (apart from the full skirt and the pansies) is the corset back, which the shawl covers in all the photos of my back. oops!

I waffled for a while about whether or not to include a YO in the first two edge stitches to give the edge a bit more elasticity. Some projects on Ravelry mentioned it, some didn’t, one said it made it too loose. In the end I decided to knit it as written. I figured that the designer would have thought about that, and noticed any tightness in the samples. I had a few moments of worry while knitting (“it’s feeling a little tight….”) but after a good soak I was able to stretch it into just the shape I wanted. This shawl isn’t a straight line across the top, it curves slightly to sit on the shoulders. If adding in a YO would have taken that away, I’m glad I didn’t!

I’m loving our new camera. We purchased a Sony NEX 5N in December, to have something a little beefier to take on our honeymoon (and because I was pining for interchangeable lenses) and we’ve both loved using it. P plays with all the settings when we do little photoshoots like this, and it’s lots of fun. I suppose it gives him something to play with, when I’m all ‘Now take one of the shawl spread out! Can you see it all? Make sure it isn’t caught on my purse! Now we need a cool one of the bridge with me very tiny!’

Having the time to finish this felt great. Having finished this and still having plenty of knitting time is awesome! I don’t know which new project to start first. I may start more than one…

Original content posted @ Colour Affection – Finished!

I’m not talking about wasting an employer’s time – I don’t sit at a computer for my job, so it’s impossible for me to browse Facebook/You Tube/blogs on company time. I’m talking about wasting my precious time off from work. I will work from just 6pm-10pm each day for weeks at a time. This sounds awesome, I have the whole day to accomplish things. Important things. But all of a sudden it’s 4pm and I don’t even know what I’m going to make for dinner.

Today, I took back a little bit of control. I found an add-on for Firefox (are you using Firefox? I hope you are, it’s awesome) called ‘LeechBlock‘. It lets you designate groups of websites that you want to block yourself from. You can choose what days you can’t see things on, you can give yourself access only from 8pm-10pm, you can cut yourself off after 10 minutes in an hour…. The timing of the blocking is infinitely customizable like that. Currently, this is what I have set up:

Facebook, Twitter, Weddingbee – I’ve lumped these guys together and have set it up to block me after 10 minutes in every 2 hours. That’s not 10 minutes per website in the group, that’s 10 minutes for the group.

Pinterest is it’s own category, as that is an endless time-suck for me. Pinterest is at 10 minutes every 3 hours.

Ravelry, blessing and bane of knitters everywhere. I would get so much more knitted if I didn’t spend so much time on Ravelry! But because it’s a great community and I’ve joined some awesome active groups (Harry Potter House Cup FTW!) I’ve given myself 1 hour every day. Also, one of the things I want to accomplish with my new-found extra time is writing some knitting patterns, and Ravelry is then a work resource. (Seriously. Stop looking at me like that.)

The group I call Real Time Wasters!: Places I go when I don’t know what else I want to do. Go Fug Yourself, various fanfiction sites that I still haunt when I don’t know what else to read…. They get 15 minutes every week, and I’m hoping I don’t even use that much.

Given these limits, it’s still a fair amount of internet time I’m allowing myself. Say I have a day off. I’ve slept 10 hours, so of the 14 hours left in the day, I can spend 1 hour on Ravelry, 50 minutes on FB/Twitter/WB, and 30 minutes on Pinterest. That’s still 1 hour and 20 minutes in front of the screen. I don’t want to lose online friends and relationships, I just want to put more focus on to things I really want to do, the things I complain I don’t have time for.

What don’t I have time for? Well….

• Blogging. I want to blog more. Some might say that if I want less ‘screen-time’ I should quit the blog. Nuh-uh. The blog is what I want to do more of! I also haven’t blocked Google Reader or any blogs I read. They’re fair game!
• Knitting. I want to knit multiple pairs of socks in a year! Maybe even finish a pair in less than a month! I want a wardrobe of sweaters I’ve knit myself. And, you can’t knit and scroll at the same time.
• Designing. I promised the world a Metroid Toque months ago, and I’m still not done. I have more design ideas in my head just waiting to get out, but haven’t taken the time to put pen to paper.
• Reading. I used to read all the time. I was a bookworm. Now…. I haven’t finished a book I started on the last day of our honeymoon (March 10th). It’s two months later.
• Studying. I applied to an online program and got in! More about that later, but it means I’ll have school reading to do, and essays to write. It hasn’t started yet, but the thought of not doing well because I got distracted by “Sir Ian McKellen” doing the theme from Ducktales (OK, you do have to watch that one, it’s hilarious. Just close YouTube once you’ve watched that one thing! You can do it!)

Not to mention cooking, baking, learning my camera, yoga, and (most importantly) spending time with my awesome husband.

Once you’ve installed LeechBlock you can also put a little countdown timer in your Firefox toolbar, so you can see exactly how much time you have left on whatever site you’re on. Apart from saving me from trawling old posts because I’m too lethargic to get out of my chair, it is making me value the time I do get to spend on those sites more than I did before.

I feel like this change also fits in with the two New Year’s Resolutions I gave myself. Even though the content I was reading was not in itself negative, the awful feeling of 3 hours “wasted” looking through post archives or Pinterest was pretty negative. And I felt like I was re-reading a lot of things too.

How much time do you think you waste on the internet? Are the rules I’ve set for myself too stringent, or too loose? Would you ever try LeechBlock or something similar?

Original content posted @ Mental Blocks

After we left Oxygen, we headed back to San Jose for another night at the Brilla Sol before the volunteering part of our honeymoon began. The trip from San Jose to the Sloth Sanctuary on the Caribbean coast (near Cahuita) is about 4 hours. We used a service called Interbus to get out there. Interbus picks up from various hotels, and shuttle you where you want to go. They have a rough schedule, and you’re in a nice air-conditioned van that seats about 10. We also used Easy Ride to get back to San Jose from the Sloth Sanctuary later. Given the choice, I’d pick Easy Ride, as they were more flexible about where they’d pick you up and drop you off, and you don’t need to pre-pay. You can just pay your driver when he shows up!

We went to the Sloth Sanctuary to volunteer. Yes, it was our honeymoon, but this sounded like such a unique experience that we knew we both wanted to do it. Here is a basic run-down of a day as a sloth sanctuary volunteer.

5:30am – Wake up to the sounds of howler monkeys outside your window.

6:00am – Head to the sloth cages. Grab a dustpan, brush, cloth, and bottle of vinegar/water and get to cleaning your section’s cages! They tried to have everyone have a set section, so you could bond better with the sloths. Obviously with people coming and going and days off you weren’t always on the same ones, but it was pretty close.

7:00am – First feeding (for the sloths. You still haven’t had breakfast yet!) Count out leaves for everyone, then deliver to the cages.

8:00am – Human breakfast! We took turns cooking breakfast for the group, and ate on a beautiful dock outside.

8:30am – Enrichment time. This was an alternating schedule of volunteers. Each day one group would take some babies out to the jungle gym to learn how to climb, and another group would take some of the sloths out on the jungle trail to have a good sniff of everything.

Cuddling baby Mirra

Baby Mirra on the jungle gym.

CB taking a bradypus (3 fingered) sloth for a walk.

Arthur the choloepus (2 fingered sloth) going walkies.

10:00am – Project Time. There were a couple segments of project time each day. This was where you got to use your own skills to help the sanctuary. Good at SEO? Help with the website! You’re a writer? Write some blog posts! Want to work with your hands? Chop some paths! Once Cinnamon Buns told them that my job is all about organizing and scheduling…. we were made the volunteer Volunteer Coordinators. That part was almost a little too much like working, when I’d gone there to be on vacation, but once we had a scheduling system down, all was good. We did it together to make sure that neither of us missed out on any sloth time.

11:00am – Choppy choppy time. This was when we prepared the sloths’ food. We peeled and cut lots and lots of veggies at this time, and sorted pounds and pounds and pounds of leaves.

Jojo sez: "Mmmm, cecropia leaves!"

12:00-1pm – Human lunch. Lunch (and dinner) were cooked for us by Sloth Sanctuary staff. We ate a lot of rice and beans, traditional Costa Rican cuisine.

1pm-2pm – More project time

2pm – Second sloth feeding. This time we just got to feed them, we didn’t clean the cages like we did in the mornings. At this feeding, the sloths got all the carrots, tubers, and beans we prepped earlier in the day. I always carried my camera with me when feeding, and we came home with about 1000+ photos from the trip, most of them of sloths.

3pm – Free time! Some days we’d all go out to Cahuita, the nearby town, most days we’d stay at the Sanctuary in our rooms or on the deck and read/write diary entries/Skype home/explore the grounds/whatever you wanted.

Part of the Sloth Sanctuary's grounds.

We made friends with some creatures that we will never forget. I want to introduce you to:

Billy, and his stuffed bunny.

Cinnamon Buns and Jojo doing ‘Thriller’. (Jojo wouldn’t go to the bathroom in his cage, and has learned to climb into your arms/up your legs/jump on your head to be taken outside to go on the grass).

Laylo coming over to say hi to me and be picked up.

Laylo’s cage-mate Wall-e trying to decide if my shorts have enough claw-holds to climb. Laylo and Wall-e were two of the friendliest little guys – they’re the ones that would climb all over you while you’re trying to sweep their cage!

Snaggletooth.

The adorable Zoe.

A wild bradypus sloth who came to visit after some females had been making their ‘I’m in heat!!’ calls.

Oh, and we met some awesome people, too.

It was definitely a non-traditional thing to do on a honeymoon, but it was amazing. We got to spend much more time in Costa Rica than if we’d been staying at hotels and doing touristy things. We got to spend the so much time together, which was wonderful after our crazy work schedules. We learned all about these amazing creatures – neither of us really expected them to be so full of personality, but they’re all little furry individuals! It’s sad that so many have been injured or abandoned, and need this sort of care, but it was great to meet them. The Sanctuary did also release some sloths back in to the wild while we were there too. (Not counting sneaky Jasper who escaped after picking his lock with his claws!).

Us, with Toby and Velcro.

This was more than just a honeymoon, it was the trip of a lifetime, mainly because of all the little furry friends we made.

If you need more sloths (and who doesn’t?) have a look at this video CB cut together once we got home:

Would you ever consider volunteering on your honeymoon / a big vacation with your partner?

Original content posted @ Cinnamon Sun Part 2 – Sloths!

It’s a pretty simple recipe. Basically, put anything you would put on a personal pizza on a portabello mushroom (remove the stem first). Then bake until cheese is melty!

The best part about this recipe is the website it introduced me to: Once a Month Mom. Now while I am nobody’s mum/mom, I do like to eat. I like to eat immediately once I’m home from work. That is, during the weeks that I don’t eat dinner at work. This usually means that the fridge could be stocked with all sorts of good things, but I want FOOD and I WANT it NOW so I’ll fry an egg. Or have cereal if getting the frying pan out will take too long (this is assuming P hasn’t been at home that day to cook, because when he is, he does, and I love him for it). I could see us using a lot of the OMM recipes, especially their whole food, veggie, and dairy-free menus. (I’m just not a ‘open a can of mushroom soup’ type of person).

The things that need to be thrown in the oven before eating will be great for rehearsal days, when I work 9am-6pm, and the things that just need to be put in the microwave or toaster oven will be great for tech days, when I work 12pm-12am! And, I’m always up for a great muffin recipe.

I love having a stocked freezer – stocked with meals, not just frozen meat and ice cubes! It’s great to help tighten your literal and financial belts too. We aren’t running to pay $$ for greasy things that we probably shouldn’t eat. Just grab something from the freezer! We do need to invest in some more food containers though, they’re all ending up in the freezer now.

Original content posted @ Healthy Lunch Pizzas

This photo taken with my camera by one of Oxygen's staff.

I just have to tell everyone, right now, that our honeymoon was amazing. It was a life-altering experience. I had the time of my life, and I had never felt that way before. And, I owe it all to youuuuu. Had I not been part of Weddingbee, I don’t know that I ever would have heard of Oxygen Jungle Villas (from Mrses Brooch and Lox). Maybe Costa Rica would never have been on our radar! But thanks to those two ladies it was, and now I’ll tell you all about it. We spent 3 weeks in Costa Rica, this first post will be about the first 4 days we spent at Oxygen and the surrounding area. This honeymoon happened the February after our June wedding.

Flying from Calgary to Costa Rica was pretty easy – one change in Houston, which we made with enough time to eat dinner at the airport before heading onwards. We got in to San Jose at night, so we needed a hotel to stay at that night before we went to a smaller regional airport (San Jose Pavas) to take our little flight to the Pacific Coast. We didn’t want to spend lots of our trip driving, so we chose to fly from San Jose to Quepos on the Pacific coast, pick up a rental car in Quepos, then drive to Oxygen. Driving from San Jose to Oxygen is 3-4 hours I believe, while our flight was 25 minutes, and Quepos to Oxygen was about 45 minutes. That way we’d still have a car to explore with, but wouldn’t have to navigate San Jose or any major roads. We chose to stay at the Hotel Brilla Sol that first night in San Jose. It had been recommended by the place we were volunteering at later in the trip. It was cheap (but cash only!) and cheerful, and included a breakfast where we both gorged on fresh fruit. We ate a lot of fresh fruit on this trip.

Breakfast on the terrace at Brilla Sol

The Brilla Sol is behind a big iron gate, which was a bit scary, but most businesses in this area seemed to be surrounded by fences, gates, barbed wire, or some combination of the above. The Brilla Sol was close to the main airport, but not so close to Pavas airport, so we spent a fair amount of time in a taxi during rush hour, both relieved we weren’t driving.

Once at Pavas airport, they weighed our luggage, our carry-ons, and us. Yes, the plane is that small. We had a bit too much luggage, but we’re both small people so I think the airline clerk was nice to us and didn’t charge us for being over on baggage. We had some great views of the country as we flew over it:

At Quepos, the adventure began. We had arranged our rental car through Alamo, who had been recommended by Oxygen. There was a man with an Alamo truck at the Quepos ‘airport’ (really just a Quonset hut by a small airstrip). Hm, we hadn’t rented a truck. Turns out Alamo was all out of cars, but Elvis was here to drive us to Oxygen, and would drop off a car for us at the resort as soon as one was available.

We were at Oxygen by 10:30am and it. was. amazing. Our room wasn’t ready, but the staff was very welcoming, so we basked poolside with fresh fruit smoothies until the room was ready. Really, we would have just put our stuff down in the room and come out to bask anyway, so it didn’t bother us in the least. As we had no car, we spent the day basking, lazing, and swimming. Not a bad way to spend the first full day of your honeymoon! And what a view!

Now before you get too excited about the adventures we had once the intrepid Elvis brought us our car…. it never came. The lovely Oxygen staff kept phoning Alamo for us, and the answer was always ‘Soon!’ Soon never materialized, but it honestly didn’t phase us. We spent some much-needed down time in one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. We ate every meal at Oxygen, and every meal was amazing. The 5-course surprise dinner menu? Worth it, every time. The wine was also reasonable… we may have polished off a bottle every night we were there!

We did a little more than just lazing by the pool, though. We went on a mini-hike to a waterfall on Oxygen’s property:

We saw some wildlife:

That is a coati, a bit like a raccoon.

We hung out together in the shade of some lovely umbrellas:

Umbrella by day

Umbrella by night

And for a bit of adventure we went down to the village (Uvita) and went on a waterfall rappelling adventure! One of the staff at Oxygen recommended this trip to us and it was awesome. I overheard an older couple the morning before we went saying ‘$80 each is too much to walk down a river! Why would I do that?!’ Let me tell you, this is not walking down a river:

The trip was run by Costa Canyoning, and I would recommend it over and over! I felt so safe, and it was tons of fun. The guides even had a waterproof camera, and we all got a DVD of photos at the end of the tour. We even had delicious beverages and homemade salsa after all our exertions! The funny part about this excursion was that it was Cinnamon Buns and I and 3 other tourists. The three others were from…. (wait for it)….. Calgary! Small world. If you go on this trip, leave everything at your hotel. EVERYTHING. You do have to swim at some points, plus the water pelting down – not a good combo for things in pockets. Luckily, we both managed to keep our glasses on our faces, although one of those glasses tie things might have made me feel a little more secure. We even left our wedding rings at the hotel, which I think was a good choice. I would have worried to much about losing them to enjoy the excursion!

After that adventure, we had a couple’s massage back at Oxygen, which was an excellent combination.

As our car never appeared we taxied back to Quepos airport. All in all, not having the car saved us money, as we only had to pay for the taxi back to Quepos ($80). I did have a moment of worry when the driver who picked us up at the resort stopped at the crossroads in town, got out, and his friend got in to drive us, but we got there! I’m a little sad we never got to tip Elvis, who was lots of fun on the drive to Oxygen – we assumed we’d be able to do it when he brought us our car.

In short: I would recommend Oxygen Jungle Villas to anyone and everyone! They aren’t an all-inclusive but we feel that what we paid for everything (room, meals, drinks, massage) was very reasonable. More reasonable that a lot of all-inclusives I researched, even. It’s a beautiful location with a wonderful view that we just didn’t get tired of.

Next up: Slothymoon!

Sloth self-portrait

Original content posted @ Cinnamon Sun – Costa Rica Part 1

My mum flew out to visit last weekend, and brought me some of the first flush of rhubarb from her garden. I chopped up some of that, along with some strawberries from our fridge, and filled this casserole dish about 3/4 full. I sprinkled 1/4 cup of sugar over it all (because rhubarb is tart!) and gave it a quick mix.

Then I mixed a cup of whole wheat flour with a cup of oats and a cup of sugar in another bowl. I normally use brown sugar, but we were out for once! Then I pulled 1/2 a cup of butter out of the fridge and mixed it into the flour mixture with my hands.

Pat that mixture on top of the fruit, then bake it somewhere around 400 until the juices bubble up around the edges (almost an hour this time).

Try to let it cool (my tongue still feels burnt 4 days later), then dig in!

Original content posted @ That’s the way the crumble crumbles