Ceciley's birthday bunnies

It's Ceciley's birthday tomorrow and as you know I sent her several pairs of clip-on earrings made just for her.

And a very cute dress from Zara (I bought one for me too)!

And then of course I sent her some bunnies!

But I thought I'd send her a few more here so we could all enjoy some cuteness at the end of a very long week.

What is it about a bunny in a tea cup that is extra cute?

Ask ...

and you shall receive!

You want bunny kisses?

Here you go!

Have a great weekend everybody and happy birthday to my sweet sister!

etsy experiment continues

I've tried out some new "poses" for earrings with a few new pairs that I've made by hanging them from some other pieces of my vintage pottery collection. I love how the little hand looks!

And the green vase is a nice soft backdrop. I have lavender in it but that didn't show up in the close ups.

I love the smoky mauve and pink taupe pearls together - this is going to be a rare pair.

The white pitcher does a pretty good job too.

 

Then I worked on the banner and I was hoping it would look like this ...

but once I made it the correct size for etsy it turned into this ...

I guess I'll need to have another go at this to get more beads in the banner photo. Here's the link to the store again: http://www.etsy.com/shop/JessicaLovesJewelry

Happy Long Weekend!!

And happy holidays to all my friends and family celebrating holiday-type stuff this weekend!!

Us Jenkins like to celebrate all things bunny in April.

Since Ceciley's birthday is coming up and spring is finally here.

So here's a little Vernon for ya - played by Mr Lapin.

le creuset

Today is the fine fellow's birthday - yay!! But he is very hard to shop for. I was racking my brains for quite a while until it occurred to me that he has been known to lament the fact that he doesn't have a cast iron frying pan so that he can put omelettes in the oven so they get nice an fluffy - he makes a mean omelette. So I took a poll amongst all my lady-friends at work who are good cooks and they all agreed, Le Creuset is the only way to go.

This stuff is not cheap people, but it comes with a life-time guarantee. Of course, I did go looking for the best price I could find. I wasn't even going to look on-line because I figured the cost to ship a 6 pound frying pan would be ridiculous. But guess what I found? A place in Canada, where it was on sale and free shipping in the US and Canada!! It's called Creative Cookware. They shipped me the pan FedEx and I got it the next day - amazing!

And while I was there I fell in love with a green-apple green tea kettle. My current tea kettle is in bad shape, but it's probably the thing I use the most in the kitchen. Naturally I shared my love of all these green pots and pans with the work lady-friends and guess what they did?

They ordered the kettle for me as my goodbye gift! But they were soon thwarted and informed that this colour has been discontinued. So they all scoured the city to find me one and in the end they did. Isn't she lovely? They really are the best work-mates a girl could ask for and they're the only thing I'm going to miss when I leave the ol' job in a week.

etsy experiment

OK well, I thought I had kind figured out how I wanted to approach the etsy thing and what I wanted my banner to look like and how I would like to photograph the earrings. All of it very do-able but requiring some new fonts and new pictures. I figured I had about two weeks as I wanted it to be ready for my sister's birthday.

I mailed her presents to her last week thinking it could take a while for them to get to her. But they arrived super early and she opened them right away. And wore them right away. And made a video and talked about them right away.

And the video will be up on YouTube later today. So I scrambled to throw something together late last night and get etsy up and running - ahhhhhh! It's not at all what I want it to be just yet, but it's there. I'm interested to see what happens! Here's the link: http://www.etsy.com/shop/JessicaLovesJewelry

counting the days

I'm very excited for two things that are coming up very soon. First, the cherry blossoms in High Park that I adore are due to bloom in about a week.

Second, it's only two weeks until my last day at my job!!!!

Crocuses in the front yard this morning - yay!

eat pray love

I love this book. I do. I really do. I've read it about 5 times now. I first read it when Perry and I were on an idyllic vacation in Mexico, where everything was beautiful but our relationship was falling apart and I was crying almost every day. Liz made me cry a bit more but she helped me so much get though that difficult time with as much kindness as possible to both myself and to Perry.

And then I read it again when I was in a happy place, and Liz made me laugh with her and her observations about life. After I saw the movie I read it again because I didn't really want Julia Roberts' voice in my head, I wanted to hear Liz. And now she feels like an old friend, or at least the voice in the book feels like my friend. So last night, on her second last speaking engagement to talk about this book and the one that came after, I went to hear Liz Gilbert speak. She is lovely, and funny, and smart, and wise, and silly, and so very human.

I appreciate all the more that after having "solved" all her problems in Eat, Pray, Love, she goes on to have a few more problems in her second book. And then while she was writing the second book she encountered a rather large crisis about the work she felt she was always meant to do and she had to figure out how to manage her way through that too. I take something new away from the book every time I read it. This is what's keeping me company this time - thanks Liz!

"So I’ve started being vigilant about watching my thoughts all day, monitoring them. I repeat this vow about 700 times a day: “I will not harbor unhealthy thoughts anymore.” Every time a diminishing thought arises, I repeat the vow. I will not harbor unhealthy thoughts anymore. The first time I heard myself say this, my inner ear perked up at the word “harbor”, which is a noun as well as a verb. A harbor, of course, is a place of refuge, a port of entry. I pictured the harbor of my mind – a little beat-up perhaps, a little storm-worn, but well situated and with a nice depth. The harbor of my mind is an open bay, the only access to the island of my Self (which is a young and volcanic island, yes, but fertile and promising). This island has been through some wars, it is true, but is now committed to peace, under a new leader (me) who has instituted new policies to protect the place. And now – let the word go out across the seven seas – there are much, much stricter laws on the books about who may enter this harbor.

You may not come here anymore with your hard and abusive thoughts, with your plague ships of thoughts, with your slave ships of thoughts, with your warships of thoughts – all these will be turned away. Likewise any thoughts that are filled with angry or starving exiles, with malcontents and pamphleteers, mutineers and violent assassins, desperate prostitutes, pimps and seditious stowaways – you may not come here anymore either. Cannibalistic thoughts, for obvious reasons, will no longer be received. Even missionaries will be carefully screened, for sincerity. This is a peaceful harbor, the entryway to a fine and proud island that is only now beginning to cultivate tranquility. If you can abide by these new laws, my dear thoughts, then you are welcome in my mind – otherwise I shall turn you back toward the sea from whence you came. That is my mission, and it will never end."

clafoutis ... almost

The saga of the wheat-free clafoutis continues. I am determined to make one of these because I LOVE it! To recap, I have made this twice now and both times were massive failures. But, hey-ho, I have a new pyrex pie plate and so I decided to go back the the original recipe and try again to see what would happen.

Okay, much better. I overcooked it a bit I think, and it puffed up and then fell after I took it out of the oven. But it was totally edible and pretty good. So, the vintage pie plate was the big problem here. Next time I will try another recipe with more eggs cause I would like it to be eggy-er.

After I made this I looked up some videos to see if I could pick up some tips on how to do it better. I found this handy and entertaining video where Chef Nathan makes it in pan - enjoy!

etsy obsessed

I've been a bit awol this week because I'm obsessed with trying to figure out all the things I need to do to make this etsy store happen.

Still trying to make up my mind what I'm going to call it - which is pretty crucial. Looking at fonts. Trying to decide if I want to use my own handwriting for the script. Looking for a good image of what I think I want to use for a logo ...

And making more stuff!! So it's taking over my life a bit right now, but it's such a fun project. I'll let you know how it's coming once I figure a few more things out.

Slut Walk Toronto

What the what? you may be asking! Well I did something that is pretty important to me yesterday. I went on a peaceful protest - to protest the blaming of victims of sexual assault by police, judges, and a whole lot of regular people who think that if a woman had just done (insert anything here) she could have avoided being raped. Which focuses the blame on the woman and not on the rapist.

Why is this a big deal? you might ask. Well Heather Mallick had some excellent things to say about this in a recent article but this is the one that stands out the most to me:

"In 2002, British teenager Lindsay Armstrong, 16, was raped. In court she was told to hold up the thong she'd been wearing when attacked. “Little Devil,” it read. Lindsay had been very proud of her fashionable underwear and, her parents said, she was mortified by having to show them in court. “She was horrified and crying,” her mother said. Three weeks later, Lindsay killed herself."

so much bravery

Here's another reason: recently Kenneth Rhodes, was granted a two year conditional penalty with no jail time for raping a 20 year old woman in Manitoba. The judge said the victim gave out signs that "sex was in the air" because she was wearing a tube top and said she'd be interested in skinny dipping. He called the rapist a "clumsy Don Juan" who may have misunderstood when he raped her along a darkened highway. "I hope they appeal. I would like some justice. This is not real justice to me. It's a slap on the wrist," said the victim. The woman said she has suffered severe psychological trauma from the attack, including trust issues with men and a fear of being alone.

And another: Fernando Manuel Alves, 46, got handed a nine-month conditional sentence, again no jail time, for his second arrest for rape. In sentencing, the judge said Alves was not pathologically dangerous but had committed a "crime of opportunity". It was revealed during the trial that the woman woke up in Alves's bed bruised and bleeding after having been drugged at a downtown Vancouver nightclub. The woman told the court her will to live had been drained because of what happened to her and that she no longer feels safe.

These are among the many reasons why 9 out of 10 women don't even report being raped. Here's the latest one: in January, a representative of the Toronto Police told a group of university students that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized”.

  
So 2, yes only two, women decided to do something about it. They organized a walk - a slut walk - and a facebook page. And yesterday 2 thousand, yes two thousand, women and men walked to police headquarters to ask for better training for police officers. You know who does the training now? other officers. You know what they have said to this request? nothing.

there I am to the left of the person in the sunglasses

So I marched in my fish nets and short skirt and shit-kicker boots, with that sign that says "STOP the victim blame". Because my best friend from high school was raped in her first months of college by a highly revered athlete and she was blamed and shamed and she dropped out of school and never got a university degree. Because as Jane Doe said in her speech yesterday "if women could end rape, we would have". Because no one should ever be raped but she certainly should not be blamed for it. Because it's time to lay the blame at the rapists door, and it's time for men, especially men in positions of power like police officers and judges, to start taking responsibility for how some other men behave. But we should none of us be silent.