Carbs, Crafts, Sickness and a Very Special Lady's Birthday!

I’m sick.

Clearly no one wants to talk to me because I look and sound like I have been smoking a pack a day since I was four and have been forced to walk across Canada all summer in the same outfit without showering. That might be a little harsh but I bet you are get the picture, I feel pretty gross right now.

My weekend was a celebration for my weakness for carbohydrates disguised as my Grandmother MacDonald’s birthday. So I am feeling doubly crappy today. It is like a massive food hangover crossed with a fall flu. Yes, it is totally possible to be hung from food.

Anyways, I bet you never would have guessed that this blog was crafted to wish my Grandmother MacDonald a big ole’ happy birthday. She reads these blogs when I’m not around so someday she will stumble upon this and hopefully smile.

My weekend was incredibly productive until the sickness hit me Sunday morning after a quick staff meeting at work. The productivity started when I made a delicious dessert for our fish and chip party at my parent’s house Saturday night. Peanut butter bar squares garnished with a little grated skor bar.

To be honest with you, my food hangover pretty much centers on these squares. My amazing dessert arrived at the party via a proxy and had melted together so I may have had a little cry in my childhood bedroom with the pan before supper. Yes, that happened. Sometimes I am a grown ass child about things. It is not a family event until someone cries, right? That only lasted about 10 minutes and only a third of pan was sacrificed to my sad. I call it having a sad. Having a sad happens every once in a blue moon and usually before sickness hits.

On top of getting my bake on in a totally domestic fashion I also crafted this weekend. Like most crafts, it sits nearly complete today (Monday) and cost way more than just going to Walmart to buy the item that I originally needed. Breanna and I set out to make corkboards this weekend, hopefully next weekend we will finish them and I will tell you about them here in the blog. You can see it truly is a beautiful work in progress…

As you can tell, now that we have a house I am attempting to be more domestically inclined. This is really conflicting with my desire to not bring in any crap to my house that I do not absolutely love for furniture. I still do not have a dresser, but that is on my list of musts for the week. Our house is a mess.

Anyways, in my hunt for things to make our new house our own I am constantly snooping around my family members homes for things we can use for our house (with permission of course) and I found this hilarious read at my grandmother’s house.

Part of me wants to read this cover-to-cover and learn from it. I hope this book was important and informative for young adults in my Grandmother’s day (much like Adulting by Kelly Williams Brown was for me). And the cynical/bitchy part of me is angry that there are only women on the cover of a book for “Young Canadians”. I am a little conflicted; maybe I will come back to this topic in the future.

Regardless, a big “Happy Birthday” to Grannie MacDonald! I was a tad craft-bitchy at her house on Sunday so I will leave this apology here as a permanent tribute to such an important lady in my life. Sickness and failing miserably at crafts are not a good combination; I hope to someday lose my temper and gain some patience. I also someday hope to be as happy with a Palm Bay tiki girl for my birthday as you were after your trip to the LC with Lisa and Kim. Seriously.

Until then, I’m just a (temporarily) sick 25-year-old inadequate crafter with a weakness for carbs. Happy Birthday Gram, I love you!

Sear's Christmas Wish Books

Today I am dedicating a blog to the magic of the Sear’s Christmas Wish Book.

Why? Well, as a child of the 90s, it was a clear indication to me Christmas was truly on the way when a Wish Book arrived at the Bruce Household. We had to have multiple copies; we fought over getting to have a turn with the treasured item. And, you better believe you would need a Christmas miracle to save you if I did not get my filthy child hands on that book before the new smell wore off. In the country there is not much else to do when you don’t have cable television to tell you want you want for Christmas, that was the sole purpose of the Sear’s Wish Book, if they didn't carry it than it did not matter.

Yes, we needed multiple copies, not only because we would fight over the book itself, we also fought over the book’s pages and ideal Christmas presents. Before the internet the easiest way to get a photo of the items you wanted for your (oh-so-advanced) Christmas list in pictures was to take it from the Wish Book, this caused endless arguments when clippings stole the heart of a page with a gift someone else wanted. So getting the Wish Book first was key, no one wanted the Brunette Barbie… or even worse the Sporty Spice doll (yes, this was in the era of Spice Girl Dolls). Having all the details was key, from the item name and color (if applicable) to the exact page and reference number; these were the things Christmas was made of.

Another reason, a little secret (that I am sure is not limited to my lovely mother, it is probably as Canadian a problem as dipping 75% of breakfast foods in maple syrup) is that my mother hoarded Wish Books when I was a kid. They were hidden amongst other normal household items like bedding etc. I think she started doing this when I was born so that someday my theoretical future children would be able to marvel in the embarrassing crap I wanted as a kid. Also, I think she may have thought a ‘Day After Tomorrow’ style weather event was on the way in the future and burning the Wish Books would help save some of our domestic library from the fire.

Anyways, the moral of this blog is:

1.       You know where to find Wish Books from the late 80s through to mid 2000s (I think she gave up on the collection).

2.       Digital editions of Wish Books may save trees but they break my heart. You can’t clip things from an iPad and if you are a child you shouldn't even have an iPad.

3.       No child will suffer from a Wish Book paper cut, which is the only positive to take from all of this.

I could rant further; I could go on about this topic for a long time and reference the many gifts that manifested from the Sears catalog pages into my parent’s living room Christmas morning… and even the horrific burning of the non-plastic parts of my Barbie dream house. But, that won’t bring the Sear’s Wish Book back its glory… the glory of the pre-internet era.

So do your kids a favour, order them a Wish Book today here:

https://secure.sears.ca/catalog-request

End rant, its quitting time.