Wish you Were Here

Source: tumblr.com via Gillian on Pinterest

You know how all of a sudden, you can catch yourself singing along to a song in your head unconsciously, the soundtrack of our lives...and you're sitting there wondering what thought process caused a certain song to pop into your head. How can one particular line in a song capture our attention and embody all that we wanted to say and couldn't? Pink Floyd's I Wish you Were Here has been on a loop in my head tonight. Do I just miss those I've lost and left behind? Am I just stuck running over the same fears, no matter now much ground I cover? Am I just feeling a bit maudlin, at home along on a rainy night? At any rate, I wish you were here.


Source: jeriella.tumblr.com via Gillian on Pinterest

Source: jackiehj.deviantart.com via Gillian on Pinterest

♥ Craftzilla

This and That: Birthday Weekend

Not only was it Jesse dog's birthday this weekend, it was also mine! Lot of fun things this weekend, including:

- Got a tasty cake from coworkers at work -- I got the G in Gillian, because I'm that special
- Seeing a play with the boy at the Guelph Little Theatre - Calendar Girls was a fun play, and my lovely friend Angela was awesome in it! Check out this Calendar Girls promo video for a bit of a taste.
- Had a delicious birthday dinner at a place called Portuguese Mario's. Chicken, tasty salads, custard tarts for dessert - it was heaven. Now I just need to convince Zen that just because this place does a roast pig, that we don't need to get one. Pray for me.
- Worked on purging things for the move - the bags of donations to Value Village are becoming towering but things are getting a bit more organized.
- Watched more of Kingdom with Stephen Fry - such a quirky comedy/drama, and Stephen Fry is hilarious in it. Check it out if you have Netflix.
- Got my haircut! It's so short, curly and lovely for summer.
- A friend posted this lovely article - I wish you enough.
- I'm considering using Frogbox boxes for the move - has anyone ever used a service like this? I'm thinking it might make things a bit easier. I like the idea of not having to coerce many friend into helping me drag boxes home, and I'm so pressed for time, but don't really want to buy cardboard boxes either. The reusable wardrobe ones look like a good way to stop all my clothes from spilling onto the street like they did during the last move too.
- Getting so close to the end of the semester I can taste it! These next three weeks are going to be a killer, with finishing up remaining assignments and having a bunch of in class days and presentations. I'm SO looking forward to having two months off school!

Happy weekend everyone - hope you all had a great one :)

♥ Craftzilla

Happy 6th Birthday to Jesse dog!

There is no one who brings me more happiness than my Jesse dog. He is a shining ball of puppy light and snuggles, who faithfully follows me around everywhere and loves me unconditionally.

Happy puppy birthday (6 years young!) to my special puppy friend!

Here's one of him as a tiny puppy --he's about 3 months old here:

I remember being really freaked out to have a dog at first, as my family had never had pets other than birds or fish, and getting used to having an alive thing running around who likes to be literally under your feet definitely took a bit of getting used to.

Having a dog has been an awesome experience for me though, despite any hard work or book/furniture Jesse may have eaten when he was a teething puppy.

Best parts of having a dog for me:

Someone is always happy to see you
You will always have a willing companion for walks
Your feet will always be warm in bed
You always have a reason to go home from work on time
Petting pups is super relaxing
All the unconditional love you could ever want!

What could be better?

Happy birthday Jesse Tiberius Dog!

♥ Craftzilla

Celebrating Life

On Thursday, our family gathered to inter my grandma's ashes and to have a final celebration of life for her at the Royal Canadian Legion in Peterborough, where she was a lifetime member of the Ladies Auxiliary. It was wonderful to attend a service where everyone had known her, and we were able to learn a little more about her that we hadn't known. It was a lovely service and an amazing way to remember her. As you can see in the photo above, someone even made sure she had a drink for the road.

I didn't notice this until I actually saw the photo, but I really love the quote the Legion has on their remembrance board. I looked it up, and it's actually a part of a poem by Laurence Binyon written during WWI, but this one ode has been used to remember the fallen and is often referred to as the Ode of Remembrance:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.

Reta (Radka) Orford
November 11th 1931 - May 4, 2013 

♥ Craftzilla 

A Memorable Mother's Day

This year, we really tried to have a memorable Mother's Day for my mom, since the loss her mom (aka my grandma) was so new. We thought of me going home to surprise her, but let's face it, I've been home a lot lately! So my sister and I hatched the plan of my sister Sarah driving my mom up to visit me in Guelph, since she's never been to visit me here yet. So Mom and Sarah hopped in the car on Saturday night, and arrived just in time to eat some delicious buttertarts, drink tea and sample some turducken from our earlier guest that day (more on that later) before heading to their hotel to sleep.

They showed up bright and early on Mother's day morning, where I had tasty pancakes waiting for them to fuel our day of shopping at the new Target and Len's Mill for fabric. After shopping was accomplished, we picked Zen up and headed to high tea at the Boathouse.  We gave each us fancy tea names like Penelope, Pritchard and Condalezza and sipped our tea with outstretched pinkies and exaggerated English accents while we discussed hilarious topics. Overall, it was a day to remember and possibly the start of a new yearly tradition!

Happy Mother's Day to all the awesome moms out there!

♥ Craftzilla

Have You Met....everythingok

Have you met my lovely friend Sami, who has an awesome Etsy shop called everythingOK?
If you haven't met her yet, you definitely should! She's just ventured into the world of 'creative unemployment,' and is reaching for her dreams of being employed in a creative field, hopefully in television! This girl doesn't need anymore training to be creative though: she's a photographer, maker of fibre-y things and illustrator. I thought I'd share some of my favourite things from the everythingok Etsy shop with you today, since hey, creative types also like to eat and stuff.

Sami LOVES her some Doctor Who, which shows in things like an adorable Tardis mug cozy above, and here amazing illustrations of the doctors and their companions like this one of the Ninth doctor and Rose  (my desire to re-watch the Ninth Doctor series is growing...)

Her photography and descriptions are amazing- I love this holding hands print

The description she gave is probably also the cutest thing ever and makes me wish for more warm summer days and holding hands walks:

Somewhere in Manhattan (or possibly Brooklyn) holdin' hands down the road. It's much safer to walk down the street holding someone's hand, and in some cases, it makes your heart do backflips.

The colours in this photo, "a crack in the universe" are so amazing! I wonder where this crack leads...

The below picture is actually from the art show she had where I met her in person and we chatted about the evils of university professors telling students not to take notes over downloading Powerpoints later.

Make sure you visit Sami over on Twitter, on her website or on her blog too for more photos, nerdery and some really thoughtful posts. 


♥ Craftzilla 

Dealing With Loss and Finding the Good Moments

Source

It was a bit of a hard weekend -- I got a call on Thursday that my grandma was being moved back to palliative care from the nursing home, and she ended up passing away on Saturday morning. It was good that the whole family were together, and that I decided to take Friday off instead of waiting until Saturday to go up to Peterborough.

There were good moments of the weekend along with the bad:

 ...going to garage sales with my dad and finding a sweet ice cream maker
 ...calling relatives to tell them the news
...going out for a patio lunch of pizza, beer and ice cream right after it happened, and raising a toast to my grandma
...making arrangements at the funeral home
...sharing memories and stories
...eating hot dogs and chips out on my parent's deck and enjoying the sun
...taking back those three pairs of pants that will never be worn, with the excuse of "the size was wrong" since my mom didn't want to freak out the pre-teen girl on cash.
...laughing over my grandma's thriftiness in not wearing the pants, of dying before her rent went up at the nursing home as well as partway through the month so she still got her old age security check
...writing my first obituary..luckily my sister helped.
.. finding photos that I didn't know existed of my Grandma, from Legion events --that's her in the middle, looking very much like a president or fighter pilot in her spiffy Legion blazer, right?

What's next:
...celebration of life in a few weeks at the Legion
...visiting the memorial gardens as a family
...trying to stay positive

♥ Craftzilla 

Making Memories: New Sewing Machine

Source: favim.com via Gillian on Pinterest

I've talked a lot lately about my grandma being ill, and part of that has resulted in the sale of her house and liquidation of some of her assets. Not to get into too many details here, but this ended up meaning that some money came my way, and I was stuck for awhile trying to decide what to do with it. There's the obvious action of paying off some bills, but I wanted to have something that I could hold, something that I could use to make me thing of her every time I used it.

Maybe I have a bad memory, maybe I need something to hold, like the locket of hers I've put on every time I miss her or feel upset that she's sick. Maybe I just like the idea of something tangible to remind me of her every time I use it. Maybe I'm just one of those people who don't like getting money even as gifts, and always want to DO something with it. Or maybe I just needed an excuse to buy a new sewing machine since mine is older than me and barely chugging along anymore.

So that's what I did - meet my new co-creator, Bernina 330:

I'm hoping to master more than the art of threading this fancy machine (I literally had to watch a video to even do that much, which made me feel pretty technically challenged)  in the weeks to come, and do some creative sewing. Best of all, every time I thread it,  I know I'll be thinking of good memories of my grandma, which will make sewing an even happier occasion than it usually is.

♥ Craftzilla