one

Gus is one! Here's his birthday present. I like these fabric banners so much that I think I'll make a couple for myself...

baking

Zucchini spice loaf made with zucchini fresh from Emma's garden.

visit with gus

It had been about a month since my last visit with Gus so we met up at Little Nest for some lunch. He brought his own meal and I tried the walnut-chickpea hummus baguette sandwich. Tasty. Then he went inside to check out the play area with Linda while Emma & I had some tea & dessert.

Back at the house, he showed me his latest trick - walking!

t-shirts and fireworks

Here are a couple of successful freezer paper stencils. I'd had the t-shirts lying around for awhile and finally got to doing something with them. One for Eli and one for Graydon. Gray is sporting his at the last of the fireworks evenings, having managed to wipe his cherry juice covered hands on it about 30 seconds after putting it on.

It had been several years since I watched the fireworks from the West End side of town. I had forgotten just how crazy busy it gets but the show was worth it. It was a bit trying to get my bike through the crowds to get home but once I was off the main streets everything was just fine.

saturday

Trish & I hosted a brunch for Louis a couple of Saturdays ago. I told Trish that we should really do brunch more often since we treat ourselves so well when we're feeding other people. I made my go to egg dish plus a super easy and delicious fruit salad. It's just cherries, raspberries, blueberries, oranges and a touch of cointreau. Trish thought we might like to have some maple whipped cream to go with it. What a great idea! Trish made her potato salad with arugula and a couple of flavoured butters - honey and garlic. It was all quite tasty.

After we finished that up we walked down to 4th Ave to pick up some t-shirts for our craft project of the day. I had brought over supplies to do freezer paper stencils. Unfortunately it was a mostly failed attempt so there's not really anything to show for it. Unless you want to see a picture of a shirt that's been washed a few times to get the fabric paint out.

While we were attempting all this we noticed that the sky had gone an incredible shade of orange and then the thunder and lightning kicked in. I love a lightning storm and we did try to get a picture of it for awhile. If you look really hard you might see the fading lightning in the orange sky picture but probably not. The better picture is a still of a video - much easier to capture lightning that way! And not long after that the sound of the fireworks from the Celebration of Light started competing with the thunder. It was quite an evening.