I found this video via Girl’s Gone Child and just watched it. And I cried, too, because people are amazing and kind. This little guy created his own arcade from cardboard! Kids are awesome.
Caine’s Arcade from Nirvan Mullick on Vimeo.
If I could go to LA, Caine’s Arcade would be at the top of my list of places to visit.
Yesterday – my nephew Tyler
Obsessing over: Instagram for Android!! Holy mother of pancakes, it is finally here! I woke up yesterday to the news on Twitter and immediately downloaded. So far I am enjoying it very much. There is something so wonderfully satisfying in being able to be openly nosy about peoples’ lives, which is basically what Instagram allows. You look at photos people take of stuff, their life, what they’re doing. Humans, due to our social nature, are inherently interested in others. I’m verabird on Instagram, by the way. You’re welcome to be nosy!
Working on: Creating a good routine for my days. It’s too easy for me to get sidetracked if I don’t have a plan. Lately my productivity has been much less than I would like (unless you count housework because the place is pretty friggin’ clean).
Thinking about: Preparations for Josh’s birthday BBQ on Saturday. He’s 21 today. 
Anticipating: Game of Thrones. Season two has just started and I’m finally going to get to watch the first episode today. It’s exciting! I love how gritty this show can be; it’s fantastic.
Listening to: Right this moment, nothing. The only sounds are cicadas, traffic in the distance, and birds. It’s restful.
Eating: White chocolate. In preparation for Easter, of course. 
Wishing: I could have a dog, still. This should maybe go in the ‘obsession’ section because clearly I’m going nuts about it. On the bright side, I do get to hang out with my sister-in-law’s Maltese pup, Lexi, which is always lovely.
Lexi hanging on the couch.
What are you up to today? Also, just want to say thanks to Danielle for inspiring this post!
My love has bought himself a violin and is teaching himself how to play.
Words don’t even describe. It’s a good thing I love him! 
I am officially knackered now. The clocks went back an hour overnight so I’m thrown off from that, plus I woke up when it was still dark and the birds were quiet. Try as I did to get back to sleep, it just didn’t happen. On the bright side, Josh and I went grocery shopping before 9am (surprisingly busy…) so the rest of the day has been relaxed.
Anyway, here’s a small bunch of articles I’ve enjoyed this week:
Gala’s article on how to have your own retreat at home is fantastic. I want to do this, I need to do it.
Check out these 20 healthy snack ideas for inspiration. So many of them sound delicious.
The last week and a bit I’ve been following this guide to cleaning your house in 20 minutes a day for 30 days. It’s been great help in keeping everything on track and up to date; doing a little every day is much better than all-at-once! I also love the kitchen version.
This is a really important article to read, about how to tell if someone is drowning. It is not how it looks on film. I seriously hope you take a look, even if you know this stuff already because a refresher is not a bad idea.
Night!
On Friday mornings my mum takes my niece and grandmother grocery shopping and, if I have time, I go too. Grocery shopping is always much more humorous and fun with a preschooler in tow! She likes to look at the fresh seafood and today she was pretty enraptured with the crabs that were on ice. Everyday activities become lessons in anatomy and biology.
After shopping, Persia didn’t want to go home so I said she could hang with me until her mama came after getting my nephew from school. We had a fun time, though I definitely need more kids’ books and some toys. We watched some of Finding Nemo, had lunch, read books, and played with guinea pigs. Then I thought it might be fun to whip up a little felt doll for her, so we did that. It’s actually more like a gingerbread lady in shape, with button eyes, a stitched mouth and some buttons on her tummy.
I forgot to get a decent photo of the doll, but here are some photos of Persia playing with her.
Seeing as how it’s a gingerbread lady, obviously she needed to be baked. Please note that the oven was OFF and very much cold, and Persia asked permission to touch it before she opened the door. She’s a smart girl, that one.
Checking if Miss Ginger is ready – she wasn’t quite done yet.
Hm, still not done, so the shelf was placed higher up for a crispier outside.
Finally, Miss Ginger is cooked! She’s very tasty.
However, she wanted to go for a fly, so this just before take-off.
A safe and fancy landing was had by all.
I love Fridays. xx
Home of Lou Mora and Sarah Yates, via Design*Sponge
One of the reasons why I ran into so much difficulty at university is because I’m a perfectionist and that leads to massive amounts of anxiety for me. I have always liked most things to be ‘just right’ or ‘perfect’, based on whatever criteria I came up with for stuff. In many situations my perfectionism goes beyond simply having standards for things, which is good and helpful, to holding myself to impossible standards.
I remember when I was four, almost five, I had this plastic yellow table which I used when playing my favourite game, Secretary, in which I pretended to be a secretary. I had my ‘desk’ organised with pens, pencils, paper, hole punch, stapler, ruler and an old telephone. Everything was set out how I liked it to be, ready for me to write down notes and do whatever else I thought secretaries did. One day my neighbour’s badly-behaved kids came over and they all started to play with my table, messing up my bits and pieces. Their mother spent most of her time not paying attention to them and not telling them to leave my stuff alone, or at least be careful. My protests were ignored by all but my mother (but those kids never listened) and I ended up pitching a fit because how dare these boisterous children come into my home and ruin my desk and game and all of the perfectly organised game pieces?! I was so utterly devastated by this invasion of my space. It wasn’t JUST a game for me. I spent a lot of time playing this game and I spent ages organizing and reorganizing my table. I was very invested in it and got really mad so my mum ended up putting me in my bedroom to calm down. However, I happened to be eating an apple, and long story short, I banged the apple on my very old bedroom window in frustration and shattered it, cutting my right thumb in the process.
Needless to say, that was not a super-great day for me. First some kids fuck up my Secretary table and then I slice my thumb open just days before beginning school. Also, my neighbour swiftly removed her family when I came running with a blood-spurting thumb!
This memory really stands out for me because it illustrates how prominent my perfectionistic tendencies have been since early childhood. It’s one of the major things I’m working on in therapy, thankfully.
By the way, there is a great website called Centre for Clinical Interventions which has some fantastic workbooks for things like perfectionism, depression, anxiety and self-esteem. Even if you aren’t struggling in these areas, these workbooks are helpful in checking up on how you’re doing anyway and can help you to understand what others may experience. xo
I really want a dog. I mentioned before and I’ll say it again: this is the first time in my entire life, except for a few brief moments, that I have lived without a dog. It is weird and I do not like it. I miss the canine company, their unfaltering devotion and happy dispositions. I miss the comical moments of excitement over a toy or getting to sit in your lap, the drowsy nodding as you scratch behind ears, necks, under chins, and all over bellies. I miss the cuddles. I miss the cute. I miss all that is distinctly Dog.
My parents’ dog, Missy, when she was a puppy.
My nephew’s dog, Chopper, when he was a puppy.
So I’m going to save for a dog, to be able to afford all that having a dog requires. It would be careless to get one without some dedicated funds. Vet bills can be scary.
Puppy, the late family Chihuahua, in his older years.
Now I feel guilty for not mentioning how I miss cats, too, which I do. MY cats, my babies. I miss them tremendously and some days I verge on tears from it. But I won’t ever get another cat until my babies have passed on. It’s because I can’t have them living with me (they like where they are and I would feel bad taking them away from their wilderness on the farm) so it would be like I am ‘replacing’ them if I got another cat now. Instead I console myself with visits that consist of shoving my face next to their faces and cuddling them until I get clawed and taking photos so I can put them up in my space.
My Molly baby
My Lola love
You can take the girl away from the animals (mostly, I do have guinea pigs at least!) but you can’t take them out of her heart. Aw, sappy. But so very true.
Things have been pretty quiet around here in the last week. I honestly haven’t felt much like blogging and I’ve been hibernating a little from some of my usual online activities. Earlier in the week J was under the weather and then it was my turn on Tuesday. I thought it was just fleeting, except for the sore throat I’ve had from allergies, but since yesterday morning I’ve been feeling pretty yuck. So, this weekend I’ve taken it easy.
I also wanted to write a bit about my first therapy appointment that I had on Friday, but I’m not feeling so up to it right now. Maybe some time this coming week. I will say that it went well and I felt comfortable, which is very important. One of my homework assignments is to practice being mindful of the present moment, so I’m doing that as often as possible. The rest of Friday I got to spend with several of my favourite people, including two adorable kiddos whose company never fails to add light to my day. We visited a pet store and found this little guy, plus two Poodle pups:
Miniature Schnauzer boy
My 6-year-old nephew decided then that we should call his mother to come down to the store, and talk to her about getting them one of the puppies, because they love him so much (the Poodles had been barking at him and wagging tails). Earlier that day he and his sister had found a fluffy white dog outside the supermarket and made friends with her. The love these two kids, especially my niece, has for animals often makes me want to adopt a puppy just so they can ‘have’ one! Okay, and also because the last three months is the first time in basically my whole life, except for about 6 months, I’ve been without a dog. It is odd. Really, really odd. I find myself craving canine company more than I thought I would.
Travelling through a rabbit hole of house architecture and this is the result.
This home found on Blog Milk is basically buried in snow! How neat. It looks like it’s just popping its head out of a burrow. Photos by Brigitta Wolfgan Drejer, though I couldn’t find these particular ones on her site when I looked (I’m probably just blind).
A red house in Norway, found at Inthrlld. I like the shape of it, too, but I wish the interior photos were done after it was furnished because it would be nice to see it being used/lived in.
While this Tokyo home I found on Inthrlld might look ordinary on the outside, check out what it contains…
A freakin’ rock climbing wall! It’s in the internal courtyard, so it goes all the way to the rooftop.
This home in Poland found on HomeDSGN is giving me a happy. I’m fascinated by the surface of the bottom of the pool, and I really like the library.
Icelandic solar home via Enpundit, with a cool grassy roof. Um, also, horses!
Stunning beach house in Piha, New Zealand, found via Enpundit. This place is amazing and if you go and check out the rest of the photos you’ll see that, from the interior, it looks like you live in the trees.
When I lived with my parents I had terrible internet with very little data. Since moving out I now get to share 60GB a month which means I can do things like listen to playlists on 8tracks. I am not a radio person unless there is absolutely no talking ever and no ads ever, so sites like 8tracks are definitely my cup of tea because they allow me to listen to non-stop music that I actually like.
Anyway, I wanted to share some of my favourite playlists from the past week.
For calm mornings and photo editing. Plus, it’s just pretty and I love it.
Another calm playlist, and this contains a number of my current favourite songs, including Flightless Bird by Iron & Wine which makes me want to hug people.
Surprise! I listen to rap sometimes. I can’t help it, since I grew up with a sibling who’s always been obsessed with it there are days I crave it, and this playlist is such a welcome relief.
Is anyone else on 8tracks? My profile is here and I would love to have some more friends!