Tutorial - Tea Advent Calendar

It's been a long time since I been around, it's been a long time but I'm back in town! haha, I'll stop now. Anyway, It's been forever since I've blogged but I've decided that I'd make my first comeback post a good one. I hope it lives up to my words...but I'm pretty excited about this project.

Most of my friends and family know that I'm a tea addict. I think there's also something that happens when Autumn rolls around, my obsession gets stronger. It must be that I feel the fall chill in the air and crave a warm drink in between my palms.

Maybe you understand how I feel? Do you start talking about tea and mention things that the average person cannot relate to? For me, my own sister doesn't get me...so I decided to make an awesome little handmade gift of tea for her to share my obsession. Then maybe by Christmas, she'll be hooked? One can hope so.

Today I'll be guiding you through the process of hand making a tea advent calendar

It's a cup of tea for 25 days counting down to Christmas!

Let's begin with discussing my inspiration:


24 days of tea from DAVIDsTEA: their yearly Advent Calendar that retails for $34.50.
I would say it's their most popular collection and usually sells out within a day of being released (both online and in-store). I was physically holding a box on the day it was released but I knew that my collection of teas was already too big. I've also tried the majority of the teas in the set already. So I talked myself out of it. Later that day, they were practically sold out everywhere. You can find yourself a set for about $70 - $100 on sites like eBay or Kijiji (a Canadian site like Craigslist)!

So why spend up to $100 on a box of 232 grams of tea when you can customize your own? I'm sure you or your giftee would much rather have a calendar that is filled with hand-picked flavours of tea. Plus, not only can you personalize the set to taste, you can customize it around allergies and dietary restrictions.

I think that's enough talking, how about we get started?


What you need:
-25 wooden Clothes Pins (plastic is fine too)
-Printed Napkins (or Wrapping Paper)
-1 sheet of Card Stock/thicker paper

-White String (25 pieces x 6 inches)
-Twine (approximately 40 inches)

-25 miniature Adhesive Labels
-25 miniature Zip Lock Bags
-Black Permanent Marker

-25 different types of Tea

-Gift Box or Bag

-Scrap Paper
-Scissors
-Stapler
-Ruler
-Pen
Optional:
-Chisel-Tipped Permanent Maker or Paint (Colour of your Choice)
-(Tag-Shaped) Paper Puncher
-Colourful Pens

Ice Storm 2013

It's been a while but this is totally worth blogging. So, the Greater Toronto Area was hit by a major ice storm yesterday. Some cities got it worst than others. My neighbourhood was hit pretty hard and here's the aftermath:


There's trees everywhere! The weight of the freezing rain was too much for the poor trees to handle. There's countless amounts of branches and whole trees that are just laying across roads, sidewalks cars, and even houses. I couldn't sleep last night because of the amount of trees that were constantly breaking and slamming to the ground. It was terrifying. There are approximately 250,000 households that are affected by power outages and some may not even have power restoration for another 72 hours.

Hope anyone that was affected by the storm or any sort of winter weather condition stays warm. It's slippery out there and there's still tons of branches falling from trees, so beware.

Drive carefully & stay safe! Today is going to be a long day full of ice scraping and chiselling...

Giving Thanks

Hey everyone, I hope your weekend was good and to those who got to celebrate Thanksgiving, you may feel as bloated as I do right now. Haha, it was an amazing weekend spent with friends and family - I love this time of year. Just some photos I wanted to share:


Syl and I attended a family Thanksgiving dinner with approximately 60 guests. We were very well fed, that's for sure


Gobble!


Syl and Matt's (crowd pleasing) Broccoli Cakes


The desserts! There were a total of 14 pies!


Can't stop laughing at this picture


A terrifying fish

Happy Thanksgiving to all! Thanks for reading! <3

275: diy shoeaholic christmas stocking

Check out our new tutorial on Everybody Is Ugly!





Learn how to make your own stylish shoe stocking!
Check it out, make it your own, share your art, comment, vote, and favourite!

251: c'est l'halloween

Hello ladies,

Welcome to all our new readers! Our apologies for being MIA on the blog for a few days now! We've been crazy busy finishing up Halloween costumes for our wonderful customers & then working on our own last minute ones. We had a craaaaazy fun Halloween weekend filled with tons of creepy little details (like dry ice!) and fun with our close friends.

Here's just a quick picture post:






it was our 8th anniversary :)






























Our past two days have been filled with cubing and grating 6 large pumpkins and trying to find different recipes to use them on. ahaha, crazy. So far the faves are the deep fried pumpkin pakoras and the spicy pumpkin corn chowder! :) We'll continue with regular posting soon! I'm working on a reader-requested manicure for Monday :)

xoxo
&

Christmas Prep

Sam & I have been on a bit of a computer hiatus (which is UBER-RARE!) because we've been busy all week with Christmas prep at home. Baking, cleaning, gift-wrapping, decorating & the occasional trip to the mall have been the only things on our daily schedule.

It's been hard to get into a holiday mood this year... I'm not sure whether it's the weather but I guess the older you get, the more you need to create the festive-ness around you? Well, we've been trying. I've been snapping pictures all week of our yule adventures, so enjoy!


a couple weeks ago, my cousins sent over a big gift box filled with goodies!


they had already baked TONS of goodies by mid-december & we hadn't even thought about what recipes we wanted to try yet!


caitlyn & a rumball


in my attempt to get in the christmas spirit-- my christmas sweater nails.

& our house has been filling up with crazy christmas decorations:
















bahahahah. this brooch.

&my best friend got a sweet little puppy, who I visited about a week before Christmas!

Hi Roxie! She's a golden doodle!



We've been baking up a storm; I think we totaled 8 or 9 different recipes?


mocha tea cookies iced with snowflakes


orange pekoe. that's my jaaaaaam.


kahlua truffles dipped in chocolate




chocolate & peppermint stripe things

not pictured: oatmeal shortbread cookies, spice cookies, walnut thimbles, rosemary-swiss shortbread (they're savoury appetizer cookies! mmmm!)


& my adventure with macarons!
the first batch was disastrous & the second batch was equally as bad (both times, the batter was too runny). So my improvising with the second batch was to just make tiny bite sized macarons instead of 2" ones, as the recipe had called for. They are obscenely small but actually worked out instead of being completely wasted like the first batch of batter! It was soooo difficult & I was near tears so many times, but I would say it was worth it & would definitely try again!


parfait, non?


aaaaaand of course there are a large number of them that are mis-shapen, have cracks, don't have les pieds and are oddly sized. ah well, just as delicious as the pretty ones!

Hope everyone isn't too beat-down & stressed-out by the busiest shopping day of the year & is starting to actually feel the more positive spirit of Christmas :) I can't wait for all the Christmas feasts & I loooooove giving gifts-- so I can't wait for that either! (& I hate getting gifts cause it always makes me cry... and usually in front of the family camcorder. lol)

ANYWAYS, have an amazing, safe holiday season & a happy new year (if I don't get a chance to blog before then!)

xoxo