And the winner is...

Today is August the 31st and it's time to choose a winner for my first BLOG-GIVEAWAY!

Many blue pandemonium friends were gathered for this momentous event. I wrote each name down, folded the pieces of paper, and put them into a little blue tea cup.

I offered the tea cup to Unloved to pick the lucky winner.







Congratulations to Chickenbells!

Please contact me at bluepandemonium@hotmail.com to claim your little white acorn! I will need your mailing address.

Have a happy long weekend!

It's Slug Day!

I hereby dub today temporarily, "Slug Day" - the sidewalk is crawling with them!

All the little slugs are out to play, sliding their slippery way across the pavement. Where they are going, nobody knows! But the sun is their nemesis and time's the game. Crawl, crawl, little slug, but don't go too far! When the rain goes away, turn around and hurry your way back to the bushes.

(Have a happy Friday!)

Fall Weather and Seven Fat Babies

It's rainy, gloomy, and chilly - cheers to Autumn weather! I am now eagerly anticipating pumpkins, apple pie, and Halloween. I know, I know, I'm still a bit early, but it's definitely moving in that direction. Who doesn't love apple pie and, oh, pumpkin pie, mmmmm!

Update on the fishies:
So the soap opera that is aquarium life has culminated in SEVEN FAT BABIES (remaining), and a new dark-scaled male antagonist for the mother-turned-killer Molly fish. Neither the lady nor the gentleman like each other and frequently take turns attacking one another. It looks like the beginning of a beautiful relationship to me! Heh... They are currently situated in the (koi?) fish tank with Joo Joo (Piggy), and Joo Joo doesn't seem to either mind or be bothered by the quarrelsome couple.

The babies, which my sister have temporarily named "Friends" collectively ("Hello, Friends!") are very fat little bubbles of joy. They swim very fast and eat even faster. I am quite smitten by them. Tiggy and the red Platy fish are in the same tank, but separated, and they have recovered perfectly after several rounds of antibiotics, anti-parasite meds, a new heater, and superbly clean water. Good job, sibs! It seems that all is well in the wonderful world of the fishies.

Don't forget to add a comment to the Little White Acorn posting if you haven't entered my first BLOG-GIVEAWAY!

Cheers!
Marie

Little White Acorn BLOG GIVE-AWAY!

I couldn't sleep last night so I pulled out some yarn and began to crochet. It's starting to feel a little Fall-like around here what with clothing stores switching to Fall-style clothing and the air beginning to take on a bit of a chill crispness. I decided to make an acorn.

I have a somewhat limited range of yarn colours right now so the end result was a mellow taupe coloured cap on a fuzzy white acorn nut. I liked it quite a bit so I made one more today.

One of them is in the store now.

The other one is part of my very first BLOG GIVE-AWAY! Leave a comment on this post between now and August 31st to be entered into a draw for one of these lovely little acorns.

Good luck!

Coal, Trees, Bugs, and Horses

Here are some pics from my camping trip!

V. cooked our meat on a coal BBQ; we visited a giant Douglas Fir tree; there were pretty orange butterflies around the campsite and a pair of strange insects on the car; and friendly horses stood about the orchards and farms, tossing their heads and eating grass.

Camping Fun and PW update!

I went camping on the weekend and it was super fun. We hiked to the beach one day and I wandered the beach line picking up colourful stones. The water felt so icy cool on my feet and I liked the little fishies that were swimming about.

We tried to go berry picking one day of the trip, but the berry farm was well picked over and, after scouring the rows of bushes, I only had 2 small blueberries and 7 raspberries. Disappointed, I went back to the main store and told her it wasn't working out. She offered the berries to me for free eating, but I politely declined. Then we drove out to a nearby farm store we had passed earlier and bought 20 lbs of unsprayed/organic blueberries. I plopped a handful into a cup of water and ate them. They tasted good and made up for my unsuccessful berry picking adventure.

The rest of the trip was fraught with various other adventures including SUPER salty marinated meat from Costco (I washed all the topping off, cut the meat in thin slices, washed them, and it was STILL too salty!!! Maybe I should have boiled it...), two spiders built webs right across our tent entrance overnight and we were too scared to leave the tent (good thing we noticed it before we walked out into their webs! We finally got the courage to open the tent door a crack and wildly wave a shoe around to anhiliate the webbings and wap the spiders out of the way.), and we scored a whole days' worth of free firewood from a previous camper.

We had to hurry home on Sunday for a friend's engagement party, but that turned out to be very fun too.

When I finally got a moment's time after unpacking and doing laundry, I sat down to peek at my tutoring website to see how the Project Wonderful ads were performing. There are 3 available advertising spots and they're running at 1 cent, 2 cent, and 3 cents per day. That's not bad for a start! So someone will have to bid 2 cent, 3 cent, and 4 cent per day to outbid the current advertisers. I'm excited to see how these ads will perform over time since it's fun to see who the current highest bidder is and how many people are bidding at the time. I think it's the dynamic nature of these ads that I'm fascinated by.

I hope you all had a great weekend.

Project Wonderful Ads

My friend told me about an advertising program called Project Wonderful the other day and I have decided to give it a try for Mytutorlist.com - my free tutoring classifieds website.

I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

If you're looking for some free advertising, head over there and get it now. Unless someone is bidding against you, it's free! There's lots of space right now so you might as well get the exposure now while the coast is clear. My tutoring website currently gets over 7071 unique visitors per month and has a page rank of 4.

Have a good weekend! I'm off to camping tomorrow.

I'm in another treasury!

I'm always excited when I'm selected to be part of someones treasury - especially when the theme colour is blue! This treasury features my "i cry (one tear) brooch".

Check out the treasury before it expires!

Goodbye, Sylvie!

Sylvie was ready to be sent away to her new home yesterday so off she went! I tucked her neatly into a box with tissue paper and tuule, plus some little treats. I'd show you pictures, but then it wouldn't be a surprise for Carla!

It was a bittersweet moment to hand the addressed box away to the post office. That's felt doll #1 and sale #1 all at the same time. It was a bit exhilarating to be sending my artwork away across the country but, at night when I looked at my shelf, there was an empty spot where she used to be. It's okay though because I know she's going to a very good new home.

I hope I'll sell more things so that I can package them up and send them away too. It's so much fun.

Have a great day!

My Best Friend's Wedding

One of the most memorable experiences in my life took place this weekend - my best friend got married!

It all started about 5 years ago when my boyfriend and I invited both of our best friends to come along with us on a number of excursions. By some stroke of luck and fate, our best friends fell in love. And so it came to be that both V. and I were groomsman and bridesmaid for their wedding.

At 5am I headed over to the other bridemaid's house to get our make-up and hair done. It was amazing to see how 4 sleepy heads could transform into 4 lovely maidens. Then we drove over to the bride's family home to have breakfast and to prepare for the games and the tea ceremony. In Chinese tradition, the groom must overcome a series of obstacles and tests set out by the bridesmaids before he can claim his bride. The games that we had ready included everything from romantic serenades to eating wasabi popsicles (ugh!). Once both the groom and groomsmen pass their tests satisfactorily, they can enter the house and greet the bride.

This was the first time that the groom had ever seen the bride in her wedding dress and he looked so blown away. She glowed and beamed at him and he twirled her around and couldn't stop smiling at her. It was really quite cute.

Then two pillows were set out in front of the couch, and they kneeled to serve tea to all of the relatives. In return, the relatives would drink the tea, give them their blessing and well-wishes, and give them gifts of money in red envelopes. Some of the relatives gave gifts of gold jewelry to the bride. Many tears were shed in happiness over the moving occasion.

Then the boys settled down for some home-cooked breakfast while the girls continued to primp and preen in preparation for the church ceremony.

Suddenly, "Ooohs" and "Aaahs" were heard - a white luxury limousine had pulled into the driveway. It was a surprise from the sister of the bride so that the whole wedding party could travel in style together throughout the day. We had originally planned to travel in 3 separate cars. The bride hugged her sister in delight and we piled in to enjoy the chilled champagne and roomy leather surroundings.

From that point on it was a whirlwind of picture-taking, waiting, and smiling. There were so many special moments to remember - the bride looking at herself in the tall oval gilded mirror and looking nervous as she waited for her moment to walk down the aisle, the pixie-like flowergirl so sweet and so innocent, the bride and her groom looking into each other's eyes and looking so completely entralled in each other and the moment.

The church bell rang long and loud and they were now married.

We headed to the reception hall for free-flowing spirits and a sumptuous buffet, and dancing, dancing, dancing that went on into the early hours of the morning.

"Would you do this again?" one bridesmaid asked. "Definitely!" we all answered. It had been so much fun.

Tragedy in the Fish Tank

I returned home from a weekend of celebrating to discover that something terrible had happened in the fish tank. Pruney, a black googly-eyed Moor goldfish was tangled head-down in the aquatic greenery and his beautiful dark skin had turned a shocking silvery grey. His eyelids drooped down in the saddest of expressions and his lovely veil-like tail was shredded into threads.

"What happened!?" I cried, and my mother sadly reported that the mother Molly had gone territorial the other day and commenced attacking all of the other tank residents. Poor googly-eyed Pruney had taken the worst beating having succumbed early to his injuries and laid around while she continued to abuse him. The mother Molly was immediately removed to another tank with a much larger koi goldfish neighbor that we didn't think she would attack. As I looked around the tank, I noticed the damage the other tank residents had suffered. The small red Platy fish was staying low to the ground and not swimming around much, and the other googly-eyed goldfish, Tiggy, looked depressed and tired. His top fin drooped, and he appeared to have some whitish fuzz on his body.

While the baby fish were in a separate section of the tank, they appeared to have lost some numbers too. Only 11 were left of the original 20. Algae seemed to have coated the white tank ornaments in a matter of a few days. It was clear that the tank water conditions had also deteriorated.

My brother changed the tank water, my sister added aquarium salt to treat the wounds/infections in the goldfish, and we hoped that Pruney would survive.

This morning, Tiggy had more energy but the Platy was still quite lethargic. Poor Pruney was dead.

I can hardly believe what has transpired in this little aquatic microcosm these past few days. I hope that the rest of the babies will survive and give my siblings some respite from the sadness of losing Pruney who was a favourite.

My Fish Had Babies!

I rushed home today to see the miracle of brand new fish babies in our fish tank.

My mother was eating lunch when she noticed a curious gathering in the bottom corner of the fish tank. She put her glasses on to have a closer look and discovered tiny new inhabitants emerging - the very-pregnant Molly fish was giving birth to babies!

The googly-eyed goldfish neighbors attempted to eat some of the little newbies, so my mother lured them away with a generous offering of fish food. Then, while they were busy pursuing the floating pellets, she carefully scooped out the babies into a cup of water.

She waited patiently throughout the day for the remainder of the babies to come out, and by the end of the day there were 20 little guys!

While mommy Molly is pure white, the little guys are all different colours - black, yellow, white, and spotted. I am so delighted to be able to welcome so many new fishies, and it's so neat that Molly fish can give live birth! I always thought that fish only lay eggs.

Note: I was calling the fish a Platy earlier, but it's actually a Molly fish. Thanks, Karen!

Here are some pics:

Toadstools, Felt Owls, and my first sale

I was delighted to discover today that my first felt doll, Sylvie, will soon have a new home. I took her down from the shelf, gave her her very own hand-drawn tag, and began to package her up.

It seems fitting that my first felt doll is also my first Etsy store sale. Today is a very special day for me. I think the very best part is that Sylvie will go to someone that I like and care about - it's funny how you come to care about the people that you meet online. (Carla, I'm going to make sure Sylvie is packaged up very nicely for you. I'll let you know once she's in the mail so that you can keep an eye out for it!)

Thanks to everyone who has been celebrating with me!

In getting things ready to send Sylvie off, I also updated my store with 4 new bookmarks - one of felt owls flying in the sky, one of red and white toadstools on grassy green patches, one of purple cats with striped tails, and one of felt owls flying about a patch of red and white toadstools.

I hope you're all having a wonderful weekend!