This weekend I spent a lot of time at the St. Albert Curd Festival – a festival dedicated to cheese curds? Sweet! I love cheese and I love curds! This week friends said they would be going to the curd fest and I thought, why not?

St. Albert is about 40 minutes from Ottawa and, no surprise, is known for the cheese.

Booths are set up with various local produce and goods.

Some local Alpaca were around to pet – they were so soft and cute!

On Saturday we enjoyed a cheese tasting which included 5 and 6 year old cheese as well as curds and different cheddar cheeses.

On Sunday I went with CH and NM to watch CH’s brother and his band perform. They played some fun upbeat folk music. It was fun to be there with her family.

During the second set, one band member called sets while the others performed. La Ligue du Bonheur put on a good show and it was a great way to end the weekend.

This week at work was very exciting because there was a film crew in town shooting a movie. In the afternoon everyone took a break to watch the filming for a few minutes (see Wordless Wednesday: Movie Madness).

On Wednesday, my friend GSL and I were enjoying lunch over in the park by our office. We were talking and then noticed a guy who looked a lot like Garrett Hedlund walking in the park. Since I was looking at the photos I took from the office window the night before I was pretty sure it was him. Since we were heading back to the building we decided to walk by on our way. We asked if he was Garrett Hedlund, filming in Gatineau and wouldn’t you know, he was!

Garrett (if I may be so bold as to use his first name) was super nice and took the time to chat with us about the movie, Tron and let me take a few portraits with my Holga. I was very excited and glad to get a photo with this lovely actor, it really made my day!

I’m definitely looking forward to getting my next roll of holga film developed!

This week I saw that I had several old bananas sitting on the counter and I thought, these shouldn’t go to waste so I did a bit of a searching to find a good banana muffin recipe. I have been doing so many cupcakes recently but I also love a muffin. I did a light pecan streusel  on top.

I have been working on several sewing projects and today I got to work on reconstructing a pair of old jeans. They were my favorite but after several years got worn out. Today they are new again as a jean skirt.

I cut off the legs near the knee and then cut the bottom leg apart. I cut the seams of the legs and sewed them in place.

I am excited to wear my favorite jeans again and that this project worked out. It was simple to do and only took about an hour to complete.

Our backyard is full of wildlife and after the chipmunks that have moved in, I love the bunnies. This year buns, the resident bunny, had babies and this one I call baby buns. I often find baby buns in the backyard in the afternoon when I get home from work, sometimes I don’t even see baby buns because she is SO baby!

Since we stopped weeding the backyard baby buns comes to munch on the dandelion leaves, which works out quite well for me.

I love having so many wild animals around to watch and photograph…I just wish I could capture the beautiful deer that also live in our neighborhood!

It has been ages since I’ve done a sewing project, years in fact,  but recently I’ve been wanting to do something with all my old t-shirts so I’ve been looking up projects to reuse old t-shirts.

I want to make a giant lounging pillow for my office so I’ve gotten a bunch of my favorite old shirts that I want to use to make a quilt of sorts…anyhow I’m designing the project and will post about it later.

I decided that my first project would be a t-shirt dress that I saw here.

So I got an old t-shirt that I silkscreened that was looking a bit tired.

It’s an old ad for getting live seahorses in the mail.

Then I got an XL navy t-shirt. I cut the bottom of the fitted shirt and cut out the neck of the XL t. Then I measured elastic and pinned the 2 shirts together and the elastic.

The fitted shirt is right side out inside the XL shirt. I used a stretch stitch to go around the elastic. I used a regular stitch around the pockets. It was relatively easy but I did have a challenge as I’ve never had to do this kind of sewing before.

At the bottom of the dress I cut 2 small slits in the bottom and with the left over fitted shirt cut a long piece of shirt to feed through bottom so I can fit it.

Here is a side view of the dress.

Here is the front view with no belt.

I used the leftover fabric to belt where the sewing is and give it a more finished look.

I will try to post a photo of the whole dress soon. I’m wearing it now and it’s very comfy!!

Recently on a tv show I saw some cake ideas that reminded me of my childhood and I thought…I want to make those. And so it came to be that at a recent Girls Night In Stella and Dot party that I made cupcakes but also cake cones.

When I was younger my mum would bake cake in ice cream cones but since I couldn’t remember how she did it I just baked cake in a square pan, but only making a thin layer. Then using a circle fondant cutter I carefully cut out circles (I saved the scraps to push into the cones.)

First I put a blob of icing into the bottom and then put a piece of cake.

Then I put in a piece of marzipan or drizzled caramel and icing.

Then I put another piece of cake.

Finally I topped them off with lots and lots of vanilla buttercream icing.

I cut out various little fondant ‘confetti’s – flowers, circles and hearts and put them on the cake cones and cupcakes. They were popular at my party and I think would be really great for kids parties, like they were when I was younger. I think if I do a cake for a child’s birthday I would definitely consider doing cake cones.

That’s it on the cake front for a while but it was really fun to be doing so many cakes/cupcakes again!