friday fixations

{mushrooms} I saw this post on Design*Sponge and literally squealed over the mushroom logs. Idle Husband loves mushrooms almost as much as bacon so I've been thinking about trying to find one of those growing mushroom logs just for fun. These logs aren't really growing those mushrooms, they're just real mushrooms pinned on for a centerpiece. It gave me a fantastic idea to make it more permanent, though, I doubt I'll ever get around to it. For now, I'll just oooh and ahhh over their to-die-for cute pictures.

{bird cages} Specifically the ones I spotted in the background of this lovely picture. I would die if I found cages like that. Actually, let's just be honest here. I would die to have everything in this room. I'm actually looking for chairs and couches exactly like that right now, and I love how the birds have been placed by the windows with a big palm tree unfurling over top of them. This is completely and utterly my dream room. See more pictures of the house here.

{thrifting} I don't even want to bother with regular stores anymore, I just want to find every single thrift shop in Edmonton and cycle through them every month. In fact, bad things happen when I finally commit to items in regular stores. Almost a week later, I find the exact same thing, with better quality and functionality, for 10 times cheaper than what I just bought. Those fancy stores are for idea generating not money spending.

{serene fish tanks} We only have one goldfish. He's the last of four and we're pretty convinced he offed the others so he could enjoy our humongous fish tank alone in peace. And not surprisingly, that's been bothering me big time lately. One tiny goldfish, we can't even see, swimming around a 20 gallon fish tank. Doesn't that seem a little off? And not even considering the ridiculousness of it all, I was even more annoyed at having to clean this huge tank just for this one tiny fish. So we made arrangements to have the fish and the tank transported to mom who has two goldfish that are (I'm not even kidding) larger than your closed fist. Those two have been happily (we assume) bumping into each other in a 10 gallon tank their whole lives, and I just feel like this would be better for them. Her fish get a larger house, I don't have to stick my arms up to the elbow into fish poo water, everybody wins. Since we didn't have plans to keep our goldfish, we really weren't out looking around for a tank, but we had just finished talking to the terribly attention starved parrots (I'd give them a home if they weren't the price of a small car) and on our way out the WEM pet store, when we spotted these fluval chi fish tanks. I'm not one to buy things right away, I always want to take some time and think about it, but this time I actually said 'let's get it!' rather energetically. This coming from the gal who was really against fish and tanks and cleaning and feeding them in the first place. The fluval tanks are like peaceful water features that just happen to be able to support fish. I especially love how the pump system is inside the tank and has been integrated as part of the tank's design, not some ugly lump that looks like an afterthought since it has to precariously latch onto the outside of the tank. (That's always really annoyed me about conventional tanks.) So I never thought I'd ever be the one to say this about a fish tank, but it's beautiful and modern and the perfect new home for our one fish.

{baked donuts} I'm still trying to find a recipe that's good enough to send into Idle Husband's work. It's starting to feel really impossible. I've tried nutmeg ones and chocolate ones (that one was disgusting at first, so I actually garbaged the batter, but they weren't so bad after being frozen and slathered in nutella. It was probably the nutella, wasn't it?), I even rewrote and converted a yeasted donut recipe yesterday and I'm still not 100% happy (they taste like sweet bread rings rather than donuts, though I liked the yeasted recipe a lot more than the batter recipes I've tried. I would much rather cut them out of dough than pipe them. It's faster and cleaner). As the day gets closer, I'm more and more tempted to just make some vanilla cupcakes and be done with it.

{in search of a new do} My hair is terrible. It's thick and heavy and bulky and such a nuisance. I haven't had a hair cut for almost 6 months now, and it's gotten so long I can put it into a ponytail again. Since it's so long, I'm now suffering from extreme overheating at night (because it's wrapped all up around my neck), headaches from ponytails, and pushed out ears from furiously tucking pieces behind them (it's too thick to actually stay behind my ears for any length of time, so I've gotten into the habit of always carrying an elastic with me because I can't even eat a burger without my hair swinging out and getting all up in my mouth. I like to call those pieces my "hair horns"). One thing I've been doing everyday is googling hair styles. This is so frustrating for me because of my hair texture. I've never really seen any style that looks like that person actually has the same thickness as I do, so I always think that even though I really love that look, it's probably not going to look like that on me. I've also started to notice that there's really nothing new or interesting when it comes to hair. Everyone's got the same style or variation on the same style, so it's been a really uninspiring task. I would definitely go to a hairstylist tomorrow if they would actually recommend the cut that would be best for my hair texture and my face, but none of them do that. What do you want? What should I do? Tell me how much to cut. It's so stupid. I haven't been trained in hair cutting, I shouldn't be the one giving the orders, how the hell should I know what to do? But I guess after years and years of women bawling their eyes out and complaining about how they had one centimetre more cut off than they wanted (omg hair never grows back after such an assault!!), hairstylists must feel like it's easier and safer to just stand there and take orders from people who really don't have a clue what would look good on them. I think they should start taking control of their industry and bring it back to what it should be about: artistic expression, innovation, adventure, and excitement. We never would have seen hair trends like the (blurgh) Rachel haircut had Jennifer Aniston gone in and said, I just want one inch taken off the bottom. No more. No less.

{futurama} Good news, everyone! We stumbled on the DVD for the new Futurama episodes. You remember they made some new ones right? And they were only aired in the states and Canada was totally denied? Yeah. Those ones. It's so nice to watch unseen episodes, I can't even tell you. I was getting really tired of the same ol' repeats every night (as is our nightly routine of watching Futurama before bed). Unfortunately, there are only 13 new shows, so we're rationing them out so they last as long as possible.