inspired by: budgies

We had to leave our little budgie in Canada, and we miss him terribly. So it's no wonder that lately I'm drawn to all things budgie or budgie-inspired. Clockwise from top left: teal polka dotted linen pouch, diy sugar scrub cubes, budgie iphone case, free printable modern valentine cards, SKEE wicker stool, budgie printed pillow, Finalyson duvet cover, bronze budgie head earrings, drop storage jar, edible green glitter

friday fixations

{cup stacking otter} This is the best thing!

{wedge boots} Mysteriously, I keep looking at these Toms and even these trainers... I gotta figure out something that's warm that I can wear with a skirt in the winter (that's going to be here before I know it).

{furoshiki} The art of gift wrapping using fabric instead of paper. Someone's got a birthday coming up, so I really want to wrap a gift using this technique (plus Christmas idea!).

{drawer knobs} I have a little night stand that is in desperate need for some pulls, but I can't decide what to do! Leather, rope, fancy and expensive (I only need 2... so I guess it's a possibility), thrifted (if I can find something I like), or some other homemade option?

{baker's feed and seed} I went here this week to see if they had anything different for our little bird, and what I found was not so much a store as a boarding place for A LOT of different birds. I can't even remember if anything was for sale. There were just so many birds and they all had signs on them that said they weren't for sale or they were being boarded. So. That's not really the interesting part. I wanted to tell you this. When I was in there, I went around and talked to all of them (as one does when faced with birds), and there was one little parrot -- I don't know what kind he was. He had a black head and multi-coloured body -- who was in his cage, at the bottom, on his head. So I asked him, "what are you doing?" And he righted himself, looked at me, and said, "Lemme outta here."

DIY: printed gift bag

I had a request from a friend to "send her budgie stuff." I don't really have any 'budgie stuff', so I had to make it myself. I sure wish I could find some cute budgie stuff, though

I have these fabric crayons. Basically, all you have to do is draw on some paper and instantly, you've got yourself an iron-on transfer. Pretty nifty, hey? But I wouldn't use them on anything that regularly goes in the wash. I mean, I wouldn't use them AGAIN on anything that goes in the wash. The transfer fades (or at least mine did), so it's best to use them for something that probably won't be washed (much).

I headed to the trusty internet in search of a cute budgie picture and once I found it, I simply traced it out using a fabric crayon. I like to go back over the lines a second time just to make sure they're dark enough.

I had some leftover scraps of white fabric, so I simply turned the crayon side down onto the fabric, and ironed away (don't forget that the image will reverse so if your image needs to be a certain way or has words, be sure to flip it).

That's it! It's important to spend a lot of time pressing and holding the iron on the paper. Even though the instructions say the transfer occurs once you can see the image clearly through the paper, it often needs a little longer than that. This is my second budgie print, and you can see that I didn't hold the iron over his nose area long enough. But that's ok. I kinda like the rough nature of it. Especially all the little loose crayon bits I purposely ironed on as well.

For the bag, I simply sewed two open channels at the top hem, then I put the two right sides together, sewed a straight line down each side and turned it right side out again. This was my second attempt at the bag as I hadn't really thought about the channel spacing in my bird placement for the first one. Sometimes I think that sewing's so easy and then I start doing it and I'll be halfway through and think, "Ohhhhhh... THAT'S how I should have done it." Then just thread a ribbon or string through the top channel and you get a little pull closure.

It's super cute. The pictures don't do it any justice.

can you spot the next DIY?

it's new year's eve already?!

This year has just flown by, hasn't it? Here are some photographic memories from my year:

we went for a walk in a snowy park and played on the swings

when I saw Colin & Justin live at the home show

when Idle Husband was at the dentist, I read magazines at the library

our drive in the country found us some new friends

the dragonfly that decided to take a ride on my arm

my first real macarons from duchess bakery

blowing bubbles in the backyard

Idle Husband surprised me with little Hermes

adventures in ice cream and frozen yogurt making

cute visitors

the annual millwoods canada day celebration

the orange cat who liked to sleep in our flower box

our neighbour's drying laundry

our trip to see outdoor dinosaurs

Goodbye 2010! Hello 2011!

Hermes' day out

I don't know what started it on Saturday, but we thought it might be fun if we opened Hermes' cage door for a while.

So I opened it and secured it with a twist tie and we waited and watched.

At first, he kinda pretended like he didn't notice anything was different. He'd jump on his food dish and reach his head just out the door and then jump away.

We thought we'd give him some encouragement, so I took his hanging mirror and hung it just outside the door.

Now his bird friend had been courageous enough to venture outside and Hermes knew it. He swung the mirror further out of the cage a couple of times before climbing out the door and around the side of the cage.

Then he went for a fly.

We might make this a weekend routine.

It's good to challenge him with new things. Besides, he needs excercise, too. 

And those are definitely the only good things to come out of this idea. There weren't any added benefits to his excercise at all. No, sir. Nothing like how he was no longer interested in angry squawking, random piercingly loud chirping at nothing in particular, or the fact that aside from some minimal chatting to himself, he slept quietly the whole rest of the weekend. Nope. None of that. It was just good to challenge him and give him some excercise. Yup. That's the extent of it.

an unexpected guest

oh. hello

what's this?!

(Hermes freaked out.)

you look delicious.

(Hermes figured out he wasn't in any danger.)

maybe if I crouch down, I can surprise him.

I'll hide behind the curtain.

nothing works! I want him! Gimme!

anything for the seed

I don't know why you keep aiming for the window. There's snow out there, stupid.

Hermes got out of his cage today. I say it like it was this grand escape he's been orchestrating for months. Secretly fashioning a shovel using one of the bells on a toy then quietly digging a tunnel slowly through the plastic and out the other side to freedom.

I, actually, have been tying his cage door open lately in an attempt to make him feel more comfortable with us and feel more like he can trust us with his life yadda yadda budgie whisperer nonsense.

Anyway, I was cleaning up the office this morning and dusting with the Swiffer when, in a fit of omg-there's-a-big-fluffy-blue-thing-no-where-near-close-to-me hysteria, he flew right out the door. I don't think it was intentional because all he's done with the open door concept is pretend not to notice it's open even though we can all clearly see he's eyeballing it from his perch.

So he flew out and despite me calling after him (cuz we're definitely at the point where he knows his name and comes to me when I call him -- also good to note that budgies never get to the point where, during flight, they 360 and return to you because you called their name), he flew into the dining room and landed on the floor. We'll say gracefully just to spare him his manly feelings. He then spied a dining room chair and confidently flew up to it and sat there looking around quite proud of himself on top of such a cushy new perch in an even larger cage than what he had before.

Then the phone rang, so he got to sit there for 5 minutes or so, and he got real comfortable and probably super happy cuz who wouldn't be, right? His feet were touching soft fake-suede! How luxurious for him. So when I got back, I said ok well, as much fun as you're probably having right now, I kinda don't want you to poop on my chair, so let's put you back in your cage now -- again I don't know why I feel like I have to explain the whole situation to him. Like making him understand the reasons behind why I was going to commence grabbing him now would make everything better and he'd just go along with it cuz oh yeah, sure! Grab me! You explained I'm going back in my cage. The cage I just escaped from. I'm gonna make this real easy on you.

Obviously, you know what happened next. He flew into the living room window and under the living room table and beside the tv and back into the dining room and into the kitchen -- where he quite neatly landed on the window screen, very impressive -- then back into the dining room, then the living room again, where I finally managed to corner him (in a corner) and grabbed him.

But if you're thinking oh! Animal cruelty! Think again because the moment I grabbed him (using the safe and proper budgie handling technique), he chomped down on my finger and wouldn't let go unless I let go, and as I yelled out in pain, asking him to stop (again, I'm talking to him like he frickin' understands me), I realized he had the leg up here because it's pretty easy to just bite down infinity when you're not in any pain whatsoever (just slightly uncomfortable really). So I released him -- which bugs me because it's like telling him, hey! Budgie! If you wanna get your way, just bite me REAL hard! What a good pet owner I am -- I ended up having to use his blanket to gently trap, lift, and transport him back to his cage.

Once he was back in, he kinda chirped a little bit, drank some water, had some food, and now he's half asleep.

On hindsight, I wish I had gotten the camera. I'm so keen on taking pictures of frickin' everything (whether interesting or not) but the moment something fun and exciting happens, I don't even think to capture it. So

[insert picture of a very smug Hermes happily surveying his new domain atop his fancy-ass chair here]

stupid things designed by stupid people

I'm making bread and pizza today. Not pizza to eat, but to freeze. I find it's super handy if I make the dough, roll it out on the pan, and freeze it for some time in the future. I did try pre-topping the pizzas, too, to save extra extra time, but then I realized it's much better to make a pizza with whatever you have on hand at the time you want to eat it. I'm a big fan of the leftover pizza, anyway.

Anyhoo, while both the doughs were rising, I decided to clean out *Hermes' cage. It got me thinking about cage design. It's a nice cage, I do like the look of it and the colour, but there are a couple things that had me bothered right away.

First there's a grate at the bottom seperating the bird from the paper. I thought it was weird when I first saw it, because I don't remember my old bird cage having such a thing. I have no idea the purpose. It's not like Hermes walks around on the bottom all day and we don't want his little bird feet covered in little bird poop -- which brings me to my point. The grate is a poop collector. It sticks right on and piles up. So even when I change the paper, it still looks like a disgusting poop explosion in there.

Here's one of our many intellectual msn conversations

So it's been on my list of to-dos to remove the grate. Which I did with reckless abandon today. Not like this is going to make me clean his cage any less, it's just going to make it easier overall. I don't mind rinsing the bottom off every week. That's not a problem, but scrubbing a pile of shit off a useless grate feels...wrong. At least this way, the poop will be disposed of every second day and it's not going to be this huge shit pile that makes it look like some bird-like relative of an elephant is living in there.

Second thought came about with the paper tray itself. I like to reuse paper for his cage. Oh. First things first, I'm super cheap. I reuse paper until there's no white spaces left on it. I double-side; if I print something that only fits the top half, I'll save that paper for when I need to print something else that'll fit on the other half. Therefore, I'm not about to use fabulously shiny new paper that's never had a drop of ink on it just for poop. I'm going to use the paper that I've printed on both sides already then Hermes can poop on it and then I can throw it out (guilt free!). But here's the irritating thing. The tray just barely accomodates letter sized paper. And by 'just barely' I'm talking the paper fits save for half an inch on one side and the top. Half an inch. Who designed this damn thing? How about you take the dimensions of a piece of paper and design the cage tray around that. Why isn't this an obvious design detail? So what? I have to either squish the paper down, fold it in, or cut it to size. Cut half an inch from the top and bottom of every paper so it fits without bending up or getting caught on the cage bottom as I'm sliding it in. Gah. It seems like such a miniscule issue, but it's just common sense to me and it bothers me when this sort of thing doesn't seem obvious to the rest of the world. Shouldn't there be some social outrage? Are the manufacturers of bird cages not actually using their bird cages? And wouldn't this sort of thing come up when the manufacturers of bird cages were all sitting around a huge table brainstorming new and exciting bird cage designs for their spring/summer bird cage collection?

Lead bird cage manufacturer: Hem hem. It's come to my attention that no paper size in the entire world will fit into our cages without modification. So I had this eureka moment -- let's take the dimensions of a piece of paper and -- wait for it -- build our cages around that!

Other bird cage manufacturers chiming in: *gasps of shock and awe* I can't believe we haven't thought of that before! *clapping* *standing and patting him on the back* What a genius idea! We'll make millions! You just revolutionized bird cage manufacturing!! You just took us out of the dark ages, my man!

(because that's how I imagine bird cage manufacturers are like)

And that's my post about poop and dealing with poop. It was pretty epic, right? So epic, in fact, that I'm having trouble coming up with a nice closer. Poop.

*That's the budgie's name. Well, that's my name for him. Idle Husband doesn't really like it and prefers to call him something else entirely. But I win this one cuz I see Hermes all day long. Mwha. ha.

Hey, budgie. How you doin'?

It sounds like the Australian outback in here.

I found a recording of some budgies out in nature and our little guy got so excited! He started chirping and eating and doing all sorts of exciting bird-things (read: he finally woke up out of his coma). So I've had that on a constant loop since I found it. I figure it's better than leaving music on or trying desperately to strike up some sort of (awkward) conversation with him (to which he always responds with a blank stare and then goes back to sleep).

Anyhoo

I turned it off for a moment so I could watch a video, and I swear. He looks up from his gravel, looks me right in the eyes and he's like, "chirrup?" like, where the hell did my budgies go, dude?! And I'm like, "I just wanna watch this music video for a second, ok?! Sheesh." (because I feel like I have to justify myself)

Budgies are high maintenance, I'm telling you.