TFIF

It's been one of those days.

To the weekend, everyone!  

Till next time

Spring?  Is that you?

It has been a beautiful day here in Halifax.  Winter endeavored last night to keep us down but has been hobbled by an afternoon of sunshine and mild temperatures.  As I was walking about town on errands, I noticed awnings dripping with thawed snow, people without their winter coats and hats, and lots and lots of little birds all over the ground foraging for eats.

Magic hour on Citadel Hill

I know we're not out if it yet (and knowing Halifax, tomorrow will be -25) but I'm sure you'll agree that it's days like these that help us get through!  Hope you got to enjoy a bit of it too.

Till next time!

DY-NO-MIIIIITE!

I had plans for today.  I was going to sit and slowly sip an entire pot of coffee....

I <3 you, rocket fuel!

...whilst luxuriating over a few of the gorgeous books I received for Christmas and STILL haven't gotten through....

Alexander McQueen: Evolution, by Katherine Gleason; Design Sponge at Home, by Grace Bonney;
Daughters of Painted Ladies: America's Resplendent Victorians, by Elizabeth Pomada and Michael Larson

...and lazily nuking leftovers from the fridge instead of cooking.

Thai red curry noodle soup with prawns and pork.

Alas, my plans were thwarted when I glanced out the window to see this:

That, my friends, is a truck full of explosives.  And these are the pros putting the explosives in the ground.

This is a very skilled excavator operator placing about eighty-five metric tonnes of blasting mats over the area about to be blown up.  

And this is every other member of the construction crew, putting some distance between themselves and the blast.

And this is what happened.  The fun bit happens about 45 seconds in.

So that answers my question about how crazy the blasting is going to be - the siren was way worse than the explosion.  

I have to admit, I couldn't tear myself away from watching the action this morning; the site was a veritable bee hive of activity, every corner bustling with something - prep for the blast, stability wall construction (which at one point seemed to have hit a water main, but I really couldn't tell you if that was actually the case), dozens of dump trucks lined up and being filled with dirt and debris.  I felt like a 7 year old boy whose favorite things are his plastic hard hat and Tonkas.  

It's been a fun day.  As incredibly dorky as I know this sounds, I have to give props to the guys who work the excavators, I could watch them all day.  The way they can control a huge machine like that, like an extension of their own bodies, to do such precise work is amazing.

Ok, bit embarrassed now.

Going to go put on some heels, put on a pot of tea, and do something girlie now.  

Till next time!

Birthday Beads

Tomorrow is M's birthday; HAPPY BIRTHDAY, M!!!  

My dear friend M is a big lover of jewels, so for her birthday I decided to make her some big, dangly earrings.  She's also a big fan of turquoise so choosing beads was easy.

Turquoise and Mother of Pearl with silver findings.

I played around for a bit with different designs, and when I found one I knew M would like, I got to work.  I attached an eye pin to the jump ring already through the top of the MOP drop.

Then I added the flat MOP ring, but kept it at the very tip of the pin.

Leaving it at the tip allowed me to slip on the turquoise discs before pushing it through the top of the MOP.

Next came the large oval stone.

Then I used needle nose, or round nose jewelry pliers to make a tiny loop with the remaining bit of the pin....

...and I attached the ear wire.

And presto! Earrings!

Now, off to celebrate the birth of a wonderful lady with the gal herself and some lovely friends.  Don't worry, I'll tell her you say Happy Birthday too!

Till next time!

Buildings, Buildings Everywhere....

It really seems like there is construction on every corner in Halifax these days.  I've already lamented over the annoyances caused by the Nova Centre being built, but this post is to exalt one particular project here in the city - the Halifax Central Library. 

This is what it looks like right now:

Corner of Spring Garden and Queen, January 14, 2013

And this is what it's going to look like when it's finished:

Awesome, right?!?!  I tell you, I am both a bit of a word nerd AND a big time book lover, and I STILL have never been so excited to hang out at the library! 

Till next time!

Welcome to the Maritimes

Ahh, Nova Scotia, where else can you meet the cousin of a friend of a friend in a parking lot somewhere and buy four big, kickin' lobsters, still dripping with sea water, out of his trunk, for twenty bucks? 

I LOOOOOVVVVEEEE lobster!  Well, I love food, obviously - a lot of my posts are food related, either cooking or restaurants, etc.  But lobster - well seafood period - is, for me, the upper echelon of amazingness.  If I ever got stuck on a desert island for the rest of my life and had to eat nothing but seafood, I'd be A-OK.  Happy as a clam. ;)

Anyhoo, yesterday, we got some lobsters!  And when I think of a lobster feast, I think of cold salads on the side.  I looked in the fridge and made my plan.

I pulled out a sweet potato and chopped it up fairly small. 

Then I grabbed this stuff:

Some good Nova Scotia Maple syrup, Dijon mustard, lemon, diagonally sliced green onions, diced dry cranberries, diced red pepper, toasted with sea salt sunflower seeds.

So I just cooked the potato until it was just soft, then cooled it off under some cold water and tossed it in a bit of freshly squeezed lemon juice. (Oh, a super helpful hint I came across recently: to get all your lemon juice out of your lemon quickly and with little effort, wash that lemon off, drop it into some boiling water for a couple minutes {I just chucked it in with the lobsters as they cooked} and then just squeeze as usual.  It works like magic!) 

I tossed in the onions, cranberries, peppers and seeds.  For the dressing I used the juice of half the lemon, about a 1/3 cup of maple syrup and a 1/4 cup of dijon, whisked it all together and tossed it in the salad.

By the time the salad was done, so were these guys:

Ahhh, a feast!  What could be better on a cold January's night?

Till next time folks!

Date Night

BF and I went to Il Mercato Trattoria, a really great Italian restaurant on Spring Garden Road for date night, on our way to see Django Unchained (awesome, btw).  Their menu is quite extensive and really hard to choose from since it all sounds awwwwweeesome, but I narrowed it down and then eventually chose the handmade triangoli pasta stuffed with roasted buttercup squash and pear in a double cream and Gorgonzola sauce.  Damn.  It was so good I pretty much annihilated it before it even occurred to me to take a picture.  

Photo #12.  Saturday, January 12, 2013

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.............

Il Mercato - you should go.  http://www.il-mercato.ca/food-wine.php

Till next time!