Brunch and Parasols

Here are some photos of the backdrop for Georgie's 5th birthday. On my day off last Friday I bought these umbrellas and lanterns in China Town. I got the idea because the ceiling had a huge section where the paint and plaster had come down recently. I thought it would mask the disaster. It did. I am leaving them up until Easter.

 I ended up buying loot bag goodies in the same great shop on Dundas St. The trip had been frustrating until with hit gold with this savvy shop keeper. Great chinese checker sets and origami paper, small umbrellas, recorders,  bright chopsticks with alessi-like rubber trainers on the top for beginners. Saved a trip to MasterMind and felt like a timing saving stroke of genius.

This is the craft table. We dressed paper dolls with fabric scraps.

Fine and Dandy Steve.

This dress was a gift from our friend Greg and was also a China Town treasure. She loved it. She loved all of it. And in another couple of weeks we'll celebrate all 2 years of Gradie.

Little Girl is Five

Tonight when I go to bed, after the mess of the party (pictures to follow)is erased, after all of the Oscar's are handed out, I will secretly hope to wake up at 1:40 a.m. For this is the  moment, just 5 short years ago, that Georgia joined my life. She is now post-celebration sleeping soundly, sugar coursing through her veins from the 3+ cupcakes and countless skittles, stories from her new books swimming in her head, baby doll blanketed and sleeping in a large GAP box formerly occupied by jeans and caftan courtesy of Stephen, placed gingerly next to her bed. She will wake up tomorrow a 5 year old. I started to really remember things when I turned 5. If her powers of observation are good, I'm going to have a lot of explaining to do. Happy Birthday love.

The day off superhero

It's been a common theme in my blogs that my 9-5 is a bit stressful right now. I think just about everybody is feeling this way at the moment and there doesn't appear to be an easy fix coming anytime soon. I've never been terribly comfortable with vacations, days off or even leaves like maternity. I call the office, I hypothesize about all the many things that could be capsizing in my absence that will eventually result in my termination on the day that I return to the office rested and tanned. Needless to say that this is not healthy and suffice it to say that the volume is cranked way up on this sentiment during this chaos that is known as the recession. While the economy impacts a lot of things what it doesn't seem to impact are the children's needs. The birthday parties, the nosebleeds, the bed wetting, gymnastics, swimming and ballet lessons and the discipline issues which surface everyday. But forge ahead we must and today, I'm taking a day off (applied for, approved electronically, submitted to payroll for tracking and presto! I'm off). Number of times I'm going to call the office today:1-5, number of times I'm going to check my inbox: 5-10 and the number of things I should be fully focused on that are not work related: 1000. So today, after this entry I'm going to turn my attention to my daughter's 5th birthday. The brunch with family  is on Sunday and my tactic usually is to decorate the house in some pleasing way so that people will not notice the debris, dust and general disrepair of our old but lovable house. I am: recipe sourcing, grocery list writing, inspiration-seeking, thoughtful  gift buying, loot bag assembling, work forgetting super mom. And if I'm a super hero, the recession is affecting more than I thought. Is it wrong to want a drink?

Currently I'm out of style

I like fashion. I like seeing it, reading about it and participating in it to the extent that I can. Fashion as a priority ebbs and flows as a priority in relation to the pregnant, breast-feeding, losing the post-baby weight phases that have dominated the last 5 years of my life. With my youngest son turning 2 in a few weeks, I feel increasingly interested in trends and expressing myself through my clothes. Budget is less important now because of the multitude of responsible options for getting a style fix. Vintage, make your own (which requires a fat budget of time), and the cheap thrills of h and m and zara. That said, last weekend on my vacation in the city (thank you Douglas and Ginger) I ventured into  zara's end of season sale. I bought a pair of these low crotch pants that were densely populating the sale rack for a mere $9.95. I have tried them on every morning this week in the hopes of understanding how to wear them. Or what to wear with them. I have not fully given up on them but I need a success with them this week in order to conclude that i haven't made another "wow these are so cheap, they must be fabulous" purchase. The kicker is that I have searched style sites and blogs to canvas information on how to wear them. They show up on the sartorialist in October of 2007. So much for being current. I haven't worn them and they are already no longer fashion.

Is it ever too late to say thank you?

Context: I am a person who sometimes writes thank you notes. I think of myself as grateful for acts of kindness bestowed upon me. I'm careful to thank the person who picked up the tab for lunch or the one who opened a door for me. I often call the day after you've had me over for dinner just to tell you again how much I appreciate it. And then there are times when my manners go out the window.
I had a milestone birthday last year with a lovely party and lots of friends. It was the end of a long winter and Spring was still far away. A woman that is a new friend and the wife of one of my husband/boyfriend's friends gave me a very thoughtful gift. It’s a silver necklace with three small medallions on it with the engraved initials of each of my 3 kids. I have received countless compliments on it and every mother I know thinks it's an outstanding present. Add to that, the gift came in the mail, in an envelope, inside a beautiful card, with a wonderful note. It was so touching. Now, in my own defense, the card sat on the radiator at the front door for weeks before I knew that it was there. I opened it well after my birthday and told myself that I would call this thoughtful gift giver “tomorrow”. Well tomorrow turned into tomorrow and then a week passed and then several weeks passed and then the summer came and we started going to the cottage and then (as always happens), every time I thought about it I would cringe. The kind of cringing that you do when you feel bad about something but know that you are not going to take action because you are too much of a coward to truly know how to thank the person when you’ve been such a dolt by having not thanked them in the first place-the right way, right away. I have had the opportunity to make it right for almost a year and haven’t done it. I have even had the opportunity to make it right via my husband/boyfriend. He easily could have said to her on one of the 2 encounters he has had with her since the birthday. “Liza never takes off that beautiful necklace you bought her for her birthday.” The problem would have almost been solved. But I was even too much of a coward to tell him how hugely ungrateful I had been.
Cut to yesterday, I run into the thoughtful gift giver.i knew this moment would come and rehearsed it in my mind since. My friend Stephen came up with this great oversight strategy that involved telling her "again, I just want to tell you how much I love the necklace." Pretending of course that I thought I had thanked her in the first place.

She was as cheerful and friendly as ever. She has excellent maners. We were at the Love and Rummage Trunk Show at the Workroom and I was both delighted and sheepish to see her. And do you know what I did? NOTHING! I made chit chat and we promised to call so we could get together. What is wrong with me? After a few hours of self-loathing, I decided that I should tell my friends who were with me about my crime of omission. One of my friends told me that she wished I hadn’t told her because now she wasn’t going to be able to sleep until I was able to confirm that I had righted the wrong. So, here it is. Thank you Kimberly for one of the most beautiful, unique, precious and thoughtful gifts anyone has literally ever given to me. I love the necklace and today I wrote you a bonafide, old-fashioned thank you note. I'm going to buy a stamp and put it in the mail before I tell myself that I'll do it tomorrow.

This weekend, I'm following this advice.

My girlfriend Ginger has invited me on a last minute, weekend getaway in the city. She will be weaning her baby from her breasts (the little dear will stay with his daddy) and I will sleep in and look for inspiration in everything we do. Brunch, vintage exploration and the workroom's love and rummage trunk sale. I can already feel my shoulders relaxing. The Jim Jarmusch image is stolen by the way.

Work like you could get fired.

The economic storm that we're all experiencing plays out in thousands of business in thousands of cities across the globe daily. Employees feeling vulnerable are vying for the attention of their bosses, hoping that a brilliant thought or idea on cost saving or sales driving will draw positive affirmation and underline their own job security. People are working later, starting earlier, showing up to optional events and all around pluggin in more to the pulse of their businesses and trying to add value. A colleague of mine uses the metaphor of a prenuptial agreement to describe the employment contract. The prenup never matters until you're getting a divorce. Then suddenly you really care what you signed on for. It's no secret that people are losing their jobs right now. Tens of thousands everyday south of the border and numbers reflective of that reality here in Canada. There are probably lots of employees who have gone to that bankers box where they keep their paystubs and contract to review what was agreed to in the category of termination of employment. This symmetry has been further underlined for me recently in the actions of one of the dozens of recruiters who invade my inbox during my 9-5 time. Because I work in Human Resources, I hear from "placement services" a lot. So given that the economy is tanking and so too is the job market, the headhunters are struggling for business. So today, I received what I thought was a decent approach to the unique problem of declining client business and less recruiting contracts. One of my favourite recruiters sent me a listing of all of the great candidates they have on their roster. The first one happened to be a better sounding version of me. They were skill for skill a match for what I do except they held the elusive professional designation that I have been too distracted by keeping me and my family alive to complete and they were fluently bilingual. This got me thinking. What if dating websites sent out updates on the recently divorced, broken up and separated who were joining the ranks of the single? Would we do as I did today? Would we scan the addressees to make sure that it hadn't been sent to anyone in my company more higher ranking than me who might want to know if this bilingual,CHRP toting, HR Director has great legs, less kids, is a workaholic, has round firm double D's and can walk on water? Or would we click on the profile and fantasize about how much more brilliant our lives would be if we were married to this new bachelor with the fantastic cottage in Muskoka and a full head of hair? All I'm saying is that I worked harder this afternoon after having seen the profile of a suitable successor and I came home promising myself I would be the best cheerleader my relationship has. I just re-read the pre-nup and it turns out I'm totally replaceable.

New pumps please.

I love this pump. I'm not sure that it's the perfect pump. It's not what I would usually wear. But I'm really liking the shape. I've been researching pumps lately because I need new black pumps. I am a working girl and I wear black pumps a lot. I typically wear high, pointy, simple, bought-hastily-out-of-desperation pumps. Not this time. I'm going to plan my pump purchase.Let's be real. My new shoes will not be Louboutin or Blahnik but I'm going to do my research and I'm going to make a solid decision. The problem is that by the time I've made the decision, I will be well into the fantasy of open toe shoes again (and not just with tights but with the full out pride of a pedicure). The pumps that I am limping (literally) along with right now are highly irritating because they are too big. They didn't have the smaller size.They were on sale. I was desperate. I bought them in haste and now I struggle to keep them on my feet as I walk about the catwalk that is my office. I should create a giant art installation of all of the "on crazy sale" bad purchases I've made. You are probably asking yourself why I keep them at all. I have trouble getting rid of things and I did vow that I would be better in 2009. So far, I'm not better. I will commit that if I buy the right pair of black pumps I will cast off the drag queen giant pumps that I'm getting by with now.

What does lemon have to do with it?

Anybody who knows me will tell you that I like lemons (they will say more damning things but we're keeping it narrow here). They will tell you that if I'm coming to their house, they will buy lemons. If they know me they won't ask if I would like lemon in my water, they will always just put it there and if I stop by someone's home unannounced, after greeting me, they will apologize for being out of lemons and will dispatch the lowest ranking household member to the local fruit market to retrieve some.

So in naming the blog and in giving it life, it took me all of two seconds to decide to include lemon in it's name. I squeeze lemons on my food, I like the way they look and I think they pretty much make a bad day better. But in the context of this blog they mean a few other things. They mean: If life gives you lemons..., they mean: adding something simple can make something so interesting and elegant, they mean: a zippier take on what you already have, and they mean: that Pledge smell when I was a child dusting all of the many wood surfaces in our suburban ranch-style house. I discovered lemons in my thirties and if you haven't already been converted, it's not too late for you. Add a little lemon to the usual, spin it a different way, take the bad and make it better, don't choose your crisis, choose your attitude. And always keep a few lemons in the fridge because you don't know who might drop by.