First page of the Calgary archive.

dinner at 11

Posted by jessica on Oct 30, 2009 with No Comments
in Loved Ones, photography, Thoughts and Feelings
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All of you wonderful people who have homes and kitchens and front doors with real keys which you regularly use might not realize it, but goodness, staying in a home makes a difference.

A heck of a difference.
It’s not that hotels don’t have their charm. I certainly don’t mind a good continental breakfast, especially if it holds the added lure of a waffle maker, one of the few things that might actually drag me out of bed during the part of day that is still classified as morning. But hotels can get old. The paper thin walls. The roommates that you hope don’t snore. The maids that are constantly trying to barge in, though I realize that “barging in” is just part of their job description.
Anyway, this past week I have had the luxury of staying in a real, honest to goodness home here in Calgary. A friend’s mom has been kind enough to open her house to a few of us, even offering us our own keys and bedrooms, respectively.
Wow.
So we had just a few people over for a real dinner last night.
John Legend was singing in the background and when he got tired Nickel Creek jumped right in; and all the while we were busy in the kitchen. My dear friend Ian, who is a master chef in his own right, had already prepared some spaghetti and delicious sauce the night before, and Emily had baked a cake while I had made some frosting. We also made sure we had everything we needed for salad, garlic bread, and of course, wine.
Well, I guess the only thing you need to make sure you have in order to have wine is wine–and actually, our guests supplied that.
But here we are. Stirring, icing, warming, buttering, pouring. Taking advantage of this beautiful kitchen, wearing no shoes and not thinking a thing about audiences or leotards or God I hope I get it.
It was dinner among friends.
With everyone chipping in.
And every beautiful cake needs a garnish, right?
So I might have taken a little spider from the halloween decorations currently gracing my dressing room.
He might have happily sat on top of our cake.
Our hummingbird cake.*
*no hummingbirds were harmed in the making of this cake.
And what a delicious three tiered beauty it turned out to be.
But more than anything else, the feeling of family, of community, was maybe the sweetest thing of the night.

calgary goodness

Posted by jessica on Oct 26, 2009 with No Comments
in photography, Thoughts and Feelings
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Today was a doozy.

But a good doozy.
I think the dooziness was mostly due to only having slept about two hours last night. So when my alarm clock greeted me at 6:45 this morning I wasn’t exactly enthralled with fact that my day had already begun. Well, except for the fact that this particular day was taking me far from Saskatoon and so in that sense, it couldn’t start soon enough.
The airport was made a little brighter by the fact that I got some Tim Horton’s hot chocolate, which is some of the best around, in my opinion. And the sad news is that I am hardly ever around Timmy Ho Ho’s (which is what we affectionately call it), so I try to take advantage of the fine establishment while here in Canada.
But a few hours later when I landed in Calgary, that hot chocolate was long gone. I was hungry, exhausted, and cold. I was a total doozy. A personified doozy. Still, a good meal and a walk around this lovely town did me wonders. See, I am staying at a friend’s mom’s house in the Kensington part of Calgary and it is absolutely magical. Adorable. Artsy. Full of consignment shops.
Which is where I scored this sweatshirt.
$18 worth of warmth and verdant stripes. Not to mention a big old collar. Yes.
And then, shoved onto the lowest shelf at my feet, a bit of robin’s egg blue caught my eye.
Another find. This time something Kenneth Cole had made. And for $30 I walked out of the store with it, thanking Mr. Cole for his use of blue and yellow and the way it so easily carries a wallet and lip gloss and one elementary school picture of a tow-headed Drew that I keep with me at all times.
But it’s kind of weird when people ask me if I have any pictures of my husband and I hesitantly pull out this wallet sized photo of a first grader.
I make sure to tell them that he’s grown up since then.
Cause, gross.
And sorry to end on a downer, but one of my strings on my guitar broke tonight and I am so bummed. Seriously, that thing brings me so much joy right now and it feels like a friend just suddenly left. I don’t know how to restring a guitar and at this point I don’t even know where a music store is to buy some strings.
I know, google search, blah blah blah, but still.
What a beating.