You know it ain't easy runnin' out of thrills

Hmm, so I had intended to put in a nice travelog of our trip, but I found it much more relaxing just to ignore the Internet completely. Except for once-a-day email checking to see if I got any sales on Etsy (just 1, thanks for asking.)

We're spending the night in a somewhat sketchy motel in Barriere, British Columbia, which is about 5-6 hours from home. We made some amazing progress today - left my friend Alice's house in Bonnyville, Alberta this morning around 6:45 our time, and TJ drove 12 hours straight, with minimal stops for gas and food and puppy-walking.

We did have a lovely stop in Mt. Robson, at a rest area. It was about 70 degrees out, gorgeous and sunny, and an amazing view of the mountains. The Canadian Rockies, and really, most of BC, are *so* pretty. We'll definitely be back.

The pups have been really great travelers, Spike especially. We set up his dog bed in the back seat, and he just curls up there and sleeps nearly the whole time. He hasn't once tried to come up to the front seats while we're moving, though he does get up there if we leave the dogs in the car to get some food. I guess he wants to watch us through the window to make sure we haven't abandoned him.

Neither dog has fussed about needing to get out of the car, though around the 11th hour today, Peanut got up and paced around the back of the Nitro, alternately staring at us and barking at the giant tractor-trailer truck behind us. I think he was just done with the car today, and so were we, so here we are, in bed at the motel, in a huge dogpile.

Oh! And today we saw wildebeests. Ok, not really, but we did see wild mountain goats - a whole flock (herd? gaggle?) of them crossing the highway in Jasper Natl Park. I got some pictures before I had to shut the window to prevent Spike from jumping out to get them. Peanut DID NOT like them and told them in no uncertain terms, to stay the heck away from him. Very loud. Fortunately the wildebeests didn't notice the Peanut at all.

We had a lovely time with Alice and Randy, eating, playing with dogs (they have 2 awesome pups), and crafting. I think TJ snuck in some football and napping while Alice and I went to some garage sales and did our crafty stuff. I made some good progress on my cross-stitch kit that I bought several weeks ago. I also figured out that cross-stitching in the car *is* possible, but a bit unwieldy and also has the danger of someone getting their eye poked out with the needle in case of an accident.

This past week has been a lot of fun, but I'm looking forward to getting home too. Wish us luck that the border crossing line is short!

I was made for chasin' dreams

Helloooo from Lillooet, British Columbia. Don't know where that is? Don't worry, neither did I until this evening when we decided we were done driving after 150+ km of winding, bumpy mountain roads.

Our intended stop for the night was Kamloops, which we didn't quite make. But that's ok, because we are SPONTANEOUS travelers. Flying by the seat of our pants with no plan except to get to Edmonton by Thursday night.

This morning I slept in because my sweet husband got up early and fed the pups and took them to the small dog park near our hotel. Peanut met an Akita puppy named Andy and apparently took quite a liking to him. They spent a long time chasing each other and wrestling while I slept blissfully in our hotel room.

Breakfast today was another crepe. Yes, I'm obsessed. There was a tiny crepe cafe across from our hotel which had been closed since we arrived but reopened this morning, finally. and OMG it was AMAZING. The most perfect, slightly sweet, paper-thin crepe surrounding fresh sliced banana and strawberries. It was HEAVEN. I would have eaten every meal there if we had stayed any longer.

We took the pups to Granville Island and wandered around for a bit. It's a great place for artsy-crafty things, so I had a good time. I actually *didn't* buy anything, believe it or not!

Then we drove to Whistler, and saw the ski jump and biathlon stadium they are building for the 2010 Olympics. Very cool, except for the TONS of road construction along the way.

After a nice dinner at a brewpub in Whistler Village, with the pups begging pointedly at our feet, we got back on the road, and after what seemed like an interminable sequence of twists and turns and potholes and bumps, ended up here in Lillooet. I have never been so happy to see a town I hadn't heard of before, especially when we saw there were places to stay :) And now it is time to sleep. We hope to make it somewhere in the area of Banff Natl Park tomorrow, but that's a long way from here, so we'll see. Yay Canada!

If it was a box or a bag

When I go on a trip, I like to buy a souvenir to commemorate it. But not a tacky shot glass or collection of postcards that I'll lose in some drawer. I like to buy a piece of jewelry, clothing, Christmas ornament or something I'll actually use in my day-to-day life.

So when I walked into the giant Roots store in downtown Vancouver this morning, and saw their handmade in Canada purple leather handbags, I fell in love. And decided the "Village" flat handbag would be my trip souvenir.

In fact, the bag I bought was the only one in its shade of purple - it's more of a magenta, reddish-purple. The others in the shop were more of an eggplant shade. The style I bought is actually hiding in the pic above, it's in the middle on the left, right behind the small two-zipper pouch.

But not only is the color totally fantastic and the hardware bright shiny silver instead of the usual hideous brass, it's the softest nicest leather *ever*. Or should I say "leathah evah" in honor of Project Runway contestant Stella, who got booted a couple of weeks ago.

Yay. I love my new bag. It's so pretty.

We also took the pups to Ambleside Park, which is *amazing*. It's a big off leash park with a paved walking trail, access to the bay, lots of cool driftwood to run on and around (which also means nice big sticks to throw for Peanut), and big grassy fields for running and ball-chasing. Until you lose your ball, that is.

Don't worry, I got lots of good pictures of the pups having fun. They're still getting used to traveling, though of course Spike travels like a pro, my little roadtrip buddy. More later. I gotta go get us some crepes now for dinner. YUM.

And I just can't hide it!

We're leaving for our Great Canadian Road Trip in a few hours. I started packing last weekend, which was good because it gave me a chance to think about what I might forget.

Traveling with the pups adds a whole new dimension to this - we've packed a bag just for their stuff, and it also means they are going to take up the space where we would usually put our bags.

Last night, I got some girls together for a "beauty exchange", which basically meant that I asked them to bring all the old hair products, unopened cosmetics, and jewelry that they no longer wear/use and we could swap. One woman's "too greasy" is another woman's "amazing find", right?

We did surprisingly well, with only 4 gals - yeah, people ended up taking some of their own stuff home with them, but for the most part we did some good swapping. And managed to drink 2 bottles of yummy red wine, from Argentina and Spain. (Thanks Lisa and Adrianne for giving me those!)

I got some nice travel-sized color safe shampoo and conditioner for our trip, and some of the John Frieda "brilliant brunette" styling products that I've always wanted to try.

But the real awesome find for me - tons of beaded jewelry to disassemble and remake. I can't wait to get started on that. It's really too bad jewelry making isn't exactly a portable craft, or easy to do in the car.

Well, off to do the last few bits of packing!

What about today?

So yesterday I left work early to go get my hair cut and colored. I was planning to get the red highlights I liked so much before, but my hairstylist actually talked me *out* of it. That's how I know she's good, because she passed up the opportunity to charge me multiple $100s of dollars for the much cheaper one-color treatment.

So yeah. I'm at the point now where I need to color my hair at least every 6 months or the miscellaneous grey hairs start popping up all over the place. And with black hair, I can't exactly hide them. That's pretty suck-tastic but since it's only twice a year, I can deal.

I got a shorter haircut than I was expecting, which was sort of my own fault since I gave her carte blanche to cut some of the old, badly-colored parts. Apparently the previous salon I went to used a "1" and they should have used a "3", whatever that means. To me it all looks black.

But anyway, after I got home, I needed to do a bit of work before shutting down for our vacation. And I realized when I got on the computer that the Etsy Treasury West was just getting ready to have an opening.

For those not familiar with Etsy Treasuries, there are a limited number that can be created, and you get 2 days before they expire. So all through the day, treasuries are expiring. Once they get below a certain magic number, it opens up for new ones to be created. All very mysterious.

But I had the amazing luck to be there exactly AT Magic Number + 1 and had to wait only 15 min for that last one to expire. So I snagged a spot, and came up with the theme of Pumpkin Pi:



Yes, it's because I'm a dork. But since all those nice folks in my EtsyRain group included me in their 4 (maybe 5?) treasuries last week, I thought I'd repay the favor and try to use all local Etsy shops in my list. Which wasn't too hard, until I got to the "Pi" item. Apparently no one in Seattle does anything with Pi. Sad.

So I was pretty proud of myself, and thought the list looked good and was sort of dorky and clever at the same time.

And then I woke up this morning to find out it actually made the FRONT PAGE of Etsy.com. Holy crap! It's only the 4th list I've put together. I've always tried to make a list that was so fabulous it would get picked for the front page, but it takes a special "look" and the whim of one of the Etsy employees to pick it.

I'm still surprised they picked mine. Of course, it was before I woke up, but the happy Etsy community managed to get a screen shot and post it to Flickr.

So, again, because I'm a good Etsy sheep, I used this to promote other Etsy shops besides my own (plus I've gotten a ton of exposure and consequently, I think, a lot of sales over the past couple of weeks), so I didn't really directly benefit from this treasury. But you know, that's ok. I had fun picking the items, and it was the first time for some of the EtsyRain folks to have their items on the Front Page.

Since I'm not totally heartless, that was enough to make me happy about that :) You know, good will, good karma, and all that.

So I guess at some point my goal is to have one of *my* items make the front page. A girl can dream, right?

And speaking of dreaming, remember that I mentioned Oprah last time? So it's not going to make me as rich as Oprah, but the day after posting that blog post, I got an inquiry from a woman about my nickel tags.

She wanted me to create 10 tags with her band's name on them, as keychains for their upcoming record release party. How freakin' cool is that?? And if that wasn't cool enough, I went to check out their page and they are an all-female METAL band, from Seattle. Wow.

Now, they're a bit too growly death metal for my liking, but the music part of it is pretty rockin'. I'm stoked to work on this project, which I'll tackle when I'm back from vacation. If you want to check out the band, go to http://myspace.com/greydoom, and rock on.