Ok, we all know I'm not a parent, but I have lots of friends who are parents, and lots of clients who are parents. Some of them have used the services provided by The Children's Storefront, an awesome child-parent centre that used to be, literally, a five minute walk from my house.

Used to be?  Oh. The building it was in burned to the ground on October 31st. :(

So now they need to raise money in order to start again - they need a new place to rent, new toys, new chairs, tables, equipment... remember, EVERYTHING was lost in the fire. And they were a non-profit, so it's not like they have investors ready to swoop in and replace things.

In order to try to help get some funding, the staff of the Storefront entered it into the Aviva Community Fund competition. This competition allows communities to vote for their favourite community projects, and if The Children's Storefront wins, they could stand to gain most or all of the funds for rebuilding.

If you have just a few minutes, please please please consider voting for them. They need to stay in the top 20 in order to move on to the next level of the competition, and right now they're fighting to stay at 20th place. Your email address will not be spammed.


http://www.avivacommunityfund.org/ideas/acf3541. 

So today I tried something pretty easy and basic: GF buckwheat pancakes. Found tons of recipes, decided to make this one since I <3 anything from Veganomicon.

They turned out pretty decent! I'll admit that I didn't use the exact flours they recommended as I don't have them all. I subbed in Bob's Redmill GF AP flour mixture for the quinoa+corn flours. I probably will pick up some plain corn flour at some point, since it seems useful for cooking GF.

Gonna try making some muffins soon I think, and I might do some sort of biscuits for hamburger buns, at least in the short term. Someone over here recommended a brand of buns that is available in Canada and really yummy, so I'll seek those out too.

Unfortunately it looks like baking GF, VEGAN bread is going to be hard. Usually people use eggs to get it to rise correctly (along with yeast of course). I don't mind using other stuff like xanthan gum or agar agar or whatever to get things the correct consistency/texture, but I can't use eggs, and a lot of the egg substitutes don't work well in bread.  Sigh. I'll figure it out eventually. :)  For now I can always eat my veggie burgers without buns.

ETA: Picture!

This entry was originally posted at http://nyxie.dreamwidth.org/1432.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Before anyone reads the title and misunderstands, I am not pregnant and I am not gonna have any babies, ever. :p

This is a brainstorm. If anyone on my friends list (or not on my friends list, for that matter) has suggestions, please do comment! Or if you have a friend who might have useful advice, please do direct them my way, I'd love that!

I've been moving towards specializing (as much as we're allowed to specialize as RMTs) in pregnancy, postpartum and infant massage stuff ^*. I know just doing massage has its limitations and I'm trying to brainstorm possible directions I could take my career to expand on the types of services I can offer. This is meant to be a huge list of possibilities, not necessarily all ones I'd want to pursue for sure.
( cut for those not really interested in this stuff )

Give me one word to describe me. Comments screened. Positive, negative, I don't care, just make it interesting and honest.

Meme time!

1. Open graphics program of your choice.
2. Close your eyes.
3. Draw a cat.

( Not bad! )

The Governor General's residence has a door!

Mouse has been sick the last few weeks. We rushed her in to multiple vet appointments, including a cat internal med vet and a cat cardiologist. She got two ultrasounds and a pile of blood work. We gave her pills 4 times a day and gave her whatever kind of food she wanted. But her body wasn't strong enough, and her kidney (yes, she only had one) and liver started to shut down. We wish we could have done more, but the vet even said that in mouse's condition, this was the right thing to do. We could have hospitalized her, but I think that just would have prolonged her suffering. Her prognosis was pretty poor.

We were there when it happened and we held her until the end, so she wouldn't have to go alone, and that we would be the last people she saw.


I'll miss you my fuzzy meezer girl. You were my study buddy and my friend. I hope you're in a better place, eating all the tuna flavoured fancy feast you can handle.



Edit: more pictures here if anyone would like to take a look. She was very photogenic, that's for sure.