19 Mar

Creativity and Grief

We’ve been on hiatus here at Make it Bittersweet. Not a planned hiatus, but Mary and I have both suffered losses recently and have found it incredibly difficult to be creative and “on” while grieving.

Creativity and Grief - Wilting Tulips

Grieving can be such an all encompassing thing. Riding that wave up and down…feeling a bit OK and then absolutely NOT. You always hear that time heals things. I’m not quite sure about that. The waves of grief come less frequently, but I think that they never go away. That’s just the cost of love.

Creativity and Grief - Wilting Tulips Closeup

It’s only been recently that both of us have started to be ready to dive in and get creating again…in fact, we’re both craving it now. We’re both excited to get back and see what new and beautiful things are to come.

Creativity and Grief - More Wilting Tulips

25 Nov

What to Drink When You’re Sick

Cough. Cough.

It’s been a sneezing and sniffling filled couple of weeks here at Make It Bittersweet. I’ve had a nasty cold, just in time for the start of the cold weather. In honour of finally feeling better, I’m going to share my “what to drink when you’re sick” recipe. Let’s call it a “healing tonic”.

This is a very “scientifically” crafted drink recipe. It contains all of the essential ingredients to help you get better:

– Honey to sooth your sore throat

– Lemon for the Vitamin C

– Hot water to warm you up and sooth that sore throat

– Bourbon…also to warm you up, make you feel better and all that other important stuff that Bourbon does

In a small mug, pour about an ounce of Bourbon and add a spoonful of honey and the juice from half a lemon. Top with boiling water, stir to combine and sip slowly.

Hope that you don’t need to use my healing tonic over the winter, but you’ll appreciate it if you do. Remember not to mix with any medications that you can’t have alcohol with!

p.s. Other whiskey’s also work well in this drink if you don’t have Bourbon kicking around. Just don’t use the super good stuff!

28 Oct

Things You’re Superstitious about

It’s Day 28 of the #Blogtober14 Challenge with The Daily Tay and Helene in Between! Rasa here with today’s post, “Things You’re Superstitious about.”

I can be a bit of a superstitious person, but that seems to increase exponentially when I’m at a Toronto Rock Lacrosse game with my family. Collectively, we all get pretty weird.

Honestly, if one member of my clan leaves to get a drink or something and The Rock starts scoring, they are asked to not return right away. It’s gotten to the point where if you’re away and see that The Rock is scoring, you KNOW not to come back. I’ve seen my sister trying to watch the game at the door rather than come back and be cast away.

Heaven forbid that Mr. Fox say something like, “well, they’ll win now for sure.” Which he does just to see how wide my eyes get…you never say that. Never.

I’m not sure what it is about a sporting event that really brings out that superstitious “you can’t say that!!!” side of me…but it comes out. Big time.

26 Oct

Who’d play you in a movie

It’s Day 26 of the #Blogtober14 Challenge with The Daily Tay and Helene in Between! Rasa here with today’s post, “Who’d play you in a movie?”

A movie about me? I’m a little afraid of that. It’s not going to be the most interesting movie right now. Rasa: IT Geek, Blogger, Likes to Cook and Shop. No, I think this movie is going to need a little embellishment…some fun.

For the epic “all about me” movie, I think that I should be animated as a cartoon Fox, a la Disney’s Robin Hood. For those who haven’t seen it (and why haven’t you??), here is a clip:

Mary would be my animated Bear companion (albeit, a much smaller Bear than in this movie. Mary’s tiny.)

We would roam around on adventures, doing brave and noble deeds and generally getting into trouble, but the good kind of trouble.

Whose with me? What animated animal would you be?

24 Oct

One Beauty Product You Can’t Live without

It’s Day 24 of the #Blogtober14 Challenge with The Daily Tay and Helene in Between! Rasa here with today’s post, “One Beauty Product You Can’t Live without.”

I love beauty products! If you want to read about what beauty products I consider essential for everyday use, you can see them in my beauty bag post, but picking only one that I can’t live without? Here are Make It Bittersweet, we agree that if we have to pick just one thing, it can only be SUNSCREEN.

We both wear sunscreen everyday. If you don’t, watch this video – we’re willing to bet it will convince you to start.

Favourite sunscreens? I personally love Kiehl’s Super Fluid. It’s SPF 50 and doesn’t break me out (that’s huge. Really.) Mary loves Neutrogena’s Healthy Defense Moisturizer SPF 45 with Helioplex.

One Beauty Product - Sun2

What do you think? Is it fair to make us choose only one beauty product when it obviously has to be sunscreen??

23 Oct

An Ode to GIMP

It’s Day 23 of the #Blogtober14 Challenge with The Daily Tay and Helene in Between! Today’s topic is “Favorite instagram editing apps/ or editing tools for your blog.” So, here is our Ode to GIMP.

While we love playing with the various Instagram filters, there is one editing app that we use more than anything here at Make It Bittersweet and it’s called GIMP.

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program, in case you were wondering about the “interesting” name) is free, open source picture editing software. Imagine PhotoShop, but free! We love it here and use it all. the. time.

Pictures speak louder than words, right? To demonstrate the awesome power of GIMP, Mary has used our Angel picture to show you how versatile it can be when you’re editing pictures.

What do you think? Have we convinced you to give GIMP a try? If you’re interested, you can find out more about it HERE.

21 Oct

Dream Vacation

It’s Day 21 of the #Blogtober14 Challenge with The Daily Tay and Helene in Between! Rasa here with today’s post, “Dream Vacation.”

A dream vacation. Serious…what to choose? There are so many options, I couldn’t possibly decide. I’ve never been to Mexico City and would LOVE to see the Pyramid of the Sun. My husband has never seen Mexico City or Oaxaca…I would love to show him both. Then there are whole other options…The Azores, Bali, Fiji, all of Europe. How to decide?

To be honest, my dream vacation right now is actually being able to go on a vacation. I made a choice to start working in a small business with my Husband and it’s very hard for us to get away…especially both of us. Also, my youngest cat was recently diagnosed with diabetes and needs two insulin shots per day. This makes it difficult to take a day trip, much less a full blown vacation.

Still I wouldn’t change it…well, except for my cat having diabetes. I would totally change that if I could. In the meantime, I will daydream about vacations and make sure that when we can finally get away, it’s for a crazy, amazing thing. Since part of the fun for me has always been planning the vacation, I’ll continue to dream right now of the perfect trip.

Anyone else in the same boat? If you are going away on vacation – have an amazing time!

19 Oct

What Makes You Happy

It’s Day 19 of the #Blogtober14 Challenge with The Daily Tay and Helene in Between! Rasa here with today’s post, “What makes you happy.”

There are a lot of things that make me happy – spending time with my husband, cats and good friends, shopping, eating amazing food, but what really makes me happy? Exploring.

I love exploring a new part of my city. Toronto is great for that…it’s filled with pockets of completely different neighborhoods. I love finding a new ethnic grocery store somewhere and wandering around in it trying to figure out what I should get to cook. This is something I do with my Mom all the time.

I also love exploring new cities when I’m on vacation, but my favourite thing to explore? It’s always historical sites. I love trying to reconnect with the past. How did these people live? What did they eat? Every time that we’ve gone to Mexico, I’ve made it a point of searching out a new historical site for us to check out. The pictures on this post are from Guachimontones , which we visited while vacationing in Puerto Vallarta.

It was exciting because it was still in the process of being restored, so you could see the newly restored pyramids as well as piles of rocks. Honestly, it amazes me that the archaeologists can take what looks like a pile of rocks and reconstruct these amazing structures.

Anyone else love exploring?

17 Oct

I’m an Expert At

It’s Day 17 of the #Blogtober14 Challenge with The Daily Tay and Helene in Between! Rasa here with today’s post, my attempt at “I’m an Expert At”

I had a hard time with this topic. What am I really an expert at? I’m a good cook, but an expert? I asked Mr. Fox what he thought and without even looking up from his computer, he replied, “Shopping.”

Yeah…I really like to shop and I am a little too good at it. I can find a deal almost anywhere (or sometimes the most expensive thing in the place. I’m looking at you, 1920’s Beetle Broach in the muddy field at an auction.)

Since I’m a little too good at finding a deal, I’ve had to make some rules for myself about whether I should buy something. Namely, do I already have something like it? If I do, I don’t buy it. The exception…black booties.

I wear booties all. the. time. I’m wearing them now! As you can see from my collection, I have, well, a few pairs. If I find a great pair of black booties (that fit me…I have size 10 feet), I’ll probably buy them.

Anyone else a little too good at shopping? Is it really possible top have too many pairs of black booties??

16 Oct

Fall Fashion

It’s Day 16 of the #Blogtober14 Challenge with The Daily Tay and Helene in Between! Rasa here with today’s post, my attempt at “Fall Fashion”

Fall in Toronto is (often) lovely with bright, crisp Autumn days and leaves turning different colours, although it’s also frequently wet, cloudy, dark and cold. Although, I would LOVE to live somewhere where it’s warm all the time, I live here. We have 4 very distinct seasons and you really do change the way that you dress for each of them.

Fall is great because you can wear all of the clothes that were too warm to wear in the summer (although this last summer could hardly be considered warm.) You can also actually show the clothes that your wearing before winter comes and you’re bundled up in the parka that you always wear and the super industrial winter boots that don’t get completely killed by all of the salt.

My fall uniform is generally a blouse, a pair of jeans that don’t look like jeans and booties. I love booties! A fashion blogger, I am not, so these pictures are my sweet husband trying to get me to sit up straight and not laugh or make monster faces at the camera. There are a lot of pictures like this one and worse:

Anyone else have a uniform for each season? Assuming that you have seasons where you live…