Ummm...awkward.

So, it was has been a while. A few weeks ago (6 weeks ago to be exact) I received the following message on Facebook from a friend and avid ag.gray.gate reader:

 "it's been 20 days since the last ag.gray.gate post... and 40+ days since the post before that! This trend cannot continue.".


But my absence has persisted. I feel as though I have fallen off the face of the planet. I am not sure exactly how it happened. I had no intention of my new endeavour into the small business realm completely kiboshing this blog. This blog that I love, and that I miss terribly. Truth be told, I would rather write here.


When I bumbled my way back to ag.gray.gate last night I realized I missed a couple important events.

Firstly, the designs I had used from Shabby Blogs was gone. They had sent out numerous messages, helpful hints and finally changed servers. Oops.

Secondly, ag.gray.gate passed the 10, 000 visitor mark. Wow. Thank you. I am humbled...and I am back.

I am excited - I have so much to tell you!

See you tomorrow. xo.

Technical Difficulties...

It is Monday and I am feeling overwhelmed and under-researched. We were away all weekend (in the car mostly) and Mike has gone back to Vancouver to work for the next week and a half.

Not usually one to get a case of the Mondays I am finding this day particularly debilitating thus far. I have one baby to the left and one to the right - both are spewing a constant barrage of verbalization at an unreasonable volume, and being especially demanding... about EVERYTHING. I think they need some concentrated attention.

What I am saying is I will be back tomorrow guns blazing and my wits will be functioning at full capacity, so thanks for stopping by and I hope you'll be back in the morning! For now I have an arse to wipe and it is not mine.

Wordless Wednesday - And the Nominee...

...is me!!!!!

So not really a Wordless Wednesday at all, but instead, after my extended weekend I was thrilled to find the following message in my inbox:

"I just wanted to let you know that ag.gray.gate has been nominated in the Best New Weblog, Best Written, and Life categories of the 2010 Canadian Weblog Awards!"


YAY!!!! Great news, right?! How fun! Thank you soooooooooooooo much!

Guest Post - Brandie Weikle

I am thrilled to present the first guest post on ag.gray.gate! Brandie Weikle was featured earlier this week in the Artist Homage and without further adieu here is her article itself:


The kids are heading back to school this week, and I can’t help but yearn for some of that same newness that September brings when you’re young. Nervous tummies aside, who can forget the sense of possibility that came with that backpack of empty duo-tangs?

I took each of my boys, Cameron, 7, and little Alister, 3, on separate walks down to the little stationary shop on Bloor this weekend. My little guy is bound for Montessori school and in need of his first pencil case. And my first-born, now a “Grade Two-er,” needed the ritual purchase of new pencils, sharpener and glue stick, almost as much as he needed the reassurance that he was tall enough for second grade.

I’d love some new school supplies almost as much as a pair of nude platform pumps to complement my fall wardrobe. But while I don’t need a new binder (or, I guess, even the shoes - drat) I can satisfy that yearning with art supplies. So, I got a few new drawing pencils this weekend.

Because I’ve spent my whole career in journalism, and consider myself the most beginner of visual artists, it was a surprise when my sister wanted to feature me on her blog’s new weekly artist homage (secretly I’m thinking she was running out of people) and have me guest post the next day.

But then I got to thinking that maybe the subject of art doesn’t have to be that far off my usually parenting beat (I edit two websites for the Toronto Star, and write about a blog about parenting). All kids make art and all parents are capable of making art with their children.

When I was a little girl I was apparently quite easy to entertain with paper and crayons. I was forever trying to make snow globes out of jam jars and tiny bits of crumpled-up tin foil. I entered earnest little portraits of my best friend in the country fair. I painted posters to announce the rec-room premieres of my most recent plays.

Paintings by two grandparents decorated the walls of my homes growing up. In addition, we were also cottage neighbours (though we call them cabins no matter what their size out west) with artist/activist Wallis Kendal 

My most vivid memories of his artwork are of the canvasses that depicted what he saw on his trips to some of the most underdeveloped parts of the world. But artistically he’s now best known for his collaboration with Sandra Bromley on the Gun Sculpture http://www.gunsculpture.com/, an anti-violence installation made of 7,000 decommissioned weapons that has been exhibited around the world, including at the UN headquarters in New York and at the Centennial Exhibition of the Nobel Peace Prize in Seoul, South Korea.

Wallis would occupy us on rainy days with papier mache projects, kept up an elaborate fantasy that there were elves in the forest surrounding the lake who we just missed meeting because it was bedtime, and let us make banana peel ice cream for a “gross-out” party. (Everyone should have an eccentric artist or two in their upbringing.)

When I was a teenager Wallis took me to buy my first proper camera, a second-hand Pentax K-1000. Then we tromped around Edmonton’s Fringe Festival so I could photograph all the colourful buskers and artists. I felt like SUCH a serious photo-journalist.

I can’t bring his artistic ability to the table, but I do cover mine in newsprint and bring the kids and their friends there to work with paint brushes, acrylic paints and canvasses that make them feel like real-deal artists.

We have kind of an awesome time.

No matter how big you are, you get to create.

We’re working on a gallery in our basement stairwell.

Doesn’t just looking at these supplies make you want to give it a go yourself?

I’m quite sure that the kid in you will look at a blank canvass and appreciate the possibilities.

Not a bad metaphor for life, really.


-Brandie Weikle

Homage Monday - Brandie Weikle

via parentcentral.ca

Today I have the honour of featuring one of my favourite artists, Brandie Weikle. Brandie is an immensely talented and ambitious writer, the fantastic mother of two young boys, helplessly beautiful,  a gifted painter, foodie, design guru, and brilliant as all get out. Brandie is also my sister, I simply adore her.


In Brandie's own words,"I am an online and print journalist with specialties in parenting and health. Currently I'm the editor of two of the Toronto Star's specialty websites, parentcentral.ca and healthzone.ca. I decided to be a journalist in about grade 10 or 11, after I started writing for my school newspaper. But the very first thing I ever wanted to be when I was a wee girl was "an artist." In high school I discovered that I didn't have the drawing skills for art or architecture as a profession, but I continued to have an aesthetic yearning for the whole paint and canvass experience. I think it runs in the family. As you know my Grandpa Weikle painted landscapes. So did my mom's mom, Edna, who died before I was born. I started buying canvasses and painting them as what I'd call "decor art" about 10 years ago and then in the last few years, started dabbling in abstract landscape and realism, particularly as I became interested in birds.".

Regarding the yellow bird image: Birds are my current favourite thing to draw and paint. I guess it was my interest in birds that interested me in spending time drawing and painting for the first time since childhood. This image is the other kind of multimedia in my life. The branch the bird sits on is created using cutouts from a magazine. The pieces are from a picture of a long full skirt by Coach. The iconic print is kind of deconstructed here and - if you blur your eyes - it kinda mimics the black and white colour contrast of a birch branch.

I selected the colours of this picture so I can hang it next to this landscape, which is painted from a photo I took on a drive from Calgary to Drumheller, on the way to the dinosaur museum, of course! People go all the way to Provence to photograph the sunflowers against the blue sky, but the same colour combination is available right on the Canadian prairies every summer with fields of canola against all that big sky. It was a windy day, and I liked the way the grasses in the ditch were moving in the foreground.

Later, I got the idea to paint a bird cage with the door open, over two canvasses, to hint at the idea that this might have been someone's domesticated canary gone free.
-Brandie Weike

Brandie lives and works in the Greater Toronto area. You can read her insightful and informative online blog at the Toronto Star. 

To Whom It May Concern...

This blog began as an experiment.  I have never been a journal keeper, though I have always had much admiration for those who keep regular thorough account of their lives. My husband maintains the most wonderful travel journals. The last trip Mike and I took together I did make a point of sending the kids a postcard everyday. Almost all of the cards arrived after we returned but it really felt like some sort of accomplishment for me, they catalogued where and when we were and the minutia I surely would have forgotten otherwise. Apparently, for me, being culpable keeps me focused.

Despite my inability to reliably keep a journal, I have always loved to write. My family has imbued me with a legacy of actors, teachers and story tellers. In my youth I wrote prolifically, I have no idea how good it was or not because when I wrote I never kept it. Young and passionate, I wrote very personally, and the thought of someone else reading my stories, plays and poems sent me running script in hand to the bin.

ag.gray.gate is actually my second blog. A few years ago I posted my first and last entry on a blog entitled "The Everygirl". It went a little something like, "Well we'll see how this goes". It didn't. My former Twitter account also mirrored this lack of zest and is now defunct. These two failures hung heavy over me whenever I thought about starting a new blog. A few of my friends had started writing blogs of their own and I wondered if, maybe this time, I could do it too.

A little unexpected and unsolicited encouragement from a family friend set me in the direction. I put the idea of ag.gray.gate (and myself) out there, guns blazing and both feet in, actively telling people that I was writing and risking rejection every time I asked a friend to follow. Amongst fantastic family and friends who follow this blog, I am also blessed with patronage from those whom I have never met. They follow because they support others in this blogging community or better yet simply because ag.gray.gate is an enjoyable read!! Somehow, it never ceases to amaze me that I meet with resistance about reading or following after having known someone for years. It is as though for some it is giving away too much to participate in another's journey toward success. Life lessons I remind myself.

The process of keeping this blog has been full of lessons for me. First: I have really come to love it and 3 months in am taking it quite seriously. Blogging has been a wonderful outlet. When I sit down to write I am disembarking from the mundane while at the same time drawing upon it and focusing in on it in order to find the humour and my gratefulness. I look forward to writing. I keep an idea log in my new moleskin journal just like Hemingway would. I ordered business cards for pete sake! Second: I have slim to no tech prowess so this has been a steep learning curve (despite how relatively easy it has become over the past few years with designers creating forms, tutorials, and free stuff) what with buttons and banners and headers and layering. Third: Albeit not entirely unexpectedly (apparently being a blogger makes me an inherent comment whore) I love hearing what you have to say!

So thank you for all of your love, thank you for your auspcie, and thank you for taking time from your day to escape with me! Until tomorrow...