Great Friends and Blanche Nuit

I hope that you all had a fan-fricken-tastic weekend! We certainly did! A very dear friend of ours was in town for the weekend, so naturally we offered her an air mattress in our "guest room" (re: storage room). After some quick tidying (re: carefully stacking everything in the basement/closets), thermarest air mattresses, an old coleman air mattress and some blankets the room was quite hospitable. She even had a fresh new pillow to use. We had borrowed the mattress from a friend and it did not arrive with a pump. So this happened:

Mr.Bliss "blowing" up the mattress

Terrible innuendos aside (she and I were standing behind him, drink in hand, giggling like little girls), it worked really well!

Prairie Bliss Life Hack #1

In the event that you need to blow up an air mattress and you are lacking a pump you can use a small funnel and a hair blower. The end of the funnel must be small enough to fit into the nozzle (the thing you blow, tee hee) or fit tightly over the nozzle. The hair dryer must have a no-heat function. This one had a "cold shot" button that Mr. Bliss held down. Why cold? Well; the rubber may melt or be otherwise negatively affected, and you may also have bacterial growth within the mattress. You don't want that, trust me.

Nuit Blanche

The weekend with Mel was lovely, only made better by the occurance of Nuit Blanche! Our friend Matt Jenkins of Cloverdale Forge was directing an art display in Old Market Square on Saturday night. That's right, I said "forge", our friend Matt is an artisan Blacksmith. His work is simply amazing, follow him on twitter (@cloverdaleforge) to see his work.

The goal of the evening was to complete three bike racks that Matt had designed. Spectators were invited to enter the pit and swing a hammer, few took up the challenge but those that did enjoyed it a lot. Mel and I brought some sparkle and shine into the pit with matching head scarves that we had bought from Dollarama earlier in the day. We swung massive hammers, played with fire and smoked cigars for nearly nine hours in the beautiful autumn air with festivities all around us. It was an incredible night.
By the time we were done packing up the display it was 3am.
We had to leave at 5am to drive Mel and Matt to the airport.
It was after 6am when we finally went to bed.
We are too old for this shit.

My whole body is still sore from swinging that hammer!
What did you get up to this weekend? If you are from Winnipeg, did you attend any Nuit Blanche events? Did you come to Old Market Square to watch the sparks fly?
Let me know!

xoxo
Char