Would you believe it? We didn't do a lick of work on the house over the weekend. Instead, we just took it easy and enjoyed our weekend off.

On Saturday, we wandered around Edmonton's south side. We started off as we normally do, by heading to the Farmer's Market. We like shopping there, because the food is always fresh and the money stays in the community. Prices are pretty competitive with the big box stores (if only a little more expensive), but you get really high quality food that's often organically grown.

We have three regular stops on the tour through the Farmer's Market. The first is a baker, where I get my Saturday morning butter tart; second is a Polish woman (Grace), who makes a very acceptable garlic sausage and pepperoni. Our last stop is to Mom's Pies, where you can get exceptionally well-made pies in both "personal" and "regular" sizes. "Mom" and "Pop" actually know us now, and occassionally throw in an extra little pie for us. In fact, The pies are so good that we've had to start limiting ourselves to every second week in order that I not become obese.

After the farmer's market, we ran back home, picked up Cayce, and drove around the South side to do some garage sale browsing. Despite some pretty heavy rain, there were quite a few garage sales around our neighbourhood.

We both found some things to spend our money on. I found some (not so old) original Star Wars toys for my office (An X-Wing, a Snow Speeder, an Imperial Speeder Bike, and an Outrider (I had no idea what it was until just now), and Kirsten found some nifty antique butter boxes for our bathroom and an antique copper smoker that's sitting beside our couch. We also picked up a new bike for $8 (have you SEEN kirsten bargain? It's a wonder to behold). It's nice having a bike that both changes gears AND stops.

WARNING: Really Cute Dog Story: While we were tooling around town on Saturday, we left the puppy outside in the back yard. Because we're big sucks, we also opened the garage door so she could escape the rain and have a dry place to sit. I never mentioned it on the blog, but over the holiday weekend, my car was broken into; the bastards smashed my driver side window and completely destroyed the center console trying to get the CD player out. When they couldn't get the CD player out, they stole the faceplace and remote. I've been storing it in the garage since then to avoid it a) getting stolen and b) getting rained on.

Back to our story: When we came back from our afternoon, I looked in through the garage window, and saw Cayce sitting in the driver's seat, waiting for one of us to come and drive her to the dog park. She'd jumped in through the open driver side window, and just hung out there for an hour or so waiting for us to come back.

Saturday night, we had our friend Christie over for dinner, before heading off to her opening at neXtfest at the Red Strap Market (an art market in downtown Edmonton). Her paintings were quite good, as were some of the other paintings on display (we particularly liked Shane Krepakevich and Margo Millette). We also got free chai (and free chai concentrate!) from Steeps, who was set up in a corner.

On Sunday, we really took it easy; I took the dog for a bike ride (well, I rode the bike, she ran along side, which is her favourite morning exercise now), and Kirsten and I sat down to watch the entire 3rd season of Six Feet Under.