October in Prince Edward County

I've been poking around on the computer, since it's Saturday night (and that means hockey on TV, bleck!) and found some great photos I took last month.
We moved here one year ago today so we missed the fall colours last year with all the rushing around to pack up our house in Toronto for the big move. Well we certainly had a great showing of colour this year to enjoy to make up for it last year.

It really is achingly beautiful here through all season but fall really puts quite a show on. Every morning for the month of October I brought along my camera on my early morning drive to work at Cressy Tool & Die. I live in a bit of a valley and as I climb up the rock cut to the main road the sun would inevitably greet me as I crested the hill. Rising up over the lake in glorious golden hues with the mists still swimming across all the fields. It was really breathtaking but I never managed to stop the van and get out and take a picture. It always seems that when you see something like that when you try and photograph it and contain in that space it never does it justice. I think it has to do with the fact that your standing in the middle of incredible view with golden light and mists enveloping you.

So I basically chickened out and never tried. Also there always seemed to be another vehicle behind me and I didn't want to pull a tourist of hoping out with my camera in hand. I am trying to look like a local after all!! Tim says my hats give me away every time. I do have a rather fun collection of hats that I love to wear and they all are a bit of statement makers, hee hee! Funny, I don't think I've ever lived anywhere where I have actually been a "real" local to the place! Weird!

Anyway here are a few shots I took of the river standing beside our barn with the sun setting.

I really should have taken some shots this morning. There was a dusting of snow on the ground already and then big thick clumps of snow started falling. After about a half an hour when I walked outside it was like everything had been powdered with icing sugar and it was all quiet with that funny sense of muffled sound that comes when it snows like that. The snow must absorb alot of sound so it seems so much more still and quiet.
This property has such a great feel here and energy, especially the barn. I sure love being out there in the store. It must have something to do with the age of the building or something. Of course it could be that I've filled it with stuff I really like and it's neat and tidy unlike my house!! I think this summer I might try and rig up a cot to sleep upstairs in there on those really hot nights!

New Kitten

Well it's all my fault, I admit it. I don't know why I can't resist another pet...sigh. Meet our newest family member Smudge. It took us a long time getting to this name and no one will even call him that most times. It's always "hey kitten" or "kitty" or "fuzz butt" or something along those lines.

We were visiting a neighbour's farm and meeting all the cows, chickens and kittens and this little grey fuzz ball of affection I couldn't leave behind. I even had to convince the kids that they wanted him but kept saying that their father was going to freak. This was just shortly before Halloween. Funny, that was the same time last year that we found our Baxter at the Toronto Humane Society and brought him home.

Well the kitten thinks, as most small animals do, that everyone must love me and constantly climbs into the paws of fluffy Belle who is anything but thrilled with the intrusion. I think the kitten thinks that Belle is nice and warm with all that fur especially around her tail and behind. The problem comes when the kitten starts to paw and claw and play with Belle's fur. Usually Belle stands up suddenly the kitten tumbles off and then it all begins again a few minutes later when Belle finds another place to lie down.

Smudge is a very mellow little guy and has taken to the habit of sleeping with me every night. Everyone else was sleep tested but Leah has too many toys to fit the kitten and Tim always picks him and chucks him to the end of the bed and Quinn's loft bed is too high, yet. Apparently my neck is nice and warm and the perfect spot. Lucky me! All the damn purring makes me nuts and then the occasional stretches that cause sharp claws poking me in the chest is not a great way to acquire sleep! Oh well, it's my fault we have the silly fur ball and I'm getting better at falling back to sleep after he wakes me up to settle in for the night. This is Smudge sleeping in Tim's baseball/work hat.

Now for the weather report; it was an icy rainy snowy day with no buses but the kids got dropped at school anyways. Quinn was there with 2 other girls and Leah was at her school with a total of 5 other girls. They both had a great time playing all day while Tim and I worked. Tim was the one with the worst luck being stuck outside all day in that nastiness fixing a falling down barn, yuck.

Also tomorrow marks the offical one year mark of us moving into our house here in the County and we are going to celebrate by going to the evening Santa Claus parade in Bloomfield and camping on my boss' front lawn to watch it. There are lots of lights and a marching band so it should be a fun time.

Memories

It's been ages since I've had time to write here and I miss doing that. I promise to try a bit harder now that we are moving into what appears like it may be a quieter season.

Well it's been almost one year to the day that we left downtown Toronto for Prince Edward County and wow, what a year! Our business the Galloping Goat Gallery had a very successful first year with hopefully more to come. We are even having a "Customer Appreciation Day on this Sunday (Nov. 25th) with some of our artists visiting and regular customers dropping. My mom is bringing another load of her fresh baked biscotti, which has been hugely popular!

It's funny looking back at some photos of last Christmas when we had only been here 4 weeks how odd the house looks in the photos. It still looks like someone else's home. The curtains weren't up and walls were still all a whitish colour. At least I've managed to put a bit of colour on the walls now and it's starting to look more like we live here. Of course I haven't managed to print any of the photos from last year or for the past few years come to think of it. If there was a fire I would have to grab the computer harddrive since all the photos from the last 4 years are in it! It's going to cost a small fortune to print them all, not to mention weeks of sifting through the files to see what's worth printing. Ugh! I'm kind of missing the days where you had to take the film in to see what you had photographed.

It's funny this picture because I have another one just like it with the same goofy paper hats from the crackers except it was some time in the 1970's and I was the same age as my daughter Leah in the picture with all my aunts, uncles and grandparents! Does everyone have one of these pictures??

At least then you had them printed out once and a while. Of course then they were put into boxes with the intention of putting them into an album. Or better yet the intention of making a beautiful scrapbook with all those fun embellishments and ribbons, stickers and what-have-yous.
I really like scrapbooking but I find it difficult to do, which my friends think is odd since I'm an artist and used to be an illustrator and a graphic designer. Weird huh? Maybe I just think it way too much. I have a large rubbermaid box of scrapbook stuff and now I end up letting the kids use it for school projects. What a hell of alot of money I must have spent on the stuff in that box!