The View From Here

Cool Weather August

2010-08-27T19:10:00.004-04:00

Well the warmth seems like it's all gone for the summer, though looking at the forecast it is supposed to return over the next week. We shall see.

I even actually found some trees with leaves already changing! I'm not sure I'm ready to give up summer but I have to admit I do rather enjoy those cooler breezes and bundling back under a blanket to go to sleep.

Isn't it funny that September always seems to be about beginnings even though it is technically in the middle-ish of the year? Is this just because we have all developed that back to school attitude that we carry even into adulthood? I kind of like thinking of September as beginning a new phase and I've intentionally over the years started major changes in my life in September because I kind of like it starting then. Weird? maybe but it makes me happy and feel young, like buying all those fun back to school shiny new crayons and binders and cool new outfit.

Tim is jumping into a new phase and is now working with Rene at Scout Design. We are both of us thrilled about this and it's awesome that Tim has some great creative people to work with and interesting jobs to play with. It will be a real change having Tim working out at an office rather than in his studio in the house. Today was the first day of that and it was really quiet, especially since Quinn and Leah also where off to their Grandma's for a visit.

This transition will be interesting to see where it takes us and how I'm going to fit in my teaching around the Galloping Goat Gallery schedule. I love the teaching but it will be nice to have a little less financial pressure off of me and trying to squeeze in more work into already busy weeks of the store and the schools.

Life is never dull or slow around here. Life is just good!

No Dig Gardening Method

2010-05-15T07:15:00.002-04:00

This is seriously the best idea I have heard of in a very long time! For those of us who don't enjoy the thought of tearing out sod and trying to start a new garden this is brilliant!

The idea is that you just use those bags of triple mix or top soil (personally I would go with the triple mix since it is a much richer bag of dirt for nutrients and such) and place them on the ground and cut an opening in the top and a few drainage holes in the bottom and garden directly in the bag! No weeds since the bag is not allowing them to come through!

My Mom read an article about this idea and then I found this one online at the Vegetable Gardener

For me I need to move our very large vegetable patch to a different area of our yard. The problem is that the trees shade it for a good part of the afternoon. I imagine that our veggie garden was there from the beginning in this spot behind the barn a hundred years ago but someone planted trees about 20 or 30 years ago and the are now very big! The thought of trying to dig up a decent sized patch is a bit daunting so I thought that getting a few bags each year would be a good start on the move.

My plan is to lay out a thick pad of newsprint and wet it down on the grass to keep grass and weeds growing between the bags. Then lay about 9 bags of triple mix 3 x 3 on the newsprint with drainage holes punched through the back. I know the plastic isn't going to look all that nice but it will be great to kill the grass in that area. I'm going to plant in the bags this year and then next spring I will remove all the plastic and leave the dirt on the decomposing newsprint for the new garden. Each year I will add a new section of newsprint and bags so that eventually I'll have the veggie patch the size I would like.

I love the idea that you get the rich soil and not have to try to remove all that sod and eventually you'll have a great garden without serious back injury from all that digging!!

Count Down!

2010-04-26T19:42:00.005-04:00

Well this is it my last offical days off until after Labour Day weekend! Ack, that sounds awful but the perks are good. I get to be home and at work at the same time but of course that means there is no escape unless I leave the property.

It's been fun in the barn/shop that last few weeks since all my regular customers and friends have all been stopping in to say hi and check out all the new garden stuff that I collected up over the winter. It always feels like a reunion when people come in after not seeing them since before christmas.

It's fun too meeting the new people just visiting "The County" and telling them all the great places to see and places to eat. New people are often amazed that the County has been hidden from them all this time considering it's only 2 1/2 hrs from Toronto and 3 hrs from Ottawa. I guess all the advertising of the wineries and restaurants is starting to pay off.

It's hard to believe it is the first of May this Saturday and the start of the busy season. Boy is it going to be busy. Tim and I just finished up our after school Art Club programs, though Tim has the kids animation they did to download to DVD's for them still. Tim wasn't too sure about doing the Art Club teaching but he ended up really enjoying it and the kids had a great time doing stop motion animation. I'm looking forward to seeing the DVDs of their work when he finishes putting it together on the computer.

Now we are starting to ramp up the Summer Art Camp for kids and flyer the neighbourhood, schools and libraries. I'm also putting together a press release, which I admit intimidates me a wee bit but I'm pushing forward and going to do it anyways. Our local papers are pretty laid back so I probably have nothing to worry about. The only problem is I don't have hardly any pictures from the summer camp last year. I guess I was too busy teaching to keep the camera at ready. Also you have to be so careful about not having the kids faces in the pictures when using them for online stuff or advertising, this tends to make for some unexciting photos!

Off we run to keep the wheels turning and creating our own employment. I wonder do you think the government counts Tim and I as one of the unemployed or employed? Neither of us have been an employee of another company in a very long time, although those benefits people get sure do sound nice and weekends off, wow! I mean seriously that would be awesome!
We've been freelance so long now and it's become 2nd nature to be constantly looking for creative ways to pay the bills. A "real" job, or should I say a normal job with normal hours and scheduled days off would be a real luxury but I imagine both of us would end up walking away from that because I think we are basically nuts!

Hats, Hats and more Hats!

2010-02-21T21:21:00.006-05:00

I love the colours in this green hat, it was a surprising mix that just seemd right to me. A bit of tangy orange, fizzy purple, magenta and a real sage like green. A lady bought this hat in the fall for her daughter, I hope she loved it as much as her mom did. I should try and make this hat again or at least follow the colour palette, there was so much attention paid to it!

This red fizzy hat was another good colour combo. The turquoise just popped on this. It's funny how certain blues next to a certain colour that leans to the orange will make it vibrate and then you can't hardly look at it! This blue seems to almost do that, nothing like giving people eye strain when they are checking out your hat!

This blue hat is very similar to the red hat in that I used the same boucle only in blue rather than red for the ear flaps. I've heard alot of people complain about knitting with this yarn since it tends to split apart on them. Personally I haven't really had any problems with it. I like because of that bit of sheen and it's rather woolly so it knits up nice and quick. It is also fascinating to me how the same hat style with a different topper, as in a pompom or a tassle looks completely different when you wear them. Certain people look way better with the tassle and others need the pompom. I'm more of a pompom wearer, the tassle doesn't suit me as well, no idea why that is.

This hat just seems icy, shivery and reads coolness, as in the temperature though I'm sure you would look cool in the other respect as well wearing it!
I love citrus lime green with turquoise together, my favourite colour combo these days. I even painted my house using those colours. The colour of water and spring and bright days, love all of those things so to live in the middle of that is the best. Especially true on the grey days of February!

Here is Leah wearing Hanna's Christmas present from her mom that I whipped up for them. Hanna is 9 and opposed pompom's quite vigorously so I decided to do a twist tail on a hat that was in the store and Hanna saw that and was in love with that style. Her mom emailed me later to ask for me to make a similar style in pink with a touch of grey to match her snowsuit. Unfortunately I couldn't quite get Leah to tilt her head right so you can't see the pearly grey in the hat. It turned out to be a beautiful colour combo that I'm glad I was asked to play with. I'm definitely going to do that again!

Sprained Ankles and Crutches

2009-12-09T12:08:00.003-05:00

Well apparently the universe is telling me to slow down since I went down the front steps the wrong way on my ankle and now get to hobble around on crutches for a while. Definitely not the cool fashion accessory that it was in teenage years.

I haven't got the shopping done for the festive season, I hate handing the job over since I actually like going shopping and finding cool things. Tim is busy with a few small projects and for him that usually means he only wants to focus and work on those and every mundane task around the house or chores needs to take a back seat or in other words, "Not going to happen". This should be interesting the next week or so since he is going to now have to do the grocery shopping, goat feedings, and run laundry up and down the stairs and make some meals plus keep up with his deadlines. I am usually the multi-tasker in the family and don't mind it at all, though the grocery shopping and meal making I would gladly pass on. It's just kind of boring and food preparation is the worst when you have a never ending complaining 9 and a half year old that hates everything and sits for hours (litterly hours) picking at his food and trying to stop gagging with every mouthful.

I'm in the Christmas Craft show called Busy Hands that is upstairs of Books & Company this weekend and I don't really know how the heck I'm going to manage it. My mom is coming to take care of the shop at the barn and Tim was supposed to go to Waterloo with the kids for the extended family xmas dinner with all his aunts and uncles. I'm taking my knitting and some other things to sell along with Tim's concrete sculptures. I think Tim is going to have to do the carrying in of all the stock and setup and then drive to Waterloo and be back in time to take it all down and load it into the van on Sunday. We are trying to figure out if I can manage to do this show on my own while he is away or that maybe he will have to skip it this year.

Too bad this weekend wasn't so busy and of course that I hadn't fallen down some steps and ended up on crutches! So here I sit with my laptop and knitting and watch the kids having a blast outside on their first snow day of this school season. Poor Tim is stuck with all the chores for a while and the kids are already getting annoyed with my requests to help here and there or to get me something. This is only day 1! Hopefully for everyone's sake I'm a fast healer!

All Handmade Show coming up!

2009-11-19T09:59:00.003-05:00

Well I'm jumping in with both feet and Tim's feet too! We are going in Vicki's very awesome craft show which has become more and more successful every year. The rules are you can only sell the things that we created ourselves. I'm going to take my hats, Tim's concrete sculpture, and my latest venture... dat dat dat daaaa... all natural scented soy candles!!! We are going into production work to create scented candles that don't dirty the air with nasty chemicals like those paraffin wax ones. I love scented candles and the paraffin ones are now starting to bother me and my asthma. I also want to get creative again and have something that we can sell that is "County made" and then offer the candles at a wholesale level to other stores so we can have a business that will keep us going all year round. The shop is great but it's only open seasonally and it's too quiet for us on the shoulder seasons so we need a business to keep us going financially and fill in those gaps when the shop is quiet. Tim was offered a job back in the city of Toronto that would be for about 14 months and we made the commitment to turn it down. This is very scary since it would have made a very nice financial cushion to see us through for a while. It is really hard on all of us when Tim is gone all week and exhausted on weekends. Not to mention us missing him and him missing out on everything the kids are up to and of course all the drama that happens in a normal school week!

So decision was made to say no and find work here for Tim. He is going out and shopping around his unique style of Graphic Design, and Illustration work and hoping that will bring him some jobs and he is vamping up our website and ads to show that he can do that kind of work. He always takes unique approaches to design and everyone he has worked for and created ads, logos, business cards and such have been thrilled with his concepts and he is an incredibly talented artist. He makes some wickedly funny character drawings and comic style illustrations.

Of course these types of jobs are all found through word of mouth so pass around the word and thanks to the joys of the internet long distance creations are completely possible! Tim is currently working on our very funny family Yule card. He did a caricature of all of us and we printed it on cars to mail out last year. This was last year's version. He managed to add in all our individual quirky bits that makes it so perfect for us. I can't wait to see what this year's will look like, hee hee!

Our Baby Goats Are Here!

2009-11-02T09:54:00.005-05:00

We finally went to visit Little Blessings Farm, a short drive from us, where Tricia Daley raises her pygora goats. Pygora goats are a cross breed of a small pygmy goat with an angora goat with the long curly coats that can be spun and turned into mohair yarn.

These two sisters have a pygmy mom and an angora dad and were born this past spring. We will hopefully get their birth date from Tricia soon so we can celebrate it when it comes around.

Right now they are super timid and nervous since we brought them home in the dark last night. It was only 6 pm but it was completely black outside. The poor girls stood on the ramp most of the night so I imagine they are pretty tired today. This is the first time they have been separated from their mom and the rest of the herd.
We brought food out this morning and with some coaxing only one would eat from our hands. As soon as we left the pen to get the kids on the bus they started naa-ing out for us to come back. They sound oddly like a child crying right now. The one girl seems to have more of the angora coat with lots of curls and length while the other one is a bit shorter and less curl more like the pygmy's coat.
They need names and we are all a bit stuck so we are giving them some time to get used to the place and for us to get to know them and see their personalities. I kind of like the idea of coming up with something very girly for them. I like the idea that it has something to do with the colour white or the moon and so far Luna is the only thing I can come up with I sort of like.

Names are so tricky at first and then the name seems to just be taken on by the animal and you can't imagine it being any other name. Our cat Baxter, a big black and white boy was named Pixie at the humane society but it seemed so wrong for him. Now he could only be a Baxter or Bax for short and it suits him to a tee. I'm liking the names Cora, Holly, Molly, Lu-lu, and of course the kids don't like those at all and want Frizzy and Fluffy! Short names work better with animals or at least ones that can have a short nickname so you can call them easily.

I really hope these girls are less timid and will be able to be good pets for us to play with, walk and have customers visit. We were spoiled by Coco, Smore and Nana Aggie since they were so easy to have around and had no problem being fussed over and petted. Really they were more like demanding the attention than anything.

I moved 2 cords of wood in our barn a week or more ago on my own so that we can create an indoor pen area for the girls. Goats don't like the rain and with the snow not far away we need to give them a better shelter from the wind and snow. We've got all the things we need to make the pen, Tim just needs some time to nail the thing together. We might even have chickens this spring to live with the goats, we'll see how it goes this winter. I just hope the coyotes don't discover our baby girls. I don't think they could get into the pen but they sure will scare the goats and us! Not to mention once they know they are there they will return over and over to work on the problem of getting into the pen. This year we have a higher number of coyotes in the County and you can hear them most nights and they come pretty close from the sounds of them. Once the river freezes they use that as their main route to move around. Those paw prints are pretty big on those things. Apparently we have hybrid coyotes that have mixed bred with wolves so they can get pretty big. We live very close to McMann Bluff where a few packs live since it is all heavily wooded and a large acreage where they can live undisturbed by people. I need to get one of those crazy horns that they blow at sports games since I don't want to ever own a gun so if the coyotes show up I can run out there making a hell of a wracket so they will be scared off. Or I'll have to start practicing with a slingshot and stones!!

Samhain Gathering

2009-10-27T10:31:00.006-04:00

This year my friend Charlene and I decided to go on an adventure to the Womyns Spirit Retreat in Hockley Valley. It was this past weekend and was a gathering of women at the Ecology Retreat Centre there to honour and celebrate Samhain.

There were about 50 women and we all arrived on Friday afternoon and that's about the time the rain started really coming down and then the hydro died up at all the buildings but the dining hall and kitchen, which luckily was on a different circuit. It was actually fine since we had flashlights and there were woodstoves in most of the buildings. There was no heat of course in the bedrooms but I luckily had my old wool poncho along from my younger backpacking days so tucking that over me in my sleeping bag kept me cosy all night. The first ritual of the night was done lite only by candles which of course makes it much more magical.
The next morning was still dark when I got up and headed for the only working bathroom down the path at the dining hall. It was all good though since Linda the cook was up and about and had a pot of water already to go for tea, I was a happy girl. I love mornings of solitude to watch the sun rise. After I finished my tea and I could actually see outside a bit better I headed for the labyrinth to walk as the sun brightened the sky behind all the grey clouds.
Char and I met some very interesting and amazing women and learned alot from the weekend. We each took some workshops in the afternoon, though I think Char regretted the choice to do yoga. Her muscles were not too happy with her after that!
I got to play with beeswax and learn a new way to use it which I am going to totally use for Yule gifts!

We learned a whole bunch of songs and chants from the rituals and I actually have come away remembering a bunch of them! I can never remember tunes to songs but I think we sang them so much and they are fairly simple they finally stuck with me! Yeah! I also came up with lots of ideas for Leah's coming of age ceremony that will probably happen this spring. On Sunday for the last ritual we actually cast the circle using bubbles, it was so fun!

Char and I both want to go again next year and possibly bring along our daughters. Leah has already said she wants to come but she needs to go through her coming of age before she can join the women's circle. She would probably have just as much fun with the younger girls circle though she does get shy with new kids.

It was a beautiful weekend and I really enjoyed it and I didn't mind the loss of hydro or the rain that came and went. The vegetarian food was fabulous and luckily they also had gluten free for those of us that needed it. It was wonderful sharing and learning from all the women that were there and I'm looking forward to next year.

The Winds Howl and the Trees Fall, Again!

2009-09-28T20:08:00.006-04:00

Can you see Leah and Quinn behind our newest fallen tree?

The wind very suddenly and abruptly blew through our place and just up the road on Morrison Point this afternoon. 5 trees fell on Morrison Point and I didn't even realize this one fell down until Leah came home from school and was bouncing around in excitement over the destruction!

The roots were yanked right out of the ground and left a very large crater in the shoreline. It ripped off a few limbs of the cedar and pine trees on it's way down as well.

I was busily working in the upstairs of the barn painting the studio room and didn't even notice the tree falling! Of course there was a constant howl of wind and crashing of smaller branches against the tin roof to distract me from the bigger crash of a tree falling.

This is the 3rd tree to fall in 2 years. At this rate we are going to run out of trees and shade very soon! I'm going to go out and buy a nice oak tree I think to replace this one this weekend. In about 60 years it should be at least as tall as this one. Hopefully someone in the future will appreciate the tree like I appreciate the person who planted all our trees that we have today. This tree was a black locust, at least that's what I think it was. It used to bloom large white clusters of flowers just after the lilacs finished blooming and they smelled incredible. I will miss this tree very much.

Published Writings!

2009-09-01T09:45:00.003-04:00

I was asked to write a piece on Quinn's summer job as an actor in the Festival Players production of "Schoolhouse" so here is the link to that story. Firsts in Prince Edward County
Quinn had a great time and is already thinking about trying out for another play that is happening this fall. Leah also has the bug and is really keen to show Quinn he isn't the only thespian in the family!
There are other stories here that are fun to read and I've gotten a real kick out of having my story about Quinn being on here. It was harder than I thought to write but I did manage to muddle through.

So I haven't blogged in a while, too insanely busy I guess. The Galloping Goat summer art camp for kids was a success but also exhausting. I also went to Montreal with Tim and my friend Charlene and her guy for 3 days and we had a great time. The gift show was going on so there was alot of shopping involved and the guys were good about it and didn't hover too much!

Now it's the first day of school for Quinn and Leah. Quinn is now at Leah's school since he is starting grade 4 today so he is now officially at the big kid school. Crazy how that time flew. It seems like only a year ago I was desperately wishing for Quinn to finally be in grade 1 and full days at school and "BAM" he is in grade 4 and Leah is in grade 7 and really, really close to high school!! I think time is speeding up!

Milford Fair is coming up next, Saturday Sept. 19th. I'm not prepared, we were supposed to come up with a clever parade entry but so far nothing. I need a creative fun idea. I have had the offer of goats to borrow again but not sure if we are going to do that again or not.

The busy pace never seems to let up and now we have more stock coming since I ordered more merchandise in Montreal. Hopefully we'll have a gorgeous fall with lots of visitors to the barn. It really is the most beautiful time of year.

Horse time

2009-06-09T22:28:00.003-04:00

This is Indee, she is this gorgeous painted horse that I met a few months ago and have been lucky enough to ride most weeks. The first time I saw her I was immediately drawn to her and there was something about her that I loved. This isn't a great picture of her here, with her ears back but she is very sweet and gentle and willing to please. The trick is for me, a new rider (I used to ride as a kid) and her being a bit green (this means she hasn't got alot of experience or training in having a rider and the signals that tell her what I want her to do) is to get our signals right and both of us knowing what to do with the information I'm sending her with my legs and hands. I tend to give crossed signals since they are different than the signals that I was taught as a kids when I rode english.
Indee is a trail horse and is happiest on the trail and carrying her big western saddle. I tried riding her tonight with a much smaller english saddle. The western saddle is great for trail riding and very comfy and helps with balancing but when it comes to riding in a ring and using your legs to give signals and doing a rising trot the western saddle gives alot of blisters! Indee and I had our best ride tonight with me giving the right signals and her understanding me better and willing to go along with my directions.

Indee is actually for sale and I am in love with her but don't really know that much about keeping a horse and certainly can't afford the cost and the upkeep but everytime I ride Indee I can't help but dream and wish. If we had more land, a bigger barn, steady income... the list goes on. I even told Tim I would sell my motorcycle in a second if I could own Indee. I have wanted a horse since I was a very little girl and was always horse crazy and read every horse fiction book I could get my hands on.

Indee will be at the stables where Leah and I ride for the rest of June and then she is heading back home since she didn't sell. I keep thinking that maybe I could make a deal with the owner to pay for her board for a year and then get to ride her whenever I want, so at least it would feel like I own her.

I love my cat Baxter and have a strong attachment to him, but our dog Belle I never connected with the same way. I had a dog from a puppy when I was 13 and I had an incredibly strong connection with him and was devastated when he passed at 16 yrs old. Now I seem to have made this connection with a horse from the moment I saw her and she seems to feel the same. She comes to me when I call her and when Leah tried riding her she couldn't get her to follow her directions and Indee wouldn't do anything but try to follow me into the stables. I've even had dreams about her. It's a bit ridiculous I know, I feel all the same obsession I had when I was a child and just wanted to be with the horses all the time.

At least I have a few more rides to enjoy with Indee and maybe in the future I'll find a way to actually own her. You never know and if it is meant to be everything will fall into place.

Mother's Day

2009-05-09T21:59:00.002-04:00

Here it is Mother's Day tomorrow and I'm working, as usual. Good thing I love being out in the shop visiting with all the people that wander in!

I was a good girl and invited my mom for dinner and she is contemplating coming but hates the drive. It's only 45 mins of country driving but she always seems to stress about the distance. It's not that far! It's not like there is a highway or too much traffic. It's really pretty and you get to look at all the trees, cows, sheep and occasional horse as you drive, not to mention the good music you can listen to on the radio. I like driving, especially alone, as in no children chattering in the back seat. I play the music I like, flip through the stations as I want, sing at the top of my lungs if I feel like it, even occasionally do some seated dance moves and drumming on the steering wheel.
It's funny when I lived in the downtown core of Toronto she seemed to stress less about that drive from Belleville. Of course when she came to Toronto she always stayed a few days and we would usually run around the city on the subway and visit our favourite spots for lunch and a bit of shopping.

It's all about your mind set, if you keep stressing over something you dislike but still have to do, you will end up really stressed and hating it even more. My mom always says to me "Don't you just hate putting out all that stuff (as in our garden items for the Galloping Goat) everyday and bringing it back in every night?" I don't really think about it actually is what I usually say, if I did I would make myself nuts! In actual fact, yes I find it a pain in the butt dragging all the stuff in and out of the barn everyday! But I sure as heck don't want to hash it over and whine about it when I still need to do it. I intentionally don't think about it, I stay in the house until the last possible minute doing the usual morning stuff and then dash out to start the process. So far after all this time I've managed to do pretty good with doing this annoying chore and not thinking about it before hand. I guess it helps playing around with setting it up a bit differently just to distract myself mostly!

The tricky part happens when it rains,like it did today, what a downpour! Luckily I left it all out and then the rain went away and the wind picked up and dried out all of the flags and tags just in time to put it all away again!

Happy Mother's Day tomorrow to all the Mom's out there and hope you all get flowers and breakfast in bed!

Hording Cat

2009-04-04T22:13:00.003-04:00

Continuing with the theme of a very odd little cat, our dear Smudge, this is a shot of some of the things that Smudge has absconded with from various parts of the house and left the kids wondering what happened to that thing!

Since Smudge is deaf he doesn't realize the racket he makes when he starts whacking these objects around. It always seems to happen around 5 am or so and it's always me chasing him through the house trying to grab the item he is knocking around and banging off of everything so we can go back to sleep. I swear since Smudge has come into our home I haven't managed to get a full night sleep more than 1 or 2 nights in a row! It's like when the kids were babies again!

All these items somehow seem to migrate together and end up under our kitchen stove which is gas, I might mention, so the sight of a lighter wedged under it bothers me a fair amount!

Smudge loves those small rubber bouncing balls the best and loves to rip around after them and leap in the air when you bounce them. I had no idea we even owned that many! Along with half of an easter egg and a gold foil chocolate, a t-lite a tiny toy penguin and the most odd a small plastic grey cat that looks an awful lot like Smudge, weird! Lip gloss tube, a door jam, a few clickits, a piece of quartz stone, a medival shield from playmobil soldiers, a pistashio, half of a plastic holder from a kinder surprise egg and 9 rubber balls. After picking up all of this stuff I gave a ball back to Smudge, 10 mins later it's missing so Tim give him another and as I write this it's gone under the stove!! I can't reach it without a coat hanger so Smudge is now lying by my feet starring at the stove hoping it will spit his ball back out. I think I'll leave it until morning so I can go to bed without interuption of my sleep. Who am I kidding, he will just find something else to knock around and make lots of noise with! Arrgh!

Smudge, aka Hockey Cat on Ice!

2009-04-04T22:00:00.003-04:00

Smudge is definitely the oddest cat I've ever lived with and there have been a few over the years. We had the perfect conditions on the river for skating and a bit of hockey. It had rained buckets and then flash froze on top of the already thick ice on the river so no snow removal and no flooding, just perfect skating ice as far as you could see.

So we run out there one evening before dinner and start hitting the tennis ball around and skating back and forth and the dog comes out but won't go near the ice since it is super slippery. Our older cat Baxter checks us out from the shore and then wanders off. Not Smudge, he is out on the ice and following us around and then starts chasing across the ice everytime someone shoots the ball! It's a good thing he has claws because he went skidding a few times but managed to recover fairly quickly. It must have been so crazy cold on his paws! His tail was puffed up to twice it's size so I imagine he was pretty chilly but he would not leave the ice until we did. Crazy cat!

Awesome New Technology

2009-03-09T09:44:00.002-04:00

So it all started when the dryer didn't turn off and it ended up running all evening and all night until I happened to wander downstairs the next morning and heard it going. I seriously can't imagine what that is going to cost me in electricity! The clothes were boiling hot and I feel pretty lucky it didn't start a fire.

After that we started setting timers so it would remind us to go down and turn it off when we used it but we also noticed that the heat on the one session wasn't really hot. It was taking close to 2 hours to dry things. We bought a drying rack which then only took 1 day or 2 to dry everything. We also started checking out dryers and costs and going online to see which dryers had more problems than others. I noticed that of course if you bought the washer with the dryer you could save a bit more money.

The washer we were currently using was an old coin operated, top loading machine. You actually didn't need any quarters but you did have to slide the coin slot in to turn the machine on. There were only 2 settings, warm or cold wash, both were basically cold. There was no spin cycle or rinse cycle, just on or off if the lid was up. In doing my research I found out that this ancient machine was using approx. 40 gallons of water per load! We are on a well and we have water shortages in the dry months, August to November. When I checked out water usage on front loading machines and they only use 12 gallons I started working on Tim that we needed to replace both machines. He balked at the cash outlay for both machines but while I was working on him the washing machine started acting up and wouldn't turn on. I swear I didn't do anything to it! I think I must have hurt it's feelings when I was talking about sending it the way of the scrap heap.

When Tim started to agree with me about getting the new machines, that was it for the washing machine, it refused to start. Laundry began to pile up rapidly while I frantically did more research into which machines people had found to be disasters and which were fabulous. Then of course there was the price checking all over town for the best deal.

I ended up at Future Shop and picked up the brand LG and got the stacking set with free delivery, which of course wouldn't deliver for another week! There was laundry everywhere in our house. The kids were not happy since they actually were stuck wearing all those clothes that had been previously buried at the bottom of their drawers that weren't quite cool enough to be seen in.

Finally the machines showed up all shiny and new, which is a first for me, I've never bought brand new machines before! Tim and I managed to stack them after Tim hooked everything up and then spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to get a normal cycle out of the machines according to the manual. They really make these things very complicated, seriously how many people out there actually use more than 2 different cycles when they do their wash?

The machines have digital displays and pretty sounding bells and chimes for when they are finished. They so far haven't shaken themselves across the floor or anything. The clothes have turned out nice and clean and we leave the door of the washer open when not in use so it doesn't get smelly. The dryer has truly amazed us though, it actually drys clothes completely in 41 minutes!! It might have something to do with the washing machines ability to spin the clothes almost completely dry but still 41 minutes! Wahoo! I should have bought these machines 2 yrs ago when we moved in and saved us a bundle in water and energy! Tim and I, as of now, are still trying to race each other to get to the machines first to put the laundry in because of the novelty of the machines. I'm letting him win mostly since I know it won't last but it's fun for now making him think he is winning. Hee hee

Children and Their Funny Food Issues

2009-02-17T12:25:00.005-05:00

My daughter, Leah is now 11 yrs old and is getting really fussy with eating meat. Of course giving it up means headaches for me and trying to get protein in other ways. There is no way she will eat tufu and she can't stand beans or legumes so other than cheese and dairy not alot of choices. She will eat fish happily but finding good fresh fish is a bit of a challenge not to mention the cost of it. I personally love fish and seafood but we just can't afford to have it more than once a week and the frozen stuff is just kind of lousy!

Leah loves sushi along with Tim and I, Quinn of course hates it! It's always the restaurant of choice with Quinn complaining the whole time. He usually manages to eat plain rice and miso soup and occasionally they'll have those deep fried chicken wings so he does survive.

Food is always such an issue in our house and a fight most times. Quinn will spend hours, yes, seriously hours! at the dinner table nibbling like a mouse only slower! At least a mouse has enough sense to eat quickly before getting stomped on! Unless the meal is completely highly processed and of the fast food variety with no veggies or fruit in sight, Quinn will fight us to the bitter end to avoid eating anything healthy. This pic at the sushi restaurant just so completely sums up Quinn at all dinner tables. Fists up ready to fight it out with us and a mask on so a fork couldn't possibly enter his mouth with the poison that I feed my family. What a monkey!

Leah on the other hand eats more like a 30 yr old with lots of veggies, though there are few fruits she will eat. She hates processed foods, exactly the opposite of Quinn of course. She actually hates all donuts and even the timbits at Tim Hortons, seriously, isn't that nuts?

My kids don't even like bananas, they actually agree on that amazingly. What kid doesn't like bananas?? Peanut and butter and banana sandwiches rock! Oh how I miss loaves of soft white bread with that delicious crispy outside crust. The smell just about brings me to my knees. Being gluten-free is tough. I love going into bakeries and just standing there and breathing in that glorious smell! Luckily I'm not celiac so on occasion I do indulge and not always, but sometimes I pay for it later with all those nasty reactions that remind me to stay away!

Can't you just smell that bread when you close your eyes! Can you tell it's lunch time while I'm writing this?!!

Winter Projects

2009-01-21T19:46:00.001-05:00

Isn't it funny how after christmas is done all that sparkly, snowy wonderland becomes annoying and a big cold pain in the butt!!! It's snowing, again, the driveway is filling with snow, again. I need to haul wood from the barn to the house, again! I need to drag the 1969 snowblower out of the barn and spend an hour blowing out the driveway, again!

Tim had surgery a week ago on his leg and is now hobbling around only slightly better than he was 3 days ago. The doctor wasn't kidding that he would need 2 weeks off! So that means I get to shovel, snowblow, haul wood, drag the garbage and manage the lighting of the woodstove all by myself. This is fine when he is away, I can handle all of this without any great issue but it's the overseeing of my darling husband while doing these chores I could do without! He has been a wee bit cranky from the pain and bored so being under this much scrutiny is a bit trying at times.

I have been cutting and laying ceramic tiles around our woodstove in the livingroom. I left a border of 6" around the 13" tiles to play with mosiacing that area. I've been collecting up bits of floor tiles at our Habitat for Humanity store in Belleville (The Restore) for months. I spent a day in my studio smashing them all to small bits so I could puzzle piece them back together in a random way for my fancy border. I spent 2 days messing around and coming up with a look I liked and then started gluing down the bits. After 2 full days I only had a small section done, about 3 feet, Tim didn't like it. Thought the pattern wasn't very good and the spaces too large and ... blah, blah, blah. Then he told me I needed to leave more space between the wood floor edge and the tiles. So I said nothing just picked up a hammer and scrapper and removed the 3 feet of glued down mosiacs. I was not too happy. I had asked how much space to leave ages ago and he had said a 1/4" but now he thinks he'll need 1", grr.
So my livingroom is a mess, of containers of broken tiles for mosaics and drop clothes under them and buckets of glue. Now the fun has been taken out of the project and I don't want to do it... sigh. I think I'll just wait until he is now longer living on the couch in the livingroom recooperating. That way I can play in peace without all the "help" and "suggestions" I wish it was not so cold out so I could go for a walk and revel in the tranquility of the great outdoors. It's even a bit too cold for this Canadian girl. I mean when you are already wearing your longjohns under your jeans and then ski pants over that and your thighs and butt are still going numb it means you need to stay near the woodstove! I hope that groundhog has good news in a week and a half!

Yule - The Darkest Night

2008-12-23T15:00:00.002-05:00

Since Mother Winter decided to show off on Sunday with another huge dumping of snow and lots of wind our Winter Solstice gathering was postponed until Monday, which was yesterday.

Thanks to Valery and Charlene with the planning and writing that was needed for the ritual it went really well and everyone seemed to enjoy it. We cast our circle with candles and poured the melted wax into a bowl of water to see the shapes that would appear to give us insight into the coming year.
There was a mediation, with a minor incident of my cat Smudge lighting his tail on fire with a candle! Luckily the cat didn't even feel it and the candle was blown out for safety. His tail has a section of fur that is a bit shorter now. The smell of burned fur is definitely less than pleasant!

We sang some traditional caroles with words that are more appropriate to the honouring of the Goddess and the returning of the light at this time. It was a good laugh trying to remember the new words without falling into the habit of singing the christian version.

We had an exchange of crystals as gifts and as always we all seemed to receive what we needed most. We even did a craft! We wrote a message to ourselves on a square of paper that will not be opened until Imbolc (Feb 1st) and then folded it into an orgami star for safe keeping.

Then of course there was the feasting after of all the yummy things everyone brought. A fun afternoon with a wonderful group and everyone left with a warm and connected feeling to each other and to our mother earth.
Bright Blessings to all at this Yule time. May the darkness nurture you in it's comforting embrace and may you find it energizes you with it's quiet stillness in readiness for the coming of spring.

There are cookies and then there are Cookies!!

2008-12-11T21:17:00.003-05:00

Tis the season for baking in my house. I can't seem to resist that temptation of baking cookies for yule and christmas just like my mom always did when I was a kid. Problem is 1. I don't want to eat the damn things 2. I shouldn't eat them because they are made with flour and wheat and I do not get along very well and 3. I have no will power and I don't need the things in my house!!

But as usual I start asking the kids what kind of cookies do they want to make and then it all gets out of control. Leah wants shortbread, a favourite of everyone but Quinn, and Quinn wants these sugar cookie stocking cookies with chocolate chips and nuts in them.

So we started this evening on the stocking cookie dough and Quinn wants marshmallows instead of nuts to be rolled into them. Which made a bit of a mess when the marshmallows kind of EXPLODED! They sure don't look like stockings any more! The kids were disappointed but enthusiastically offered to eat them anyways, what great kids I have!

So on we go to shortbread, which I truly love but of course I need to make gluten free shortbread. Well the internet has all these lovely recipes for gluten free "melt in your mouth" shortbread. Seriously I don't think anyone who wrote this has eaten "real" shortbread in a very long time! Melt in your mouth? well kind of if you like that gritty fine grain sandy feel that rice flour seems to always leave in your mouth.
Well as usual I can't leave a recipe alone and have had some success with gluten free pancakes by mixing in a variety of flours. I used less of the rice flour and made use of amaranth flour to make up the difference plus the cornstarch they called for. Well I mixed it with the butter and icing sugar as called for in the recipe and tasted the dough and bleck! Nasty flavour and gritty! So I thought it's time to leave the purity of shortbread behind and just save the dough. I splashed in vanilla and then went for the frangelico, my fav liquor. It helped the taste but I wanted to actually taste the flavour of the frangelico and it was barely noticable. I moved on to amaretto and splashed that in. That kicked it up a few notches! I had to add in more rice flour and cornstarch and more icing sugar to make it less sticky. I of course don't measure but just kept messing with it until it seemed the right consistency.
I threw the almond onto the cookies on the 2nd sheet since these cookies will end up on a cookie plate at some point and I wanted to give a heads up that they aren't the usual kind of shortbread.
So in the end they do melt nicely in the mouth, the flavour is Ok with a nice amaretto overtone and the texture I can live with but still a wee bit gritty. I am going to continue to experiment until I find a way to make shortbread that is as good as my whipped shortbread recipe and is gluten free. Those shortbread cookies are worth the belly aches until I crack this problem. Well I'll try and keep it down to 2 cookies, those pains are not much fun.

Magic

2008-12-08T20:25:00.004-05:00

There is magic in a house decorated in lights, blanketed in drifts of snow, under a star spangled indigo sky.

There is magic in the frozen stillness of the river. The constant ebb and flow and lapping of water has vanished and leaves only silence...

There is magic in a single flake of snow captured on a brightly coloured mitten. The amazement of it's perfection and the utter wonderment that it is completely unique from all the others falling from the sky and piling on the ground.

Blessed Be at this magical time of year.

Beauty All Around

2008-12-08T19:02:00.003-05:00

Sunsets lately have been incredible. I wonder if it has something to do with the cold air. The colours are so much more intense. This picture was taken on the beach by a rental cottage near the sandbanks at Thanksgiving.

It must be because we are still new here that everything seems so much more beautiful. I constantly see these views that just seem to cry out to be photographed. The snow, the fog, the morning mists, the spring rains and even the heavy heat of the summer all seem to have become so much more ethereal here.

We've now lived here 2 years and yet it still feels like we have only just got here. We have made lots of friends here and feel very much at home. We started to drive a bit more "county" on the roads now that we've figured out where the roads take us. We still haven't managed to get to visit all the places we have been wanting to yet in the County. I think I need to make a list and a plan so we can see all these places that I've only seen in photos.

It's funny how this place seems to fit so well for me. It's like everything I did before, whether it was work or art or just things I learned from other people, have all come together and make sense and I can apply better here. It's like I needed all those previous experiences and they were laid out in front of me with the ultimate plan of where I was going to be in the future when I was going to actually to need all that information.

It's funny I even like the snow better here, though I have a hell of a lot more shoveling to do here! It's feeling very festive outside today with all the snow, though the weatherman says it's going to be raining by late tomorrow, bleck! Quinn is quite put out that it's supposed to rain and he'll lose all the snow to sled it. World's best present last year turned out to be the $3.99 Canadian Tire blue plastic flying saucer for sledding. The kids love them since they don't sink in the snow like the crazy carpets and are much easier to just throw the thing down and jump on it to go down the little hills. Not to mention you do get a pretty good spin happening on the bigger hills. I had one when I was a kid and it really was an awesome sled machine!

Knitted finger puppets

2008-11-30T23:14:00.005-05:00

Our family tradition is to make homemade gifts for Yule, which is Dec 21st. It usually ends up being me on my own creating gifts for everyone but Tim is starting to get into it and the kids are a bit too now.

Last year I asked my son, aged 7 1/2 yrs at the time, what he would like me to make. Since the last thing I wanted to do was go through all this time and work to have it be completely unappreciated. He asked for finger puppets and being the knit lover that I am I scoured the internet in search of patterns. I finally found a spiderman that someone had created and that was the jumping off point for all the superheros and supervillans that Quinn loves to play with.

Batman was the most complicated since I made a cape that I attached on afterwards. These little guys were surprisingly quick to create and alot of fun to design.
They aren't technically finger puppets since they fit 2 of my fingers about 3 of Quinn's but he seriously loves them. This really surprised me but I guess he thinks they are really cools because they are superheros, Actually now that I look at these pics again I remember I did Spidey first and he was really tricky because of all the switching of colours to make his suit. Spidey and Venom I embroidered on their spiders and the eyes were embroidered on everyone. Venom has this weird long red tongue so I tooks some red yarn and looped it through his embroidered fangs and braided the yarn so it sticks out, perfectly! So there you have it Spiderman, Batman, Hulk in his purple shorts and Sandman and Venom.

For this year Quinn has requested Iron Man, Ghostrider and of course all the Star Wars characters from the new Clone Wars movie. It's going to be a lot of late night knitting...sigh.

Chilly Night

2008-11-30T22:33:00.005-05:00

I am sitting in front of a wonderful smelling fire that is keeping my feet toasty but my bedroom will be of course ice cold. I love the woodstove but wish I had an electric blanket to at least take the frost off the sheets before I climb into bed.

Don't get me wrong I love a cool bedroom to sleep but on the really cold nights I tend to go to bed shivering and wake an hour later shaking with chills, no amount of blankets seem to be enough. I've started the habit of wearing a zipped hoodie over my flannel pjs to and wear the hood up so I keep my head warm.

Maybe I should wear one of my hats to bed!

The weather is throwing some nasty snow and rain at us right now and there is a prediction of no buses tomorrow, the kids, of course, are ecstatically hopeful that this will happen.

My week is going to consist of coming up with creative games and decorations for Leah's 11th birthday party this Saturday. I also need to take a run to Belleville to gather loot for the party goers, grab a couple of xmas gifts that are currently on sale (hopefully there will be some left after the weekend shoppers!) bake a cake, clean, and decorate. I'm a sucker for a theme party and Leah has requested a wizard, witch magical party. So we've decorated our spare room with fabric and black lights for the oracle that is coming to tell the students their future. It's actually Leah's Gramma that is doing the honours and doning a hat, cape and veil to add to the mystery.

I've been drapping blue xmas lights and halloween purple/orange lights all over the rec room to give it a more dramatic look. Next the streamers, and a few balloons. I also need some games that aren't too boring for the discriminating 11 yr olds that are coming and keep them out of trouble. Leah really wants me to create clues or riddles that they'll have to figure out to find different locations to get the next clue that will eventually lead to the "treasure". This is going to take some serious brain power and concentration for me to come up with good riddles. Tim is so much better at this but he is buried in his storyboard work right now so I'm not going to bother him.

Well it's getting late so I should wander off to my chilly bed. I have alot to get done and if the are kids running a mok tomorrow that will definitely complicate things. Eek! Did I mention that it's recycling day tomorrow, so much stuff to bundle and get to the curb, the fun never ends!

Waiting for the Bus

2008-11-27T14:37:00.002-05:00

The school bus comes by our house any where from 8:50 to 8:55 to 9:05 am when it's really late. Well on Monday the bus zoomed by without us! Luckily we get a 2nd chance to grab it since it goes way up Morrison Point Road (which is a very long 6 km dead end) to pick up kids so we wait at the corner for it to come back down. We've had occasion to do this, um maybe about 5 times, very handy.

Since it's snowy, or at least it was this morning, my kids are anxious to get outside to play in all that white stuff. Even our dog Belle loves the snow, snowball throwing is her favourite game. She loves eating snow too. When she is outside and you are trying to coax her back into the house she just stares at you while gobbling up mouthfuls of snow pretending she doesn't understand what you want her to do. She also loves rolling in it as in this picture, so she tends to come in soaked, much like the kids. Snow melting everywhere, puddles, dripping mitts and snowpants. I was smart this year and have acquired a total of 5 pairs of snowpants so there should be a dry pair to be found everytime they are needed. Luckily Quinn and Leah are close to the same size so, they both fit into them all. Now I just need to stock up on mittens, and probably a couple more hats. Quinn seems to have lost his black hat with the skull on it that I knit him, hopefully it's just in the lost and found box at school. Funny, why is it a lost & found box? Isn't it just a lost box? I mean if it's found than it won't be in the box right?

A Hat with a Happy Home!

2008-10-09T08:47:00.003-04:00

There goes another of my hats to a happy lady, I called this one "Neon Noggin", with some help on the name from Colleen who was visiting the store. The name usually comes to me as I'm doing the finishing up bits of tucking in ends and weaving them in, something I really dislike doing because I'm usually already wanting to start the next hat design that has been percolating in my head. Neon Noggin was a tough one because I was determined to create a swirl pattern knitted into the design. I used a rainbow wool for the swirl so in this picture it doesn't show up very well at the top of the hat. I think I ended up with 6 swirls around the hat after much drawing on graph paper and figuring with a calculator to make them show up at even points around the hat. I also tryed the bobbin technique of having the yarn for the swirl cut and wound up at each swirl point rather than the mess it would make carrying the yarn over so far between the swirls.

Anyways it was fun and I have the math worked out now so I can do it again but I'll try it using plain yarn so it shows up better.

It's SCARECROW FESTIVAL this Saturday (Oct 11th, 10 to 5) so I've got a million last minute things to pull together so we have enough materials for everyone that shows up to build a scarecrow. It might be a bit of a wild weekend seeing that it is normally busy with it being Thanksgiving and the weather is going to be fabulous, 18 degrees! and sunny! I hope we have enough stuff! We have 100 hotdogs and almost 80 scarecrow sticks and hopefully some people will want to build a soft sculpture scarecrow that can sit on a bench/chair or porch and won't want sticks.

Well off I run to get through the errands before I open the store.

Busy, busy, busy,,, exhausted.

2008-09-15T08:32:00.002-04:00

Well another full weekend just passed. We had a booth at the Milford Fair and the rain held off all day even though it looked like it was going to dump on us the whole time! Thank you to Wilma for loaning me her sun canopy, I'm definitely going to have to find one of those but one that will save us in case it does rain.

The fair was a great event and I put in one of my knitted hats in the judging events and it won first prize!!! Hee hee! I was telling Tim I don't think I've ever won first prize in anything before! I kind of like it! Also Tim won first prize for his concrete sculpture and Quinn won first prize for his lego sculpture and Leah won 3rd prize for her collection of 115 stuffed toys!!!! Insane number of stuffies I know, now that we know that number we won't be acquiring anymore!!

Whoops, gotta run and get the kids out the door to the bus!

Hat-titude!!

2008-08-17T21:05:00.010-04:00

I've been knitting as fast as possible and still it's not quick enough for the way my funky hat creations are flying out the barn doors of the Galloping Goat Gallery! So here are some of the latest creations. Some are still here, others have found their people that have been searching for that perfect chapeau.

This is Raspberry Souffle. I've started naming the hats which is sometimes a bit of a trick but also alot of fun! This one is a delicious pink with a bit of soft pink eyelash and some purple feathery yarn mixed in.

This one is still in the store as of yet. The last 2 pink/purple hats I finished in the last month both sold so fast I couldn't even get a picture of them!

This hat was nameless until Clare discovered it on Saturday so of course this hat now has a home and a name! Clare's hat! Clare loved it so much she actually wore it right out of the store even though it is August! Hope you enjoy it, it was definitely made for you and looked awesome on!

This next hat I call Tropical Fizz. It's a bit larger than the other ones and will be looking for a person with either a lot of hair or just a bigger head.
Just for the record I knit hats in adult sizes since I personally love colour and a bit of silliness in my world and get a bit frustrated with how only kids get the fun colours in clothes and accessories. This is my personal way of putting the fun and funky out there for grownups. Of course growing up is an option, and at 40 I still have a ways to go I think!! hee hee!

This next hat is called Rainbow Sherbet. The photo unfortunately doesn't do it justice, the colours are so gorgeous and baby soft. As I was finishing it in store a lady thought it was a purse and it would have looked amazing as a purse but a wee bit to hairy. It did get me to thinking that making purses might be fun.

I just finished 2 more hats I don't have pictures of yet. One is Midnight Frost which my brother named and it's all in black/white and charcoal colours with a tassle off the top. I couldn't resist and added a few silver charms in the tassle strings. The other hat seemed convinced that I had to call it Harvest Moon. It's a bit more manly in colour, or at least I did try to go more that direction. My son Quinn helped me sort out what was Ok for guys and not Ok for guys to wear. He is 8 years old and very particular in that regard but still likes the bright colours so he is a handly boy to ask these important questions. Harvest moon is in rich orange with navy checkerboard and some bits of red and stripes of creme colour. I'll try and get photos quick before they find their favourite people's heads!!

Happy Father's Day!

2008-06-15T19:59:00.004-04:00

It's father's day for our husbands and dads so Happy Father's Day to those of you dads out there. Of course I know my father will never read this since he isn't very computer savy and sticks pretty much only on sites he is interested in. Ebay, train and car shopping, and any info on old cars is where he surfs. He did ask Tim the other day when he was visiting what the point of blobs was. Yes, he said blobs not blogs. Why would we write our personal thoughts for all to read? Why would anyone want to read our blathering? True. Funny how it's kind of irresistable reading about other people's lives. Tim explained that it's a great way to keep in touch with family and friends and let them know what's going on and what we are up to as well as tell the funny stories that happen and document pictures of life as it happens. Dad still thought it was rather odd that people like our friends and family would be curious enough to read it. Go figure!
The Galloping Goat Gallery was a busy little barn today and I sadly sold my last balancing crows garden stake...sigh. They are so cool those funny birds. They are made of metal and balance perfectly on a stake and swing and whirl around in the wind. I really really wanted to keep one for my garden but sadly I had to give them to other homes. I do have an order in for more but they are currently sold out also so I can only wait and hope they arrive. I also need to find a hammock that has a self-supporting stand for Tim for father's day. Of course we all know that it will become a fight with the kids who gets to lie in it and Tim and I will rarely get the change more than likely with out kids on top of us. I better find a good sturdy one.
Well the bats are out and swooping around eating mosquitos and my bug spray is wearing out so I'm going in the house now and giving up my pretty river view for a TV screen and finish my latest funky hat. Pictures soon of it I hope. It's a new pattern so you'll only see it if it looks cool!

A Soft Day.

2008-06-03T20:13:00.005-04:00

This is Black River and our grass mowed labyrinth beside our house looking from our deck.

It's raining softly and the birds are tucking away for the night but still cheerly calling to each other as they settle in.

Looking further back from the labyrinth to our veggie patch and the 2 barns.

I stepped out on our deck to take some pictures of the rich saturated colours of the grass, trees and gardens. Everything looks so lush and green in this evening muted light.

The white blossoms are on the Mountain Ash tree that I've read is a favourite tree of faeries. We only watch and wait...

Happy Days Are Here!

2008-05-28T13:41:00.003-04:00

So big excitement around here, it's Quinn's 8th birthday! Wahoo! He has been trying so hard to stay cool this week when he is in fact dying to open presents!!! He got one this morning from Leah and will get ours after school. Of course it's still all about Lego. Right now we are into Indiana Jones and Star Wars. At least I like both of those movies so I'm not out of my mind yet from the repeated viewing of them.

The marketing giants are sure good at what they do and you can't turn around without some ad showing up for Indiana Jones new movie, game or toy or lego, it's everywhere! So being a good mom I of course got suckered into buying the cereal with the light up spoon. Why the spoon lights up I have no idea. How long it will last before an errant drop of milk slides into the mechanism and shorts it out? Probably very soon.

We also got Tim a new computer for his storyboarding so he is a happy boy too with his new toy. My new computer, though months old is still my favourite thing too right now. Tim also got a wireless router so we can play with our fancy toys just about anywhere in the house and outside and still be online. Seriously that is so cool!! I even got a faint signal in the barn so when I'm in there I can send emails and pay bills, talk about convenience!

Right now it's all very exciting and fun and Tim and I drag our laptops around everywhere, yes, everywhere (he took his into the toilet to watch movie trailers!!LOL) and we have them on even when we are watching TV at night!! I imagine we will be a little less intense about all this online time soon... well maybe.

At least now I should be updating my blog much more regularily and we finally updated www.gallopinggoat.com so that it no longer says we are closed for the winter!!!

Hypertufa Fun

2008-05-25T22:47:00.004-04:00

Well the Galloping Goat Gallery had it's first workshop last week and we got to play in the mud!

We played with hypertufa and made some birdbaths and planters using plastic bowls and bins and used rhubarb leaves to leave wonderful designs on the containers.

Right now they are all drying nice and slowly in our barn.

It has certainly had lots of people talking and interested in playing with hypertufa. I have a pretty long list of people that want to take the next workshop. I found a picture online of a castle someone made from flower pots and alot of creativity and I'm so going to make one for the garden! It was so cool!

This is the birdbath that we are making in the workshops.

SPRING!

2008-04-01T10:26:00.004-04:00

All those horrible pics of snow below in this blog are depressing! YUCK!

Funny how that first snow is magical and lovely and everything looks pretty and sparkling under the blanket of white. Now it's just a dirty, mucky disgusting mess, especially the mine field of doggy you-know-what! Now that is the worst job in the world in the spring, taking a wheelbarrow picking up all those nasty bits!

Well now that the snow is clearing out we finally got our new wall furnace in to warm the place up.
The barn tends to be a pretty damp spot until the afternoon sun starts pouring in the windows. We tested the furnace out with a bbq tank since the big tank doesn't come until tomorrow and wow it really worked great! No more freezing fingers for me on weekends!

The people visit us in the barn are largely tourists that don't know Prince Edward County very well so most come dressed in the usual spring attire that you can get away with in the city or at least any town further from the water than we are. Let it be known, the County is always windy, and always markedly cooler than even our largest city of Belleville. So if you are coming for a visit bring a warm coat and these days, decent boots. We had a lot of shivering guests visiting for the Maple Surup Festival in the barn huddled under the electric ceiling heater with thin leather jackets and light polar fleece sweaters.

There is a reason there is so much interest in the County for wind farms, it is insanely windy here, all the time! It's great in the summer, even on the hottest day there is usually a breeze. It's this time of year and the fall that it will whip right through your clothes and leave you numb! I am sure looking forward to all that warm sunshine, come on SPRING!

Full Moon Eclipse

2008-02-19T20:37:00.002-05:00

Tonight there will be a full moon eclipse that I don't think I'll manage to be awake for. I love watching the moon, so serene and peaceful. I like full moons' in the winter because their light is magnified this huge amount by all the snow on the ground. It lights up everything so it is practically daylight out with sharp crisp shadows on the ground.
We got another huge dumping of snow last night and this morning. I was actually amazed the buses ended up running. It was definitely the worst driving conditions I've had to deal with yet going to work.
So I am leaving my 2nd job at the Tool & Die company to have 100% of my time dedicated to the Galloping Goat Gallery and all the things I haven't had time to do until now.
I'm looking forward to it but also fairly apprehensive since it was a nice steady pay cheque. If feels like I'm jumping into another adventure again. So off I go to leap into the unknown yet again!

Our Backyard

2008-01-23T18:18:00.001-05:00

The river is snow covered and serene as the sun set on the last day of 2007. I ran into the house and grabbed the camera when I drove into our driveway to take these shots and also to enjoy the magnificent view from the side and back of our house.
It was actually quite mild and if the sun hadn't disappeared I would have take some shots of the river an hour later. This was when all the mist came swirling up from the frozen river as the air chilled for the evening. I was breathtaking to look at.
The most frustrating part of our new home is the fact that only our bedrooms face these views. The window in the kitchen also looks over the back of the house so when I'm washing dishes and making dinner I do have a nice view. What I really want is to turn this house around so the big picture window is looking over the countryside and river rather than the road and Black River Cheese Factory!! It's probably going to take a few years but we'll figure out a way so that we can sit in a comfy chair and watch the wildlife.

Knitting Funky Hats

2007-12-03T20:42:00.001-05:00

Hello my name is Lesley and I'm a knitting addict!!
Hats right now are my favourite, especially when I can play with decorative yarns and fun colours.
I've even sold a couple in our store and I have lots of interest in the one I wear around town. I haven't been knitting long but love the fact I can do it while in meetings, in the store while customers are browsing and in front of the TV. Now if I can just figure out how to read and knit my life will be complete!! I need some kind of a book holder... hmmm...I just might try and see if my cookbook holder will work.
This is a hat on the right I just finished. It's an xmas gift though it really looks cute on my daughter Leah and she loves it.

Here are two that are up for sale at our store, modelled by Leah and Quinn. I have a thing for checkerboard pattern so the blue and orange hat Quinn is wearing has the checkerboard using the eyelash in blue with regular orange yarn for the opposite square. It looks really cool with squares of eyelash sticking straight out with the flat orange yarn beside and above it. This picture doesn't show it so well. The tassle on the top is actually a 4" long braid with the pompom on the end. I made these large enough for me to wear so they are a smidge on the big side for the kids but they both what to keep the ones they have on.
Off to knit some finger puppets for Quinn at his request for his homemade Yule gift. So far I've created Spiderman and now I'm trying to find black yarn to make Venom but might have to just do Green Goblin tonight since I can only find the green yarn and not the black! I really have to stop stashing yarn all over the house, I can't find anything!!

October in Prince Edward County

2007-11-24T20:57:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-22T21:59:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-20T21:01:00.000-05:00

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!

Scarecrow Leah!

2007-09-14T19:36:00.001-04:00

Here she is Scarecrow Leah! She wants to be the mascot for the day's event of the Scarecrow Festival. It would actually be pretty cute so I'll probably help her get herself ready so she can walk around and greet people during the day and direct traffic a bit.
Lots of work yet to be done but thanks to a wonderful group of ladies from the Regent's fundraising committee who have done tonnes of running around it should turn out to be a brilliant event that will hopefully happen every year.... it had better not bloody rain!!!!

Can I have a Mohawk? Please??

2007-09-14T17:21:00.001-04:00

Look at that face, how can I saw no to those big brown eyes??
"Please mommy, please I want a mohawk!"

"Why?" I ask.

"Cause it will look cool! I'll look like a rock star!" Quinn says as he dances and leaps around the room, climbing anything that he comes in contact with. He appears so into being a rock star he starts doing his version I think of what he thinks is air guitar. It might work on a base cello those moves but I doubt any normal electric guitar would! I start wondering where exactly he has seen these moves he is miming.

"Well OK if your sure that's what you want." I say dreading the task of trying to pull this particular haircut off myself. I did do a sort of longish mohawk a couple of months ago with not bad results except with Quinn's silky locks they don't stand up straight or long enough to suit him.
So I pull out the phonebook and look up a professional for the job that won't cost me a small fortune for this whim of his. Though I admit he has been pretty focused on getting a mohawk for about half a year.
I found a local lady that cuts hair in her home and the wait for the 2 days until the appointment were excruciating for poor Quinn. We made it though with time to spare which annoyed Quinn that he couldn't leap into the chair and get on with the buzzing!
When the other lady customer finally vacated the seat she mistook Quinn for a girl which he says he is really tired of so that is reason #3 why he wants this mohawk since girls don't get them. I'll have to show him some pictures of me from the 80's. Little does he know that his mother had a mohawk long before they were common and mine altered weekly from brilliant fuscia pink to a very intense purple colour. I even played around with bleaching the shortest part out and then painting checkerboard pattern with the purple permanent dye or stripes once the checkers faded away.
I can't figure out why people mistake him for a girl. Seriously am I missing something? He always dresses like a boy, or in superhero costumes. His hair isn't that long. Is it those huge brown eyes and long eyelashes? The senior citizens we run into in town are forever calling him a girl and he gets so annoyed so I imagine this haircut will help out with that.
SO here it is the new Quinn, Mohawk and all!

Scarecrow Festival

2007-08-17T08:12:00.000-04:00

We, as in the Galloping Goat Gallery, are hosting a Scarecrow festival Saturday September 29th 10 am to 4pm (raindate Sunday the 30th, we are praying for no rain that day!) here on this lawn as a fundraising event for Picton's Regent Theatre. I came up with the idea and took it to the Regent's Board of Directors with big plans and ideas and they jumped right into it! Now we have Picton's Main Street businesses offering support by dressing their windows and making scarecrows that they will auction off with all proceeds going to the Regent.

Along with that we have County Cider donating (alcohol-free) cider and the County Farm Depot donating hotdogs and (hopefully one of out other local businesses will offer condiments and buns!) we'll have drinks available for sale. We are going to also have a "Make Your Own Scarecrow" area that people will come and purchase what amounts to a kit and with the help of some volunteers they will create an original scarecrow for their garden or porch. Thanks to Evans Lumber who has already offered to make and donate all the wood crosses for the scarecrows. I know that someone is donating the pumpkins so we just need some clothes, a few bales of straw and a large ball of twine to tie sleeves and legs closed. Hopefully the other fundraising committee volunteers will find those items for us. If someone is reading this that can offer us some help or items email me!!

I've also been on the phone asking local businesses to make a scarecrow that we can have at the Galloping Goat that day to sell to people that don't want to do the "make your own" version. So far I have only got a few people agreeing to make them but I'm hoping that will get better. It's always tough the first year trying to do these kinds of things. We have big plans to make it an annual event. Wouldn't it be great if it became a really big thing where each fall the entire County has all it's residents sticking fun and funky scarecrows on their lawns! Then the County would be this place to visit in the fall to see the fall colours, buy harvested veggies, do some wine tasting and do a drive to see all the scarecrows! Sort of like those drives I used to go on when I was a kid to see all the Christmas lights at people's houses. Kids love that kind of thing so it will hopefully draw families here after it's too chilly to go to the Sandbanks.

For those that are wondering why the Regent needs money basically it's this gorgeous old original theatre from the 1800's that is run largely by volunteers. There is a crushing debt against the place and the community banded together to save it and keep it open and running and trying to find ways to dig out of the debt and have it support itself from the revenue it brings in. It's been struggling along for years but needs a boost to keep it going. The new general manager that has been hired, Sharon, will be a great infuser of energy and vitality into the Regent. I've met her at the Board meeting and she is full of energy and ideas and best of all, experience in theatre. I think the Regent should make some real head way with Sharon at the wheel.

If you ever visit Picton Ontario you have to make a point of stopping in to see it. All the architectual details are original and the old marquee lights on the front set up a gorgeous view in the evenings. It has been classed as a historical building so it is well worth visiting. The Regent hosts todays movies at very reasonable prices along with live theatre on the stage.

Tim and I went to see the production of Elizabeth Rex and we were both completely enthralled with the play and felt it certainly was up to Stratford festival standards with the costumes, sets and acting skills of the players. There are also live music events and a constant stream of talent through those old doors.

Don't miss the opportunity of visitign the Regent Theatre on you visit to "The County" as it is fondly called (otherwise know as Prince Edward County) and buy a ticket to a show and help support our community's historical icon. Come and see us at the Scarecrow Festival September 29th at 906 County Road 13, right across from the Black River Cheese Factory, just follow the road signs to the cheese and you'll also find the Galloping Goat!

First Harvest

2007-08-17T07:41:00.000-04:00

I woke early, as usual these days and decided to get creative
and shoot some pictures as the sun was trying to pull itself up in the sky.
This basket of veggies was from Tim's trip into our garden after dinner last night. You really have to keep an eye on those zucchinis for they explode into mammoth things!

It's amazing how much food we are managing to make for ourselves in our garden! We seem to be doing very well sticking to that 100 mile diet (or as Tim says 160 kms) that everyone is yakking about. It wasn't planned or intentional to do it but it's relatively easy living here.

I went to the big gift and tableware show on Wednesday and that was quite amazing. It was pretty easy to speed past booths that I know won't work for us and our barn. Food, fabrics, smelly soaps and bath bombs are just the thing for the mice to enjoy which we are trying to keep out of the barn. Also all that high end glass, china, chrystal and ceramics don't work in our rustic venue. I did find a couple of new wholesalers which have some fab stuff that I love so hopefully customers will too. A couple of them are Canadian couples building things to sell which is perfect for what we are trying to accomplish. I found 2 different sources for those great birdhouses and outdoor items that use old recycled tin ceiling tiles and barn board and other found objects to make cool things. I ordered from the one place so hopefully I'll be receiving the items by Sept. 1st or at least that was the date they told me they are hoping to have it out to me. My Christmas items that we currently have had in the store for 3 weeks are flying out the doors and my other shipments of the big load of Christmas should be arriving any day! I wish that they would hurry up I can't wait to see what I bought! I know I had some really different things I found and I bought from another vendor at the show a few more Christmas bits that I couldn't resist! They had some really different metal outdoor xmas garden stakes of Santa or Trees, Snowman and an angel. They were metal with paint and some cute sayings and a few cut out stars with sparkle on it. Can't resist a bit of bling!
All this Christmas ornament shopping has got me completely obsessed with figuring out presents for the kids and trying to plan out some kind of budget. This year is going to have to be a bit more crafty and homemade than our usual Christmas. At least with the kids not having any TV channels to watch they have no commercials buzzing in their heads telling them they "Have to have it". I hadn't realized how completely TV jams down the kids throats all this stuff they need, need NEED! After 9 months of no TV but just DVD movies and videos they have no idea what stuff they are missing in their lives! Of course when they get back to school that will probably change rapidly.

I'm not in any rush to hook up a satellite dish or fix the TV aerial and no money for it either so Tim and I tend to watch either one of the 3 stations we do get in somewhat clear or watch a DVD or thanks to my mom, pop in a VHS with some TV program she has taped for us. It's shocking to see how clear our TV can be when you watch a movie after the fuzz of our normal stations!

Well my tea is getting cold and my tummy's rumbling so I better go and grab a quick quiet moment at the river before the monkeys get up and have some meditation time while I can.
Life is good.

The 10 year Adventure

2007-06-22T22:23:00.000-04:00

Well it was 10 years ago yesterday that Tim and I were married in a very fun outdoor, medievial, paganish wedding not far from where we now live. It was a really fun day and will definitely be one of my best days ever and I know Tim has said the same thing.
So tomorrow we are having friend and family coming over to BBQ and hangout and roast marshmallows and tent to celebrate. I'm looking forward to a fun Saturday!
This is where Tim spends alot of his time now on his wee tractor cutting grass. Doesn't he look like a good farm boy with his rubber boots, plaid farm jacket and that ridiculous bucket hat!! Gotta love him!

Last night I went with Leah to a Summer Solstice celebration with a group of local ladies. We all met at one ladies house not far from here and had the most fantastic evening together. My mom also came along with her crone sister Linda. The ceremony was beautiful and the sky was incredible with huge thunder heads rolling just by rumbling away just north of us. We even got a light sprinkle of rain with the sun shining and an incredible rainbow showed up. A very magical evening and we conjured up some really good energy and as always the feast afterwards was fabulous! These witches really can cook!! It is so amazing listening to these facinating women talk about the journeys they are on in their lives and all the incredible wisdom they have to offer. I always leave these events feeling so relaxed and enlightened. It's a good thing to be surrounded by wise women that I can learn by and if Leah is listening to even half of it she will be gaining some amazing insight that we should all be so lucky to hear.

Ode to the Veggie Patch

2007-06-04T22:01:00.000-04:00

Wow, has it really been only six months since we moved here? The time has flown by and yet it feels like we've been living this life for years instead of months.

We still get awestruck by the landscape around us and fasinated by the wildlife. The big bull frogs I'm learning to fall asleep to the rumbling croaks of them through out the night. The horse pasture has disappeared behind a wall of foliage and I've discovered terribly neglected gardens in little spots on the property. Tim and I have been tearing up the grass around the choked perennials in hopes of coaxing them into the sunshine and a healthy life.

We also had fun for Queen Victoria's birthday with some sparklers and an long open shot with the camera.

I finally managed to get Tim to let me drive the ride-on lawn mower and it was pretty fun! Tim got stuck with the push mower, tee hee. Tim even mowed the path of the labryinth that had disappeared in the long grass. Of course it did rain all day today so you know that we will be out mowing in 2 days tops to keep up with it all.

At least the Canadian Goose family are enjoying the many dandilion seeds that are on the lawn! I guess that's one way to get rid of them!

Crazy busy!!

2007-04-24T20:03:00.000-04:00

Well it's just too busy around here to write much but Tim my wonderful hubby has been very dedicated to his blog and telling the story of the creation of Galloping Goat Gallery. Wander on over to his blog to check out great pictures and all the news. Tim's blog

Some day soon when I'm not driving to Toronto once a week to teach and trying to inventory all the merchandise that has been arriving daily and trying to help in the fix up I might actually have time to blog again. Maybe even relax and read some other's blogs too! It's good to dream.

The Before Shots of the Galloping Goat Gallery

2007-03-17T21:07:00.000-04:00

Here we have a first look at Galloping Goat Gallery, a soon to be up-and-coming destination location of a wonderful garden art boutique extraordinaire! In a mere 40 days you will see the transformation into a quaint and charming little retail shop.

This little gallery will be offering all those hard to find unique items to make your garden and landscaping something truly spectacular. There will also be an eclectic sampling of home decor and original art works by a number of local Canadian artists. Hope to see you soon!

(Opening day is tentatively set for May 5th 2007.)

The entrance way has a quaint rustic feel with a "watch your head" and "duck!" before you enter beam to welcome you.

Inside you will find the "whoops!" "don't trip on that loose board" flooring. That shows well the patinas of the barn's history. Notice the array of notalgic furnishings and odds and ends lying about. Gives you a real warm comfortable feeling doesn't it?

The use of colour in the upstairs room is quite a surprise but the view of the river from the windows makes up for the shock of the green walls. Make sure you give the walls a good knock before you spend too much time is this room. The resident squirrel hasn't accepted that notice of eviction yet.

The adjoining room still has that old world charm left untouched. The cathedral style ceiling with the leaky tin roof adds extra ambiance to the building.

Here is a view of the charming stairs or ladder, depending on your view point. Even this poor pooch looks on with trepidation. The twisting and uneven staircase very much resembles the historically acurate look of something that comes close to a ladder to a hay loft. Isn't it charming and rustic?

Here of course is our hardworking owner Farmer Tim. Do you see the knot hole on the wall of the barn above and to the right of Tim? That is where the highly popular mummified squirrel is peeking his petrified head out from. The childern always love to visit this little guy when they come to the barn!

Come visit us soon!!

SHOPPING, SHOPping, shopping... whew...zzz

2007-03-15T17:51:00.000-04:00

Well we had our first wholesaler rep come to our house to show us his line of products. He had alot of lines that he represented. He came with his wife at 10am. The first book I looked at didn't have much that got me excited then about catalogue #4 I started seeing more of what I wanted and got EXCITED!.

Wahoo! I was going to finally blow some $$ for merchandise that so far I have been only allowed to drool over.

5 hours later!! and a few thousand dollars that will be soon hitting the old credit card I am whipped! Thankfully they were helpful in remembering what I had purchased so far. Gaetan's wife was great with suggestions on what I had purchased to keep in mind for display, as in colours and themes.

It will feel like Christmas I'm sure when all the merchandise finally shows up and I get to open all those boxes. I'm sure there will be lots of surprises of what I have purchased and completely forgot about.

It did get completely terrifying in the last 2 hrs when I had no longer any idea what I had agreed to buy or how much I had spent so far. I mean seriously how the hell do I know what people are going to buy!! I hope I didn't completely bury myself with stuff no one will be interested in.

I did buy all the stuff I like at least so worst case senario I will have beautiful garden stuff for my garden!

There really was some gorgeous stuff that I got and great colours, yummy bright colours and you all know how I do love colour!!!

Quizzes are Fun!

2007-03-14T19:46:00.000-04:00

Your Dominant Thinking Style: Exploring

You thrive on the unknown and unpredictable. Novelty is your middle name.You are a challenger. You tend to challenge common assumptions and beliefs.
An expert inventor and problem solver, you approach everything from new angles.You show people how to question their models of the world.

What's" Your Thinking Style?

Spring, Bring it ON!!!

2007-03-09T21:46:00.000-05:00

Is it Spring yet?? It feels like spring, it's sunny and getting warmer. The time change is tomorrow night, which is a bit weird. I usually start that transistion way before the actual time change but it's not happening yet for me so I think this could be painful. At least it's March Break and we don't have to get up so early. It should make it a bit easier on us.

So I need some spring so hear are some pics from my old tiny city garden.

I made my front lawn into a garden since I hated hauling the electric lawnmower out to cut the sad bit of grass. It was only about 17 feet by 12 feet so it wasn't like it was doing much. In 3 years it looked great! I had tonnes of compliments if I was out puttering in it by neighbours. I even had a lady drag back a big box of perennials when she saw me putting in my first plants and there was all this empty space still left. That was the great thing about city gardening, everyone was running out of room and they were always glad to give plants away when they had to thin their perennials out.

We even gorrilla gardened in a few areas around the school on grass boulevards belonging to the city. I always figured if the city expects me to mow their grass then they can't complain if I decide to make it into a garden instead!

Here is the real reason I want spring to come!! Vroom, vroom!!! I still can't believe Tim talked me into buying this little baby! But man! it is so much fun to drive!! Tee Hee!! Not to mention it turns quite a few heads because it's a 1971 Honda 350. I haven't ridden it yet without some guy asking what year this bike is. The guys seem to love this bike because it's what most of them started out riding way back in the day.

Gotta love springtime, playing in the dirt and ripping around the roads! VROOM VROOM!

Cob Building (no it's not made of corn cobs!)

2007-02-23T20:14:00.000-05:00

Tim and I have big plans to turn our falling down firepit area into a cob structure where we can have fires to cook on and hang out at in the evening by the river.

Currently it's a cement pad with a light pole in the corner and a dangerously tilting fireplace of bricks with a iron oven on oneside. Behind that is a 3 foot cinder block wall that the top 2 rows are dissintegrating. It looks horrible.

Here is kind of what we want it to look like.

This is a cob structure that was built in 2006 in Dufferin Grove park which we lived near. The whole community pitched in with working the cob material. Cob is made up of clay, straw and mud I believe and you have to stamp on it with bare feet to work in the straw to the clay.

THey also did a gorgeous job laying in mosaics of glas, china and mirror and then grouting it all around to the outside of the cob. Anyone was allowed to come and do mosaic on it. There are some amazing designs on the structure.

I don't know when we'll do it or if it's even possible. We've been looking for a book with decent instructions besides telling us to take a weekend workshop.

Sculpting Tantilizers

2007-01-30T18:56:00.000-05:00

OK I got permission from Tim to post some of his sculptures. So far these are only created in clay and then we will cast from these and make molds and master casts. I hope I got all that lingo correct!

These are the fairy ladies carrying off a honey pot. I guess it would have been helpful if I had thought to turn the bloody thing so you were looking at it from the right angle!! Oops, sorry!

Here is the Oak tree man or Fall guy or something like that. Tim's working on doing a plaque for each of the seasons.

This is a fingermaze that is the same pattern we used in our larger walking labyrinth. It's kind of fun to run your finger around on it.

Tim's been sculpting lots more since these photos were taken but we want to keep some of it secret until we open our doors of the gallery!

Winter Fun

2007-01-30T18:42:00.000-05:00

It seems like it's been a long time since we've had a winter resembling normal in this country. We have been having great fun with all this pretty snow everywhere. I guess after living in the city for so many years it seems very gorgeous. In the city the snow is only ever fresh and clean looking for about a day or so. Then the dirt and and plows and salt turn it all nasty and brown.

Here it still looks fresh and white and still untouched in areas with only an occasion path of tracks from some critter running along.

We, sorry correction, Tim cleared a big area of snow off of the river and has been skating everyday since and the kids have been out there too. The hockey games have been feverish between them. I managed to get out there yesterday after school and played until the tummies were growling on everyone.

Tim also got ambitious and tracked a labyrinth in the snow and then traced all the edges with sticks so that in the spring we'll be able to add to it and make it more permanent. It's wonderful to walk under the pines and listen to the wind run through all the needles and it's actually the river at the back of the picture which is covered in snow. It should be a nice spot at anytime of year.

County Life is Great!!

2007-01-16T14:44:00.000-05:00

6am First snowfall and a full moon. It was gorgeous!

Well I'm back in the library. We come to the library about once a week or so. Apparently the news on getting wireless is more dismal than before. The technician that works on the tower here in the County fell off his roof over the holidays and broke his leg! Sooooo... he obviously won't be climbing that silo in Waupoos anytime soon to add the extra length needed to get the signal to us. sigh...

Dialup is crazy slow. Our modem can only run at half speed because apparently the copper wire in the county is kinda lousy so the signal can't run any faster!

I do love it here, even without TV (besides the 2 channels we do get!) and cell phones and internet. The kids have their moments of wanting to go back to the city. Mostly this is because they miss their friends. Being able to see so far out on the horizon is amazing after never being able to see past the wall of houses across the street in Toronto. Even lousy weather is wonderful to look out the window at!

There was big excitement yesterday! It was officially a snow day! NO BUSES! The kids were thrilled with the icy weather keeping them home for the day. This morning though it was back to business and they got outside early enough to slide down the little hills on their crazy carpet sleds before the bus came.

Tim and I decided to give the sleds a try at the back of the house from the hill and both of us would have ended up in the river if we hadn't managed to get our feet out quickly to stop the slide. Obviously our weight carried us alot further than the kids and all the crusty ice on the surface of the lawn made from some speedy sledding. The river isn't exactly frozen solid yet so it would have been a nasty ending. Tim went first and couldn't stop for quite a distance so he was a bit paniced by the end of the trip!

Fun to be had in the simplest of ways around here!!

We Are In the County!!

2006-12-13T11:49:00.000-05:00

This is the view from our kitchen window and the horses are usually in the green field you can see on the other side of the river.

I'm once again at the library picking up junk mail. The deal is the Wireless tower they built on a silo in Waupoos isn't tall enough to get a decent signal. So back to the engineering drawing board of figuring out how to get it taller and attach it so it doesn't blow off!! They say maybe by xmas. We aren't holding our breath.
We are in town to do some errands and one of them is to find a modem for dial up in the mean time. Of course they will only allow us to use 10 hours month until the wireless is up. Yes you heard right 10 hours a month!!! Yeah, I freaked too! Hopefully we'll have some dial up before the week is out.

Life is awesome and we are loving it here. The kids are loving it and very happy and relaxed. Quinn is bringing home love notes every day this week from all these different girls so he is feeling pretty good! Leah loves the less homework and therefore less stress and has 2 very good friends in her class.

We've had a great snow that is now gone, plus a day with double rainbows and lots of sunshine and warm weather too. It feels like we have, in three weeks, managed to have every season pass through!

The Crystal Ball

2006-11-19T11:35:00.000-05:00

Wow! What a night Tim and I had last night!! My boss Sharin got for all the Knobart.com Crew tickets to go to the Crystal Ball at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. It's a huge fundraiser for Reach for the Rainbow, which is a children's charity. The tickets were $700 each!! Our table was given to us because of the large donation Sharin gave of a completely decorated bedroom with furniture and everything!

Sharin is in the green jacket with Mary Jane (MJ) beside her, then Adrianne, then me. Lorrainne in red and Evelyn on the rocker. This was early in the evening and once Bacardi opened up the cocktail bars it all got a bit sillier! Those mojitos went down smoothly didn't they ladies!

Yes and so did those Bacardi Razz and lemonade cocktails too!

We had to test out the comfort level of the BMW car and motorcycles that were up for auction too!

I couldn't resist hiking up my long dress and trying it out. I know, I know not exactly lady-like, but when will I ever get another chance like that!! The bike was so nice and all the foot pegs, brakes and clutche were perfect sized for me to ride. It was a wee bit tall, I had to be on the balls of my feet, even with heels on!!

Here is a shot of my hubby and me in our fancy dress up clothes. This will have to be a keeper of a picture since the chances of going anywhere this glamourous in the future is probably fairly slim!

What a way to end our 4 years in Toronto. Did I mention that the Beach Boys were there and we got to dance for a couple of hours to their music. Sweet!!

Thank you Sharin for an absolutely great time! You are an Awesome boss!! That was so much fun!

Website Building

2006-11-16T16:23:00.000-05:00

My smart hubby is working hard on creating our Galloping Goat Gallery website. It's looking great so far. We've even managed to agree on a business card design without any major arguments! Just a tweek here and there and one back and forth of each of us having a go at the design and we came up with one that we like.

Cute goat isn't he?

I got all excited this afternoon in the middle of packing because I came across a knitting pattern for a winter hat that had a goat on it. I kept thinking how cool it would be to make Tim one for Yule and try to somehow tweek the design so it looks more like our goat. I have only recently begun knitting but have managed pretty well and even messed with some patterns midway so that they would fit better. I guess I could always just knitt the hat and then stitch the goat on after.

Tim just realized we have inadvertantly picked christmas colours. Well yes, kind of, but red and green are split complimentary and go together really well. We picked the red because the barn is red and green to go with the garden theme of our items that we will be selling. We should probably pick a third colour to compliment the design that doesn't say christmas so much!

Limbo Anyone?

2006-11-08T20:24:00.000-05:00

Well here we sit in Limbo Land...sigh. Too soon to pack all of it and nothing much to do since the work is waiting on the other side of the move.

Having Tim home has been nice and he even cooked dinner tonight! Nothing beats sitting down to a meal I didn't have to think about, plan or prepare!

Here is the stuff I have been working on and is now on the website. Soon the grow charts will be there as well, they just need to be photographed.

www.knobart.com has most of my stuff under "New Projects" and there is even a page with my picture in the Knobart crew link. Our dog Belle has her picture and info page under the dogs since she comes to work with me on occasion when I dodn't drive in on my motorcycle. Though she would probably love that if I had a side car for her!

3 Beautiful Things

2006-11-05T14:17:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Clare and her blog for this idea!

1. Full moon last night was gorgeous and had me up late and creative until way past my normal bedtime. Then I got up early in the morning to continue working on my fun painting. I rarely give myself permission to just paint a picture on canvas and I did last night and it turned out very cool. It sort has the look of what could be a great fabric design.

2. Hot chai tea with frothy milk made for me by my hubby who found me in my pj's playing with my paint this morning. It looks like even my pj's aren't safe from me getting paint on them. Oh well they are fuzzy purple flannel with sheep on them so it's not like I'm really going to care if I get paint on them. Love that chai and it always wakes me up with a zing of caffeine.

3. Going to the movies with the kids and actually enjoying the kid flick!

3 Beautiful Things

2006-11-05T14:17:00.000-05:00

Galloping Goat Gallery

2006-11-04T09:56:00.000-05:00

Here is the location of the Galloping Goat Gallery barn. Or at least in 19 days it will be ours. This barn used to be the original Black River Cheese Factory but it moved across the road in, I believe 1901. It's going to be quite a job getting this barn up to snuff to be a store. I'll load photos of what it looks like inside when we get there and hopefully before spring there will be "after" pictures when we are ready to open the store. Too bad I can't paint it until the temperatures are above 10 celcius...sigh. That will be fun, at least painting the inside and picking colours since the outside is staying red. I want to paint the trim around the windows a sage green colour but Tim wants to keep it white since it's traditional. Any opinions? It isn't registered as a heritage building but and everyone that visits the county takes pictures of the barn since it is so picturesque with it being beside the river. Which should we do? Or do we even need to worry about it?(The river is just to the left of the picture here.)

Only 19 days left! Eeek! My stomach lurches when I see the calendar these days knowing it's soooo close.

Tim's last day of work was yesterday and for fun he decided to a jacket, shirt and tie. The kids even asked why he was dressed like that. I told the kids "Daddy is playing dressup today." The kids of course understood that explanation completely and just said "oh" and went on with getting ready for school. Tim and I had a bit of a giggle since he wouldn't normally ever wear those kind of clothes to work, only weddings and funerals warrent it.

The Handyman Gene

2006-11-03T14:56:00.000-05:00

Apparently the handyman gene has been passed from father to son. This is Tim and Quinn building the mecano dinosaur set that Quinn won at the costume party. It was very intricate to put together but they both stayed at it the whole weekend!

Quinn is now looking online for more mecano sets to get for christmas! Tim is already planning the next build they will do with the dino set, apparently there is a car that can be adapted from the set.

Halloween Treats!

2006-10-30T19:17:00.000-05:00

Here is Quinn, Leah and my version of ye olde witch finger cookie. We went with a sugar cookie dough that we added green food colouring to and a chocolate chip for the nail (no nuts in the schools allowed). We call them Monster Toes! Too bad most of them got a little over cooked but these guys turned out OK and it made enough for both class parties tomorrow!

Gotta love a simple fun and a wee bit gorey treat that makes 73 cookies!

and so begins... Halloween!

2006-10-27T10:09:00.000-04:00

So Quinn managed to not scare himself too much and decided that he did want the scars, stitches and blood for his pirate outfit for the Boys and Girls Club costume party last night. 2 nights ago he had changed his mind and only wanted to be a guy with a boat that was blue with a white strip and sail. He was worried if he looked in a mirror he would be too scary as his original idea of Franken-pirate!

The evening turned out great considering how the day started out with Quinn disappearing at his school and no one knowing where he was. I found him hiding in the basement almost 20 mins after I had dropped him off at the school and watched him walk into the building. It's pretty scary to ask his teacher where your child is and she tells you that he hasn't arrived yet when you were the one that dropped him off into the building!

Anyways, letting that stress go, or trying too!

Leah's Grammie made her Raggedy Ann costume and I made the wig and painted the lines on her tights and she was thrilled with how she looked. Quinn loved his look as well and had a long list of pirate lingo that he was practicing all night.

The competition was a bit tougher this year at the club but these 2 again won two of the six best costume prizes so they were pretty pleased with themselves. Leah won Best Dressed Girl and Quinn won Best Homemade Boy.

Baxter of the Golden Eyes

2006-10-23T17:06:00.000-04:00

Here is our boy Baxter. It seems his name is staying. He was a good boy his first night but I'm definitely going to have to learn to sleep through all the purring! He even managed to wiggle under the blankets in the early morning for better snuggling. He slept the entire day on my pile of bills beside my computer monitor while I was typing away and Belle was at my feet keeping them toasty on this chilly day.

County School Visit

2006-10-23T10:23:00.000-04:00

Tim and I along with Leah and Quinn left early Friday morning for the County from Toronto. We arrived under a deluge of rain and gray skys at Quinn's soon-to-be school. We walk into the small school and turn into the office where we see the big white board with the important news and up coming events on it. There right in the middle in Bright orange marker is "Friday Oct 20th - Quinn's visit". The secretary and principal and Quinn's soon-to-be teacher rush to greet us and tell us all about the school.

It's in the middle of lunch hour with an indoor recess because of the rain so it was a bit noisy and the principal (we got to call her Pooky!) kept appologizing since they've had 4 days straight of indoor recess because of the lousy weather. It really wasn't that noisy, I've heard way worse at Dovercourt in a lunchroom with the kids.

Quinn got a book from his teacher with all the pictures of all the kids in his class with their favourite things listed and a bit about how many people are in their families. Then his teacher introduced him to the class and showed him where he will sit and had a girl stand up and tell Quinn that she had moved here also from Toronto. Then she had a girl named Lucy stand up and say hi because her grandma and Quinn's grandma are friends and know each other.

We then left for Leah's school 5 minutes further down the road. Quinn was clutching his book and looking for Lucy's picture and asked for a pen or pencil, or anything quick! He quietly wrote his name and put a heart with a happy face and an arrow pointing to Lucy in the picture. He showed us and told Leah not to tease him but he loved Lucy.

Leah's teacher was away but she got to see her class and check out the kids and see the HUGE computer lab. There is one brand new computer for each kid when a class goes in to use the lab.

Quinn's class is SK grade 1 split with 22 kids and every other day when the SK's aren't there, there are only 18 kids. Leah's class is a grade 4 and 5 split with 22 kids in it. Nice class size or what!

In the 20 minutes that we spent at each school the secretaries and principal and even the special needs teacher had double checked on the special FM system and phonic ear that Leah needs for her Auditory Processing Disorder. They are hoping to maybe even have the classroom wired and set up for when Leah arrives. This is completely shocking for us! Toronto school board told me it would take a couple of years probably to get this system for Leah. Too expensive, not a strong enough need, she isn't hearing impaired, blah blah blah.

Pooky kept saying we will do our best but no promises but the secretary Brenda just laughed and rolled her eyes and said don't worry we'll get it all set up. Pooky said the school board would of course have to approve the expensive of the system so that's why they can't promise anything.

We shall see what happens but I'm certainly more hopeful at this school then I ever was in the Toronto Board. Like I told Pooky and Brenda "you've done more for us in the last 20 minutes than the Toronto School Board has in 6 yrs".

Wahoo! I love the County!! The kids seem like they are happy with what is to come now and Quinn seems less frantic about what the new school will be like so all in all a good trip.

2006-10-22T20:15:00.000-04:00

I'm always a sucker for a sad story and after looking online at all the poor kitties that need homes we (as in myself and Leah and Quinn) ended up at the Toronto Humane Society on Saturday.

It was very busy but we looked around read all the cats charts and any info found one, two and three and even a fourth that we liked. Next we got a number and an adoption form and kept poking around looking. After an hour and a half the number on the lighted screen was still "3" and we had "15" in hand. Quinn was grumpy, hungry and the smell was making him a bit nuts so we decided to be smart go home and think about this whole thing.

Sunday we woke up and couldn't get all the kitties out of our heads so this time with Tim in tow we headed back to the Humane Society. We decided in the ride over we wanted a girl and a tabby as first preference. We threw around a bunch names of what we were going to call our new cat. We also decided we wanted to get one at least 2 or 3 yrs old.

Well after a short time showing Tim our favourites from the day before we found Pixie. I think Quinn found him first. He was talking to Quinn when I saw him first. He has huge golden eyes and black and white patches on the softest fur ever. He is a big boy and I assumed he was at least 2 yrs. Turns out he is only 6 months!! We discovered this while doing paperwork, so much for all our plans.

As you can see he made himself very comfortable by climbing in beside Leah on the couch for a nap. The kids are completely in love with him, we'll see how long that lasts after the inevitable kitty litter scooping begins. Oh and we have changed his name to Baxter, at least it seems to fit so far!

Making Plans

2006-10-17T15:26:00.000-04:00

Well Quinn is still stressing so after chatting with another mom in the school yard I've scheduled a visit to the new school and thank you to Denise for her brilliant suggestion!

I spoke to the principal of the school where the kids will attend and she was very helpful although extremely curious about us. She asked straight out why are we moving to the County, what are we planning to do there? She then said she isn't supposed to ask but that she was asking anyway. I couldn't help but laugh at that. I almost forgot how small towns work. Who every has the most up-todate gossip wins!

Apparently all the County folk have already heard that it's "Toronto people comin' and bought that Black Crick property"(note to self; to sound like a local it's Black Crick not Black River). So I guess it's understandable that Ms Pooky Scott the principal of the small public school wouldn't want to miss this opportunity to grill me. I couldn't resist putting in her full name, isn't it great!

So we are leaving this Friday morning early, early and probably crawling out of the city stuck in rush hour traffic, grrr. Which should add on an hour or so to the drive. So I've got to pack snacks, a lunch and the (thank Goddess for this) portable DVD player. Hopefully all this rain we are getting will be gone by Friday so it's not a wet sloppy drive. I want to take the kids to Little Bluff to see the beach where they will be able to swim in the summer and to few other points of interest. Hopefully this will help give them a sense of anticipation rather anxiety about where we are going to be living.

It's funny it still doesn't feel that real yet sitting here in my kitchen with the constant hum of traffic and sirens from the fire station down the street. Will the silence be too quiet? Will the dark feel scary and suffocating without street lights? I don't think it will, I'm feeling too much the draw of quiet solitude and hearing nature at this point. We'll see if that is still true after some time living there. I'm looking forward to Friday and a chance to be able to take a few deep breaths before we head back to the city to finish up our time here. I am going to try and do some of the fun things in the city with the kids before we go but time is starting to sneak by me so I better get my butt in gear with some plans. Not to mention everyone here that wants to get together with us before we go. Maybe I should just have a big, last-blow-out party with all our friends and the kids friends too. Hmm... that sounds like a plan!

October's Chill

2006-10-13T09:51:00.000-04:00

Well it sure was chilly this morning as we walked to school. Lucky for me I managed to find the box of winter hats, scarves and mitts in the attic so we all suited up nice and cozy.

Every morning lately Quinn finds a leaf and asks me to press it. Invaritably I loose it as I follow my routine of dropping of the kids and backpacks and taking the dog to the park for a run. So I end up having to spend some time hunting for a similar one to replace the one he found and it is wet. Now I have it drying which you know I'm going to forget about and it will go all crunchy and boy will he be ticked at me! THis is assuming he will even remember, you never know with Quinn, he's a tricky one!

With the move coming I am letting the kids have friends over more often and tonight they are each having a friend for a sleepover. Which means I'll have 4 kids running rampant in the house right after school and through dinner (thank goddess for mac and cheese!) until the late hours. How insane am I? Pretty insane but the guilt of knowing I'm pulling up their roots to move them is playing pretty strongly here.

Hmm... I just realized that when I saw the kids' parents this morning we never discussed a pickup time for Saturday, eeks! That can be dangerous but I have phone numbers and I will use them if it gets to ruckus on Saturday!

The Number Three

2006-10-12T15:09:00.000-04:00

This has been a hell of a week. Why do we always assume that death comes in three's? When did someone come up with that calculation?

Saturday evening my husband answered the phone at 10pm and was obviously upset by the news he was receiving. I was in a panic wanting him to get off the bloody phone and tell me want was going on because my imagination was going crazy!

It turned out it was bad news a very good girlfriend of mine from college had died. She was the same age as me which certainly brings about a reality check. Judy was 38 and was found in her apartment dead from Menningitus, the worse strain of the virus.

Judy was the one that kicked my husband and myself in the pants near the end of college enough to admit we had feelings more than just friendship. 13 years later and 2 kids and we are still very much in love and having a great life. That Judy was a smart woman, or possibly sick to death of listening to her two friend yakking her ear off about the other person. Either way we got the nudge we needed and Judy was toted as the matchmaker for us.

The day before we got that call I was poking through my wedding pictures and found one of Judy with her boyfriend partying with us. I promised myself to call her after the weekend to catch up and tell her all about our new adventure we were launching with our lives. I got to go to her memorial service instead.

Why don't people cry? I couldn't help crying but I seemed to be the odd person out in doing it. She was only 38 and there were at least a hundred plus people there that she had been a part of their lives. Was it just too fast and shocking that people haven't let the news really sink in or have we just become too desensitized from reality thanks to all that TV and movies we see. We only know how we are supposed to act not how we actually feel and to follow that instead of the proticol that we've seen in some damn movie.

As for the number three... well I learned the day before yesterday my Great Aunt May passed in her 92nd year which is still sad but understandable. The number three death was our pet Rachel who was a very sweet rat.
Do we get to count small rodent pets as a death in our morbid death count? Rachel hasn't had her ceremonial burial or good-bye service yet with the kids. I am going in 5 mins to pick them up from school and have the talk.

Unfortunately we had to send Rachel's body out with the trash this morning but we have a box we created last night which the kids will think holds the body of Rachel. Personally I prefer the truth since we all have stories as children about pets that go off to a farm to live to only find out years later it's completely bogus! Tim wants the fake burial service, I want to hand them a gentle truth. I'm going to see how they first take the news of Rachel's passing before I make the final decision about what I want to say about her body.

A few more kinks to work out

2006-10-10T15:29:00.000-04:00

I'm going to apply for a job in Picton. Big problem is it starts next week! We don't move for 6 weeks yet. This would mean living at my Dad's or Mom's and driving back to the city for the weekends.

Sigh... what to do... It's a real simple office job that happens to have excellent pay and it would mean a bit of stability while we go through all the changes.

Tim finished his job in 3 weeks and then no more income! Scary!

We asked our purchasers if they would move up the closing date by 10 days but they wouldn't unless we paid them $1000!! I was a little shocked at that number. I'm going to check with the bank about bridging and see what that would cost.

I just want to get on with the new life and stop hanging around this old and ill-fitting life we have now. Time is passing very slowly.

Waiting... and Waiting... and Waiting...

2006-10-04T17:00:00.000-04:00

Well there was some hope of moving up the moving/closing date of the houses but I'm waiting to hear still.

Our home purchasers said they would let me know today if they wanted to make the date earlier in November, I'm still waiting.

It's still 6 and 1/2 weeks if we move on the original moving date so I'm waiting, impatiently for that date.
I'm waiting to find out if we can get high speed internet at our new house. Apparently I have to find a close neighbour that has it and then chase down the provider so we can get it too. There is no way I'm patient enough to handle having dial-up! I know I'm going to be the wound up, fast moving person from the city for a long time. The County is moving on a whole different space, time plane of existence. I imagine it's going to take years to wipe off the city from me.

I'm waiting on my cell phone provider that will no longer be able to give my phone service since there is no signal in The County to finally decide to let me out of my contract without fining me.

Sigh... The kids are waiting for Thanksgiving turkey dinner at their Grammie and Gramps house and very impatiently waiting for trick or treating night!!

Funny how we spend way more time waiting for the future than actually living the moment to moment stuff.

Toronto - Before and After Shot

2006-09-28T12:25:00.000-04:00

So it's official after one week on the market and holding back offers until Tuesday evening we sold the house that evening. Only a smidgen under asking price so we feel pretty good about that. Again, like our last house, the couple that purchased our place are young and getting married next year and very excited about the house and can't wait to move in. Unfortunately for us they asked for 3 visits before moving day, argh! Well it sure won't look like it did for the showings when it was up for sale! We brought back the computers and the place looks back to normal practically!! Papers everywhere and toys scattered about, that clean, neat, lovely home we had sure didn't last long!

The countdown now begins with 8 weeks until moving day. The kids are starting to stress about the move and leaving their friends. Quinn came home yesterday for a couple of hours because of a sore tummy. Tim and I are also feeling the reality of the big move and getting anxious also. This is going to be quite an adventure!

Here is the picture of the house before we demo'd the porch and after with a fresh modern paint job.

For all of you groaning about us painting the brick you would understand if you saw it before we painted it without the porch. The bottom half was painted to look like the upper portion of the house. They even painted in mortar lines! It was the only thing we could do to fix the odd way the paint and unpainted portion of the house looked after the porch was gone.

We Bought Black River House!

2006-09-28T11:26:00.000-04:00

We bought our next home! On Black River in "The County" right across from the Black River Cheese Factory (this is a very well known tourist spot to visit!). This is a picture from the bridge of the coach house and the barn beside it and our little bit of the river. The house is farther to the right on the property.

I'm writing this about a month after we actually purchased it and then we ran back to Toronto and went crazy on trying to finish all the renos on our house. Time was tight because we wanted to hit the hot Toronto real estate fall market. We missed our first choice deadline and made it a week later. We both worked so hard and so long those last weeks but the house is gorgeous!

This is the Toronto house after we ripped off the old metal porch and painted out the brick. It's quite shocking on our street from all the dull beige houses and browns and terracotta bricks. The consensus of the neighbours is that they like the look of the house and many have commented that before I changed the look they had never even noticed the house at all. There was also some comments that we are looking much more like the Annex neighbourhood now. This neighbourhood is quite posh and funky with gorgeous houses.

Movin' to "The County"

2006-07-25T18:59:00.000-04:00

Well like one of my favourite bloggers Farm Girl we are thinking of making the big plunge of selling this ridiculously expensive house and moving to "The County". Which is Prince Edward County in Ontario Canada. It is a beautiful island that is just starting to be discovered by tourists in search of antiques, good wine, (and Black River cheese) along with all the arts and crafts created by the artisans that live there.

I went there to visit my parents who both live in Belleville, which is just over the bridge from the County. I also went to check out some real estate. Tim was coming up by train late Friday night so I was supposed to qualify some of the places we had found on our MLS search during the week while I was there. I did some major running around and my Dad was good enough to come along and his girlfriend Pat babysat Quinn and Leah tagged along with us.

What a crazy busy time and trying to sleep at night was impossible. My brain wouldn't be quiet and Leah kept flopping on top of me all night and my mom snoring in the other room made for alot of lost hours of sleep. The excitement of finding a great place to live definitely kept me going though.

So by Saturday I had it down to 4 properties one of which I hadn't seen but was the property that started it all and then there was a big victorian with only a wee bit of land and a house with 2 outbuildings that all looked like it was about to fall down but it was in a prime location for tourist traffic. Then there was this Farm that I had seen the day before, sigh... it was so beautiful there, I fell in love before I knew what hit me. I didn't say much to Tim other than "you've got to see this place, it's really nice".

Our adventure started at the house on the river with two cute barns and a newer raised bungalow. The location was good, the house was in great shape and roomy and the views were spectacular. The odd thing was we both felt that the acre and 1/4 lot seemed too confining.

Next we went to The Farm. The owner, Sid, was waiting for us with raincoats and an ATV with a trailer to haul Tim, myself our real estate agent, the kids and my mom back to the back of the 80 acre farm. What a great ride we all had fun bumping along the trails and admiring the 400 trees planted in '76 and the 4000 trees that had been planted in '81 along with the 50 acres that his neighbour rented off of him to farm. Also behind the house is an evironmentally protected marsh.

It was a bit shocking how big 80 acres really is. The property reached back a mile and 1/4. We decided then and there that the ATV would have to be part of the purchase of this place.

I really thought Tim would like the place but lean more towards the riverfront property so I kept watching him to gauge his reaction. We ended up staying there and checking everything out for about an hour and a half. I think Sid and his wife Marg really liked us and the kids had them laughing with all their antics in the hay loft. Sid's daughter and her family live right next door, actually, come to think of it they are about the only neighbour you can actually see!

When Tim and I finally got a moment alone to talk I found that he had the exact same reaction to the place that I did, you just feel like you can really breath. Like you finally are able to take a huge deep breath after ages of breathing very shallow. I described it to Tim that it was like your chest just got opened up so that your soul can step out and take a real stretch.

Now we number crunch, which really means we make up numbers that we think it will cost to live there and then come up with numbers of what we think a business like what we want to create will make. Then we hope that the 2 match up! Ridiculous or what? We have been talking and planning and talking about doing this for 4 years (it was our 5 year plan) I say F**K it and we just do it and then work our butts off to stay afloat. I don't care if I have to work for minimum wage at a grocery store or hardware store I just want a chance to do what we have always wanted to do. Set up a studio create our creations, sell them from our studio/home and online and at craft/wholesale shows and just plain go for it.

We shall see, Tim's going to see it another time with his Dad in 2 weeks. I hate waiting!!!

A Meme About Me

2006-06-25T10:52:00.000-04:00

I borrowed this from my brother-in-law for fun. All the bold ones are true for me.

* I miss somebody right now.
* I don't watch much TV these days.
* I own lots of books.
* I wear glasses or contact lenses.
* I love to play video games.
* I've tried marijuana.
* I've watched porn movies.
* I have been the psycho-ex in a past relationship.
* I believe honesty is usually always the best policy.
* I curse sometimes...
* I have changed a lot mentally over the last year.
* I carry my knife/razor everywhere with me.
* I have broken someone's bones.
* I have a secret that I am ashamed to reveal.
* I hate the rain.
* I'm paranoid at times.
* I would get plastic surgery if it were 100% safe, free of cost, and scar-free.
* I love sushi.
* I talk really, really fast.
* I have fresh breath in the morning.
* I have long hair.
* I have lost money in Las Vegas.
* I have at least one sibling.
* I was born in a country outside of the U.S.
* I have worn fake hair/fingernails/eyelashes in the past.
* I couldn't survive without Caller I.D.
* I like the way that I look.
* I have lied to a good friend in the last 6 months.
* I am usually pessimistic.
* I have a lot of mood swings.
* I think prostitution should be legalized.
* I slept with a roommate.* I have a hidden talent.
* I'm always hyper no matter how much sugar I have.
* I have a lot of friends.
* I have pecked someone of the same sex.
* I enjoy talking on the phone.
* I practically live in sweatpants or PJ pants.
* I love to shop and/or window shop.
* I'm obsessed with my Xanga or Livejournal.
* I'm completely embarrassed to be seen with my mother.
* I have a cell phone.
* I have passed out drunk in the past 6 months.
* I've rejected someone before
* I currently like/love someone.
* I have no idea what I want to do for the rest of my life.
* I want to have children in the future.
* I have changed a diaper before.
* I've called the cops on a friend before.
* I'm not allergic to anything.
* I have a lot to learn.
* I am shy around the opposite sex.
* I'm online 24/7, even as an away message.
* I have at least 5 away messages saved.
* I have tried alcohol or drugs before.
* I have made a move on a friend's significant other or crush in the past.
* I own the "South Park" movie.
* I have avoided assignments at work/school to be on Xanga or Livejournal
* I enjoy some country music.
* I would die for my best friends.
* I'm obsessive, and often a perfectionist.
* I have used my sexuality to advance my career.
* Halloween is awesome because you get free candy.
* I have dated a close friend's ex.
* I am happy at this moment.
* I'm obsessed with guys.
* Democrat.
* Republican.
* I am punk rockish.
* I go for older guys/girls, not younger.
* I study for tests most of the time.
* I tie my shoelaces differently from anyone I've ever met.
* I can work on a car.
* I love my job(s), most of the time.
* I am comfortable with who I am right now.
* I have more than just my ears pierced.
* I walk barefoot wherever I can.
* I have jumped off a bridge.
* I love sea turtles.
* I spend ridiculous amounts of money on makeup.
* I plan on achieving a major goal/dream.
* I am proficient on a musical instrument.
* I hate office jobs.
* I went to college out of state.
* I am adopted.
* I am a pyro.
* I have thrown up from crying too much.
* I have been intentionally hurt by people that I loved.
* I fall for the worst people.
* I adore bright colors.
* I usually like covers better than originals.
* I hate chain theme restaurants
* I can pick up things with my toes.
* I can't whistle.
* I have ridden/owned a horse.
* I still have every journal I've ever written in.
* I talk in my sleep.
* I've often thought that I was born in the wrong century
* I try to forget things by drowning them out with loads of distractions.
* I wear a toe ring.
* I have a tattoo.
* I can't stand at LEAST one person that I work with.
* I am a caffeine junkie.
* I am completely tree-huggy spiritual, and I'm not ashamed at all.
* If I knew I would get away with it, I would commit at least one murder.
* I will collect anything, and the more nonsensical, the better.
* I enjoy a nice glass of wine with dinner.
* I'm an artist.
* I am ambidextrous.
* I sleep with so many stuffed animals, I can hardly fit on my bed.
* If it weren't for having to see other people naked, I'd live in a nudist colony.
* I have terrible teeth.
* I hate my toes.
* I did this Meme even though I wasn't tagged by the person who took it before me.
* I have more friends on the internet than in real life.
* I have lived in either three different states or countries or provinces.
* I am extremely flexible.
* I love hugs more than kisses.
* I want to own my own business.
* I smoke.
* I spend way too much time on the computer than on anything else.
* Nobody has ever said I'm normal.
* Sad movies, games, and the like can cause a trickle of tears every now and then.
* I am proficient in the use of many types firearms and combat weapons.
* I like the way women look in stylized men's suits.
* I don't like it when people are displeased or seem displeased with me.
* I have been described as a dreamer or likely to have my head up in the clouds.
* I have played strip poker with someone else before.
* I have had emotional problems for which I have sought professional help.
* I believe in ghosts and the paranormal.
* I can't stand being alone.
* I have at least one obsession at any given time.
* I weigh myself, pee/poo, and then weigh myself again.
* I consistently spend way too much money on obsessions-of-the-moment.
* I'm a judgmental asshole.
* I'm a HUGE drama-queen.
* I have traveled on more than one continent.
* I sometimes wish my father would just disappear.
* I need people to tell me I'm good at something in order to feel that I am.
* I am a Libertarian.
* I can speak more than one language.
* I can fall asleep even if the whole room is as noisy as it can be.
* I would rather read than watch TV.
* I like reading fact more than fiction.
* I have pulled an all-nighter on an assignment I was given a month to do.
* I have no piercings.
* I have spent the night in a train station or other public place.
* I have been so upset over my physical gender that I cried.
* I've been married and am now divorced.
* There have been times when I have wondered "Why was I born?"
* I like most animals better than most people.
* I own a collection of retro game consoles.
* The thought of physical exercise makes me shiver.
* I have hit someone with a dead fish.
* I have written/read erotic stories.
* I am compulsively honest.
* I was born with a congenital birth defect that has never been repaired.
* I have danced topless in front of dozens of complete strangers.
* I have gone from wishing I was a boy to revelling in being a girl to feeling like a boy again in the span of five minutes, and not cared a whit for my actual sex.
* I am unashamedly bisexual, and have different motivations for my desires for different genders.
* I sometimes won't sleep a whole night or eat a whole day because I forget to.
* I obsessively wash my hands.* I always carry something significant around with me.
* Sometimes I'd rather wear a wig in day-to-day life than use my own hair
* I've pushed myself to become more self-aware and thereby more aware of others.
* Even though I live on my own I still cry sometimes because I miss my mother.
* I hand wrote all the HTML tags in this document.
* I've liked something which a majority of people claimed was either bad or weird.
* I have been clinically dead for a brief period of time.
* Instead of feeling sympathy/empathy with people and their problems, I simply become annoyed.
* I participate/have participated in auto drag races and won.
* I do not 'get' most comedy acts.
* Seriously. I do think larry david, and roseanne are funny.
* I don't think strippers are money-greedy or slutty for dancing.
* I don't like to chew gum.
* I am obsessed with history/historical things and can't wait for someone to build a time machine so I can be the first to use it.
* I can never remember for the life of me where I parked the car.
* Had the TEEN ANGST thing going for at least 2-3 years.
* I wish people would be more empathic and honest with each other.
* I play Dungeons and Dragons weekly.
* I love to sing.
* I want to live in my mother's basement when I grow up.
* I have a custom-built computer. And I built it.
* I want to create a certain someone's babies, even though there's a 0% possiblity of ever achieving it.
* I would be in a relationship with one of my pets if they were human.
* I've gone skinny-dipping.
* I've performed in three plays, all of them Shakespeare.
* I enjoy burritos.
* I'm Irish and lovin' it.
* I have a thing for redheads.
* I am a twin.
* Most times, I'd rather do something intellectual instead of doing something generically 'fun'.
* Once I set out to finish something, I always stay at it until it is completed before I move on to something else.
* I wish there were a way to erase past mistakes.
* I wish I could do High School all over again.
* I have big interest swings every year.
* I have loved Pokemon since the beginning and continue to do so.
* There's no genre of music I dislike.
* I've read every work written by my favorite author(s).
* No matter how much I sleep, I'm always tired.
* I'd rather eat out than cook.
* I am obsessed with actors that are older than I am.
* I can move my little toes independently.
* I enjoy purchasing and wearing articles of clothing and/or accessories that have skulls on them.
* I can play most woodwind instruments, particularly the clarinet.
* I have appeared nude in a film.
* I have attempted to rob a store using a replica weapon.
* My hair has been every colour of the rainbow at least once.
* I think its entirely possible to just like Marmite when you feel like it, without having to love or hate it.
* I have half siblings who I've never met.
* I auditioned to join the circus.
*I have had sex with someone of a different race.
*I can do tricks with my tongue.

Father's Day Climbin'

2006-06-18T22:54:00.000-04:00

Well for a father's day treat we surprised Tim with a rock climbing adventure at our local rock climbing club. Of course the kids had to go first and did really well then Tim got a turn. We soon understood why it's a pay one price and stay as long as you want. It should be a pay one price and stay until you drop which seems to be about 2 hours into the climbing!! Tim managed to go up 3 times and was completely done with numb sore fingers and toes from griping.
The kids had an absolute blast and are completely hooked. Of course they did great scrambling up until they looked down and then they would just let go and hang there with one of us holding their ropes at the bottom and just yell "I'm done, Get me down, NOW!" Quinn managed to get about 20 feet or possibly more by the end, Leah was closer to 15 and Tim got to the top once, which would have been about 40 feet or so.

The photos of Quinn climbing is about 6 or so feet short of where he managed to actually get to. I have a feeling we will all be back fairly soon and Tim is already trying to think of people he can drag along to climb with him after work next week.

I have to say it was a really great thing for the kids and not that bad in the price department. They had a bunch of different areas to practice with many different skill levels plus the caving area where there were some people practically hanging upside down!

It sure burned up some energy with both Leah and Quinn and they both sure fell asleep fast!

Gorilla Gardening

2006-06-04T20:19:00.000-04:00

Two years ago I took out all the grass of our tiny 12 foot by 17 foot front lot and with a tonne of work and digging and adding in a truckload of triple mix. With the help of donations of many plants by my Mom and a friendly stranger who just came and dropped off an entire box of perennials my front garden looks fantastic! The tulips created a fun path for the kids though I can see now that I missed a section that I need to put bulbs in this fall. I better mark it now so I can find the area come October!

The city came along and spoiled my plan to no longer have to drag a lawnmower out the front by adding in a grass boulevard with a tree...sigh. I don't want to drag the damn lawnmower out and the neighbours to one side are renters and never do any lawn care. The neighbours on the right side are very clear that they will only mow up to and never over the property line. Sooooo that leaves me dragging out the lawnmower or making a new garden and ditching that grass too!! I think I'll start that little project soon...heheh. I can't resist the urge to expand the garden, maybe I'll even spread it into the renter house area since they obviously will never cut their's either.

Quinn is 6 Today!

2006-05-28T12:14:00.000-04:00

Happy birthday to my sweet boy! I can't believe you're six already, where did the time go? I think because you are the youngest it seems more final, all that baby stuff you are leaving behind.

I always had that time frame of the September when you would go off to Grade 1 for full days of school and Leah would be in Grade 4. It always seems so far in the distant future and yet here it is only a short summer vacation away!

You and your sister are growing so fast that I find myself looking at and you both and wondering some days how I got here and where did all that time go? You both are really great kids and I love you to pieces and love to hang out with you, it's always a fun time. I was once told that our children are our greatest Zen Masters and will teach us our toughest lessons because they are the one person on the earth that we have to listen to and can't avoid the lesson being taught. So always remember you have as much to teach me as I have to teach you and we have a life of learning ahead of us both.
Love you my wee boy.

Bathroom Limbo

2006-05-26T10:59:00.000-04:00

Well the bathroom reno is temporarily on hold. Tim is back at work and once again crazy busy and coming home late and exhausted. Weekends are crazy busy like this weekend with it being Quinn's 6th birthday party and nothing prepared for it. So between the mountain of homework Leah always brings home and a party to shop for and organize along with a function at the kid's Boys and Girls Club that they desperately want to attend, I'm already tired. Not even mentioning Leah's social calendar of her friends that want to get together with her to play.

Now that I'm working from the store and not at home during the week all the household chores are piling up. I used to break up my work with grocery shopping, laundry and cleaning while I was home. Now I'm too whipped to do it in the evenings after rushing through a meal and homework. What is up with the homework anyways! Leah is in grade 3 and there is always an hour to 2 hours of homework. She has trouble doing class work in class because of her APD but even still. Last weekend she came home with 13 pages of math work that was over and above what they are doing in class and the homework that came from that. Crazy! Math is a real struggle for Leah especially at the end of a day when she is tired.

So back to the bathroom, well no news is bad news in this case. I think we are going to have to hire someone to get us to the next stage. This is going into week 4 with no upstairs toilet and I really need a toilet up there! I guess I'll make some calls to see what it will cost me... sigh. It's actually cheaper to hire someone and keep Tim at work since taking off work for Tim means no pay whatsoever. Definitely cheaper to hire someone than loose Tim's income.

All Quiet...

2006-05-16T09:23:00.000-04:00

Well Tim went back to work today after taking 2 weeks off to do the bathroom. Those kind of holidays suck, all work and no play. We did manage to get some major destruction, rebuilding, organizing, purging of the house and garage done which is great.
We are going to have a big yardsale soon!
So the kids are now out of the house to school and Quinn will go to daycare for the afternoon and Tim is at work so we can finally get a paycheque again. It's very quiet and pretty damn clean in this house, yeah!
Now I'm supposed to get my work done of making final changes to the children's book I've illustrated and designed for the author. Of course I'm avoiding as usual. I keep telling myself it won't take long and then I can burn the CD's and ship it this week and it will be done! Unfortunately I'm not really believing that because there always seems to be one more change...sigh.
I've moved onto other projects and jobs and illustrating a whole book may sound great but it's a really long project for me and I never can do it quick enough to actually make any money. I'm lucky if it pays my daycare expenses for the time I'm working on it. I've decided that I'm not a book illustrator, I'm much better at the short creative jobs so I'm going to turn down the ones that I'm not good at so I can concentrate of the jobs I am good at. Less stress this way for everyone involved.
The author that is paying me has been awesome about the whole project and the 2 books we did previous to this. I think though she is taking it a bit personally that I don't want to do a 4th book or any other book in the future. I couldn't have asked for a better person to do the project with but I need to realize my limitations and step back to allow for someone truly talented in this capacity step in. I know lots of illustrators so when she is ready I'll help her find the right person to step in and develop anymore books that she wants to plan for.
Book website www.grahamcrackerkids.com

The Tub is IN!

2006-05-15T13:04:00.000-04:00

The plumber arrived early Saturday and we got the tub in by evening and it's really, really deep! YEAH! A good soaker/bubble bathtub at last!!!
The kids decided to christen it for us and there is tonnes of room for them both and Leah can even completely submerge herself and she says practice for swimming class. We stuck up plastic everywhere and hopefully we will get the floor in and the toilet and sink by the end of next weekend.

We moved the doorway so it opens on Leah's side of the hallway and will have a sliding pocket door. The door will be in the wall when open right at the end of the tub.

Century homes are such a joy and full of surprises!! We did find some old newspaper from 1937 and old wallpaper and the old, probably original flooring which was about 5 inches lower than the other old floor that had probably been installed in the 60's with the yellow tub and toilet. We also found a nice piece of baseboard still attached to the wall under the old tub from the days of a freestanding tub. The bathroom is only about 8 feet wide and the original floor where it attached on the side of the room where the toilet was to across the room to where the tub was the drop in the floor was about 5 inches. The angle was crazy! The old floor ontop of it was sloped as well, even where they tried to correct it. We had to rip up the hallway section as well since it wasn't level either. Now Leah's floor in her room is again lower than the hallway and a small step down into her room.

The angle of the walls is pretty scary. I think if we intend to stay in this house for much longer we are going to have to underpin the kitchen so it will stop sinking!!!

Movie Night!

2006-05-12T17:59:00.000-04:00

I help organize a movie night fundraiser at our kid's school and it's tonight. We are watching Nanny McPhee.
We usually raise close to and sometimes more than $300 so it's a great evening. THis time I'm sneaking a thermos of some lovely chilled wine for myself and another mom (best girlfriend) to celebrate the end of another school year. This is the excuse I came up with anyways.
Hopefully I won't get caught with the goods!

Backsplash

2006-05-12T13:09:00.000-04:00

I was at my Mom's during the xmas holidays and created this backsplash for her kitchen. It was a small area that ended up taking a surprising amount of time to do.
I used 4 x 4 inch white tiles with 1/2 inch glass mosiac tiles in about 4 different colours of blue and 1/2 inch mirror tiles. The mirror tiles were all silver but the glass was etched with different designs like a raised wavy pattern, swirls, a fern-like leaf pattern and also just clear glass. The mirror added a really nice sparkle.

Renovation Time...AGAIN!!

2006-05-10T21:52:00.000-04:00

So we are once again renovating this house of ours...sigh. This time it's the upstairs bathroom. So far we've discovered the original floor is sloping about 5 inches from one end of the 7 foot room to the other. Someone raised the floor over it in the 60's but now that floor is slopping too. So now we are raising it up so it's level which meant now we had to raise the hallway up too. Which means we had to rip out the top layer of laminate flooring, the middle layer of oak strip flooring and the subflooring and then start over. We've gone to the dump alot! Our poor old van is going to have a heart attack with all this abuse.

This is the 3rd bathroom reno Tim and I have attempted and none have been much fun. This picture is before we took the lovely gold tub out and found the old flooring underneath it with the old baseboard still there.

The basement bathroom we reno'd back in September and only finished it last month. That reno entailed digging up a large portion of the basement floor to get the plumbing set up properly. Before we fixed it the toilet used to get flushed out a pipe and sent through the floor drain in the basement out to the street rainwater run off. The smell was nasty in the basement because of that floor drain. So we dug up trenches of dirt through the basement back to the upstairs sewer pipes to discover that it was up too high so we had to buy a "poop shooter" which takes the waste water and shoots it upwards into the sewer pipes. This "poop shooter" needed another hole dug about 3 feet wide and 4 feet deep. You would not believe the amount of dirt that we dragged by the bucket upstairs thru the kitchen and the livingroom and out the front door to the dumpster. We filled the dumpster with dirt!

We've lived in the house for 3 years and we have done some major work to it; made the house back into a single family dwelling and put in a new kitchen, ripped out the walls in the livingroom/dining/hall area so it's open concept, new hardwood, new electrical, insulated, removed the upstairs kitchen and put it back to a bedroom and painted and sanded every square inch of the house. Plus fenced the backyard with a wooden privacy fence and put in gorgeous perennial gardens in the back and the front yard and even planted a tree.

Maybe someday soon we can just live in it without a project that has to be done to it.

And So It Begins

2006-05-09T22:22:00.000-04:00

So I bought a motorcycle a month ago and have managed to drive it in the streets of Toronto and lived to tell about it. Yeah! I got my license about 12 yrs ago and haven't really driven since. There was the problem of no bike, no money, college, marriage and children that slowed me down a bit.
My husband became hooked on bikes last year and got his license and Honda 550 1977 last spring and then convinced me this year to get my own. I bought a 1971 Honda CB350 which is a a bit smaller and much less daunting to handle. Though I have discovered that I need to hold on and excelerate slowly because it is so light it practically does a wheelly sometimes!

I was very nervous about riding since we live downtown Toronto with all the traffic but I stuck with just our few neighbourhood streets and then cautiously ventured onto the bigger streets. So far so good and I'm driving it to work and here and there. I do need to get some saddlebags because after all I'm still a mom that needs to pick up milk on occasion! Vroom, vroom