Hello 2010 !

The last 2 weeks have just flown by.
It's been nice and relaxing with lots of time for just the 4 of us.
The only busy thing we did was drive to Craig and Nic's Christmas morning to spend a few days.....first time we have spent Christmas with any family members for 4 years.
The weather was kind of weird and not the greatest to get out and about in,which is a shame when there is so much to explore.
Michael and Brad got quads for Christmas,so Ad and Ol had a little go on those.
I even had a go,kind of fun,but Nic has the photo evidence of that.

We did see a couple of porcupines up a tree and plenty of tracks of various other wildlife !
We walked out to the swamp,which was being to freeze over,lots of stuff to take pictures of !!
Since then we've taken it easy.
Boys have seen a few friends,been skating and sledging.
New years eve was just the four of us,sushi dinner and movies.

I'm not one for making resolutions or any of that kind of thing but I am definitely going to make even more use of my time this year.
Spend it wisely.
I feel towards the end of last year I wasted a lot of time.
All in all I am looking forward to 2010.

Anyway it feels good to get all the Christmas stuff down.
That prompted a grand old tidy up and clear out yesterday that has been continuing today.
That has of course left a huge expanse of wall in my dining room that I have to find a cheap solution for !
The boys are still off school until Thursday.....then I can get back to completing my long overdue sofa covers and cushion making in peace.

I haven't scrapped since before Christmas and not sure there will be time this week either but I am dying to get back into it....so many photo's just waiting.
I also need to sort out my albums.
I will post this 8x8 double page,one of 3 I made for Patti's birthday album...

I do intend to try and continue to post a layout every Friday.

I have also decided to do the 365 photo challenge,I'm posting those on flickr.
To keep it interesting for me I'm going to include a few simillar things each week.
I'm sure there will be photo's I love and photo's I hate but it's all about learning and trying to improve.

Monday

I like Mondays like this one.
It's 11.30 and I've already done 2 loads of washing,3rd load is waiting to go in the dryer.
Tidied away all the stuff we took with us this weekend.
Made 3 of the 6 phone calls I need to make this week (after having to deal with severely lacking customer service people,I cut it short at 3,I could take no more !!).
Filled 10 huge leaf bags,which was actually enjoyable because it is beautiful out there today,lovely and warm.

So I think it's time to make a batch of cookies,have lunch while catching up on some some blog reading and maybe a little scrapping.

We went to see Craig and Nic and the boys this weekend,who seem to be settling in nicely out in the woods in Ontario !!
Nic and I ran a ton of errands on Saturday which left the men busy building a school bus shelter and cutting down trees....manly stuff :)
I barely took any photo's,although I took a few when we went for a little walk along the road before breakfast on Sunday.
These 2 are my favourites for different reasons......


I've been wondering if I have a focusing issue with my camera but I think sometimes I just rush a little.
I am aware I'm often trailing behind or trying to capture a child who would rather be doing something else !
I took my time Sunday and most were good.


The sun was in front of us coming back,I'm aware I have the pink sunspot blaring in there but I like it.

The weekend (photo heavy !)

We finally got to meet up with our friends at their cottage this weekend.
Saturday was cool and cloudy but Sunday was glorious and sunny,shame we had to leave early,since this was the nicest day we'd had in a while.
I had been messing about with settings on my camera and changed the brightness of the screen but of course I forgot that and still took pictures allowing for the fact they appear darker than they are.
The result...... over exposed and blown out pictures,Oh well,excusing that and the fact I haven't had time to make a montage:

Stuart caught a big bass,which we released although would have made a tasty dinner....


This monster was lurking in the canoe.....


I swear spread out like that it was nearly as big as my hand,I have never seen a dock spider that big.I will never get in the canoe without scrutinising it thoroughly first !!

Our friends are American and being the 4TH of July we lit some fireworks and the kids had sparklers........


Sunday,Adam did a fair bit of this.......


Oliver preferred this.......


And found a friend....


I spent time taking pictures of these by the water's edge......

A rare picture of us taken by Oliver since it's well known I'd much rather be the other side of the camera.....


This was my favourite shot of the weekend,can't explain why but I love it....


Other stuff.
Last week I had to bite the bullet and made an appointment with the physio in town(I don't have insurance which was the biggest factor in putting this off)but my shoulder just wasn't getting better and I was just getting more and more frustrated.Which isn't fun for anyone around me,I can tell you !
That decision made I decided to stop running,ice it up when possible and managed 2 days of no driving (both are cars are manual and the gear changing aggravates it)and it was a little better.
Anyway had the first session so we'll see how it goes,got some exercises to do and he's not too keen on me running for a while........not sure I am able to obey that one but I'll try for a week and ask again !!
Out comes the bike.......and once Mum has gone back we can all bike down to swimming lessons so that's some exercise at least.

I so badly want to get those running shoes back on because I have missed it.I've been using the use the map my run site for keeping track of all my activities and I only just found the elevation feature when you map out a route......it's pretty cool.Well I think so !

Mum leaves Wednesday evening and then I thought I had 5 days before the next set of visitors arrived.Plans have changed it seems so that saves me doing a bit of furniture re-arranging and major cramming of stuff in cupboards.....Thanks Nic :) !!

OK well hopefully back later this week with a new layout...........I really want to get back to scrapping.

After the weekend

We spent last weekend at our friends cottage.
We are very lucky that they let us use it when they aren't there and because of that we always like to make sure we help contribute in some way while we are there.
This time we spent most of Saturday in between doing other things like walking and fishing and taking 350 odd photo's(that would be me !) we burnt a whole pile of dead branches left over from last year and all the leaves I raked up from this year.
So it's neat and tidy down by the lake for them when they next go.

Not much else to say so I'll fill this post with photo's from the weekend.

This one's for Julie and Patti.......a dandelion :)


These are the ones,according to my boys,that grow into the giant seed heads like these

We saw a snake.......


He was about a meter long.

I spent this morning sorting through all the pictures and have already planned my layout to include these.........(should click bigger)


I can't believe my boys went in the lake.......it was warm in the afternoon but to me the lake was still on the cool side,toes in only.Not to them,they mainly paddled but Ad swam to the diving rock so he could claim he was the first to do it.

I took this one of the moon Saturday night,I was thinking of Julie's challenge for the next day which was 'reflection' and thinking if I stayed up until midnight something like this could be my shot......



........but after all the activities of the day I was too tired and called it a night.

Monday

The weather forecast says no rain after tonight.............I hope so because I've had enough for the time being.
It needs to warm up too.
Yesterday Ad had a baseball game and I kid you not we were sat there with coats, blankets and umbrellas until it just got too unbearable and we moved the cars so we could watch from the warmth..........thankfully it only lasted 1 full inning before the game was cancelled.

Chippies out and about eating all the seeds from the helicopters that have landed on the deck...........
I also caught him eating the petals from my Busy Lizzie's,the photo is after the fact..........he'd eaten the evidence ! So far he's not found the parsley because last year he stripped it bare !

We took a trip Saturday to the Canadian Museum of Civilisation in Hull to see a couple of exhibitions they had going on.This one was the main reason for going and was interesting but I wish it had been bigger,fuller.Also this one,which was interesting,I always love seeing Egyptian relics.We haven't taken a trip to a museum for a while so it was a fun day.

Today being the 1st of June starts another month of a photo a day.
I'm doing this fun challenge with Patti again but also we've roped in Julie too.
Since Patti and I enjoyed our weekend challenges last time we thought we'd have a word/challenge for everyday this month...should be interesting !
So we've picked 10 each.....we don't know them until the night before because a certain someone thought they might be tempted to cheat if they knew them all in advance !!
So I'll be posting them on my other blog.

I'll leave you with a couple more shots of stuff in my garden........

Love these so much mainly because they seed like crazy and are just too pretty and this year they haven't been attacked by nasty ants like last year.....

The pink......

and

The white......

The purple.....

Still waiting for the red ones,which is weird as they were out in abundance at our friends cottage a few weeks ago. !

The other weekend

This weeks flying by.
I got to watch Ol's first soccer game of the season last night in the pouring rain and it was absolutely tipping it down,I'm being polite.The kids didn't seem to mind one bit,even though they were drenched.He had a blast and is totally into it.

So the other weekend,Victoria day long weekend,we went to our friends cottage in Ontario.
It was a weird weather weekend,very windy(not good for taking flower pictures !) and cold but the sun did show up a few times.
I was preparing the photo's for a layout and thought I'd post them as the montage I'm using........it should click bigger,I hope.

Lots to see although I was disappointed I didn't see one bullfrog.

• We did see Oriole's savouring the apple blossom.
• A herons nest which I forgot to include a picture of !
• Turtles, Water lilies and Trillium's.
• A nesting duck.........which we must have walked past a dozen times before we spotted her.
• Hummingbirds......which turned up within minutes of hanging the feeder.

Back tomorrow with a couple of layouts since it's Friday and all that!

Short and sweet.....

......is today's post.

Last week I finally ran 5KM and I've done it twice more since so it wasn't a fluky one off thing !
It's been a long time coming.
I don't know if it was a mental block that I couldn't reach this tiny goal of mine before now.
I changed a few things,drank and ate something an hour before,slowed down ,altered my play list to keep the tempo going and changed the route slightly.

There is no way I could do it without music,no way.I've set that play list to give me a boost every so often,it really works.
So now the goal is to run it faster (love the stopwatch feature on the iPod) and run further......the weird thing is I'm actually enjoying it rather than it just being a means to keep the pounds away.......the fact it's giving rain the next few days isn't deterring me in the least....

I feel a page coming on !

ETA: Current running play list.....since Ash asked :)

Tracks 1,2,3 are my warm up walk,I walk about 1 KM first so I normally start running towards the end of track 3.
Track 9 is timed for my first lull and seems to get me going again.
Track 12 kicks in just as I get home at the moment...........I continue to listen while I stretch which I'm sure my neighbours opposite wonder what I'm doing but my front steps are the perfect height for some good stretches :)

1. 4am....Our Lady Peace
2. Float on....Modest Mouse
3. Love Lockdown.....Kanye West
4. Magnificent....U2
5. Lose Yourself....Enimen
6. DOA...Foo Fighters
7. Extreme ways....Moby
8. One headlight....The Wallflowers
9. American Idiot....Green Day
10. Homecoming....Kanye West/Chris Martin
11. S*x on Fire .... Kings of Leon
12. Goes Around....Justin Timberlake
13. Spiralling....Keane
14. South side....Moby
15. Last fight....Velvet Revolver

Tuesday

This week sees the start of the boys sports seasons and they are well and truly getting underway.
Ol had his first soccer (it's taken me about 9 years to doing it with out thinking but I now call "football" soccer because it just got too confusing and when I referred to "football" as American football I'd get odd looks !).He had a blast and can't wait for his first game tomorrow,I hope the weather co-operates although it's not looking promising for the next few days.
Ad has his first baseball game Thursday....I think we will be eating dinner a lot at the park this year!

Well I scrapped yesterday but didn't finish my page so I'll post this one from I did on NSD..........

I'm not sure but I may have sorted out the poor image thing,although this one has come out a little dark but I'll take a little dark over fuzzy image.

And another shot from the garden,forget me nots are everywhere......

OK got to get on my bike......... to my first class in 4 weeks,hopefully my arm is fully rested but I know I am going to ache tomorrow :)

I said......

I'd post everyday this week....mmmmmmmm!

OK I'll start with this weekend,which was great,the weather was nice so we got lots done outside.

• Wonderful,fun dinner Friday night to celebrate a friends "special" birthday.
• Finished planting up the veggies and seeds.
• Cut the grass
• More weeding.
• New way of cooking/marinating ribs......yum :)
• Dinner with friends last night......where Stuart decided it was time to use their pool for the first time this year............even my boys went in......not for long but they went in !!!
• We didn't have time to get the nets up on the gazebo though but I might attempt that on my own this week because the mosquitoes are driving me crazy...........and they are huge,nasty evil devils this year !

I don't like to post without a picture so these are a few I took around the garden yesterday......

I have a couple of varieties of these....I love them and they just take care of themselves and keep coming back bigger and bigger.

This is probably a little over exposed but I liked it anyway,I don't remember planting this colour so I'm not sure if it's reverted back to it's original but I don't care as it's super pretty and had seeded it's self quite nicely around the garden !

Oh my peony buds............not long before these beauties open.

I didn't do any scrapping but I am going to do some today in between doing the laundry.There is one good side to sharing my space with my washer and dryer. Since it's sunny and windy out there it's a good day to do all the bed linens............nothing better than getting into a bed with fresh air dried sheets !

I have a new punch I am dying to use and a pile of pictures ready and waiting.

So back tomorrow ............

Monday, Monday

So glad it's a new week.......this is a photo heavy post as I don't have much to say.Plus I've had really intermittent Internet connection all weekend so I hope I don't get cut off. A while ago I learnt about the 'post options' button so I've also written Wednesdays post too.It's all set and ready to go even if I have no connection :)

We all spent the best part of Saturday in the garden,the boys both had friends over so they spent all day outside too.
I weeded all my flower beds,all 8 of them and Stuart found a robins egg in the grass.

Which is a shame,obviously she got spooked off her nest or didn't have it ready in time.

Oliver made this cute ladybird for the garden at school for Mothers day.......

So I let him decide where he wanted to put it and it's got pride of place on the front steps !

I took quite a few photo's around the garden,I think they should look better clicked bigger......

The tulips are out and blooming and so are the leaves.....


This one is the same tree as in my header after just 3 days........

I can't believe how much everything has grown,it makes me very happy to see all that green and bits of colour out there.
No scrapping time though,unfortunately but hopefully this week in between getting outside and working on the garden some more.

Not pleased........

....to wake up to this sight this morning !



I was getting used to the brown grass and huge amount of leaves left over from fall.

Lovely Monday !

I'm here enjoying a well deserved cup of coffee.Both bathrooms are shiny,house is hoovered,laundry done,windows cracked open a little,the sun is shining.....everything is good !

Spring is definitely in the air,yesterday,while we were on a little drive I saw 2 flocks of geese..........got to be a good sign.We also saw a herd of deer,about 15 in total,not the best picture as they were in a few fields over.

Out the corner of my eye just now I either just saw Chippie scramble past or else it was a big mouse or small rat.........I'll go with Chippie :)

It's been sunny and warm,all weekend and what a good weekend it was too.
Signed both boys up for their summer sports,Ol choose soccer(can't believe I actually call it soccer now!) and Adam stuck with baseball.
I got to read,finished my book and I scrapbooked.
We spent quite a bit of it seeing my wonderful pal Carine and her clan.Friday for dinner,(BBQ !)Then Sunday we went and saw Mackenzie play goalie in Hockey and then ended up having supper there again,where we brought over a rotisserie chicken.I'm mentioned this so that it flows nicely into me saying I'm going to try and post a recipe a day this week(except Friday,that's layout day !) and the first one will be the fore mentioned BBQ chicken rub recipe !

Back later with it..........

Love it or hate it......

......it's Monday !

Another fairly quiet weekend here, Ad had homework projects to finish up although it did involve a friend for one of them so not so bad for him.I'm not at all fond of homework that's project based,even less so when it involves team work and no time is given during class.

We went for dinner at friends Saturday night,which was fun but resulted in a late night so Sunday was a bit of a wash out ! It snowed all day too,nothing heavy but at 4 O'clock someone decided they really wanted to play outside and as there was no big brother to drag outside the job was mine !! I cleared the path and steps while someone whizzed down the slope at the front of the house.I took photo's because I realised I didn't actually have any pictures of either of the boys playing outside this year.Anyway not the best pictures since it was getting dark and I had the big lens on but someone had a blast and it seems the harder the fall the more fun it was........

Couldn't resist trying to get one portrait shot......

OK well two because that toothless grin is too funny !

I've spent the morning cleaning and tidying so might actually try and start a page before the boys come home.I finished up a page Saturday that had been sat on my desk all week,just wasn't feeling it last week but I got a bunch of older pictures developed so I want to make a start on those.

My favourite....

.....day of the week is here again ! I think it's just the feeling of how good it feels to have the house to myself and get a whole lot accomplished without having anyone else here to need/distract me.

Well this weekend brought Valentines day and I got to search for my hearts again (I mentioned it here) Ad got invited to sleepover at a friends although it was a tough decision for him to make as he knew we were making sushi for dinner and it's his most favourite meal.Anyway we promised to save him some,in the end we made too much so it wasn't a problem at all.

We are getting better at this,the rice was much better than the last time we made it and we put more filling in,although we still need to put more.It's not the same as getting take out but it's fun and a lot cheaper :)

Sunday we went for a drive,didn't see much but I like the look of this nest so I'll leave you with that instead of a page today.

No scrapping at all this weekend..........just wasn't in the mood unfortunately.

Baby,it's cold outside....

Cold..............it's frigging frigid !!
When people back in England ask how cold it is,it's really hard to describe it,I've explained the nostril freezing experience but you cannot imagine it unless you've actually experienced it,that I'm sure of.I'm often asked well I'm sure you get used to it........erm NO,I will never get used to it !! I had to go out yesterday and it wasn't pleasant,I think they were saying 9 minutes for frostbite on exposed skin.Today's -25C,no wind chill but it's back tomorrow making it seem like -35C.....lovely.

At least I am home today,I lit the fire at 7 this morning and keep looking at the blue sky and pretending it's summer!

So apart from it being freezing yesterday it was also someones birthday.........

I don't normally have much luck with photo's that involve cake and candles,so I've tended to give up and enjoy the moment instead but last night I gave it another try and I like these,especially the last one with just one candle left.The candles were the only light in the room.

I added a few more pages to my Flickr gallery,older ones from 2007 that I found in a file !( I've been clearing up my photo files and backing up.)

This is one I never posted it's from September 07,I could have taken those shots every time he played what a difference to this year !

Off to chuck another log on the fire........

DT news and more photo's

After 2 years of being on the Scrapbook Centrale Design Team I've decided to leave.It wasn't an easy decision but it's something that I have been thinking about for a while.Lots of reasons that make it the best decision for me right now.

I am also hoping to actually get some scrapping done this weekend...it's been so long and I'm dying to use the October Afternnoon paper I bought a while back.

I just couldn't resist and went out twice more to take more photo's !!


The neighbours pine tree just captivated me !

My photo a day is up to date here as of now !

Another year older.

Yes,today's my birthday and do you want to see what I got.....................



A lovely snowstorm !!(If you click on the picture you can see the snow falling) there was only supposed to be about 3cm but there must be 5 to 6 inches now on the driveway.Anyway,it didn't stop me meeting my friends for lunch,glad they all decided to brave the weather for me !

Sunday we went to get our tree.It was disappointing this year and the first time in 4 years we haven't cut our own tree.I think this is the last year for that particular field because the trees were all either very small or too big,even for us.So we ended up getting one of their pre cut trees and we went with pine again.It snowed like crazy while we were there so it made it festive ! I love the long needles of the pine but it makes hard work decorating it.Anyway this is what it looked like last night.



It's not touching the ceiling this year so it's about 10 foot tall.

OK I'm re posting this post using Html and it seems to be making a difference,thanks Susan :)

Another year older

OK this post is now residing in the post above,it's exactly the same but I got the photo's to work.

Bad blogger.......

Yep that's me.

I just have not had the time or the enthusiasm to post unfortunately,too many things on my mind does not make me a happy person :(

The kitchen................still not done but it's getting closer,all the little bits were finished off today.

Citizenship..............I wonder how many born and bred Canadians know all these facts ? and why don't the over 55's need to take it ? !

Scrapbooking....................hardly anytime for this and that makes me sad,I like my hobby how dare life get in the way! I did get a page picked up yesterday for the April CK which was great.

The weather............... I did not like waking up to this yesterday............

We had about 6 inches and it's still out there,oh I am so not looking forward to winter.

I'll be back soon in a much better mood !