Wednesday, July 29, 2009

whew!

It has been SUPER hot for the coast lately. Today was around or over 38 degrees (100F) ... The thermometer actually says almost 47 right now, but it is outside in the sun, so reads a little high. The kids ( and us too!) haven't been sleeping very well at all, so are all just clinging on to what little sanity we have left. The house doesn't cool below 30 at night even with fans going and windows open. We have been going down to the lake daily... even the kids have actually gone into the water (yippie!) until I got a nasty looking case of swimmers itch! Gross! We made our way to the river instead yesterday, along with everyone else in the valley! The youngest hid in the forest growling... not exactly a successful outing. Transitions just suck sometimes! Today we broke down on the " no guns" rule , andspent some of the grocery money on squirt guns. Now we are all soaked and happy... I took the brunt of it! Safe way to take out pent up annoyance at me perhaps! Fun stuff anyhow. Hope you are all staying cool and having fun times!

Monday, July 20, 2009

Hot !

Beautiful weather we are having here! The garden is just getting huge! I think that I overplanted... I don't know how I will even get in there when it grows more! The mystery squash are taking over. I love going out there in the mornings though, and I find myself lingering for a lot longer than I need to. The ecchinacea, lavendar and calendula are in full bloom and I can see tiny buds of chammomile starting. We are eating lots of peas and greens and herbs so far... the bounty is coming though. It looks like I will have hundreds of tomatoes this year and far too many beans! Dilly beans here we come!



The berries are in full swing . When we go on a forest walk now we come home with baskets of goodies. I made fireweed jelly for the first time last week. Such a pretty colour and tasty too. The wild blackberries are just getting ripe... I bet if we go up into the bush in the next couple of days that we will catch some. My neck was out for the last three days, so we havent been out much... the house is disasterous!lol



Scored yesterday at the thrift shop. For a couple of bucks I came home with a very clean blue glass 5 gallon water jug. So pretty! Since our house and pipes are so incredibly old and sketchy, we are forced to buy water. I hate using the plastic, but it seems to be the lesser of the two evils... especially since the tap water gives me tummy upset in the summer anyhow, never mind the heavy metal and rust ingestion!

Looks like the landlords are finally going to replace the roof! It has only been leaking for 5 years! I think that we convinced them to finally put some insulation in the back of the house in the roof as well... should make for a warmer winter! I hate to know that our heating is just literally flying out the roof. Especially when our main source is oil.

Heading into the shop today to finish those commision pieces for my girlfriends wedding. Hopefully we can break some ground this week and get started on our cold frame as well.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Eight!!






My biggest guy had his eighth birthday today. Sweet little bug!






He woke up for the day excited... ready to go... and ready to have cake for breakfast! What could be better?! He wanted cheesecake, but I didn't have time to do two cakes... since not everyone in the family can eat dairy we went with a chocolate mousse tofu cheesecake. It was actually phenomenal. I am not a tofu cheesecake fan, but we would all happily gobble this anytime. Bonus, we discovered that the batter makes for the best dairy free pudding ever! T received the 7th Harry Potter book from us. It was the last of the series and he has been waiting for it for months, rereading all of the others multiple time while patiently awaiting the final book. He was pretty excited and started plowing through it right away.
We had a tricky time trying to find something special to do for the day. We had the idea to go to a local island for a day trip and beautiful hike. When we looked online at the ferry cost, it would have cost over 80 bucks just for the transportation. Poo... we scrapped that idea ( It cost us 200 bucks to get off this island to the mainland... we have been off once in 8 years! ) Then we researched a local small caving tour. It had a price tag of almost 70 bucks for a 25 min tour. Eeep! Harry Potter movie for the family? Another thumbs down on that idea. Ok. We are super duper frugal. My hubby has been layed off for over 2 months now and employment insurance pays 1400 a month which doesn't even cover essentials truly. We do a ton of fun stuff all of the time.... we just happen to enjoy things that are free! We are so out of the loop of what things even cost these days! I was a bit bummed to say the least. We just couldn't spend a weeks worth of groceries for a couple of hours of entertainment. We finally found the perfect thing. About a 45 min drive away there is a wildlife reserve that does local wildlife rescue. They have a nature museum, education center, lots of permanent resident animals plus a ton of rescue animals. It was soooooo perfect .... and under 20 dollars to boot ( I would gladly donate the 90 bucks it would have cost for the ferry trip to an organisation like this one!) We will definitely go back there. We did a little trip after to the next town over and what luck.... T s favourite musician( ok... he was really into him for a couple of years , but now it is all about K'Naan... but still this was a cool coincidence) was busking outside! http://www.shanephilip.com/ So it ended up being an awesome day. Happy birthday monkey!

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

The days are getting a bit away from me!

We had a lovely and busy weekend with guests again! Still no work, so family coming by can be a little bit stressful. Luckily there are lots of greens in the garden and we could brave the bears for bowls of free cherries! It has been raining like crazy for days now and we got to enjoy a rare thunderstorm that lasted for about 6 or 7 hours the other night!!! The garden is very happy though and seems to have doubled!




Since I last wrote I spun up about 600 yards of wool( 300 plyed). The first time ever spinning a skein on the wheel... plying too! it turned out lovely. I made up two touques and they don't even seem itchy. I started the epic job of spinning 1500 yards of finished plyed wool ( so about 3 km worth!) last night hoping to make myself a sweater. I have 3 flats of raspberries in the kitchen and am right in between stages of making jam. Papa has been helping an elderly neighbour with editing his biography. A great thing to do while layed off! Tomorrow I take the boys to a protest/ rally for inclusion/ peace and diversity after a highly publicised hate crime and racially motivated beating in the valley. So surprising... but not I guess. There isn't a lot of diversity in the valley and there is still a ton of racism. I don't see it in my corner of the woods, but I do know it is there.




This little guy had an amazing weeked with his Grandpa. Notoriously this little guy is so avoidant of touch.... never accepting any hugs or touch from anyone outside the family. Even when he was a baby he tucked in his arms to his side when you held him. He doesn't high five and has been known to pick highly dangerous senarious in order to avoid touch from others. So this weekend he discovered that he LOVES head massages from his grandpa. He had these huge smiles and sat there for big sessions of long massages all weekend. When it was time for the guests to leave he ran over and said... " how about you guys hug me, and I don't do any hugging?!!" He sidled up to them, arms stiff by his side to allow them to hug him! Might not seem like a big deal to some, but for us this was huge! Not only did he initiate, but he enjoyed it!!!! So cute.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Ready to spin!






So, nerdy as I am, I was so excited to deal with the fleece this morning that I woke up at 4 AM and couldn't get back to sleep. We washed the entire fleece in small batches in about three hours. It was so grubby that I didn't want to bring it inside so I did it all in a galvanized tub which could only handle about a pound at a time. What a crazy job this was! We strung up a piece of garden netting and created a giant drying hammock strung up between the posts of the swing set!. It was a perfect nice hot day with a breeze, so it all is almost dry. This afternoon we attempted a Canada Day outing ... the music was loud at the mini community gathering and my oldest started to get upset right away. He was saying that it was "his definition of chaos" and he was out of there before we even had a chance to even get in there at all. Poor little bug. He was all clenched up and stimmy all of the way home and just hasn't recovered all day. I wasn't really into it either to be honest, but I try to get the kids out there when there is an opportunity. You never know when they will be able to function at a gathering... we stayed at a birthday party last weekend until the very end. That was the first time ever! Usually we last half an hour or so, or are notorious for politely making excuses of why we can't come in the first place. Spectrumy behaviors have actually been pretty minimal lately all in all. At a playground a couple of weeks back the boys played with a group of kids, invited new kids to join them and looked to be the perfect little socialites! I was so happy off to the side watching thinking about 6 months previously when my youngest surely would have been hiding under a bench growling at anyone who came near him. Cool anyways. The ups and downs of it all. What can you do other than just be there and cheer them on inside!
So this afternoon I broke out the carders and carded and rolled a basket of the wool... pretty different than the dung encrusted mess I started with this morning! Now I am super ready to sit for a spinning session after dinner. I am really still getting the feel of the wheel. It isn't fancy or perfect and I just need to work around that a little! I didn't want to just spin fancy expensive combed top from the wool shop. I didn't have a project in mind and it just feels wasteful while I am learning. I had put that all aside in my mind because of finances even though I LOVE the little taste of spinning that I had done. Anyhow... that was why I couldn't sleep this morning. I was ridiculously excited. I even have a hat pattern picked out for it!