Pre-Conceived

Day Dreamer? Romantic? Control Freak?

Call it what you want, but I am the master of thinking about things before they happen and then feeling a sense of frustration? loss? sadness? when they do not pan out the way my mind had shaped them.
Sometimes I think the dream and anticipation of something is better then the reality as it has all the benefits of being anything you can imagine, without the truth of what it really is.

I have been doing this a lot lately and while the dreaming party is well, pretty dreamy - the reality part has me feeling kind of blue.

Would seem that just letting reality be real and keeping dreaming for bedtime might be a routine I should practice more.

I'll let you know how it goes.

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Fall Flowers

This weekend I got the chance to catch up with Mr. S as he lay in the lounge of their tour bus surrounding by their team/band mates and someone asked - is it fall at home? It hit me that Mr. S has been on the road for pretty much all of fall - from before it started to now, when the crisp mornings are showing signs that the frost is coming. He has missed the beautiful fall colours, those perfect days when there is a light chill in the air and the golden fall sun beams down and the amazing and cozy rainy days that makes staying snuggled up inside the perfect things to do.


So this week I wanted to post some of my photos from fall so that Mr. S and anyone else who is missing out can enjoy them.

First up are our fall flowers from Thanksgiving!
The local grocery store by the cottage has a pretty slim selection of flowers, so putting arrangements together for our celebrations can be a little tricky. But this year the options were perfect and I was able to pick up enough beautiful golden mums, cabbages and purples carnations for four arrangements and all for 20 bucks! A few weeks before for a family birthday party, Papa J has made me simple wood vases out of leftover timber and together, which worked perfectly for our thanksgiving table.

I just love these colours and textures together, and accented by a candle lit thanksgiving dinner, the cottage steamed up by delicious food and family packed all around, they could not have been more beautiful.

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Happy, Sleepy, Friday

By the time I crawled into bed last night I was so tired it hurt.
I was almost so tired that I couldn't sleep, but then as I started to fret about the injustice of my predicament I must have bored myself to sleep because my next moments wakefulness was to my alarm this morning.
Right now I feel like I can't bank enough hours of shut eye and going to bed late and getting up early is doing nothing to help that. Tonight won't be much of an improvement as I will be first stuffing myself with a belated Thanksgiving dinner and then playing a midnight curling match! Post game beers (which is really the only reason anyone is playing anyway) and I won't be hitting my pillow until the wee hours, only to wake again for an early am breakfast with a loved one.

But then the afternoon and evening are mine and I plan and spending as much of that time working in bed, hopefully with the cats snuggled close and a movie playing in the background ideally all accompanied by the soundtrack of rain falling outside.

So, happy weekend to you. I hope it is perfect and cozy.

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Feathered Finds

As a kid, Thanksgiving weekend at the cottage was always prime time to get "show and tell" ( I think some crazy schools call it share and care, or look at me brag or something along those lines) objects that you thought would blow away your friends (until you arrived at school to find that everyone had brought in a piece of birch bark) and enough nature supplies to get you through the fall season of crafting.

And as we get older, I find that bringing in a perfect yellow leaf or bull rush to my colleagues at work just doesn't have the same sense of accomplishment. Luckily my family is full of budding teachers and child care providers, so we still get to enjoy the hunt and know that some little kids are going to get to enjoy our finds.

This thanksgiving weekend we struck gold in the nature departure, which made me wish my kindergarten self could go back and show those kids with their birch bark my amazing feather and bird's nest. I hope that the delicacy of a birds nest never looses it wow as you look at each of the tiny strands wound together to create a home safe enough to cradle tiny eggs and then squawking babies. The only downer - it made me miss Mr. S terribly - he loves this stuff and I wish he could have seen it. Luckily for him, these items now sit proudly on the nature table at my Aunt's day care, so if he doesn't mind fighting off a million toddlers and exposing himself to the plethora of germs they love to share, he can still enjoy them when he gets home!

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Fall Colours

For those of us here in Ontario, the Thanksgiving weekend could not have been more beautiful.
The sun was shining bright and the days rose to temperatures reminiscent of the summer. I even managed to go for a very quick dip in the lake (literally in, dunk head, get the heck out!)
Thanksgiving weekend conversation with the family revolves around food (when it will be ready, hoping it is delicious, how delicious it was, when do we eat again, repeat) around the weather and the fall colours as the trees get ready for winter. This year we had lots to talk about as the trees that blanket our cottage and line the drive up north were truly stunning.
One of the trees that greets us as we exit the back of the cottage is a tall and skinny maple that always boasts the most beautiful yellow and this year was no exception. As a child i use to pick a leaf from the tree each year excited to share it back at school and each year it would wilt and brown before I even had the chance to get it back to our home in the city - a good lesson learned that this beauty, like so many things, are best enjoyed from a far, untouched and unaltered.

And speaking of colour, I spent my holiday Monday working all sorts of new colours into a certain part of our home. But since Mr. S reads this blog (at least he says he does) and I want this one to be a big surprise, I am going to save the reveal until he gets home in two weeks!

I hope you had a beautiful and colourful weekend.

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Happy Long Weekend

I'll take two of what she's having. Sweet relaxation.

Happy Friday!
This has been quite possibly one of the longest weeks ever - Monday's events seem impossible to have been only four days ago. I have already logged them in a place many months back - how does that happen?
I must say I have a very close eye on my clock, waiting for the five and two zeros to line up so that I can hit the road. First a stop at my parents so I can pile into the car and try to fight for space on the backseat with our family dog, who my parents love much more and support her stance on taking up three seats.
We will then make the drive up north with 50% of other city dwellers breaking free into cottage country to enjoy one last weekend before the door is locked and furniture tucked in for their winter of hibernation.
I must admit that while this hot sunny weather we are having has many people singing the praises of mother nature, I MUCH prefer a cold, dreary, wet thanksgiving where all you can do is snuggle by the fire, bake, eat and take quick trips outside to gather more wood.
I am kicking it back to the city a day early to hopefully skip the crazy traffic that comes at the end of a long weekend, but also so that I can enjoy my home. Snuggle with my cats and start some projects around the house!

So Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. Eat lots and if beautiful hot sunny days are your thing, enjoy!

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The View from our kitchen Window

The view from our kitchen window goes right into our backyard. Depending on the season it extends all the way over a parking lot, beyond the tracks and into a wall of apartment buildings. And during the summer it stops at the tall trees in bloom and pack of squirrels grasping at the black berries our tree bears.
We have a very "urban" backyard - small, not at all private and neighbor to the subway tracks. But it is ours and we love it and from the moment we first saw it, before the home was ours, I started dreaming about how to transform it.
We were handed a blank slate, grass and no storage, no where to hide the garbage bins or protect our bikes. So VERY lucky for me, a birthday gift from Papa J was a personally designed and built shed. A few days off of work (and many more days invested by my father) and Papa J and I had it proudly standing. To accent it, some light landscaping; a few trees to look at as we stared out the window. Then the winter came, the snow fell and we put our backyard to rest for the season.

 And then when spring warmed and wakened us up, phase two of the changes began.
A vegetable garden, more landscaping, new siding on the house, fresh patio stones and a beautiful pergola designed by Papa J and Mr. S. Our little postage stamp of grass has turned into a really cute extension of our home and I place I have enjoyed many evenings reading and hoping not to be knocked on the head by the ever falling berries.

Sadly, it seems like an entire colony of potato bugs and their extended family also really love our new backyard and have moved in and are slowly devouring every leaf in site. The only natural solutions I have read so far are to physically pick out each bug (totally awesome if you have 6 months to dedicate to this!), so if anyone has potato bug advice I am all ears!

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