Voodoo doll?

We had a breakfast at the kids' school this morning. Each class had displays of artwork and projects. Katie made this darling plasticine family, but somehow in the set up the papa figure got a little squished! I've been making voodoo doll jokes ever since :) Cruel, I know.

We did manage to straighten papa a bit and prop him up with a paper plate. It's all good.

Ugh

This is the part where it looks worse before it looks better?

Future HGTV star

Little J stripping wallpaper in the dining room. Such a big helper!

One little sign

How can one little sign add 40 minutes to the journey?

What's that barbeque?

First big sunburn of the season, and it's only April. In my defense, it wasn't that hot today, it was a little overcast and windy, about 20C. Apparently high UV though.

Grey skies are gonna clear up

Watching the storm clouds roll in...

Baby lilacs peeking out

Can you seem them? Little purple flowers, just starting to peek out. It'll be a few weeks yet before they're real flowers, but I'm so excited! And there are a lot more this year than there were last....

Happiness

My first artsy love has always been photography, I've owned a camera since I was 4. Mostly though I've displayed my photos only in albums and scrapbooks, but today I assembled this Ikea frame and filled it with 3 5x7 prints of pictures I've taken that make me happy (L-R the cottage, Dow's Lake and Hog's Back). I really need to put up more of my pictures, they make me happy.

Charms

If you love charms - check out A Charming Place for an easy way to earn some!

Buds, the 2008 edition

Got a late start tracking the growth of my wee lilac this year - the buds are already huge!

Wheels

Papa bought the bits new bicycles yesterday, and they were up super early today, ready to ride! Look - no training wheels!

First of the season

Our barbeque is finally unburied from the FEET of snow it spent the winter entombed in. What better way to celebrate Spring and the return of warmer weather than barbequed hamburgers (and yes, they were fantastic!)

I'm so immature

...and yet, this store (on Elgin St in Ottawa) makes me snicker.

Heck no we won't go!

I just couldn't get this picture without the awful reflections, the sun was too bright, the angle wrong, but if you sort of squint you'll see some of the protesters that surrounded the building I work in this afternoon, chanting "Manulife - get out of our life!" (I don't work for Manulife, but they own the building where my office is and they occupy a few floors). Protesters are a sight you get used to quickly working downtown and as close to Parliament Hill as we are, but this is the first time they've been protesting actually AT the building where I work!

Not a morning person

Not unlike her mother, my princess is NOT a morning person :)

New Room

We moved the bits into the bigger of the kid bedrooms (the master is the biggest, but that's mine, all mine I tell you!) after painting it a soothing aqua blue. They're pretty pleased to have more elbow room, but that carpet has got to go. A project for another day...

Sleepy bear

They're so cute when they fall asleep in the car (and such bears when you have to wake them back up!)

Mmm mmm good!

Time for another food picture - baby back ribs, butternut squash and hand cut fries, ah heaven!

Strange American food

On the drive home from our NH adventure, Tina and I stopped in a border town grocery store so that I could buy strange American food (a fave cross border pastime). Among other things, I brought back these sausages wrapped in blueberry pancakes. It just sounds awful, but Jonah really liked them!

(PS - the bottle on the table is balsamic vinegar, which I love on eggs, not cheap hooch wine, which I love, but not for breakfast :) )

Freaky

I knocked a jar of googly eyes off my desk, and as I bent down to clean them up I saw that one landed in the freakiest way possible on top of this magazine... Spooooooky!

Cutest cookie seller

Spent the evening selling Girl Guide cookies with Katie's Sparks troop. It's amazing how fast we sold out, then again, could you say no to this face? Didn't think so...

Just the four of us

Surrounded by friends, there's no better feeling. Our last day at Purity Springs, happy for the fun we had but sad that it's over... until next year :)

Dining Hall

This was the beautiful building where we ate all of our meals (and oh what meals they were, the tomato and crab bisque, I'm still drooling!!!!) Hard to see from this angle but the side and back windows were almost completely covered by snow.

Beautiful (shame about the snow)

We spent an extended long weekend at Purity Spring resort in NH, beautiful, relaxing, surrounded by friends, absolutely perfect except that it freaking SNOWED today! Oh well, I had a relaxing massage in a little cabin alongside this babbling brook behind an old mill.

Wowsa!

Driving to our girls' weekend in New Hampshire (yes, I've done a lot of driving this week) Tina and I spotted the Mount Washington Resort. What a stunner! Heather tried to convince us that it was the inspiration for Steven King's novel The Shining, but Wikipedia promises me it is not (that said, Wikipedia lists a Colorado hotel as being King's inspiration, sure would make more sense if, instead, it was a New England hotel. Anyway, I digress). The red roof is so amazing against the white mountain, we couldn't resist taking a few pictures.

Out of season

Gravenhurst's wharf in frozen splendor. A bustling tourist destination in summer, it was stark and silent today.

Majestic Canadian Shield

Driving to Gravenhurst today for Jodi's visitation (the funeral is tomorrow), we stopped in Bancroft for lunch. The Canadian shield rises up from the land like (small) rock mountains everywhere in this part of the country. This frozen 'waterfall' (probably no more than a drizzle in warmer weather) becomes a spectacular blue ice show in winter, stark against the red rock and green trees. Magnificent.