Trick or Treat!

Hope you had a wonderful Hallowe'en! We sure did, mild weather and HUGE bags of candy :)

Glow Bowl

It's a weekend before Hallowe'en tradition at the alley where the bits do league bowling on Saturdays... but oh it gives me a headache!

Not-so-little Vampiress

Katie went to a Hallowe'en dance at school this evening. Got her dressed in her costume, put on her wig and painted her face, then posed her for a few pictures before running out to the school. Looking at them now I'm blown away, that chubby cheeked toddler is all but gone, who is this gorgeous young woman in her place?

Thankfully she doesn't care much for makeup yet and washed most of this off while still at the dance. Don't grow up too quickly princess....

Cub Hallowe'en Party

Jonah loves these annual parties that bring together all sections of his scouting troop. I hate them, too loud, too crowded, too many kids hopped up on sugar and adrenaline. But he loves them, and that's what matters, right?

Sunset

The picture doesn't really capture the lovely pinky-orange glow that bathed our street tonight.

Sunday Brunch

After Mass this morning C made us brunch, eggs Benedict is my all time favourite, and home fries that the Hollandaise just happened to fall on? Heaven!

I'm so lucky.

Spooooooky!

We were invited again this year to an adults-only Hallowe'en party, costumes mandatory. I'm not a big partier, but these are friends of ours and they always put on a good spread, so we called up the sitter, threw together some costumes and off we went.

C was this guy from the Saw movies. I made his little red bowtie, we found the mask at a costume shop and the shirt and jacket just came from his closet. I'm wearing a cheapy vampiress dress and the cape from Jonah's costume (hey, he doesn't need it until next week anyway!)

We had a good time though I must admit I was falling asleep by the time we left at a quarter past 11 :)

Fall

Fall has really arrived in our little town. Most of the trees have suffered significant leaf drop due to tons of rain and high winds, but this young maple out front is just peaking now. Beautiful!

Blog - the book

Before this blog I used to blog elsewhere. Whereas this blog is a sort of upbeat glimpse into my day to day life, heavy on pictures but light on content, that old blog was a true journal. I shut it down in 2006 when I realized that too many people I knew in real life were reading. But I didn't delete it.

Fast forward to 2011. That old blog is precious to me now. It's a real, raw look at my thoughts and emotions as I struggled with a pre-teen, a 2 year old and an infant, with balancing work and family, with a terrible job that I hated, and with all of the day to day drudgery that life threw at me. I realize not only are those words precious to me, but some day my kids might benefit from a glimpse into my head, when they're struggling with work/life balance, with babies who won't sleep and bosses who make life hellish, maybe they'll find comfort in knowing they're not alone.

So I turned my old blog into a printed book, using Blurb. It wasn't exactly easy, the system 'slurps' your blog into a template, but I found I had a ton of formatting work to do afterwards. Still, it wasn't difficult, and the end result exceeds my expectations.

This isn't a book that will sit out on my coffee table for the whole world to peruse, but it turned out so gorgeous and precious I'll be proud sharing it with a few of my nearest and dearest.

New Desk

I'd been using a 6 foot folding table as a desk in my office/crap room since moving here in 2008. C snapped up this new desk for me at an auction, it's solid, only 5 feet wide but a full 30 inches deep, AND it has 3 drawers to hide crap in!

Of course, I had to clear off the old table to make room for the new, and that took most of a day. Me and my chronic disorganization!

Fabric Flea Market

I headed in to the city bright and early to go to a one-day fabric flea market to benefit a local school. It opened at 10 so I wandered up to the community centre at 9:57 (my first hint should have been the complete lack of parking ANYWHERE in the Glebe) to find myself approximately #500 in line. Holy smurf!!! They actually did a great job getting people into the venue quickly and in orderly fashion but we were literally shoulder to shoulder once we were inside...

... but it completely didn't matter. The room was full of vendors and there were TONS of great deals! Despite being wigged out by the crowd I spent a grand total of $28 got all of this!

That bag weighed at least 10 pounds!

So many fun things, lots of stash builders, and all of it CHEAP!

Can't wait until next year!

Crazy fall colour

My backyard, in the strange golden light of an approaching storm...

Making jelly

A new type of jelly making for me - jalapeno pepper jelly. This tastes amazing, but it didn't set very well, it's quite runny. Could be because I can't measure worth crap and put in 375 mL of red peppers instead of 250 mL. Oh well, we'll eat it anyway...

(Used this recipe)

Mer Bleue

An absolutely perfect weekend to take the bits for a walk through Mer Bleue. Sadly 40,000 other people had the same idea so it was crowded (that might be a slight exaggeration, there might have only been 39,999).

Poor cat...

At least he looks dapper in his shirt...

Hello Fall!

Leaves in the village

Glorious Morning...

Sunrise over my yard...

Roll out the barrel...

We trekked out to VanKleek Hill for Oktoberfest on a cold and rainy Sunday. It was still a good time, despite the wet, the cold, and the whining by the short people in our contingent (I'm looking at you Katie and Jonah!) Katie assisted on stage with DooDoo the clown, C sampled microbrewed beers, we all had pretzels and sausages and schnitzel, it was fun. Hopefully next year the weather will be better...

Baby quilty

Simple baby quilt made for Michelle and Ryan's baby-to-be, I'll be giving it to Michelle at her shower today. I started this eons ago but only finished Friday. I got really stalled by not liking the blocks at.all. The finished quilt isn't too bad though, and it matches the nursery. Sort of.

(I bought a bunch of baby clothes too, I always feel 'cheap' giving just a handmade baby quilt as a gift)