One For All of Us Photographers

Today as I was making time to decorate my tree I found this adorable tiny figurine in my decorations, it was still in the original packaging and I think when I bought it I had in the back of my mind it was for the train set I plan on purchasing one day. I want to set up a huge track with a village, trees, skating rink or whatever makes it look like a village. I thought it's a cute picture for all of us photographers, it makes me smile! :-)

I was outside for a bit and the tree caught my eye so in I came and got my camera, me and my reflections... I love them!

Essays

Well here I sit, down to two essays and it's getting close, way to close for comfort, to have these handed in. I want to just quit, scream, freak out or do something crazy but I won't. I'll continue to peck away at this keyboard, write, change, probably say a few nasty words, edit some more, add new information and get to the required number of pages. That's all I'm aiming for at the present moment, get to the required number of pages, and hope to get a decent mark. One word at a time, one page at a time and this too shall pass... I hope.

This is rather embarrassing to post but I'm going to just the same, it's my reality right about now!

I'm sure that in my final draft I'm going to aim higher, in this present moment I just want it done! One more week, one short week and a few sleepless nights and this will be over and I can clean up this mess... to start all over again in January.

My Little Fish

I went down tonight to watch my granddaughter in her swimming lessons, she LOVES the water, just like a little fish.

 I only had my P&S with me, if I get the opportunity go go back before her lessons are complete I'll take my Rebel with me. At least I had a camera, the ABC rule that Rick has taught me. :-)

A No Title Day

Yup you know I'm tired when I can't even come up with a title for today's blog... oh well, here goes just the same... 

Today was another cold day, when I left the house this morning I believe it was -17c and that's without the wind chill. The afternoon sun was a welcomed sight, it didn't provide much warmth but a little bit of warmth is better than none at all.

I was driving by refinery row later on this afternoon and shot a photo, yes yet another one of my drive by shootings... 

Some call it progress, I call it pollution, yet  this is what makes our economy thrive. I often wonder what's in store for our future generations, what resources will they be left with and how will they sustain life once our natural resources are depleted?

On that cheery note, it's time to bid you all adieu, farewell and so long... until we meet again, goodnight and God bless.

Gift Exchange

The family Chinese gift exchange was so much fun yesterday, I blogged about what I had but didn't end up with. The pink gym bag and the pink warm and the fuzzy slippers which slipped through my hands, but what I did end up with is rather interesting I must say.

Yup, it's a Sauna Pro, it sounds like it's going to be awesome for my lower back when I occasionally overdo it and my back gets sore. As for shrinking an inch per hour, now if this is true I'll be amazed. I'm extremely skeptical but ya never know. Would I go out and purchase this for weight loss? Nope, not a chance but I'm glad to have ended up with this gift... it could be interesting to see what it does and does not do.

I also came home with a gingerbread house which I am looking forward to putting together. We played a game where we honestly answered questions and the one with the highest score won. The game was How Ready Are You For Christmas and it appears that out of the entire family I am the most ready. How this transpired I'll never know, and yes I told the truth! :-) 

Family Christmas

We have a tradition within our family, one which brings most of us together for the holiday, unfortunately when we have these functions not everyone can make it . Today we had our get together and what a blast!  

This is the back of the tree, I believe that there were 20 of us participating in the Chinese gift exchange this year. I was #11 to choose a gift this year and I HAD a beautiful pink sports bag, someone stole it from me, so I stole some warm, fuzzy pink Oilers slippers from my sister, yup they were taken from me as well... and the game continued with the gifts changing hands plenty of times. It's not the gifts, nor all the delicious food, it's the laughter, the love, and making memories which I treasure. 

This year my oldest sister hosted our get together and I tell ya, she puts Martha Stewart to shame. Jewel thank you for the amazing party, you did an outstanding job!  ... now how in the heck am I supposed to equal what you did (to tough to beat this one unless I hire an orchestra! lol) when I get another turn at being the hostess? :-)

And my Christmas sure wouldn't be Christmas if I didn't include the belle of the ball,
Princess Elyssa's first family Christmas party. 

Such a happy precious little angel and she's going to have to learn that song, "All I want for Christmas is my two front upper teeth", to match her two lower teeth! :-) 

What A Day

I was having another busy night tonight, this time I was attempting to get the rest of my Christmas decorations put up. I was stopped in a quick hurry when I went to set up my ladder outside, I went to open it up somehow it came back and caught both of my hands right in the knuckles. Talk about hurt!

This is what I managed to get done outside, I still have a few more things I want to do but it's going to just have to wait now.

 

It's taking way longer than normal to type and from the looks of my bruised knuckles it might be a few days until I can stop by and make comments on the blogs I love to visit. So just know that I'm not ignoring any one of you and as soon as these fingers heal I'll be back.... you've been warned! ;-) 

I hope that these knuckles heal and soon, I still have 2 more essays to type out, about 30 pages of writing, and judging how long it's taking me to post this tonight, I might be in huge trouble. 

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend and if you're working with heavy ladders that fold in half, be careful.

A Sense of Accomplishment

What a day, a busy but productive day. It doesn't seem like I stopped at all today, probably because I didn't. I went to my class, came home and finished up one more essay and when I clicked send it felt so good. I now can see my wallpaper on my desktop, I use sticky notes to keep track of all of my assignments and as reminders. 

Once that was done I decided to get cracking on some baking. 

Here I have four small pans of Nanaimo bars and one large pan of butter tart squares. While the squares were baking I give one of the doors I'm painting a final coat.  I also hung one set of bifolds back up and am ready to continue on with more trim.

It's all coming together, one essay, one door and a few baked goodies for Christmas. Yup I am feeling like I have accomplished something today and oh what a feeling! 

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

Well here we are folks at December 1st, only 24 more sleeps until Christmas and 30 more posts after today for those of us who post a daily photo until we've completed another (or a first) year of photos. I've had so much fun with this blog that I'm going to attempt it for another year... ding, ding, ding, round 3! 

It's a good thing I have 3 closets to use now, this one is getting pretty full of gifts, I'm almost done shopping now though so I don't have to worry about where things will go into hiding around here.  I have yet to get to the decorating and baking but all in good time it'll all come together. I'm not stressing this year, after all there's a grocery store with a bakery just down the street and if need be I'll visit... but there won't be a need. I have a plan and if executed properly we'll have our good old fashioned Christmas as we do each and every year. Yup, I got a plan. :-)

I can't stress about two things at once, I don't think my heart could handle that... back to the keyboard and these darn essays! One and a half down, two and a half to go, I see a faint light off in the distance.

Just Another Day In Paradise

After 5 hours sleep last night due to a deadline of an essay (which I made with 22 hours to spare), I got up early this morning to go and wash my car. Nuts... maybe but it was looking pretty bad and with all the salt they put on the roads I don't want my car to rust prematurely. So down to the car wash I went. As I was sitting in the car I noticed the computerized readings on the thingy which tells what cycle the wash is going through. 

I got to thinking, wouldn't it be convenient if our showers had one of these on them? All we'd to do was step into the shower, press a button for a 5, 8 or 10 minute shower and all we'd have to do is stand there. The shower would do the rest, presoak you, give you a second presoak if you needed it, then soak some more for those who are really dirty (get your mind outta the gutter!), then one would get a laser wash, a clear coat polish and last but not least a quick dry. A novel idea I'd say.

Now if this isn't the epitome of laziness, what is? ;-) 

I also want to include this photo here, it's one which I had the opportunity to quickly snap a shot of while I detoured this morning due to a traffic snarl. I took a side road and seen the sun shining down on this steeple, I thought it looked amazing. There was something about it that I had to park, get out of my car and snap the shot. It might have been due to the fact that the sun was out, we don't get to see too much of that these days, or it could have been the steeple... I guess just a combination of both and the simplicity of this impressed me.

Sigh, back to writing. This too shall pass.