Lemon Loaf

I felt like baking something today, so I did. Lately one of my favorites is lemon poppy-seed loaf and one bite of this loaf which melted in my mouth told me why it's a favorite. The loaf itself is as light as spongecake, the richness of the lemon flavor tantalizes the taste-buds and the poppy seeds brings it all together. I think that it's about time for a midnight snack, what's one more small piece going to hurt? ;-)

Pebbles

"I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with." 

                 ~Plato

The Young and the Old

This morning I was grateful I had my radio on and happened to hear about a fire which had traffic backed up on the route I normally take so I detoured. On the way home this afternoon thinking that the fire would have long since been dealt with I traveled down my regular route. I was delayed and it was slow going, here's what I came across...

 I was saddened to see this, there was an AA room upstairs where there were plenty of meetings, I'd guess at least 15-20 different ones every week. I used to go occasionally to a Friday night meeting and it was fantastic, I could feel the spirituality in this room. Now there's no more meetings here but the one good thing about AA is that it won't go away, this isn't the only building in town and there's so many other meetings in various places all over this city to attend. I'm sure that the people who ran this one will find a new spot, after all the found a new place when the last one burnt down about 15 years ago. Out with the old in with the new... speaking of which I noticed something today. Are firefighters getting younger or am I getting older?

 The 3 fellas in the yellow all look like they could be my sons! YIKES.  All kidding aside, thank God for firefighters who place their lives at risk more than I think most people realize. Hats off guys, you do amazing work!

One Room, Many Hours

Those of you who have been following me here on my blog since I moved into my new home know that I've done quite a bit of fixin' up. The hard work has been very rewarding but unfortunately I've had to put the work on pause while I've been back in the classrooms. I posted yesterday about a wee bit of spring cleaning and one friend asked me what my drapes looked like that finally got around to putting up. I thought that I'd show you all what the work looks like as it's all coming together in my room. I have a few things to do yet but it's come a long way. 

Day one, down came the wall which divided two small bedrooms and I had a nice size master bedroom and plenty of work ahead of me. 

I tried to tape where the wall joined on the main wall and what a mess I'd made. This horrendous pink just had to go. 

After I got the mess cleaned up and did the best I could with the taping I tried something different, I put venetian plaster on the wall and I like it. It took a lot of work to do this, first I had to prime, then put two coats of the plaster on and the final phase was sanding it all down. 

The next thing was deciding on a color to match the Franchescian plaster, I picked a greenish gray and it worked, the two colors look fantastic together.

Throughout all of this I painted the doors and the inside of both closets, yes ladies I now have two closets and thankfully they're not too big... I've filled them both already. Oh plus the closet in the office is pretty full, it's time to purge soon I think. I painted the bifold doors a few times, three I think, until I found the right color for them. I also picked out things like new bifold door handles, new lamps which I'm going to change again, and for Christmas I got a new bedding set along with the drapes and matching valances. 

Here's a portion of my bedroom now, I'll show it again IF I ever get it finished.... it's close but not quite done yet. A few more hours of work, a few being maybe about 10-15, I'm also waiting for my daughter to do a painting for me to hang over my bed and I still have a few odds and ends to get to and I'll have a finished bedroom.

To do one room the way I want it sure has taken up a lot of time, but it's so worth it.  

On that happy note... a good night to you all! I got tired just thinking of all the work I've done in just this one room! 

For those of you just waking up, have a wonderful day.

Spring Cleaning

Today I couldn't stand it anymore, I HAD to do some spring cleaning so out came a set of windows. I've been waiting patiently to put up my second set of drapes in my bedroom but today my patience ran out and up they went and the window is now clean. 

 

The hold up is some taping which has to be finished but oh well, I'll have to bag the drapes when it's time to sand and poly off everything but I feel much better now. If only everything in life were this simple.

Spring Has Sprung

... the grass has riz, I wonder where the flowers is? (Good thing I've now registered in an English class!)

We are now in full spring mode. Snow is melting, I don't have to wear three or four layers to go outside and I'm getting this urge to clean all of a sudden... yup it's spring, I hope!

This photo was taken as I was leaving the downtown core today, as you can see there isn't much snow left. Not from this viewpoint in the city but on my front lawn there's still about 2' of snow but it's leaving slowly. I'm keeping the faith that we're done with winter, or is this wishful thinking? I guess time will tell on this one.

Pictures of Pictures

I've finally went out and enlarged some of my photos, I even bought a few frames but unfortunately I haven't put up all of the photos yet. I'm trying to decide where to hang them and I'm thinking in my office I might start a picture wall.  I've managed to find a home for two of my photos, right at the bottom of my stairs where they can be seen by anyone coming in the front door and they're the last thing I see at night before I head up my stairs.

It's kind of hard to take a photo of a photo, the glare, distance and how much to include into the photo all have to be taken into consideration I've learned. I chose to just show the photos themselves without any distractions to take away from these. 

Now back to doing what I don't want to do but must do... 

Photochains

I've started up a photochain on a website which is based in Australia. I welcome you all to submit photos and come on over and explore this site. I've never participated in one of these but they look interesting. What it is in a nutshell someone posts a photo, they name the next link. I posted a child dancing at a powwow and the next link is "child", then others submit photos with child and from their photo of lets say a child, they pick out one item to link to. Eg. a child with a puppy, you could put puppy as the next link, or if there's a tree in the photo you could link to tree. 

Here's the link

Clicking on this should take you to the site. If not please let me know and I'll fix this.

Birthdays

Tonight we went out and celebrated my oldest son (Shayne) and his wife's (Sandy) birthdays. My sons birthday is today and his wife's is in two weeks. We went out to Japanese Village, they cook right at the table, so not only did we get one heck of a good meal we were also provided with entertainment.  

After our dinner the staff came out, put goofy looking caps on Shayne and Sandy and sang them happy birthday... check out how their daughter is looking at them. I had to laugh, my granddaughter was tying to figure out what the heck was going on. 

Wishing you both a very Happy Birthday Shayne and Sandy, next stop Canmore in two weeks! 

The next birthday in our family will be my precious granddaughters birthday, she's going to be a year old already on May 5th. It's hard to believe but ya, one year old!

It was a wonderful day, now it's time for an early night.

Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without the words - and never stops at all.

                                     

                                                                          Emily Dickinson