Cynful Musings

Furniture Repair Required

2012-02-09T21:42:00.000-05:00

When I got home from my trip to Seattle, I noticed that the fabric on the arm of my sofa was torn. As anyone with younger cats knows, sometimes things get damaged - your rug, your furniture, your bedding - that's just the way it is. And a little corner of this fabric had been pulled away from where it belonged before I left, so I wasn't too surprised. Although the two foot long piece of metal with multiple spikes on it that was lying on top of the dresser nearby (tucked safely out of harm's way by the catsitter) was of great concern to me, luckily none of my furbabies had stepped on that! Apparently it had been sewn into that piece of fabric and used to hold it in place when the couch was originally constructed.

But as I sat down across from this torn spot this morning, the thought occurred to me that with the tear being so large, it might just be big enough for a cat to fit into and I found myself wondering what would happen if one of the cats went in there to investigate. No word of a lie, it was less than two minutes after I had had that thought (I swear cats can read minds!) when, sure enough, Yonhee climbed right in there and made herself comfortable.

As soon as she disappeared in there, Beans had to go take a look:

(If you look near the table leg in the photo (click on photo to enlarge it), you can just see two little bulges where Yonhee was sitting, almost as if she was lying in a hammock - very comfortable indeed!)

I eventually convinced her to come back out and knew I'd have to close up the hole while I was away at work today, rather than risk any more couch interior explorations taking place while I was gone. So I leaned a couple of wallpaper books up against the arm of the chair as a temporary measure until this weekend, when I shall sew it closed properly.

Beans didn't seem to mind

but Gus seemed a bit disappointed that he'd missed his chance to explore the new hiding place.

Jane Davenport at PLAY

2012-02-08T21:53:00.000-05:00

As some of you may know, I met Jane Davenport in June last year when I went to Portugal with Teesha and Tracy Moore. So when I heard she was going to be teaching in Seattle, I immediately signed up for her classes. Teesha then suggested to me that if I was coming for that weekend, I should plan to arrive the weekend before and attend their annual art retreat called PLAY at Fort Worden. The rest, as they say, was history.

If you enjoyed my posts about my experiences at PLAY two weekends ago in Port Townsend, Washington, you may also be interested in reading's Jane's blog post about it here.

Jane very kindly gave me one of the buttons she made from her artwork, which features one of her mermaid drawings.

Artwork by Jane Davenport

You're going to want to check back on her blog over the next few days. I'm sure she'll be posting more once she gets home to her native Australia (I'm thinking she should be there by now, she was flying out yesterday) and trust me, you're going to want to see the pictures of her mermaid circus journal. For now, you'll just have to take my word for it when I tell you that it is SUPER AWESOME!!

Me or the Laptop?

2012-02-07T21:41:00.000-05:00

I can't decide which one of us Maggie missed more...

To be perfectly honest, I think it's the laptop!

February Photo A Day Challenge

2012-02-06T11:16:00.010-05:00

Someone shared this challenge on Facebook on Jan 31st and even though I was in the middle of my trip to Seattle, I decided to play along. Why not play along, I thought, since I was taking tons of photos every day anyway.

Here is where the challenge originated: Fat Mum Slim blog entry.

The idea is that for each day of the month, you are to take a photo based on the suggested daily prompt and then post it somewhere - on your blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc. There was a similar challenge for January, so maybe this person is going to do one each month?

It's a great idea. It really makes you aware of your surroundings and it's also very interesting to see how different people interpret that day's assignment. For example, yesterday's prompt was "10 a.m.", which I interpreted to mean that I needed to take a picture of where I was and/or what I was doing at that time.

Heidi is doing the challenge as well, so she and I decided to take pictures of each other in the Artfest Annex studio as class with Jane Davenport was about to begin.

Today's prompt is "dinner", which for me, will be served on a plane somewhere between Seattle, Chicago and Toronto.

Super Sunday in Seattle

2012-02-05T21:53:00.000-05:00

Today was the last day of Jane Davenport's class. It's hard to believe it's over already, we've all been learning lots and having fun.

Our homework last night was to draw faces on round balls of paint, for practice. If you did your homework, you got an Australian flag sticker.

Today we learned how to shade faces with Copic markers, here's what I drew:

The camera looks makes the colours look a little funny but I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.

Now we're at Camp Moore, watching the Superbowl game.

I'm writing my blog while we're watching the game, as I was really only interested in seeing Madonna perform. I thought she did a great job and the theatrics were awesome. :)

Flying home tomorrow, The past 10 days have simply flown by, my stomach hurts from laughing so much, my brain hurts from trying to process all the new things I've seen and learned. Very sorry to be leaving, but also looking forward to seeing my kitten caboodle.

I can't thank Teesha and Tracy Moore enough for their hospitality, I have had SO MUCH FUN hanging out with them and Jane Davenport this past week. As Jane would say, it has been "super awesome"!!!

Fun With Jane

2012-02-04T23:59:00.001-05:00

Today was day two of Jane Davenport's drawing class here in Seattle. We are having an amazing time and everyone is drawing the most awesome pictures. Jane is an awesome teacher and she makes it easy for us to be able draw beautiful faces. Of course, she is so beautiful herself, inside and out, it should be no surprise that her own artwork is so amazing and lucky for us, she has a talent for sharing her techniques with the rest of us.

There are 13 students, several of whom are from the Seattle area. Three of my classmates I already know from attending Journalfest and PLAY - Jenny, Heidi and Marty - I'm glad to have a chance to be able to spend more time with them. Here's Heidi with one of the gorgeous flower drawings she did in a recent class:

Here is Jane giving one of my fellow classmates some feedback on her drawing:

I have taken Jane's online class called "Supplies Me" (check out her workshops here) and as a result, I'm finding this class to be much more comfortable than I think I would have otherwise if I hadn't done any drawing like this before, simply because my inner critic would be quite busy telling me, "you can't draw so don't even try." There's still some of that going on, of course, but Jane encourages us to just "trust the mess" and keep going. Her best advice today? "Don't expect to be perfect doing something you are trying for the very first time".

Here's one of the faces I drew yesterday, when we drew with coloured pencils and learned how to blend the colours:

Here's one of the faces I drew today, using coloured pencils and acrylic paint. Jane asked us not to blend the pencils but to leave the pencil lines to create a looser, more relaxed look:

I thought I was done until Jane came by to check out what I had drawn and she reminded me that I had forgotten to add eyelids and I needed to add some shape to her chin, under the mouth:

This was another of the drawings I did today:

We worked with acrylic paint and coloured pencils today, tomorrow we'll be working with markers too - can't wait!

Artwalk Thursday

2012-02-03T23:53:00.000-05:00

We headed off late Thursday morning to pick up some art supplies for the weekend class Jane Davenport is teaching, after Teesha phoned a local business to see if they carried what we were looking for (Ranger acrylic paint dabbers). We found ourselves in the premises of Ellen Hutson. She and her staff could not have been more helpful and were, of course, delighted to meet Teesha. Ellen gave us a tour of their offices and even did a couple of demos with some of the products. We picked out several goodies to take away with us. Turns out she is from Calgary and has the cutest little dog named Jasper.

We spent a few hours yesterday afternoon walking around downtown Seattle. Tracy dropped Teesha, Jane and I off in front of a map store and Jane and I checked out the maps while Teesha went to the bakery next door to buy us some fresh crumpets for tomorrow's breakfast (yum).

We then headed to Pike Place Market - talk about awesome.

All sorts of fresh fruit, vegetables, fish (apparently you haven't experienced Seattle unless you've seen a fish being tossed in the market and yup, now I have! It happened too fast for me to get a photo though!) and lots of free samples being handed out.

Someone had told me that Seattle is a really "foodie" city and I have to believe it's true after walking through that market (and based on the amazing restaurants T and T have been taking us to every day). After tasting some delicious lemon curd at the Truffle Cafe, I simply had to buy a bottle so we'd have something to spread on those crumpets!

We then walked several blocks down 1st Avenue, checking out a few stores and enjoying the sunny afternoon. I took many, many photos of the architecture. We popped in to the Seattle Art Museum but were disappointed to hear the Gaughin exhibit doesn't open until next week, so we didn't stay to look around.

In the evening, the Annex was open for visitors as part of the First Thursday Art Walk that is held each month. We also checked out some of the exhibitors in the neighborhood nearby, saw some interesting artwork in interesting old buildings, one of which had this old telephone switchboard on the wall:

Dinner was a Philly cheese steak sandwich for Heidi (a friend from Journalfest 2011 who is taking Jane's class this weekend) and pizza, hand made for us by Al:

LOMO Wednesday

2012-02-02T23:56:00.019-05:00

We had been on the go non-stop for six days straight so we decided that Wednesday would be a quiet day at home at Camp Moore to give each of us a chance to catch up and slow down. For me, that meant downloading photos and printing some of them out on my POGO printer. Tracy and Teesha were doing real work for their respective businesses while Jane got organized for the classes she will be teaching this weekend at the Artfest Annex (still time to sneak into the last spot if you're interested!)

Around 3 in the afternoon, Tracy drove us in to Seattle where we made a couple of stops, including a whiskey tasting place called "Mischief" where I saw this awesome sign:

This might need to be my new slogan for Cynful Creations

and then we headed over to the Annex, which is their downtown Seattle studio, for the evening LOMO meet. Lomography is creative photography using old school analog film and there are groups getting together to take photos and share techniques all over the world. It's just one of Tracy V. Moore's passions. There are lots of cool cameras available to take these photos with, but last night I stuck to documenting the evening with my DSLR. Here are some of the photos I took:

Our Last Day at PLAY

2012-02-01T17:08:00.004-05:00

Sunday was the last day at PLAY and it was another great day but also bittersweet, as people started to clean up their tables and pack away their art supplies. I got very little art made that day but mostly because I was too busy doing other things, like spending two hours in the morning in the used book store called "Insatiables". (The store was so delightful, it deserves its own post, which I will do later when I have more time - stay tuned for that.) My new best friend Sarah drove Jane, my new older sister Michelle and myself in to town specifically to go to this store and we explored every inch of it looking for treasure. Even though this was a second visit for each of us, we all found new goodies that we simply had to have!

L to R: Jane, Sarah, Karen and Michelle

Photo taken of me by Laurie the day before

By the way, I simply have to mention that as we were leaving the Fort to drive into town, we saw this woman walking her cat - it seemed quite an odd visual at the time. :)

We got back to the Fort just in time for lunch and afterwards, Tracy suggested we head down to the beach for a bit. As we got in the car, Elizabeth asked if she should bring her ukulele. Can't say I've ever had anyone ask that question before but my goodness, what a great idea that was! We did our own version of the classic Jack Vettriano painting, "The Singing Butler":

minus the fancy dress and uniformed servants:

Jane, Elisabeth and Tracy

It was a different beach than either of the two I had been to before, over by the lighthouse. Lots of great photo opportunities. The light mist of rain wasn't stopping us or any of the other dog walkers and beach lovers!

Tracy took this great photo of Elisabeth, myself and Jane together, I love it.

Around 4 pm, Steve Salik treated us to a very cool slide show (set to music) of a collection of the various light photos he and Tracy had been taking of all of us "in the closet" over the past 2 days.

Then we did show and tell - everyone laid out what they had worked on or made over the past 3 days on their worktables and we all wandered around and had a look. OMG, you would not believe the talent in that room! I took lots of pictures but forgot to ask permission to post photos, so you'll have to take my word for it that it was all AWESOME!!

A group of us had dinner in town that night, at a restaurant located right next door to an antique store that Michelle, Jane and I just HAD to check out before heading in to eat. There was the most amazing spool cabinet in there that I coveted deeply but the size (how would I ever get it home?) and the $2000 price tag were more than enough to convince me that I would have to settle for just a photo.

In the restaurant, they had paper tablecloths and crayons on the table so of course, everyone started drawing these amazing things. The waiter came up and his jaw dropped and when he said, "You guys must be artists!", we all had a good laugh!

Afterwards, we went back to the Fort where a few people were still making art while most of the others continued packing up. Goodbyes were said, contact info was exchanged. No one really wanted it to end.

All in all, PLAY was a most amazing experience, I'm really glad I could attend. A lovely group of incredibly talented people gathered together, just having fun hanging out together making art. What could be more enjoyable?

Signs of Seattle

2012-01-31T23:49:00.029-05:00

We toured around two neighbourhoods close to Seattle today, Fremont and Bellevue and one of the things I absolutely loved was all of the fabulous graffiti and vintage and/or vintage-looking signage on the various shops and restaurants.

Here's are some examples of the graffiti:

This sign is hanging on the wall of a coffee shop that T 'n T like to visit each morning. Tracy tells me the owner found it lying on the ground of the property, what a find!

This neon beauty hangs on a place called the High Dive:

This one was a few doors down from there:

and this one is just down the street and I was able to capture it in the late afternoon:

and in the early evening:

Aren't they fabulous?!!?!

Portupals

2012-01-30T23:31:00.000-05:00

There were six of us at PLAY that had been in Portugal together last June. It was great to be together again, making art and having fun.

SaturPLAY

2012-01-29T23:33:00.000-05:00

Everyone defines "play" differently. The idea of this art retreat is that people can work on whatever they want, and some are more focused on their art than others. I would definitely fall in the "other" category. Not that there is anything wrong with that, there is so much going on that I want to see and do, it's hard to focus on just sitting down and making art. I have been doing all sorts of things, like:

- painting, drawing, making journal pages:

picking up some fabulous old ledgers and books at a local store:

walking on the beach, taking photographs:

doing cool things with light photography:

and having a delicious chili dinner.

Friday at PLAY

2012-01-28T14:33:00.000-05:00

Teesha taught us a collage exercise in the morning and these are the results:

Tracy took us for a LOMO (photography) walk in the afternoon. We're using 35 mm film and making double exposure photos. Jill Holmes took this one of me with the camera on her phone - I was making a goofy face and when it's layered over the picture of the tree, it looks like I'm trying to lick up dripping water:

It might not be the best example but it's kind of fun. Here's another one, taken by Steve Salik on his phone (the rest of us are using actual cameras but the Smartphones can do it too), one shot of me, one of Tracy Moore, mashed together:

Surrounded by incredibly talented people, very inspiring!

It feels a bit like spring here, I saw 4 robins the first day and 6 yesterday!! Although when the wind is blowing, you definitely remember it's winter!

Seattle to Port Townsend

2012-01-27T14:56:00.000-05:00

Here's how yesterday (Thursday) went down:

Breakfast in Chinatown in Seattle:

Ferry to Bainbridge Island:

which included lovely views of the Seattle skyline and our first peek at the Space Needle:

Art store, bagels and lunch in Port Townsend:

Checking in to our "officers housing" at Fort Warden:

Grocery shopping for breakfast food followed by the whole group (45 of us in total) having dinner at El Serape, a local Mexican restaurant:

followed by opening remarks back at the fort in The Commons and setting up our work spaces:

Heading to Port Townsend

2012-01-26T10:48:00.000-05:00

Woke up this morning to the sound of rain on the roof, which is such a delightful noise when you are snuggled up cozy warm in a comfortable bed and dozing in and out of dreams. Not such a good thing when you've got a two hour drive to your destination and have to pack a lot of supplies into various cars, and will no doubt make our ferry crossing less scenic than it would otherwise be. Hopefully the rain will stop before we need to get underway.

I arrived in Seattle only a few minutes later than promised by the airline. My friend Laurie was not so lucky, not only did her airplane completely change her flight (which she luckily discovered two days ago, in plenty of time) but her plane was a good two hours late, so we didn't get a chance to see her last night, will catch up to her when we arrive at our destination, Fort Worden.

Teesha Moore and Jane Davenport picked me up at the airport and we drove back to Teesha's house, where Jane and I are staying while we're here in Seattle. What a beautiful home it is! It's like being in an art gallery, full of colour and fabulous works of art and everything combined together in such a comfortable and welcoming way. It makes me want to rush home and redecorate my place! Just as an example, here's what my bedroom looks like:

Those two packages on my bed were things I had ordered and shipped here, like the books I'd found in St. Augustine for Teesha and Tracy back in November and the Ranger paint dabbers I need for the class Jane is teaching next weekend. Jane and I each brought presents. After last week's snowstorm here, I knew everyone needed a pair of these mittens:

Jane brought me (all the way from Australia) this vintage cookie tin that looks like a trolley bus (it looks orange in the photo but it's red). She has one she uses to keep all her pencil crayons in:

We have been talking non-stop, sharing stories and ideas, ordering goodies on the Internet after seeing something one of the others has, like the Dottariffic markers Jane brought - markers with a round end to make perfect dots in both small and large sizes. You can find them here: Paperinkarts.

Tracy was working late prior to being out of town for the next several days, so Teesha took us to dinner at the this authentic Neapolitan pizza place called Tutta Bella. We ordered 5 of the personal sized pizzas and shared, they were all delicious! (I even liked the one that was covered in chopped up green olives, who knew?) We took the leftovers home for Tracy and went back to the house for more conversation and lots of laughing before heading to bed.

Gotta go shower, the packing of the cars will begin shortly. More adventures await!

Seattle Bound

2012-01-25T10:10:00.000-05:00

I am headed to Seattle this morning. So excited I can hardly stand it. Twelve days of artful pursuits in Issaquah, Seattle and Port Townsend, Washington with the likes of Teesha Moore, Tracy V. Moore and Jane Davenport. Be still, my beating heart! I figure I will become a more artful person simply by breathing the same air as these 3 phenomenal artists for the next two weeks, never mind all the other wonderful folks we are going to see over the next few days as we PLAY at Fort Worden.

I was worried I was packing too many art supplies but I am reassured by two things: (a) my suitcase is not yet over the allowable limit - in fact, I have 6 kg to spare at the moment; and (b) I could not possibly be packing more stuff that Danger Jane herself, who posted a video on her blog showing exactly what she is bringing all the way from Australia. Check it out here. If I forgot anything, Jane is sure to have whatever it is and she is also bringing so many more things that I have never ever seen, it will be like an art supply smorgasbord!

Stay tuned, I'll be blogging live while I'm there. Provided we have power, that is. Last week's ice storm in the Seattle area knocked out the power at T & T's house for several days!!

Seattle's Space Needle is about one third the height of Toronto's CN Tower

Freedom!

2012-01-24T22:32:00.000-05:00

Photo courtesy of wallpapersdll.com

My sister got laid off from her job today. When I talked to her earlier, she was still in a little bit of shock but also a little bit giddy at the thought of being free. Normally losing your job would be a bad thing, it's never easy to be let go, no matter what the circumstances, and no doubt she will spend some time over the next few weeks worrying about finding another job, but I for one am very pleased that this happened to her. She hated that job and I believe it was slowly killing her. The stress, the long hours, the lack of appreciation, the demanding schedules - all that stuff takes its toll on a person over time. I had a similarly stressful job years ago and I am still very grateful to have that chapter of my life behind me. No matter how much money they pay you, no matter how much you learn from the experience or the friends you make, it takes a toll and life is just too darned short to be spending five days a week at a job that you don't enjoy.

Punch Buggy Love

2012-01-23T08:22:00.005-05:00

I've always liked the Volkswagen Beetle, both in its original incarnation and the latest model. I can remember driving with a friend who owned one in high school. You could see the road through the holes in the floorboards, that's how badly the metal had deteriorated. Then again, the Canadian climate wasn't kind to those original Bugs so it's rare to find one of the old ones around these parts nowadays. But there seem to be plenty in the southern U.S. still and last June, I took a picture of this pretty purple one in Portugal (not an original factory colour choice, I'm guessing, but still an excellent shade as far as I'm concerned - it totally fits the groovy vibe of the car!).

Purple punch buggy photographed in Portugal

Apparently several hundred VW cars were destroyed recently in Florida. It's a sad story, about the end of an old man's hobby, which was clearly a passion for him, and the destruction of several vintage Volkswagen cars: click here to read about it. It seems a shame that all of those cars were lost, although if you watch the video that accompanies the story (reproduced below), many of them shown don't look like they were salvageable. But I love the look of old, rusty metal - something about it really appeals to me - so a lot of these images are fascinating to me.

Another Adoption

2012-01-22T12:46:00.000-05:00

It was Tamana's turn to be adopted today. I think she'll enjoy her new home, where there are 2 other cats to keep her company. She seemed happy enough here but kept to herself a lot, as if having 5 foster siblings was a bit much at times. I'm sure Gus will miss her but also be glad he doesn't have to share the bathroom tap with her any more, she tended to push him out of the way and make him wait for his drink (although he cleverly figured out he could lick the water off the top of her head if necessary!)

Sometimes he'd get priority though. I love her expression in this photo, as if to say, "Fine, I'll let him have a drink now!"

He was always very gentle with her though, he's such a sweetheart. He didn't seem to mind when she bossed him about and she knew he would never hurt her, even though he is twice her size.

It's a bit sad when someone comes to adopt one of the other cats though. Gus and Beans come right to the door to greet any visitor and could not be more friendly, throwing themselves at their feet and showing their tummies in complete trust, trying to get into their cat carriers. Yonhee was quite friendly with this morning's guest as well. It's as if they all knew they were potential candidates for the adoption, even though she had come specifically for Tamana. I feel bad that no one is coming (yet) to take the others home but hopefully their turn will come soon.

Michaels Madness

2012-01-21T21:09:00.000-05:00

I met my friend Lorraine at a local mall this morning for coffee. I broke the end off the adapter cord that powers my Polaroid POGO printer and she very kindly offered to lend me hers for my upcoming trip to Seattle. Afterwards, we stopped in to the Michaels store in the mall as we both had this week's 40% off coupon. We also knew that they were offering 25% off everything from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. today in what they called a "Madness Event". (Even so, I was only thinking I'd get one thing, just to use the coupon. Ha!)

They weren't kidding. I have no idea how they can stay in business at the prices they were charging for some of this stuff, it was definitely crazy. I got this package of lovely Victorian style Christmas stamps for ninety percent (90%) off, I paid a whopping $1.69 for them.

As you can see from the photo, I also got a cute polka dot mouse pad and a couple of punches. The blue one is a corner rounder, that was about the only thing I bought that was regular price so I used my 40% off coupon on that.

I picked up a number of packages of embellishments and tags in various designs:

I also got a bunch of letter and number stickers, which ran about 89 cents a package.

We both especially like these epoxy number stickers. They had a clearance price tag of $4.99 on them and the sign said 70% off last ticketed price, which meant $1.50 each, so we each grabbed 3 packages (all they had left). Turns out they were actually 79 cents each - bargain!

I was really excited to find this pretty laptop bag with handles:

It was already 60% off, which brought the price down to $13.99 plus the extra 25% off = a final price of $10.49 - a steal! Lorraine bought the same bag and a matching iPad cover for about $5.00 and she doesn't even own an iPad yet! :) (I was tempted but managed to resist that purchase, going to wait until I get an iPad first! Although perhaps in the spirit of "if you build it, they will come", I should have picked one up.)

Lorraine got the best deal though. She picked up a stack of 6 teardrop inkpads that rang through the cash register for only one cent. One cent!! Madness, I tell you. Sheer madness!!

So Long, Etta

2012-01-20T19:43:00.003-05:00

Etta James passed away today. She sang one of my favourite songs of all time, "At Last". What a beautiful voice.

Mittens for Kittens

2012-01-19T21:07:00.000-05:00

I popped into a thrift store near my office today at lunch and found this wonderful children's book called "Mittens for Kittens and other Rhymes about Cats". The poems were "chosen" by Lenore Blegvad and the book is illustrated by her husband Erik.

From the look of it, I thought this was a very old book but it turns out it is merely vintage, copyrighted 1974. It used to be a library book and still has the library card in the back (sadly empty of signouts, which is no doubt why the book was discarded).

The inside flap describes it as "an engaging selection of old rhymes about cats and kittens" and it is definitely that but it is the illustrations (reproduced here completely without permission) that I find most delightful.

"Do kittens wear mittens? Whoever saw little kittens with mittens?" They do in two of the nursery rhymes in this book! In one, the kittens are on their way to town to get some mittens - they appear to be trying on various pairs in this drawing, with the help of a kindly shopkeeper:

And then there is the poem about the 3 little kittens who lost their mittens and when they find them, their mother gives them some pie.

This picture is one of my favourites:

It illustrates one of the few poems in the book that I recognize, the one about the pussy cat who has been to London to visit the Queen. "Pussy cat, pussy cat, what did you there? I frightened a little mouse under her chair." Note the headline on the newspaper banner in the picture above - very clever, don't you think?

I think this was $1.99 very well spent!

Lose Something?

2012-01-18T21:47:00.000-05:00

I went shopping for bras after work today. I thought it would be pretty simple, since I knew my size and just wanted to pick up another bra or two in the style I have been wearing for the past few months, which is very comfortable and (I believe) flattering. What I didn't realize was that they would, or so it seemed, have every size available except mine. They would have my size but not my letter, or my letter but not my size. Why?? Why?? Does everyone else in Toronto wear the same exact size and they just can't keep it in stock? Perhaps, but then again, probably not. Anyway, I finally found a couple in my size but not necessarily in the colours I would have liked, but I bought them anyway. Apparently, I can't afford to be too choosy.

For some reason, the whole experience reminded me of something we saw on the luggage carousel at the airport when we flew back from Florida last month. Namely, this:

Makes you wonder, doesn't it? How do things like this happen? Maybe someone's suitcase was damaged during the flight (they do warn you) but if so, how come there weren't other clothes strewn about the carousel? These were the only 2 items. Not surprisingly, no one appeared to be claiming them. (And no, I didn't check to see if they were my size!)

Want to see it again?

A Foggy Day, A Windy Evening

2012-01-17T21:23:00.000-05:00

It has been a strange weather day today. Incredibly foggy for most of the day, combined with a light rain but not one that was heavy enough to require an umbrella. And mild - about 5C or 41F. But tonight as I was leaving work, I noticed the wind was suddenly blowing quite strongly. I had been hearing it whistle around my office building for a while but hadn't really processed the thought thoroughly until I stepped outside and saw that the air was totally clear, the fog was completely gone. Luckily, it was a mild wind. For now. The temperature is supposed to drop quickly overnight and it will be much colder tomorrow. We might even get a little bit of snow by morning. Or not. (We've been so lucky with the weather this winter so far, I hate to even mention it in case I am jinxing us but heck, if this is global warming, bring it on!)

Nevertheless, I've been looking at my beach photos from Florida last month, dreaming of sunshine and a warmer wind. Here's an example of what wind can do to a pile of sand:

but add a little seed pod, and it's a whole different look:

Monkey See, Monkey Do

2012-01-16T21:27:00.000-05:00

I can't remember if I have mentioned before how Beans like to sit on top of the fridge. She also likes to jump from the fridge to the top of the kitchen cupboards, which I first found out when the vintage cookie tin in this photo bounced down onto the tile floor of the kitchen, scaring the beejeepers out of me and the other cats.

It seems she has been giving the other foster cats ideas. Both Tamana and Yonhee have taken to sitting up on top of the cupboards when they want to be by themselves.

This picture of Yonhee reminds me of that song in the movie Victor Victoria (do you remember that one, with Julie Andrews and James Garner? One of my all-time favourites!) The song is "The Shady Dame from Seville", sung by both Andrews and Robert Preston (to great comedic effect, as he sings it in drag, imitating Julie's previous performance of the same tune). The lyrics are the story of a bull fighter and a "shady dame" and the line I'm thinking of is, "Only two ears and a tail, Did they find by the blind on her sill".

Decorated Binder

2012-01-15T09:03:00.000-05:00

Another thing I'm doing as I take the advice given out by Julie Balzer as part of her Organization Week is tidying up some of the papers that sit in piles in various parts of my apartment and finding them a home.

I found a couple of plain binders at Value Village a few weeks ago and decided they needed a bit of decoration.

First I covered them with gesso and then I started adding paint (notice this was before I cleared off the table in the kitchen yesterday).

Then I used some of Julie's stencils to add more colour to the inside covers.

Here's how the outside turned out.

All in all, I really pleased with how the binder turned out, it reminds me of Julie's style and the class I took at Bizzy B when she was here a few months ago and the fun we had. And now all my notes from that class and the blog postings I've printed out about organization week, as well as notes from her Stencil 101 online tutorial are all together in one place where I can easily find them.

Now I need to get busy painting the other binder so I can do the same with the other loose papers I've got in that pile!

One Thing at a Time

2012-01-14T20:58:00.000-05:00

Have you been reading Julie Balzer's blog this week? It's Organization Week and she and several guest writers have been sharing some excellent ideas about how to organize your craft space. My mind is full of all sorts of ideas about cleaning out and switching my art space around, although most of it will have to wait until February to happen in the physical realm, as I know it will take a large amount of time to get the job done and I'd like to plan a couple of weekends in a row to work on the project as a whole, which I am unable to do this month.

In the meantime, I can work on one thing at a time in short bursts. Here's what I did today - I cleared off my kitchen table. I know, it doesn't sound like much, except that said table has been growing more and more cluttered over the past few months and the more stuff that sat on top of it meant the less space there was for me to actually use it for crafting when I needed it. Not to mention that it is also the spot where Maggie likes to eat her meals, although in this photo she is eating under the table, usually she likes to sit on top of it:

As you can see from the second photo, there used to be all sorts of miscellaneous stuff on the table. Mostly art supplies that I had used and not put away, but also things like camera bits and pieces, cat dishes, a lamp. (Believe it or not, the pieces of lasagna noodles on the left are actually a project in progress, although I might have to abandon that task. I was trying to figure out a way to punch a hole in the pasta without breaking the noodles but I'm not sure it can be done. I'll explain more at a later time.) The blue bag hanging off the chair on the left is full of recyclables, waiting to be taken downstairs to be put in the bin.

I gave myself an hour this morning to clear off this space and I finished in about 55 minutes. Everything got put away where it belongs (in some cases, an appropriate home needed to be created), the dust and cat hair on the table was wiped off, the protective paper was switched around so the clean side is facing out and voila, a clean work space with a five pronged plug added on the right side so the lamp is plugged in and my heat gun is ready for use at any time. As you can see, Beans was excited about the newly cleared off space as well:

(Funny, none of Julie's posts mention how to organize your craft/work space for the cat's benefit. I think I need to set her straight on that!)

More Quotable Pages

2012-01-13T21:49:00.000-05:00

It turns out I did have photos of the pages made by the other members of the Journal Junkies group at Bizzy B the other night, I just hadn't downloaded them from my camera - d'oh! Here they are:

I love the font Marissa used on this page about her goals for 2012, I shall be looking for these alphabet stamps to add to my collection:

Betty made this page using a stamp of a man's face that she thought looked like Mark Twain at a younger age, I love the blend of colours she achieved in her collage:

Alas, I don't remember the name of the woman who made this page but I love the little envelopes she used, into which she tucked various quotes:

This is Diana's page, with a very profound quote about keeping cats. (Luckily, I have no mice, so I needn't worry about the number of cats I keep!)

Are You Registered?

2012-01-12T20:34:00.001-05:00

Photo courtesy of adweek.blogs.com

A woman at work today came into my office and asked me to witness her signature on her donor card. Of course I agreed and went looking for mine in my wallet to show her. Couldn't find it. Which is strange, since I always sign it right away when I get my new driver's licence. Can't remember the last time I saw it, couldn't find it anywhere else in my purse. I'm wondering if it's somehow embedded in the information that goes with our current plastic licences?

But just to be sure, I went online to beadonor.on.ca. That's the Ontario website for registering your wish to be a donor. I'm guessing the other provinces have one too (I know for sure that B.C. does) and a Google search shows that there are various U.S. sites as well where you can sign up.

According to the Canadian Association of Transplantation, there are currently 4,000 people waiting for a transplant that could save their life but last year, only 1,800 people received transplants and 195 people died while waiting for a match. You can check out their website here (which appears to be, sadly, somewhat out of date, referring to 2010 and 2011 events but nothing for 2012 as yet) where you'll find interesting information like this: "It appears that Canada's low rate of organ donation in comparison to other countries is not a result of lack of generosity or altruism, but because of better health practices. Canada’s risk of death from automobile accidents or gunshot wounds is much lower than the United States. Canadian’s access to excellent health care also lowers the probability of death."
What I didn't know before this year was that you can also be a living donor. Wait, that's not quite right - I knew about donating bone marrow and kidneys but I didn't know you could also donate part of your liver and any of these donations don't necessarily have to be to a relative. You could donate to a total stranger or, as in the case of two women who have cottage properties on the same road as my family, to a friend - if you're healthy and happen to be a good match. My friend Karyn had been sick for a long time until this year when another friend Jane donated part of her liver to her. It's more than six months later and both of them are doing great. You may remember them from my post back in July, which you can read here. Karyn posted just today that she played an hour and a half of tennis today, after 4 years of being off the court. Isn't that awesome?

I don't know if I'm brave enough to offer to be a living donor but I do think about it. In the meantime, I've registered my choice and I've spoken to my family so they know my wishes. Now if I could just find that donor card...!

A Cat in a Chair

2012-01-11T20:10:00.000-05:00

To be happy, all a cat really needs is food, water, a clean litter box, and a comfy chair. If your name is Gus, that is.

Eminently Quotable

2012-01-10T20:07:00.000-05:00

As promised, here are some of the pages of my fellow Journal Junkies, as presented at last night's meeting, which started off on an excellent note with this baking made for us by Kelly - shortbread with chocolate chunks, brownies and pumpkin cookies - oh my:

which was DEEEELICIOUS. Not only is she an awesome baker, she is also an extremely talented journaler, as you can see from her page:

Laura made this one, featuring various quotes she likes (and made before she knew that next month's theme is "wings"):

I had never heard this one before:

The lady who sat beside me, whose name I can't remember, if I ever knew it at all, made a page with a number of quotes written on tags, tied together and tucked inside an envelope in the centre of her design:

This was my favourite of her quotes:

Marilyn made this striking collage:

This colourful page was made by Barb, the owner of Bizzy B:

I love the way she drew her text in the circles:

Connie's page also featured a number of her favourite quotations:

This one was my favourite:

I am just realizing I didn't take pictures of everyone's pages last night (not sure how that happened, I might have been distracted by the baking) so unfortunately I can't show you the creations of several other talented ladies that were there last night, which were equally awesome. Once again, it is amazing to see how everyone starts with the same idea and ends up with something completely unique.

A Favourite Quote

2012-01-09T21:51:00.009-05:00

The theme for tonight's Journal Junkies meeting at Bizzy B was "quotes to live by". I thought it was "favourites quotes", which is slightly different but no matter.

I used this one from the movie Bull Durham (which I watched last month for about the 83rd time): "Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air." It's from a poem written by Thomas Gray called "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (you can find the full text here).

In the movie, Kevin Costner's character hits a minor league batting record but no one knows about it except him and Susan Sarandon's character. When I heard these lines of the poem this last time, it made me think of the women in the vintage photographs I've been buying over the past year or two. Looking at those photos now, 100 years or so after they were taken, we don't know how they lived their lives or what they may have quietly accomplished in their own corner of the world. I also think of how differently their lives would have been led compared to how things are today, the restrictions they faced as women in society and how, like the lines of the poem, they may have had to bloom quietly and unnoticed, as wives, widows, spinsters, mothers, perhaps taken for granted by their loved ones, perhaps unable to fulfill their dreams. I think it's because the old photographs only show us the black and white images, we don't see the colour of their lives - the joy, the achievements, the bliss they may have found in their days.

Here's how my page turned out:

and here is a close-up of the text and the photo:

Tomorrow I'll share some of the amazing journal pages my fellow Junkies created for this month's theme.

Organization Week

2012-01-08T20:38:00.000-05:00

Julie Balzer is spending the next week helping her readers get organized.

Photo courtesy of Julie Balzer

I am planning to participate and since I'll be at Bizzy B tomorrow night for the monthly Journal Junkies meeting, I got a bit of a head start this afternoon by tidying up my craft area and collecting similar items together in labelled boxes.

I also treated myself to a desktop carousel made by Recollections that looks like something like this:

I picked it up at Michaels earlier this week for 50% off using a gift card that my sister had given me for Christmas (thanks, Janine!). It's pretty cool because it has all sorts of slots of different heights for storing things in, plus little drawers that have magnets in the back of them to hold them firmly in place as the carousel spins.

I was able to remove this collection of clutter from my dining room table:

and tidy it into this:

There's even a place for a photo on the carousel. I put in this picture, which I took of some inspiring signs for sale in Hobby Lobby in Florida.

I have to say, I'm pretty happy with this beginning to getting organized. Can't wait to see what Julie has planned for us this week!

My Happy Keyboard

2012-01-07T15:02:00.000-05:00

There are several blogs I read on a regular basis but there are two blogs I read every day and I will actually check each one several times a day to see if they have posted anything new and/or to read the comments that people have added to various posts, check out their sidebar links, etc.

One of those 2 worth-checking-and-reading-over-and-over blogs is written by my good friend Kate McKinnon, who usually posts several times a day, and the other is written by my imaginary/Internet friend Mary Ann Moss. They both have a fabulous way of looking at the world and sharing what they see with their readers using words and photos in ways that the rest of us can only sit back and admire.

This morning, I made the mistake of checking MAM's blog before I had my breakfast. Her latest blog entry featured a link to a website which features a photo of this happy keyboard:

Photo from minifanfan.com

I immediately decided I had to do exactly the same thing to my keyboard, even though I don't have a Macbook and my keyboard is black not white. It did not matter. It had to be done and it worked anyway. So there I sat, pulling out various types of decorative tape, cutting pieces to size and sticking them on my keyboard keys.

Never mind that my stomach growled in protest the entire time. Never mind that I was almost late for meeting my friend to do a little Saturday morning thrift store shopping because I delayed having my breakfast, which meant I was behind schedule when it came time to shower and get dressed (in the end, I made it with at least 3 to 4 minutes to spare!). There was art to be made and I made it!

Eventually, the clock and my stomach took control and I had to stop without covering every key but I kind of like the half decorated look too. Here's how it turned out:

Can you find the cat's paw in this photo?

Thanks (again!) for the inspiration, Miss Mary Ann!

Friday Night Tired

2012-01-06T21:44:00.000-05:00

Went downtown after work today to get my hair cut (for which I was at least two weeks overdue, oh the horror). I've been going to this hairdresser for several years now, she's worth the 45 minute commute each way there and back but man, it's hard to do on a Friday night after a busy week. I was dozing off on the trip downtown while reading "Eat Pray Love", which I am enjoying but it wasn't enough to keep me awake. (Did you know there is a blog devoted to photos of people sleeping on the subway? Check it out here.) Headed to the Eaton Centre afterwards to run a few errands but didn't have the energy to do much once I got there except have some dinner in the new food court, which was crowded and rather too trendy to be comfortable if you ask me but it might just have been my tiredness because it was full of people who seemed to be enjoying themselves. The ride home was alarming due to the number of people sneezing around me in the subway car. I thought one woman was going to cough up a lung, she sounded really unhealthy. Everyone that stood in one particular doorway waiting for the train to pull into the next station sneezed several times while standing there. Needless to say, I exited using a different door! Just got home and I am so tired, I can hardly see straight and I have a headache on top of that. Time for bed, me thinks, an early night will no doubt fix everything and I'll be right as rain in the morning.

Photo found at doobybrain.com

Kittenless Again

2012-01-05T21:30:00.000-05:00

Rhodes and Halo were adopted last night, yay! I'm very happy for them that they have found a home with a really lovely couple but I am also missing them a little bit. One thing I especially love about kittens is when they fall asleep with you and they are purring, purring, purring and then as they drop into a deep sleep, there is this little sigh and then the purring stops and suddenly, they are sound asleep. It's a very special experience.

Halo has very short whiskers for some reason

But I'm also not missing them, if you know what I mean. Kittens are so incredibly cute and cuddly. When they're tired and sleepy, that is. When they're awake and raring to go, it's a whole different story! Okay, they're still cute but they're also dashing here, there and everywhere, climbing everything, exploring every nook and cranny. I didn't know before 2 days ago that there was an empty space under my dishwasher until Halo climbed in there and then almost couldn't climb back out again. I had just long enough to wonder how I was going to get that machine apart and then, thankfully, he figured out how to exit. Of course, I immediately blocked up that space! Then there was yesterday when I came home for lunch and discovered they had closed the door to the bathroom, shutting themselves inside. They were sound asleep when I opened the door and had luckily not needed to use the litter box during their surprise incarceration but still.

Which is why it seems that the rest of my cat posse is quite relieved to see them gone. Beans has taken it upon herself to be wild and crazy and true to her name, full of beans, ever since they left last night but all the others seem much more relaxed and calm. Yonhee is probably missing Halo but she also got spayed today, so it's hard to be sure how she's feeling, other than she's resting comfortably right now and is probably glad not to have a little furball fireball climbing all over her just now.

They sure are cute kittens though, and I certainly enjoyed having them while they were here. I know they will be very happy with their new parents.

Cute Tape

2012-01-04T21:09:00.000-05:00

I was watching this video on how to make a little journal out of scrapbooking papers made by my friend and artist extraordinaire Jane Davenport two weeks ago:

and about five minutes in to this 6 minute video, I was amazed to see her using narrow decorative tape. I had never seen narrow tape before so I immediately hit Google to look for it. Had...to...have...some!

Lo and behold, I discovered a new (to me) website called http://www.cutetape.com/. Now I have to warn you, if you like decorative tape, this can be a very dangerous website because their tapes are, well, really cute.

My order arrived yesterday:

I haven't used them yet. First I have to sit and admire how purdy purdy they are.

See the 6 narrow colours I got? They are actually 3 rolls with two colours on each, very cute. Only $6 for the set of 3. I can't wait to use them in the journal I am finishing (hopefully this weekend) from my birthday trip to St. Augustine!!

Blogging Challenges

2012-01-03T20:57:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, writing a blog post every day can be challenging. Thinking up a subject, taking or looking for photos, finding the time in a busy day to do the writing, being motivated to even use the computer after being on one all day at the office - all of these things can work against you some days.

Other times, it's a logistical problem that trips you up. Like a lack of Internet service or...a cat that doesn't want to share.

Like when Maggie wants to play Freecell

or Rhodes wants to download photos of himself:

Where Does The Time Go?

2012-01-02T20:48:00.000-05:00

Photo courtesy of adpic-images.com

Only the 2nd day of the new year and already I'm wondering where the time is going so quickly. Why does it always seem like work days pass so slowly and weekends go by so darned fast? Even with an extra day, this past long weekend seems to have flown by and somehow, several of the many things on my "to do" list didn't get done. The good news is that a lot of them did, at least enough to get me through this week - I worked on my journal from my St. Augustine trip, I did some laundry, I balanced my chequebook after the December busyness, I put away my Christmas decorations and I tidied up a little bit (not nearly enough!). I think I tend to put too many things on my list, I might need to address that problem in 2012. Still, it was nice to have a quiet and not too busy few days after the holiday rush before heading back to work tomorrow.

Welcome 2012

2012-01-01T18:05:00.000-05:00

I couldn't have said it better than Mr. Neil Gaiman (who actually said this 10 years ago!):

"May your coming year be filled with
magic and dreams and good madness. I hope
you read some fine books and kiss someone
who thinks you're wonderful, and
don't forget to make some art --
write or draw or build or sing or live as
only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the
next year, you surprise yourself."

Goodbye 2011

2011-12-31T14:19:00.002-05:00

Photo courtesy of health-local.com

As I sit down to write this blog, I am amazed (once again) the year has flown by as fast as it has. How did that happen??

I have to say that 2011 was a great year for me. Not only did I celebrate a milestone birthday, I was also lucky enough to do a lot of travelling (to various locations in the U.S. and to Portugal), to work at a job that I enjoy, to spend time with people I love, to spend more time making art and to share my home and assist in the adoption process for a number of furry felines who would have otherwise been homeless, abandoned and/or euthanized. I am very grateful for all of these things.

Someone sent me the following words, with the suggestion that we should start noticing how wealthy we are right now. I thought it was very appropriate for this time of year:

Henry David Thoreau once said, “Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” Even when times are tough, it’s always important to keep things in perspective. You didn’t go to sleep hungry last night. You didn’t go to sleep outside. You had a choice of what clothes to wear this morning. You hardly broke a sweat today. You didn’t spend a minute in fear. You have access to clean drinking water. You have access to medical care. You have access to the Internet. You can read. Some might say you are incredibly wealthy, so remember to be grateful for all the things you do have.

I know these things are true for me and I am grateful for that. I hope that you can say the same. Although I have to say, I think we all spend more than a few minutes in fear but hopefully it is not the type that makes you fear for your life or that of someone you love but rather, the kind that makes you fear wasting your life or your time or your energy.

I wish you all the very best for a happy and healthy 2012. Thank you for being here to read my blog and share this journey with me.

Christmas Traditions Observed

2011-12-30T08:04:00.004-05:00

One last, belated post about Christmas before the New Year is upon us.

For me and my family, Christmas includes certain traditions and this year was no exception.

It takes place here, at our long time family home. A few years ago, my mom, my sister and I travelled to my brother's house in Calgary for Christmas but that was the first and only time we haven't spent this holiday at home.

A white Christmas is the norm here, no matter how green it might be in Toronto and even if, as it was this year, there is just barely enough snow to cover the grass. I can only remember one or two "green" Christmases in my lifetime.

We have stockings on Christmas Eve, the same ones made by my grandmother close to 50 years ago. Let's just say, I don't recall ever not having these stockings, so that's a pretty darned long time. When we were younger, we used to hang them on the fireplace but now that we are older, we put them on chairs, where it's easier to assemble all the various parcels and packages that go in or with them.

We and our neighbours put out candles on the street on Christmas Eve, very soon after it gets dark. I call it "Santa's runway". No one is quite sure who started this tradition but several others have since joined them in doing this for many years now. The result is several blocks lit up with candles placed inside empty plastic soda bottles. Cars slow down to get a good look as they drive by. It's really quite special to see.

We have turkey on Christmas Day. This year, as she has for the past six years since my father passed away, my sister cooked the bird using his recipes for both the turkey and the rice stuffing, both of which she makes just as well as he ever did.

Said turkey dinner is shared on a pretty regular annual basis with our long time friends and neighbours. We take turns hosting, as our homes are only a block apart. Some years, we've needed two turkeys and if there is enough snow, a sled to carry one of them down the street. There have been close to 30 people around the table in the past, this year's group of nine was our smallest yet but still very enjoyable. We were missing those who weren't there - some have passed away, one very sadly only a few short months ago, while others were out of town and unable to attend - but we had a lot of fun just the same.

The carving of the turkey is always a production. Usually done by the oldest male in attendance, although Janine has done it several times herself. This was Ray's first time and he did a wonderful job.

Although not without an audience

some of whom observed very carefully.

But all went well, and it was finally time to load up our plates and eat.

We always have Christmas crackers and wear the silly hats found inside after reading aloud the corny jokes and fighting over the toys they are packaged with.

Although this year, some of the ladies were already wearing hats of their own.

Which meant they ended up wearing two hats.

Boxing Day was a little different this year. We don't really have a fixed tradition for this day but I'm hoping this one gets repeated. We had old friends over for dinner. My sister cooked again, a delicious pork roast served with peaches, using another recipe of my father's (I had made his recipe for lasagna on Xmas Eve too!) and once again, an enjoyable meal was spent in good company.

"There is no ideal Christmas; only the one Christmas you decide to make as a reflection of your values, desires, affections, traditions." (Bill McKibben ) I for one am glad these traditions have endured.

Apologies to Maggie

2011-12-29T07:08:00.000-05:00

I inadvertently left Maggie out of my collection of photos of catnaps yesterday, for which I must apologize. So today she gets her own post, all to herself. Which I think she would prefer, she is a little tired of kittens tumbling about willy nilly all over the place and unfamiliar cats taking over her living space. I try to tell her it will be quieter when the kittens leave but I'm not sure she believes me.

Here she is, lounging about on the furniture, in all her beautiful muted caliconess.

Cat Naps

2011-12-28T21:30:00.000-05:00

As you can see from these photos, I wasn't the only one napping yesterday:

Beans

Gus

Katrina and Rhodes

Rhodes

Yonhee and Halo

Tamana

Gus and Beans

Could we be any cuter? I don't think so!!

Pyjama Day

2011-12-27T13:00:00.000-05:00

As much as I enjoy Christmas, it is often a very busy two or three days of last minute errands, cooking, cleaning and socializing leaving little time for proper rest and relaxation, so it is always a bit of a relief when it is over. As wonderful as it was to spend time with family and old friends, to be able to eventually return to the calm and quiet of my own home is a treat. Although this year it is better described as "relatively quiet" - I am quickly learning that sharing my space with 8 cats tends to make for a more energetic environment than I am used to. There tends to be more chasing about, climbing things, clamouring for food and litter box digging than what I think of as normal with this many furry felines about.

My desire to be home and sleeping in my own bed was no doubt stronger this year because I was sick for all of Christmas with a bad cold. However, I took along cough syrup, cough drops and my own box of 3 ply Kleenex with lotion (what a Godsend! how did I not know how tender these tissues can be on a nose that looks like one is auditioning for Rudolph's role guiding Santa's sleigh?? It appears for once there is truth in advertising and I for one now heartily endorse and recommend this product for cold suffers everywhere!) and muddled through. Luckily, it seems the coughing stage is over and I am now back to just a congested nose, which hopefully will also fade away within the next day or two.

Photo courtesy of confessionsofawannabehousewife.com

I don't have to be back at work until tomorrow and as it is a grey and gloomy wet day out there today, with a forecast of mixed precipitation (so far, merely rain) and a possible flash freeze overnight, I am quite happy to spend today indoors with nothing on my agenda other than to read, watch DVDs and/or nap. One nap has already been achieved, it took place from 10:30 to 12 noon this morning and was quite successful, save and except for the images of this guy which showed up in my dreams:

I have The Time Traveller's Wife and several seasons of The Closer available for viewing, so I expect it will be a very enjoyable afternoon.

Hope you are spending this post-Boxing Day day in a similar relaxing fashion!

Christmas Lights

2011-12-26T23:06:00.000-05:00

I drove back to Toronto after dark tonight and it was a real treat to see all the Christmas lights everywhere. Some of the displays were more elaborate than others and all colours of the rainbow were well represented.

When we were kids, I can remember my parents driving us around town some time in December to see the various light displays that people had set up to decorate their homes. That would have been in the late 60's and early 70's. About 1973 or so, that all seemed to come to a stop as there was an "energy crisis" going on and people began to be more aware of excess fuel and energy consumption and stopped putting up lights for a few years.

These decorations were especially charming, set up on a pond on a farmhouse property:

Merry Christmas 2011

2011-12-25T00:05:00.003-05:00

Wishing you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas!!

Eight is Enough

2011-12-24T10:28:00.000-05:00

My goodness, it's exhausting keeping track of eight cats! Yonhee seems to be feeling much better ever since she goes that dose of extra fluid at the vet the other night. She has been gobbling up every speck of food I put down for her and still cries for more. She is only eating wet food of the hypoallergenic variety for a couple of days as the vet thought she might have either a stomach ulcer or a food allergy. Either way, she can't eat dry food right now, which means she has to be separated from the others most of the time, because they free feed on dry food and different wet food, which I leave out for them at all times.

But keeping her shut up in one room all the time isn't easy. She cries at the door to get out and Gus and Beans sit on the other side and try to dig their way in by chewing up the carpet under the door (thank goodness building management seems to be removing the wall to wall carpeting in apartments as people are moving out, hopefully they won't mind that these cats have made a headstart on that process!)

In the meantime, the kittens now have the run of the place so they are busy exploring, climbing the furniture,

tumbling about play fighting with each other (they are very evenly matched),

trying out the scratching post and learning to use the computer.

At first the older cats didn't quite know what to make of them

and Katrina still hisses if they get too near (which is confusing for Rhodes, who grew up with two black cats that look very much like her so he is probably expecting a warmer welcome) but now everyone seems to be getting along reasonably well. I hide their food bowls and let Yonhee out for as long as possible so she can socialize with the group, which she seems to like. Since she's part Siamese, she's very vocal and will sit near me making small noises as if to say, "Don't forget I'm still here. Are you sure it isn't time to feed me again?"

A very nice lady named Janice from Abbey Cats is going to come in twice a day while I'm away for Christmas and make sure all the cats and kittens are fed and watered and haven't trashed the place. Thank you, Janice (and husband Dave for driving her over)! I hate to leave them but it's only for two days and to be honest, now that my cold has settled mostly in my chest, I'm looking forward to a couple of nights of undisturbed sleep! :)

A Christmas Basket

2011-12-23T22:04:00.000-05:00

Just to prove that this blog has not become an "all cats, all the time" blog, I shall tell you about the gift basket I won at work yesterday.

Every year at Christmas, people send gifts to the executives in our office - bottles of wine and scotch, boxes of chocolate, gift baskets, poinsettas, etc. They in turn donate them to the employee raffle - we can all buy tickets and then they draw to see who gets to take which gift home. The money raised (which is doubled by our senior vice president, who matches the total raised by the sale of the raffle tickets) is donated to the United Way. This year we raised close to $800.

I was lucky enough to win this gift basket, filled with 21 various tasty items, both savoury and sweet:

such as:
- chocolate truffles
- Belgian truffles (is there a difference? I'm guessing there is, but I'm not a truffle eater so I really couldn't tell you! aren't truffles those things that pigs root out with their snouts in France? I thought they were sort of like mushrooms? how do they get to be chocolate??)
- honey mustard flavoured pretzels
- garlic and herb cheese, with a little round dish and spreader to go with it;
- caramel wafer cookies
- chocolate taffy (not to be confused with the next item)
- chocolate toffee
- buttercrunch toffee with cashews
- almond hazelnut biscotti (definitely not for my mom, who is allergic to hazelnuts)
- flavoured hot chocolate mix
- butter flavoured pretzels
- chocolate pretzels
- chocolate hazelnut cream filled rolled wafers
- chocolate peppermint cookie brittle (this is the one I am most looking forward to try)
- Lindt Lindor chocolates (with not just any centres, but "delectably smooth centres")
- sesame water crackers
- squares of Ghirardelli dark chocolate

A veritable smorgasboard. I donated several of the items to the Daily Bread food bank via my local grocery store. I figure the people using the food bank will be pretty well supplied with peanut butter, pasta and cans of tuna, they could also use some treats. A few I kept myself and will be taking them home to share with my loved ones over Christmas. Except maybe that cookie brittle, I might have to keep that all to myself! Mmmm.

Sick Me, Sick Cat

2011-12-22T21:43:00.000-05:00

I've got a head cold (annoying and tiring) and poor Yonhee threw up a couple of times in the early morning today, the second of which was very bloody (very worrying) and not surprisingly, she hasn't been eating. Took her to the vet after work tonight. Rushed there in rush hour traffic and was worried about being 10 minutes late. Turns out I needn't have worried, the vet was so busy, I waited an hour and a half before she could examine Yonhee. Seems I'm not the only one who would like my pet looked at before the vet leaves on her Christmas vacation tomorrow.

The diagnosis is that Yonhee is slightly dehydrated and might have a stomach ulcer, which apparently is not unusual for a lactating momma cat but I do feel bad for her if that is the case. Makes my head cold seem very unimportant by comparison. She got some fluids injected subcutaneously by way of a needle under the skin between her shoulder blades and a little bit of liquid medicine orally (which she didn't like at all) and by the time we got home, she was feeling much better and gobbled up half a can of the new hypo-allergenic cat food we're trying. Hopefully all of these things combined will mean she is on the mend. In the meantime, the kittens have been moved to the walk-in closet in my bedroom so they can eat their own food, momma cat isn't to have any of that for a while to make sure she gets the proper nutrients and isn't having an allergic reaction to something in the food. We've eliminated an accidental exposure to some sort of toxin, as she hasn't been exposed to any house plants or cleaning fluids or anything of that nature, thank goodness!

As for me, it's already past 9:30 pm and once again, no presents have been wrapped, no packing has been done, no preparations to be away for two days over Christmas have been made. But that's okay, hopefully we'll all have a good night sleep tonight and we'll try again tomorrow. Only half a day in the office, which will really help me get organized plus all day Saturday to get ready before Santa comes. No worries!

And Then There Were 8

2011-12-21T19:30:00.000-05:00

As expected, Oliver and Patience were adopted today. The intervention has been called off (for now).

The couple that chose them wanted to take the two of them because they were born siblings, even though Halo has been hanging out with them for quite a while. Seems as good a reason as any. How does one choose only 2 of 4 bundles of adorableness? It can't be easy.

No matter, Halo and Rhodes are getting along like a house on fire and are a perfectly matched set of fluffy, grey and white kittens. They both have very friendly, cuddly temperaments. Rhodes can purr like nobody's business, I think he is flirting with me.

And Then There Were 10

2011-12-20T18:49:00.000-05:00

Rhodes arrived today. He is grey and white and fluffy, just like Halo, only more white than grey, whereas Halo is mostly grey with white socks, tummy and face.

They make a very cute pair.

The kittens all seemed to accept him very quickly and easily. Momma cat Yonhee hissed at him a few times but he didn't seem to mind. No doubt he smells funny to her, she can probably smell the other dogs and cats he was living with. He actually smells like incense or perfume to me, although perhaps it is just scented cat litter.

Rhodes has grown up in a household with only adult cats, there were no other kittens around in the foster home he was staying at. He is very friendly and actually wags his tail when he trots over to say hello to me, it's so cute! Hopefully he will enjoy having 3 other little ones his own size around to play with, although that situation might not last too long - someone is coming to adopt 2 kittens tomorrow at lunch time, so there will only be 2 left. Which two will they pick???

Downton Abbey

2011-12-19T21:32:00.000-05:00

I've been busy tidying up after the weekend tonight. Didn't get a chance to do it last night, because my mom called at 7:59 p.m. to tell me Masterpiece Theatre on PBS was re-broadcasting the first episode of "Downton Abbey", starting at 8 o'clock. She'd seen it when it was first shown and had told me about it, although I didn't remember the telling. But I turned on my TV and was hooked immediately by the opening scenes as the servants get this enormous mansion ready for the day before the Lord and Lady and their daughters wake up.

It's one of those period pieces, like "Upstairs, Downstairs". Written by the same person who wrote "Gosford Park". A fascinating look at life from both the upper and lower classes' perspective. Several familiar faces from various English movies, the most famous of which is Dame Maggie Smith. She looks a bit odd without the pointed witch's hat we've seen her wearing in all the Harry Potter movies most recently but the Edwardian costumes are quite lovely and Dame Maggie gets to wear several other very impressive hats.

The first scenes take place on April 12, 1912. In case you don't recognize the date, that's the day of the Titanic sinking. I won't tell you any of the plot points such as why that event is life-changing for all at the Abbey but like I said, I was immediately hooked. (Although I couldn't stay up until 11:30 to watch both of the episodes they were showing, as I had to work today, but luckily I was able to use my VCR to record the last hour or so.) The next episode is being broadcast on Christmas night. Season 2 starts in mid-January, and I am eager to watch the next few installments so I'll be ready for the start of the new season, when the characters lives are forever changed by World War I. I shall be sure to tune in for that!

Family Christmas 2011

2011-12-18T18:27:00.000-05:00

Another family Christmas party is in the books. Or should I say, in the photo album. We've been having these get togethers for many years now and we have three photo albums of collected photos from summer picnics and Christmas dinners, dating back to 1996. I know we've been getting together for longer than that but that might be the year that someone decided we should start keeping the photos in one place. We also take a group picture each year. It's fun to look back and see the changes over time - spouses arriving, kids being born and growing up. Of course, it's sad too, as we lose family members to illness or old age but the photos help keep them a part of the tradition. I'm sure they're all there with us in spirit and certainly in our hearts. The older generations would certainly be pleased that we are carrying on these gatherings twice a year.

Here are some of the photos I'll be adding from this year:

If you ask me, watching these kids grow up, having a chance to interact with them, seeing them play together - that's the true magic of Christmas!

A Sunny Saturday

2011-12-17T11:07:00.000-05:00

My foster mom is getting ready for her family Xmas party this afternoon. She can't make her bed because I'm sleeping on it.

I look so cute, she doesn't want to disturb me.

I show her my stripes

and then roll over to show my spotted tummy

All this sleeping in the sun makes a girl thirsty.

What, you expected me to use the water bowl?

Intermittent Internet Access

2011-12-16T08:29:00.001-05:00

When I got home from work last night, my Internet access was working fine, so I figured the problem must have been something with Ma Bell and not something a little kitten might have done. So I ate dinner, did a blog post, played with cats and then some time after 9 p.m., I realized I didn't have access any more. Ditto this morning. So we'll see, I might have to call them after all. Which might have to wait until first thing tomorrow morning, as we have our company Christmas luncheon today and that event has tended to last until late in the evening the past two years, so chances are I won't be trying to get onto the computer before tomorrow anyway!

Photo courtesy of sharenator.com

And Then There Were Nine

2011-12-15T20:40:00.000-05:00

When I started fostering cats for Abbey Cats earlier this year, my sister told me that if I ever had more than ten at one time, she would have to stage an intervention. Somehow, rather suddenly and unexpectedly this week, I find myself dangerously close to that limit! At the moment, there are 9 little lovelies staying with me. Katrina and Maggie, who live here permanently and then Gus and Beans who are back to visit as a result of their unsuccessful adoption and now, as of yesterday, we also have a momma cat named Yonhee (a Siamese mix, I'm told, shown here with one of her kittens, Oliver):

and her daughter Patience (who is not at all patient when it comes to being fed, meowing piteously at me to make sure I realize that she is HUNGRY):

and a third kitten that Yonhee adopted as her own when he needed nursing, named Halo, who has the cutest little smudge of colour on his face that makes him look like he has just dipped his nose into caramel and hasn't yet had a chance to lick it off):

Here's another picture of Oliver, who stole my heart right away when he started purring like a chain saw as soon as I first touched him:

The man who very kindly drove these cats all the way from north of Collingwood (a 2 hour drive) also brought along a beautiful grey cat named Tamana, who was scheduled to be picked up today and taken to another foster home. However, I immediately fell in love with her and enjoyed her friendly nature and tendency to give wonderful cuddles from the moment we first met and that meant I had to keep her with me just a little bit longer. What the heck, what's one more? The other four adults in the house are still trying to figure out who she is and why she smells like perfumed baby oil (I can't quite figure that out myself) but they are slowly adjusting to her presence.

Both Yonhee and Tamana are way too thin and I'm hoping they will fatten up while they are here, it is quite pitiful to see how very skinny they are. Yonhee loves to be petted but you can feel every knob on her spine when you run your hand down her back. Obviously, they are so much better off to be safe indoors instead of left to live their lives as strays or a frightening fate in a high kill shelter. The kittens seem small for their age but are very friendly, playful and inquisitive. I had already planned to take them in before I knew Gus and Beans were coming back but even so, how could I say no to looking after them?

One more kitten is due to arrive next week, so there will be an even number, making it easier to adopt them out in pairs (which helps their socialization skills as they grow older), and then that's it, I'm going to have to say no more cats. At least until some of these guys go to their forever homes. :)

No Internet Connection Last Night

2011-12-15T08:27:00.000-05:00

= no blog post.

But lots to talk about, including the new momma cat and 3 adorable kittens that have just moved in to my spare bedroom, where, coindentally, the modem is located. Is there a connection? Don't know yet. By the time I realized there was a problem last night, it was too late to call Bell (at least, too late by my standards, I was ready for bed!) Will contact the help line tonight when I have more time...

I Support Public Libraries!

2011-12-13T21:05:00.000-05:00

Okay, I will admit that it has been a while since I've actually been in a library but that is my own fault, not that of the Toronto Public Library system. So when our mayor, Rob Ford, and his councillor brother Doug started talking about cutting funding to libraries and closing branches, it caught my attention as well as many of my fellow Torontonians.

Councillor Ford caused an uproar and gained fame (or infamy, some might say) by saying this in July: “Good luck to Margaret Atwood. I don’t even know her. She could walk right by me, I wouldn’t have a clue who she is,” said Mr. Ford, responding to the celebrated author’s remarks on Twitter opposing the proposed library cuts." (read the full story here)

Don't get me wrong. I understand that cost cutting is necessary and no one area of the city's various services should be exempt from the process but removing free access to learning materials and the enjoyment of books is not something I support. And for any Canadian, let alone one who is an elected public official, to say they have no idea who Margaret Atwood is? That's just sad. And shocking, really. (I had the pleasure of hearing her speak a few years ago and she was absolutely delightful, even more entertaining in person than she is in print, if you can imagine.)

So today, when one of my friends on Facebook posted a link to this website, I immediately followed the directions and laid my money down. It's a brilliant idea. Donate money to the library in the Mayor's name and if your donation is $10 or more, you can arrange for a thank you card to be sent to him, either by mail or via email.

(for those of you from out of town, the reference to "gravy" is because Mayor Ford was elected based on campaign promises vowing to "end the gravy train" at City Hall).

I can't wait to hear what kind of a response is generated by this initiative!

The Return of Gus and Beans

2011-12-12T21:30:00.000-05:00

Sadly, the adoption of Gus and Beans (officially known as Aureus and Argenta on the Abbey Cats website) didn't work out. If you think about it, pet adoption is kind of like a blind date - you just don't know if you're going to suit each other and/or get along for the long term. So for the time being, they have come back to stay with me again (I insisted, as I don't think it makes sense to send them somewhere else until another adoption opportunity comes along for them) and I'm happy to have them here. So far, they seem glad to be here and a little nervous and unsettled at the same time (just arrived back this morning). We'll see how it goes as they get used to being here again. Katrina and Maggie appear slightly confused as well - "Um, Mom, didn't they move out? And now they're back? Eating our food and sleeping on our bed??". I'm sure they will all be fine eventually. In the meantime, lots of pets and cuddles all around so each cat knows they are loved and welcomed.

Beans and Gus

A Perpetual Calendar

2011-12-11T20:38:00.000-05:00

Someone sent me a link to this idea for a perpetual calendar this past week and already I can't remember who it was, nor can I find the email with the link. Or maybe someone posted about it on Facebook, I can't be sure. (Apparently, my senior moments are happening more frequently now that I am fifty plus fourteen days!) But I had the above photo in my mind so I searched it on Google images and found it here, in a blog post written by someone who got the idea here.

Anyhow, whomever it was, thank you for that link. It gave me what I think is a brilliant idea for my own perpetual calendar, which I intend to begin today. I picked up this book earlier this year (once again, my memory fails me as I can't remember exactly where although I do know it was somewhere in West Virginia when I was visiting my friend Heather).

It's a journal from 1947 and it's called "Dr. Colwell's Daily Log for Physicians". The pages are yellowed with age, about 7.5 x 9.5 inches in size and most are filled out in pencil by John B. Sullivan M.D.

I found this description of the log book online: "Bookkeeping for doctors and dentists is a special problem. Here is a loose leaf record book for listing on each day hours of appointments, names of patients, services rendered, whether charged or cash payment, and money on account. Extra pages provide suitable columns for summaries of monthly business, expenses, narcotics prescribed, obstetrics, and memorandums. The general practitioner who has to keep his own books while attending to all the other minutiae that occupy him will find the book convenient." I also found an advertisement listing a similar book for sale in 1953 for a mere $7.00 (which was probably a somewhat substantial sum in those days, considering it appears people were only paying $3 or $4 to visit this doctor!).

I also found this absolutely fascinating description of the couple who were responsible for creating this daily log book - you really should click here to read about it.

I was going to save the book to use in 2014, when the days of the week will match those from 1947 (did you know calendars repeat themselves every 6 or 11 years or so? Unless it's a leap year, in which case, you have to wait 28 years. It's true! Read about it here.). But when I saw the above photo of the little cards in the fruit basket, I got the idea to use this log book as my own personal perpetual calendar, writing a line a year to indicate what I did that day. Some of the pages in the book are quite full but even the fullest ones still have several blank lines that I can use, or I can always insert new pages. The book itself has pins holding the pages in place, which can be removed simply and easily using a screwdriver. I can rearrange, remove or add pages as needed.

I think I'll go back to my birthday and start from that day (hopefully I can remember what I have done in the past 2 weeks, at least enough to write a one line blurb on each page!), so it will be a calendar that tracks my fifties as a starting point. I am excited to begin!

Afternoon Tea at Langdon Hall

2011-12-10T21:56:00.000-05:00

My friend Barb invited me out today to celebrate my 50th birthday. She didn't tell me where we were going, just that I was not to wear sweat pants or jeans with holes in them and that it wouldn't hurt. Hmm, those clues didn't really narrow it down too much for me and as it turned out, I never would have guessed anyway. We went for afternoon tea at Langdon Hall, a "country house hotel" located about an hour west of Toronto.

We started off with a glass of champagne (my third of the day, believe it or not, as Barb had served some with orange juice when she made me a french toast brunch earlier in the day and then her brother and his partner opened a bottle when we dropped in there in the early afternoon!)

We had a choice of 14 different teas - Barb picked Vanilla Bean and I chose Lemon Verbena. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I don't drink tea so I chose this one only because that was the name of the perfume that the teacher wore in the Little House in the Prairie books! It was described in the menu as "a blend of lemon verbena, lemon grass and lemon balm for a soothing, calm effect". It turned out to be quite tasty.

After that, we indulged in a traditional afternoon tea, beginning with scones (vanilla buttermilk and maple date flavours, mmm) served with saugeen honey butter, homemade strawberry jam and heavy cream.

That would have been plenty but we also received ten different kinds of savories and sweets (served on tiered stands, one for each of us), most of which we quite enjoyed (Barb wasn't too keen on the trout and apple salsa on toast but I liked it, and I'm not much for fish as a rule).

The main house was built in 1902 in the Federal Revival style. It is quite beautiful, and especially so this time of year, with all the Christmas decorations. Including this lovely tree in the parlour that leads into the main dining room:

which was exactly tall enough to touch the ceiling!

When we left around 6 p.m., the fireplaces were all aglow:

the pool table was awaiting players:

they were preparing to serve hors d'oeuvres in this room:

and the dining room was set for dinner:

The house was all lit up outside as well:

What a lovely birthday celebration it was! Many thanks to my long time and dear friend Barb for this unexpected treat.

Missing Max, One Year Later

2011-12-09T19:11:00.000-05:00

Today marks the first anniversary of losing my darling Max. He was the fourth of my feline companions (preceded by Butterscotch, Murphy and Carly) and, to be honest, he was always just a little bit more special in my heart. I know parents say that they love all their children equally and that may be true, but when it comes to cats, this guy was different. Which is not to say that I didn't love my other cats truly and deeply, I did and I miss them too, but Max and I had a special bond and we both knew it.

I still miss him. I don't suppose that ache will ever go away, although it is not as strong or as painful as it was for quite a while after this time last year. Maybe it has lessened, maybe I've just gotten used to it being there. Certainly it has helped to have been able to spend time looking after and enjoying the foster cats that have stayed here since then and to have come to love my two darlings, Maggie and Katrina, who are currently sharing my home.

But you never forget those souls that touch your heart in a profound and lasting way and that's why I'm thinking of and missing Max today.

Dreaming of a Porch (Preferably With A Swing)

2011-12-08T19:07:00.000-05:00

I can't believe how tired I have been this week, since getting home from vacation. Maybe it's because we were so busy last week. (Clearly, we had a little trouble with the concept of "slow travel", need to work on that. But there was so much to see and do, we didn't want to miss any of it!) Maybe it's because work seems rather humdrum after being away on vacation, it's hard to get motivated to get back into the routine. Luckily, things are slightly slower at the office this week as everyone starts to wind down for Christmas and year end, and yet, at the same time, people are trying to get things done that they've left to the last minute before the holidays arrive.
As I drive home on these cold, dark winter nights, I've been dreaming of living in a warm climate on a summer's evening and wishing I had a porch to come home to after a long day. I'd mix myself up a cool drink (a mojito perhaps, or a frosty blue margarita) and sit out on the porch swing and just rest awhile.

We saw lots of pretty porches in St. Augustine, of all shapes and sizes, some ground floor and some upstairs, some screened and some not. Here are just a few:

This one had the magic number!

A porch and a white picket fence!

Anyone want to buy a house?

This one already has a swing

Turrets are always intriguing

This was the prettiest porch we saw, complete with
an unusual stone fence that says xoxox

This one looks more European than Floridian

"Little pink houses for you and me" (John Mellencamp)
(this building is actually an inn, wouldn't you love to stay there?)

Christmas Approaches

2011-12-07T20:16:00.000-05:00

Having just returned from Florida after being focused on my milestone birthday, I haven't really turned my attention to getting ready for the Christmas season just yet.

However, if anything could put me in the mood, it would be this:

According to the notes that accompany this video on YouTube, it was originally intended for an audience of 200 people. To date, over 1.2 million have watched. Enjoy!

P.S. Thanks Marilyn for forwarding this to me!

My Birthday Present Bargain

2011-12-06T21:45:00.000-05:00

Thanks to my mom and my sister, I had some birthday spending money to take to Florida last week. While we were in St. Augustine, we went shopping at Barnes & Noble. I was paying for a small, decorated notebook I had picked up while strolling about the store when I noticed several copies of Annie Liebovitz's new book, "Pilgrimage", on the shelf behind the cashier.

Each copy was sealed in cellophane and marked with a 20% off sticker. I asked the clerk about it, not having known that Annie had a new book out, and she told me the retail price was $50.00. At 20% off, that made it $40.00.

Then she said, "Let's double check that price". She scanned the barcode and discovered that the book wasn't just twenty percent off, it was actually marked down by fifty percent (50%)! Which dropped the price to $25.00 before tax. Not bad.

Then she told me that I could also use the 30% off coupon my friend Diane had downloaded from their website, which lowered the price by yet another $7.50.

In the end, I paid $17.50 for a brand new copy of a $50 book ($18.55 with sales taxes rolled in) by a woman whose skill with the camera I greatly admire and enjoy. Talk about a good deal - still a nice chunk of birthday money left to spend (a larger piece of which quickly and easily disappeared at Hobby Lobby!) and a great gift for myself! Of course, with more than 200 pages, the book was a little heavy to carry home in my luggage but it was well worth it.

You can read descriptions of the book and see some of the photos in it here and here. Or you can go out to Barnes and Noble or Chapters/Indigo or your favourite book store and get yourself a copy.

Pretend it's your birthday and treat yourself.

Our St. Augustine Home

2011-12-05T20:39:00.000-05:00

Instead of staying at a hotel or B&B, we rented a historical home for our stay. It is described as "one of 36 surviving colonial structures" in town and is located one block from the main street. The house was built sometime between 1702 and 1764 and was originally a one-storey building. It is built in what is known as Spanish Colonial style.

I knew we were in the right place when I saw the doorknocker, exactly like the ones I had photographed all over the south of France last year!

The house is very comfortably furnished, with a mix of antique and modern furniture and fixtures. Here's the living room:

The WIFI signal was strongest in this room, so we tended to check our emails there (as you can see my companions doing in the above photo!). When we sat in there, you could hear the horse drawn carriages clattering by on the bricked street outside and imagine the occupants of the house hearing the exact same sound two hundred years before. At night, when we turned off the lights, the streetlights would glow through the old imperfect glass of window panes and reflect on the living room wall, making it look like it was raining outside:

The downstairs hallway is large enough to be a room on its own:

There is also a library room on the ground floor, with a single bed and several tall wooden bookcases that are, sadly, mostly empty at the moment.

The kitchen was definitely modern. We didn't get a chance to try the fireplace but I imagine it would be quite cosy in there with the fire going on a cold night.

Of course, we quickly commandeered the kitchen table for journalling and didn't see the surface of the table again until about an hour before we left at the end of our visit! :)

The original kitchen fireplace is located in what is now the hallway leading to the 2 piece bath and a storage room:

There were 2.5 bathrooms in the house, one on each level. There were three bedrooms upstairs. Mine was the size of two rooms, with a king sized bed, a fireplace and lots of closet space:

The other two bedrooms were smaller but just as comfortable, although lacking in closets. Bedroom 2 was only accessible by walking through either of the other two bedrooms, which was slightly inconvenient but not impossible.

The 3rd floor attic had a full bath and could have accommodated more guests but is currently unused.

The view from up there was quite lovely:

(The tall two-toned building on the right in the above photo is six stories high. Apparently, after it was built, everyone decided it was much too tall and the city rules were quickly amended to ensure that no one else was allowed to build anything that high, so this one building is quite noticeable!)

There is a two storey (newer) carriage house in the back which houses a 3 car garage and storage above. There is also a small but quite lovely backyard, with a pretty terrace.

All in all, a lovely house. The best part was its location, right in the heart of downtown St. Augustine and within easy walking distance of just about everywhere we wanted to go.

Home From Florida

2011-12-04T20:11:00.000-05:00

but wishing I was still on the beach...

Photo by Lorraine P.

Our Last Day in StAug

2011-12-03T21:25:00.000-05:00

It's hard to believe it's time to leave tomorrow, the past nine days have simply flown by. We are sitting on our terrace for the first time all week (weather and our busy schedule have prevented us from doing this before now), enjoying the late afternoon sunshine, listening to the church bells ring across the street for a wedding and sipping a glass of wine.

Lorraine and I headed out at 8 a.m. this morning to check out some local garage sales. Had to stop for this photo op on the way to our first location:

The two garage sales we checked out first weren't very exciting so we headed to our main destination for the day, the beach.

We spent about an hour at the first beach, then drove down the road to Fort Matanzas. Unfortunately, the ferry that takes you over to the actual fort was not working today so we could only stand on the shore and look across.

They did have a pair of great horned owls sleeping in a tree above the ranger station, with telescopes trained up at them. That was worth the visit! Just like the alligators yesterday, I could have sworn it was a stuffed owl I was looking at through the scope, his eyes were closed and he didn't move a feather but no, they were definitely alive.

How I wish I had a zoom lens, this was as close as I could get

Headed to another beach after stopping at a gas station convenience store for a bottle of water and a snack. Did you know you can buy seashells from roadside stalls here? We chatted with the vendor, who was a lovely older man who moved down here from Buffalo 5 years ago. We bought some sand dollars to take home, as I'd found half of one on the beach.

I found my dream home on the drive back. Now all I need to do is win the lottery and when I do, I might need to move here:

The pelican mailbox belongs to a neighbour

Back into town for a late lunch at a French cafe, then home to pack. Dinner outside on the terrace of a local restaurant and then we joined the townspeople for the annual British Night Watch (celebrating the town's British history) and the Grande Illumination event. People dress up in period costumes and parade through the downtown area. The townspeople are invited to join the parade with their lanterns. It is described as follows: "In the old days, the city of St. Augustine was secured every night by guards marching by lantern light to lock the gates. On special occasions or holidays, the night watch was made into a festive event. The population of St. Augustine would participate and carry a candle or lantern in the parade. The parade would end with volleys of muskets, singing, and merriment. Now this tradition is brought back to the city."

Definitely a fun way to end our stay here in this historic city.

Cannons, Crocodiles and Crepes

2011-12-02T21:23:00.000-05:00

Our first tourist stop this morning was the St. Augustine fort, known as Castillo de San Marcos. It is the oldest masonry fort in the continental U.S.

We arrived just in time to see the demonstration of the cannon being fired (performed in period costume with Spanish commands), which was very interesting. Luckily they tell you when to plug your ears because even though it was a small gun (a 6 pound shot), it was very loud and you could feel the impact of the blast in your ribcage.

There were several groups of school children there when we were there. Apparently they were expecting 45 different groups that day! A gentleman who gave us a 20 minute talk on the history of the fort (held by the Spanish, French, English and Americans at various times since it was built in the 16th century) also told us that in Florida, all grade 4 students are required by law to visit the fort.

In the afternoon, we visited the Alligator Farm. We had driven by the entrance several times this week and I was thinking it was probably a major tourist trap but a couple of locals we talked to in the past few days said it was worth a visit, that they take visitors there all the time. We decided to risk it, even though the entry fee was a whopping $21.95 (with 10% off for seniors).

I've got to tell you, it was money well spent. We got there just in time for the 3 p.m. feeding. On the way to the feeding area, we passed several crocodiles/alligators (I still can't tell which is which) lying in the sun and we actually thought they were fake. Until we came back by the same spot afterwards and the whole area was cleared off and we realized they were all in the water! It happened several times as I walked around the various exhibits, you could look and look at the animal and swear it wasn't moving and then it would blink or you'd see it's sides moving gently in and out as it breathed. It was only as we were leaving that we saw this note by the albino alligator's exhibit:

I believe there are about 35 of them in this photo, waiting for their lunch:

They are fed a combination of commercial alligator food and - wait for it - dead rats (see white object in photo below):

They also have a rookery there,

which the bird photographer I'd met on the beach earlier in the week had told me was the place to go late afternoon as it is very popular with several types of egrets, herons and my personal favourite, the roseate spoonbill:

as well as other animals such as monkeys, lemurs and parrots:

We got to pet a young crocodile in one of the talks:

and a python:

The alligator felt like the purses do and the snake was much softer than I expected. Very cool!

A quick stop at the local lighthouse as the sun was setting

and then back into town for dinner at a local French restaurant, where we ordered crepes on the advice of the same person who told us to go to the alligator farm. They were pretty tasty but not as good as the key lime pie we had there for dessert. :)

And so ends another exciting day in St. Augustine, Florida. Here's a bit of advice from the alligator farm that we should all remember:

Of course, I don't always listen to good advice:

Flagler Rocks and Another Beach Walk

2011-12-01T23:31:00.000-05:00

If you come to St. Augustine (and you really should, it's quite lovely and very historical and interesting), you will hear the name Flagler mentioned quite a bit. He's some rich guy who came to town in the 1880's and started building stuff all over town, including a hotel and a church. Bought himself a railroad or two to bring his guests to the hotel. Yup, that kind of rich guy.

However, today we visited what used to be the Ponce de Leon Hotel and is now Flagler College and I must say, this guy Flagler really knew what he was doing when it came to putting together beautiful buildings. From the stunning exterior

through the front doorway:

under the ceiling in the lobby

over the mosaic tiles on the floor

to the murals on the ceiling of the dining room, which perfectly compliment the Tiffany stained glass windows (the largest in use collection of Tiffany glass in the world, we were told)

Our fourth year undergraduate tour guide told us it was very difficult trying to study under these conditions. Can you imagine being surrounded by this kind of stunning in the dining hall? I really feel for these kids, they've got it rough.

Then we visited the church he built after his daughter died following a difficult childbirth. Like the hotel, it too was small and unassuming - not.

We had lunch in a restaurant that is situated in what used to be the deep end of the swimming pool of Mr. Flagler's hotel (there were two buildings, located across the street from one another - one held all the guest rooms and the other had all the "facilities") - best feta cheese and vegetable panini sandwich ever.

We walked through a part of town called Lincolnville, established by freed slaves in 1866 according to Wikipedia. St. Augustine was apparently one of the most segregated cities in the U.S. once upon a not so long ago time. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visited and spoke here in the early 60's, prior to the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

We also visited the beach again today. The wind was quite strong and cold, I had to wear my ear muffs. We found a stretch of sand that was absolutely covered in seashells, I've never seen so many in one place.

Then we found another beach upon which we could drive our car. That was fun! Several seagulls and other birds were hanging about at the water's edge, all facing into the wind in sort of a V formation.

It was interesting watching them fly - the wind was so strong, it looked like they were barely moving, they were almost hanging in one spot. I was able to get some really cool photos as a result, like this one:

Antiques, Cupcakes and Santa

2011-11-30T21:03:00.000-05:00

We left the house this morning at 10 this morning with the intention of going to one of the local museums, only to find that we had just missed the start of the morning tour and the next one wasn't until the afternoon. So we moved our afternoon agenda ahead, which involved touring an area about two blocks long that seemed to have a high concentration of antique stores. Museums? Who needs museums when there are antique stores to be explored??

We visited 6 or 7 antique stores (a couple of which turned out to be "antique malls", a collection of booths of various vendors), a clothing/gift store, a paper shop, a rubber stamp store and a used/rare book store (10 small rooms jammed full of books of every size and description, including the bathroom), each one containing various items of interest and delight.

Found lots of goodies, some of which I purchased, some of which I needed to leave behind. Here's what my haul looked like at the end of the day - several old books (my suitcase gets heavier every day!), washi tape, a pretty apron, St. Augustine souvenirs, amongst other things:

The first store had a bird cage with 3 sweet little zebra finches, which I had never seen before - look how pretty they are! Apparently they tend to squabble but for this moment, they posed happily enough:

Four hours later, after a very late lunch, and a visit to the local cupcake store (featuring the best...lemon...cupcake...EVER!)

we made a quick visit to the St. Augustine Historical Museum

and then home for a bit of quiet time before heading out on the 6 p.m. Holly Jolly Trolley Tour. They gave us 3D glasses that turned all the Christmas lights around town into snowflakes and we drove around for about 45 minutes seeing the sights and singing Xmas carols. It was a lot of fun.

I told Santa when I saw him that I didn't have my list ready just yet and he said I could email it to him whenever I'm ready. Phew!

How I Spent My 50th Birthday

2011-11-29T20:56:00.003-05:00

I woke up early yesterday morning, like a little kid at Christmas, excited that the big day had finally arrived. I had a quick shower, got dressed and jumped in the car to drive to the beach. The sun was just coming up as I left the house, with one of my travel mates fixing herself her first cup of coffee and the other one still in bed. I had told them I planned to get up early and go but I'm not sure they believed me.

I stopped at the local lighthouse first and took a few photos:

then headed to a beach we had visited the evening before (still haven't blogged about our Sunday adventures yet, stunning sunset at the beach must do that). Something inside told me it was where I needed to be and when I got there, I wasn't disappointed.

The sun was up, the wind was blowing, the waves were crashing and it was all quite lovely.

I sat by the water and did a bit of journaling, sipped on some water and snacked on some Keebler crackers (we don't seem to have those peanut butter and cheese cracker combinations back home, I'll need to stock up before we leave town).

I noticed two white birds at the water's edge who were looking for fish and started talking to a man who was photographing them. Jay and I had a lovely chat about photography (he uses old lenses on a new camera body). He retired several years ago and spends his days touring the U.S. in an RV, is currently in St. Augustine to celebrate the holidays with his kids and grandkids who live here. He told me the larger white bird was a great egret and the smaller one a snowy egret. He has photographed them quite a bit and told me they would let us get quite close without flying away, and he was right.

I headed back to our house and my fellow travellers and I headed out to take one of the trolley tours that operate around town.

One of the stops was the Fountain of Youth (which surprisingly enough had no bearing in choosing St. Augustine for this vacation) but we didn't get off. Someone told me it only works if your name is Ponce de Leon, so it's just as well. :)

We got off the trolley at one of the stops and had a delicious lunch seated on an outside patio. What a treat, to be eating outside on a warm day on my late November birthday! The pumpkin sticking out of the side of Lorraine's head is the only clue to the season.

There were several laneways of shops in that area so we had a bit of a wander about and lo and behold, we came across one of those frontier photo places. You know the kind I mean? Where you dress up in period costumes and end up with a sepia photo? I had to convince the ladies to take part at first, played the "it's my 50th birthday, I insist!" card but they quickly got into the groove and we had SO much fun doing this. Here's how ours turned out:

Afterwards, we hopped back on the trolley and finished the tour, then headed back to our house for a quick nap. We had dinner at a nearby restaurant after walking through the first rain we've had since we got here (and probably the last, if the forecast is to be believed), including a margarita for me and key lime pie to share for dessert. The perfect end to a perfect day!

I also received several emails, phone calls and Facebook messages from the people I love, which really helped to make it an extra special day. Thank you all.

I found this advice in one of the little shops we visited, which I thought was most appropriate for a milestone birthday celebration:

Zero to Fifty

2011-11-28T17:11:00.002-05:00

The big day has finally arrived, today I am 50 years old. Where did the time go?!

Here's what fifty looks like - I took this picture of myself on the beach about 7:30 this morning:

People ask me how it feels to be fifty and I just tell them:

The St. Augustine Adventure Begins

2011-11-27T10:47:00.000-05:00

77 delicious degrees. That was the temperature yesterday here in St. Augustine, much to my delight. Slightly humid, but not uncomfortably so. The perfect weather for breakfast at an outdoor cafe

while watching the horse drawn carriages and trolley trains go by (both of which we will be riding before the week is out):

A quick look through the antique shop across the street from the restaurant:

followed by a visit to the local flea market. An online reviewer described it as follows: "St. Augustine's St. John's Flea & Farmer's Market leans much more towards the "flea" than the "farmer" side of things. It's located in the boondocks and the vendors and other patrons make you feel like you're, well, in the boondocks. You can get lots and lots of... stuff... here. I'm not saying it's nice stuff, or useful stuff, or functioning stuff, or safe stuff, or clean stuff, but you can definitely get your fair share of stuff at this place." Of course, that type of review just made me all the more keen to go. It was exactly as she described and I didn't buy much but I did find some treasures that made the hour and a half we spent there well worth the trip, like these Xmas ornaments I picked up (one for me and each of my travelling companions) that someone had made out of vintage ribbon, fringe and Lady Liberty images:

Plus it was worth the price of admission (free) for this photo alone:

After that, we had coupons to put to use at Hobby Lobby (so many more craft supplies available than at home, at much more reasonable prices) and Barnes & Noble, followed by a trip to the grocery store for provisions.

We had dinner at a Cuban restaurant a few blocks over from where we are staying. Our waitress recommended we try the mojitos and the roast pork dinner (complete with saffron rice, black beans, fried plantains and fried yukka). We did and enjoyed them both immensely.

Lorraine had never tried key lime pie before, so we ordered a piece to share:

We strolled along the main street after dinner, which was crowded with holiday revelers enjoying the light displays, open shops and galleries and artisans displays in the pavilions before heading home for an early night.

Arriving

2011-11-26T21:38:00.000-05:00

We arrived in St. Augustine last night under cover of darkness, only to discover it is a wonderland of lights:

While some might have felt like a fish out of water:

we decided to dive right in to the local atmosphere.

Feeling much like this little pig we spotted in a shop window!

Florida Bound

2011-11-25T09:25:00.005-05:00

I'm off to Florida today with two of my art journaling buddies, Lorraine and Diane. This photo was taken a few weeks ago when we met for dinner for a final in-person discussion about our trip. We've been planning this trip for a few months now, ever since they very kindly offered to go travelling with me for my birthday.

We fly into Jacksonville, via Charlotte, North Carolina. Then we are renting a car and driving to St. Augustine, where we've rented a house for the week. I'm taking my laptop so I'll be able to update my blog with live reports on a regular basis.

I am all packed and ready to go. Of course, it wasn't easy. First I had to convince Maggie to let me put things into my suitcase.

(Isn't she cute? She is so smart, she knows the flash is going to be bright so she always closes her eyes whenever I point the camera in her direction.)

Once I had access to my suitcase, I had to decide what to pack. That wasn't easy either, the forecast is supposed to range a full twenty degrees in temperature while we're there - whaaat???? Oh well, even 55 degrees F is still warmer than it will be in Toronto. Maybe.

The Early Bird

2011-11-24T20:24:00.000-05:00

Photo courtesy of campcatalyst.wordpress.com

Normally, as you will have heard, the early bird catches the worm. In my case, being up early today meant that I got a shower, although it was a lukewarm one with very little water pressure. It seems the pipe that brings the water in from the street burst overnight, causing flooding in certain parts. I woke up about 5 a.m., got out of bed around 5:30 and was in the shower sometime before 6. By 8 a.m. when I went to brush my teeth, there was no water at all and the building management made an announcement of our intercom system advising us of the situation. I quickly headed off to work, not because I was anxious to get to the office but because I needed to use the bathroom!

When I got home from work today, there were several trucks parked in front of the building and various large scale spotlights set up. A bulldozer was sitting idle in the midst of several mounds of dirt - good thing it's November, as our lovely front gardens have been completely dug up!

Twelve hours later, they have just advised us that the water is about to be turned back on and we'll have hot water in about an hour's time. Then it will be shut off again tomorrow at 9 a.m. so they can continue working on the pipe replacement.

So I'll need to plan my morning accordingly. Which shouldn't be too much of a problem, since I will be headed off to the airport around 10 to catch my plane to Florida - home of the early bird dinner special, don't ya know. ;)

And So It Begins

2011-11-23T20:13:00.000-05:00

Five days to 50 and today was my first birthday celebration. I arrived at the office to find decorations waiting for me. In the doorway:

and on my desk:

My co-workers took me out to lunch at Jack Astor's and of course we had to eat in the Elvis booth.

Who wouldn't want to celebrate their birthday with Elvis?

And my lovely co-workers as well - thanks everyone!

November Rain

2011-11-22T22:11:00.000-05:00

Last year, I wrote a post about summer rain in which I mentioned those cold, damp rains of November. Tonight is exactly one of those nights - brr! Was very glad to get home and into the dry after running errands, getting in and out of the car, running through the wet, wipes going at top speed. Forecast is freezing rain overnight, luckily I've got nowhere I need to go before morning.

Can't really complain, we've had a pretty dry and remarkably warm November this year overall. Not even any snow yet, which is unusual.

At the moment, I'm downloading some music onto my iPod (April Wine's Greatest Hits, to be specific). It's been a while since I've logged onto my desktop, it's sooooo sloooow compared to my laptop. Trying to remember how to connect album artwork with the songs so a picture will be displayed when one of the songs is playing. Oh wait, it seems the CD or iTunes did it for me. Not the same picture as the CD cover but it will do.

Next I shall attempt to download some apps, something I have never done before. Using iTunes always feel a bit like being a magician - "for my next trick, I will add songs to my existing playlist", because things never seem to go quite as smoothly as I'd like with their software. Already tonight I was unable to download the latest version of the iTunes software, which sometimes is a good thing. And - oops - my screen now appears to be frozen, wtf?? (Send Microsoft an error report - puhleese! Like that would help.).

I did discover that the freezing rain forecast is a rather cool picture on the iTouch weather application. Check this out:

Okay, gotta go try a manual update of the iTunes software. I'm thinking my iTouch might be too old to have apps loaded onto it, is that possible?

Maggie is playing with a binder clip, seems like she's having more fun!

Making Lists

2011-11-21T20:29:00.000-05:00

Photo courtesy of howtogeek.com

I'm a list maker. When things are busy at work, I make a list to keep track of what needs to be done. I make a shopping list when I'm headed to the grocery store. When I'm going away, I write "to do" lists of things to pack, things to do before I leave, that sort of thing. It's not a foolproof system though. Today I made a list while I was at work and forgot to bring it home with me tonight, so now I'm trying to remember what was on the list. I know I've done two of the things (called my mom, picked up cat food), I'm choosing not to do one of the things (vacuum) and the other three or four things, I just can't remember! I guess that means I can take the rest of the night off, and take care of the list if I remember to bring it home tomorrow night!

A Quiet Sunday

2011-11-20T18:12:00.000-05:00

It seems especially quiet today with Gus and Beans gone. Katrina and Maggie both seem to be enjoying the extra attention I am giving them, I wonder what they think about the other 2 being gone. Maggie seems more relaxed and has come by to say hello more often than before, Katrina just seems glad to have the sink all to herself.

I've been puttering around today, doing this and that. I finished my altered book yesterday and I'm quite happy with how it turned out. I decided to add some paint to the back cover, which was a little damaged. I painted on some pink acrylic paint (the colour coordinates with the print on the endpapers on the inside) and then scrubbed a lot of the paint off so the brown leather shows through. I really like the distressed look that resulted. So far, I'm undecided as to whether I should also add some paint to the front cover. I'd like to keep the design and title on the front and I'm concerned the paint might obscure that. Anybody got any advice on that?

I sewed in three signatures and spaced the holes so you can still see the picture on the spine. I also left a fair bit of extra thread on the spine, in case I should want to add some embellishments at a later date.

One of my classmates warned that it is hard to photograph an open book and I certainly agree! Here's my attempt to show you what the book looks like inside:

I incorporated both plain and decorated paper of various types - magazine pages, watercolour paper, scrapbook paper, graph paper, sheet music and wallpaper. I wanted to have as much blank paper to journal on as possible as well as add some colour and interest here and there with the other pages. Of course, as I start to use the journal, I will be adding photos, drawings, tickets stubs, etc. as time goes by. The book measures about 5 inches wide by 7.5 inches high, so it's small enough to be easily portable, it should fit nicely in my purse. I like the idea of journalling in a book I made myself, it seems much more personal.

A Fond Farewell

2011-11-19T18:58:00.000-05:00

It seems the time has finally come for me to say goodbye to Gus and Beans. A lovely lady came by today to adopt them after seeing their pictures online.

I must admit, after having them here for six months, I wasn't sure if anyone would ever pick them. It seems there are always several adorable little bundles of cute kittenness on the Abbey Cats website but I did hope it was just a matter of time before they found their furever home. It's been a lot of fun having them here, they are both very friendly and gentle cats and also extremely energetic. I always looked forward to coming home from work every day, to find four little furries waiting at the door, happy to see me. I will admit that all five of us crowded into my two piece bathroom was a bit much some days but that's what families are all about, right? Togetherness. :)

Even though I've already got about 200 pictures of them, I had to take a few more today before they left.

One more picture of Gus in the sink:

One more shot of Beans looking soft and cuddly:

One more photo of them napping together:

I will certainly miss these little darlings but I'm glad they have found a permanent home with someone who will take care of them and love them, as I'm sure they will.

Fancy File Folders

2011-11-18T22:26:00.000-05:00

Another crafty thing I've been doing lately is decorating file folders. You know when you're going on a trip and you want to keep track of all the necessary pieces of paper that you need to take with you, such as your flight information and/or e-ticket, your itinerary, the email confirming your hotel confirmation, the map showing the route from the airport to where you're staying, that kind of stuff. It occurred to me that it might be fun to decorate the file folder holding all this stuff in the same way that I might decorate a journal page.

The first time I tried this was earlier this year when I went to ArtBLISS in Washington, D.C. I decorated file folders for my buddy Heather and me that turned out like this:

Here's what the inside of the folder looked like:

Then a few weeks ago, I picked up about 50 folders at Value Village (what a bargain!).

Of course, I couldn't just leave them plain. They are just crying out to be prettied up. Here's a folder I decorated for the Rescue Book Journals online class I'm taking (see yesterday's post). In this case, I cut the folder in half, decorated it from pictures from Diana's blog posts about the class, stamps and tape and put it to use as a divider in a binder that holds my class notes and handouts.

Here's another divider I made (for the printouts of Diana Trout's FREE watercolour primer), using painted masking tape that I randomly stuck in various spots on the folder. I then took Sharpie posterpaint markers and added some extra doodles and swirls to the page.

You can either cover the folder with a layer of gesso or leave it plain before decorating it. You can sew paper onto the folder or attach it with glue or matte medium. You can paint it, stamp it, draw on it, punch shapes on it, whatever you fancy. It's really easy to do and there isn't a whole lot of pressure to make it perfect. If you don't like how it turns out, just make another one. At four cents a folder, I'm not too concerned about the cost (although so far, I haven't thrown any out either)!

What I really like about decorating file folders is that you can finish one quickly and easily. It can take as much or as little time as you like and it's so easy. Go on, try it - you know you want to!

Rescuing Old Books

2011-11-17T07:36:00.001-05:00

These days, I am not only a cat rescuer but I am also rescuing books. Signed up for an online course being taught by Diana Trout (from whom I took a class last year at Journalfest, see photo below) called Rescue Book Journals.

I am learning how to turn an old book into a handmade journal. Here is how my first project is coming along: I started with this old book called "Girl in Ten Thousand".

It has a really cool picture on the spine. It looks like a girl in a hat holding a binocular case but I'm not entirely sure. As far as I can tell, the story itself is about a girl training to be a nurse and appears to be part of a series of "a desirable assortment of books for girls, by standard and favorite authors", or so the Chicago based publishers say on the back page. Wonder what constitutes a "standard" author? Mrs. Meade appears to have contributed at least 3 stories to the series.

The book itself was already in rough shape, the pages had already been separated from the spine (but look at that lovely bookbinding stitch!):

I'm not sure how old the book is, as there does not appear to be a publishing date anywhere in the book itself, but the inscription is dated 1931:

Having removed the pages (no doubt they will come in handy for some other project at a later date), I have glued in some new, decorative end papers and here is the result:

I intend to use this book to document the first part of my second half-century on this planet, so I included some scrapbook paper with a ruler counting up to 49 on the far left hand side and then stamped the number 50 onto what will be the left inside cover. I glued in some handmade paper (complete with bits of cedar leaves!) in the spine (not handmade by me, purchased at a funky little gift store in downtown Toronto several months ago) and then added more scrapbook paper to finish the rest of the inside cover.

The original 7 Gypsies paper I used featured the word "abundance" (always a good concept) but I decided to cut it down and just use "dance". Because I figure a 50 year old should have lots of dancing in her life. It's already working - here is Katrina, one of my rescue cats, doing a little dance of her own!

More Vintage Pages - Part 2

2011-11-16T07:15:00.010-05:00

As promised, here are the rest of the pages created by those of my fellow, supremely talented Journal Junkies who attended the November meeting at Bizzy B:

Diana's "Gibson Girl" page,
featuring vintage wallpaper for texture

The first of Marissa's pages

Not only did Marissa do a fabulous page with vintage images of Paris, but she also included an hourglass with real sand in it!

Kelly's page

I especially liked the clock on Kelly's page, which she said she made using a stencil and modelling paste to create the raised image of the clock. Love it!

More Vintage Pages

2011-11-15T21:15:00.000-05:00

When I was at Journalfest a few weeks ago, I was having lunch one day when my friend Jenny came running over to my table to tell me, "Cynthia, there's someone else here from Toronto!" I of course said, "Who?? Where is she??" Jenny took me over to another table and introduced me to Colleen, who, amazingly, had never been to Bizzy B before. Until last night, when she attended her first Journal Junkies meeting, where she showed us these awesome "vintage 70's" pages (see anything you recognize? of course you do!):

I didn't get any pictures taken with Colleen at JF, so I made sure I got one last night:

Colleen and me

Here are some of the other awesome pages my fellow JJ's made:

Connie's page

Cheryl's page

Chloe's page, made using a vintage Korean font
for the lettering

This one was my favourite, made by Laura from several photos of their farm in Quebec, which is apparently an antique/vintage lover's dream come true:

But that's not all. Stay tuned, tomorrow I'll be sharing the rest of our gang's pages from last night's meeting.

A Vintage Theme

2011-11-14T21:50:00.000-05:00

I headed off to the November meeting of the Journal Junkies at Bizzy B tonight. Our theme for this month was "vintage". Seeing as how I will be turning 50 in just two short weeks, I thought it only appropriate to make myself the focus of this journal page. Here's how it turned out:

Believe it or not, I actually started this page last year on my 49th birthday but only got the borders and central image done, no writing. Shortly after that, my beloved cat Max passed away and I didn't have the heart to finish this page. Somehow, it was connected to him in my mind, perhaps because he had kept me company while I was putting it together, sitting nearby purring away as he often did. But in the last week or two, I've felt like it was time to finish it and the vintage theme seemed most appropriate. Some journal pages are like that, they aren't finished in one sitting. That's the beauty of journaling, there's no deadlines, no "have to get it done". Each page tells its own story and the tale is finished only when the page decides it is time it was told. Somehow, you know in your gut when that time is, as I did with this page.

So it surprised me to realize, after I had written, "Now I just need to figure out what I want to be when I grow up", that there was a little picture of a cowgirl in the bottom right corner. Talk about serendipity, who doesn't want to be a cowgirl??!

A Busy Sunday

2011-11-13T18:33:00.003-05:00

I've been puttering around all day, trying to tidy up my apartment but getting distracted by artful things. Doing a page here and there in my Journalfest journal, decorating file folders, starting to collect fodder for my trip to Florida in two weeks time, painting the pages of a little journal that a kind woman named Joan recently sent to me, putting some things together for mailing. Suddenly it's dinner time and there still seems to be a lot of clutter about, the ironing isn't done (not even touched), I'm hungry and my back is aching a little bit. I think I need to just sit for a while and try to still my mind, which is jumping around from topic to topic. In fact, my brain feels a little bit like my worktable looks tonight:

My friend Kate saw Moneyball today and suggested watching Bull Durham. I think I'll give that a try, a couple of hours drooling over Kevin Costner should make me feel calmer! Or maybe not. ;)

Moneyball

2011-11-12T22:42:00.003-05:00

Went to see this movie tonight. I'm not a big fan of Brad Pitt - I've always thought George Clooney was far and away the handsomer of the two...

Although I can see why people think Brad's good looking, of course. Is it just me but didn't it seem like he didn't actually act much in his earlier movies? Like "Legends in the Fall", did he even have any dialogue in that one? But I am a big fan of baseball, which this movie is about, and a huge fan of Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, Social Network), who was one of the screenwriters.

My sister, who went to the movie with me, seemed to think Brad was looking pretty good in this film. I personally thought he'd never looked worse throughout most of it but at the same time, the lack of the pretty meant you could focus more on his acting, and I thought he did a good job with this role.

Really enjoyed the movie, which is based on the true story of the 2002 season. I had never heard of Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A's, before seeing this film nor do I ever pay much attention to that team if they're not in the playoffs against the Toronto Blue Jays (sadly, I remember them all too well from the 1989 American League Championship series, when they beat us 4 games to 1 and went on to win that fateful World Series that was interrupted by an earthquake).

Now I'm wishing baseball wasn't over for this year, I'm in the mood to watch a game or two!

11/11/11

2011-11-11T11:00:00.004-05:00

A heartfelt thank you to all who serve in the Armed Forces, past and present, and especially to those who gave their lives doing so.

Take What You Need

2011-11-10T18:19:00.001-05:00

My Journalfest buddy Carrie Todd told me about the Kindness Mission that Kelly Rae Roberts has started. You can read about Kelly's idea here and even download a PDF of her sign if you don't want to make your own. Kelly also has a link to the original sign that inspired her to do this. What an awesome idea, there should be one on every telephone pole everywhere, don't you think?!

What a great and simple idea. I thought we should take it one step farther. Sure, we can post them wherever we'd like (I'm thinking we need one in the laundry room of my building and maybe on that bulletin board at the grocery store, in the bathroom at the office...) but I also think it might be nice to have a copy of my own hanging on the fridge. Heaven knows we all have days when we could use a little extra hope or courage or a bit of tenderness.

Okay people, get out there and pass it on!

Dental Work

2011-11-09T19:19:00.000-05:00

Spent a couple of hours this afternoon at the dentist getting a temporary crown put on one of my lower molars. Go back next week for part 2, when the permanent crown will be attached after being made from the molds they made today. You can read about the process here, if you are so inclined. Relatively painless, except for the needle at the beginning and the soreness in your jaw afterwards after sitting in the chair for two hours with your jaw wide open. Well, okay, the needle didn't really hurt either, it's just the whole idea of getting a long, sharp needle jabbed into my gums that pains me. Luckily, there won't be any freezing involved when I go back next week.

Not this kind of crown, silly!

Feeling quite hungry at the moment but waiting for the freezing to wear off a little bit more, there's nothing quite like trying to eat or drink when your mouth is still frozen for making a mess, is there? Luckily, the freezing in my tongue didn't last too long, I hate that sensation!

A trip to the dentist always makes me think of that sketch by Bill Cosby about going to the dentist. My favourite part is when he's trying to tell the dentist there's smoke coming out his mouth. It's so true!

"I hope you are satisfied" after you watch this! :)

Oops!

2011-11-08T21:40:00.001-05:00

Image by Teesha Moore

I just realized tonight that the blog post I had scheduled for Wednesday October 26th never went live. Oh, the horror. Normally, I wouldn't care (okay, I would have cared a little bit, since my goal has been to post every single day for quite a while now but it's really okay to let stuff like that go now and again, I know that.) but that post was important because I had wanted to give a shout out to some of my dear journaling friends as part of that blog, those who weren't going to be at Journalfest, to let them know I was thinking of them.

Now that Teesha Moore has announced she won't be holding Journalfest next year, or Artfest or PLAY after the sessions planned for early 2012, it seems even sadder that those special friends I was thinking of weren't able to be there. So for their benefit, here's what I had planned to say:

"I'm flying to Seattle today by way of a brief stop over in Chicago. Once I get to Seattle at 11 o'clock (which will be 2 p.m. Ontario time), I'm meeting my friends Libelinha and possibly Irene for lunch before we get on the shuttle bus that will take us to Journalfest. Hope to find my fellow Art & Soul Tribe member Joyce in the airport somewhere as well.

Heather O, Taylor S, Diane S, Lorraine P, Joan K, Maryann R, Jane D and Maxine J, all the other Tribe members and anyone else I'm forgetting to mention by name who might have wanted to come this year but couldn't, I wish you all were going to be there with us, I'll be missing you. But I'm looking forward to meeting new friends and reuniting with people I had the pleasure to meet last year. No doubt I will have lots of stories and photos to share next week, so stay tuned!"

That's what I wanted to say two weeks ago. Now that JF has come and gone for 2011, I can honestly add to that sentiment by saying that making new friends and getting the chance to spend time with old friends was the very best part of this retreat. Part of the beauty of Journalfest, or any artful gathering of its kind, is the gathering together of people with a shared interest that is important in their lives. Being with people who get you, who understand why you are drawn to paper and art supplies and books full of blank pages, is a wonderful thing. I don't have to explain why I went out of my way to pick up that scrap of paper on the floor of the airport or why I brought four different kinds of fine point black marker with me, they know, they get it. The sense of belonging is very strong, it's a thread that ties us all together, whether we are in the same room or far apart. It weaves through our hearts and souls, binding us invisibly together as parts of a whole, a community. It's a special kind of magic, a wonderful gift that Teesha and Tracy shared with us again two weeks ago, just like they did a few months ago in Portugal, and last year in Port Townsend. It is something that I will cherish forever and for which I will always be grateful to them. Thank you, Teesha and Tracy (and your amazing crew of helpers), for all you did in creating these gatherings. I look forward to seeing what you do next, I can't wait to be a part of whatever that might be.

Photo by Teesha Moore

Monday + DST

2011-11-07T20:08:00.000-05:00

I'm tired today. So far daylight savings time just seems to mean that I'm getting less sleep. I didn't even get the extra hour I was looking forward to on Saturday night. I went to bed an hour later that night, thinking I'd take advantage of the time change to make it up, only to wake up at my regular internal clock time, 6 a.m. Except now, after "spring forward, fall back", it was 5 a.m.! By the time my brain processed that little bit of info, I was wide awake and couldn't get back to sleep. So by 9 p.m. on Sunday night (which was really 10 pm, my normal get the jammies on time), I was really tired but still had a few things to do before going to bed so again stayed up another hour, only to wake up at 5 a.m. this morning too. Geez.

Planning on an early night tonight, hoping to get in a full eight hours, but in the meantime, I'm looking back at my photos of the beach at Port Townsend.

I find beachcombing to be a very satisfying activity. I like to see what I can find, like this piece of driftwood that looks like a horse or a dinosaur skull:

or this feather, lying all by itself in the sand:

Sometimes I find faces, like this one:

and sometimes it's other things, like this pretzel-shaped piece of seaweed - did nature form it that way or did some other beach walker do it?

I took this picture of my friend Irene:

and she took this photo of me:

As you can see from our attire, it was a bit chilly down by the water but it was a very enjoyable walk. And I slept very well that night!