adventure

Walkless Wednesday | 100DayProject Day 60 | Card 43a+b

100DayProject Day 60 | Card 43a+b

Phew, I stayed up way too late (it’s now almost 11:40), writing this post then deciding to finish off Cards 43a and 43b. I was pleased with how the ‘gold dipped’ effect on the bottom of my hello sentiments turned out using foil applied over the dried transfer gel. I had a sort of pinkish foil which turned out to go quite well with each of the pink colours as well as with the goldish/bronze of the pen that I had used to draw over the stitches on the die cut pocket as well as the stitches I drew in with a ruler around the edges of the cards. I should have used an uncut top cutting plate because the texture from the cutting plate came through onto the foil when I ran it through my die cut machine to better press the foil into the dry but still tacky transfer gel. It is also quite difficult to capture the foiled portions of the sentiment on the cards in photos, especially since I don’t yet have a new overhead light in my basement craft room.

I am using the Altenew blog inspiration challenge colours as well as the Color Throwdown challenge blog colours for inspiration as I make my way through the homework for my Altenew AECP classes. I’ve include the links to the April Altenew and the Color Throwdown challenge #831 blog posts in case you’re curious.

Card 43a | Altenew Let it Shine course | Lesson 6 | Foils | Altenew Inspiration Challenge colours
Card 43a | Altenew Let it Shine course | Lesson 6 | Foils | Color Throwdown Challenge #831

Walkless Wednesday

Heidi did a lovely job arranging the tulips that I bought for Jane’s retirement lunch tomorrow.

I fell back asleep after my 7:00 alarm went off this morning so didn’t have time for a walk with Luna before Roland and I set off for our 8:00-10:00 Pickleball. Roland did take her out for a short loop before we left and I did a wee bit of cleaning up of dead leaves and ornamental grasses that I had recently cut down to get a few minutes of sunlight into my eyes close to first thing in the morning. I did some some crafting when we got back. After lunch I went out with Roland to continue some yard cleanup, and boy did (and still does) our yard need a lot of cleanup. Lots of nutrients likely soaked into the soil in the portion of our backyard where all the leaves were still sitting since the fall. We definitely need to get on with a better, no maintenance backyard solution. The grass doesn’t grow that well in the shade of our trees so we are planning to put in a bit of a patio and some mulched areas. Just as we were calling it quits for the yardwork some neighbourhood friends, Donna and Jon, were finishing a chat with our neighbour so we had a great catch up talk with them. Roland put on my summer tires (and found a nail which luckily didn’t make the tire go flat over the winter but which I hope I can get repaired tomorrow) and I baked a date square then we had a quick dinner before heading to the RA centre for 7:00 for an Arctic Canoe presentation hosted by the RA’s Canoe Camping club (which used to be the Y Canoe Club – which we actually did a few white water trips with way back when). Our cottage neighbour, David Pelly, who will be a guest speaker on our upcoming September Arctic cruise with Adventure Canada spoke at the RA as did the owner of Jackpine Paddle. They both shared many stories and photos of the interesting landscape and people of the Arctic.

Of course I had to go up to look for a photo from the whitewater trip we did on the Petawawa with the Y Canoe Club back in June 1994. That’s Roland in the stern. I portaged that rapid and someone else went in the bow.

Happily, I didn’t end up actually having a walkless Wednesday because I took Luna out for a quick loop around the block while Roland gathered up a few things to head to the cottage tonight. I have a few things on for tomorrow (including a retirement lunch for Jane for which Heidi kindly arranged the bouquet of tulips that I bought when I was out at Costco buying desperately needed yard waste bags this afternoon) so I will head up to the cottage in the late afternoon tomorrow. As I took my selfie for today, I realized how impressive the night photography capabilities of our phones are these days. Crazy. And on the walk, I realized that while I love walking and do really feel off when I don’t get a good walk or two in during the day, an afternoon spent outside working on yard work goes a long way to compensating. And that I was still very happy to have a ‘less walking’ rather than totally ‘walkless’ Wednesday.

The date squares I made turned out pretty well. I think it was a recipe I got from Elaine years ago. I checked with Diane and it’s not the one that she got from our mom, so you can be sure I’ll be making another batch of date squares once she sends me a copy of that recipe when she’s back from her Florida golfing trip.
Luna looking a bit stricken as she waited for Roland to come back out to the car to head up to the cottage.

Picture This Year | Prompt 113 (pinch) | Prompt 91 (window)

I’m continuing to follow along with Tracey Clark’s Picture This Year 2025 photo prompts. I only started on April 7th so I’m also slowly working my backwards through the 96 prompts before I started.

Picture This Year | Prompt 113 (pinch) | today’s prompt and photo taken today | I was hoping that the date square recipe called for a pinch of salt so I could (legitimately) use this for today’s photo. It actually called for a teaspoon, but I added a pinch for good measure.
Picture This Year | Prompt 91 | April 1 prompt, photo taken today | I had thought about making a card featuring a window for this prompt, but who knows how long it would take me to get to making such a card, so I just took a photo of my kitchen window. You may recognize some of the flowers that I’ve been photographing lately. I’ve decided to keep up my Swarovski crystal ornaments year round because they are so pretty, especially in the morning when the sun hits them and they reflect the light and cast rainbows on throughout the kitchen. I love looking at the stained glass ornaments that Josee has made. The backyard is now mostly free of the vast collection of leaves that were on that side of the yard over the winter.

Throwback Thursday | 100DayProject Day 5 | Card 3 | Spellbinders Door 23

#100DayProject Day 5

AECP Card 3 | Spellbinders Door 23 | For my Best Pal

Below is my AECP card 3 (All About Layering Three – lesson 3) which I combined with using the dies from the 23th door of my Spellbinders Advent Calendar. Just one more card to make using the cute die that came in Door 24. This has been such a fun project to do along with my friend, Shelli.

AECP Card 3 (All About Layering 3 – Lesson 3) | Spellbinders Advent Calendar Door 23
The inspiration for my Day 3 (All About Layering 3 – Lesson 3) card

In an ideal world, I’d have a finished Day 4 and Day 5 to share as well today, but that’s not the case. And I would already have typed up my thoughts about this Day 3 card, but that’s not the case either. I did make pretty good progress on my Day 4 (All About Layering 3 – Lesson 4) card and may be able to finish it over the weekend. But I’m leaving early tomorrow to head to the cottage for a girls weekend and don’t expect I’ll have much, if any, time to craft.

A good start to my Day 4 card (All About Layering 3 – Lesson 4)
Barely a start, but still a start to my Day 5 card (All About Layering 3 – Lesson 5)

Thrown Off Thursday

I didn’t get up until about 7:00 this morning because I was up later than ideal last night. And somehow that has thrown off my day. I did get out for a walk with Luna which I enjoyed. It was really nice to run into a friend who was out with her dog whom I hadn’t seen for quite some time. So we had a quick catchup chat for a bit while our routes overlapped.

I have a lot that I want to fit in today and seem to be struggling with figuring out a suitable plan. I’d love to fit in a second swim this week – clearly 8:00 today was not the time slot for it. But perhaps 11:00 today will work or tomorrow morning. Roland wasn’t interested in running with me due to an achilles / foot issue so we walked Luna together. Then I had to eat. And so no run or one&done done yet. And no plan beyond writing a few words and spending some time my 100dayproject.

Rather than focusing on being thrown-off I’m chose to focus on a Throw Back Thursday.

So I went back into my old blog to find a post about cycling. I don’t have any posts about me cycling, but there were 4 about the children cycling. So one of those will be the focus of today’s blog post.

You may be wondering why I wanted throwback cycling post. Last night a friend asked for some suggestions about a challenge that she might do for her 60th birthday that is coming up in about 3 years. She found it inspiring that I had done a psuedo-triathlon for my 60th birthday. Day 1 was a 60 km run from the cottage to home. Day 2 was a 60 km ride from home to the cottage. Day 3 was a 6 km swim around the perimeter of our lake. Whenever I think about that birthday goal, I am always so grateful that I get to live in Ottawa and to have a cottage nearby. And that I had so many people join me on segments of that triathlon and in a celebration after each event. But I digress.

I was so lucky to have a great group of friends cycling with me for different portions of my 60 km cycle to the cottage. And some other friends who took photos.

I suggested to her that she completes sixty 60 km cycles before her 60th birthday. Which works out to 20 bike rides a year. Which works out to about one a week in the summer months. She seemed to like that goal. And, so I’m thinking about cycling. And thinking about setting a goal this year: sixty-two 62 km cycles before my 62nd birthday on 14 July. But, that seems overly ambitious. But who knows …

At the start of the 60 km birthday cycle. I’m looking forward to joining my friend, Diana, on several of her upcoming 60 km cycling adventures.

Throw Back Thursday

Day 39 – Pacific Rim, B.C – Best Cycling Ever

Tuesday July 8, 2003

This will be about our furthest point west: 3744 km from home according to the GPS. I didn’t have a good sleep – I had to get up twice to go bushy pee – I had had hot chocolate and tea to drink the night before to warm up. I’ll have to stop drinking around/past dinner. The children rode their scooters and played on the rings before breakfast eating some raisins between swings. We ate our cereal first, then Roland stayed around while the children ate theirs while I went down to the beach to poke around amongst the rocks then ran into Roland and the children along the path on my way back to the site. We stayed down on the beach for a while then set out to Radar Hill for a bit of a scenic view over the area although the views were limited due to low clouds. The children enjoyed their cardboard video cameras and didn’t like our goofing off while they videoed. From there we went into Tofino to have a look around (very busy place, seems much more developed than when I kayaked from there with Shelli many years ago). Roland took the children to the park while I bought a few groceries. We ate lunch while the children continued to play then they ate their sandwiches in the car on the way to Long Beach. It was fairly busy there – a number of surfers as well as lots of families and groups about. We spent some time on the log piles looking for a stick for Heidi to draw in the sand like Stefan had already found. Roland had the great idea to get the children’s bikes out and we all had a great time going down the beach to the Green Point part where we were camped. The children’s helmets were at the site with the scooters so they really looked wild and free with the wind blowing through their hair as they rode. We all, except Stefan, who already had very cold feet, waded in the rather cold Pacific Ocean before I set off back down the beach under a very light drizzle to get the car while Roland and the children flew Stefan’s kite. I saw them at the phones on the way back in and stopped there for a while. Colin wasn’t feeling well due to some surgery so we won’t be staying at their place in Victoria. Later in the day, I spoke to Joanne and we can stay with her instead. Roland started the campfire before dinner – cantaloupe with prosciutto as well as cucumbers for appetizers before our gourmet (but well liked) sloppy joe dinner. Since it was about 7:45 when we finished eating, Roland took the children to the theatre at the campground while I cleaned up then I joined them for an interesting program on bears and how we need to minimize them becoming accustomed to humans by keeping ‘bare’ campsites etc. The interpreter was very good so there was lots of audience participation including some new songs to familiar tunes. After the children went down about 9:30 I called Joanne then returned to the site, browsed through my magazine briefly then caught up on my journal. Overall, it was a good day, despite not terrific weather.

I am so glad that I kept a journal during our 3 month trip in June, July and August 2023. And that we took that time off work to enjoy exploring the western portion of Canada.

Trailmarker Tuesday

Luna went home yesterday with Heidi but I stayed up at the cottage with Roland. Roland didn’t want Luna alone in the cottage whining while he was clearing snow off the roof and I was in town for a lunch after dropping Heidi home. We have a problem area of our cottage roofline: when there is too much snow the insulation it creates causes the snow immediately above the roof to melt. The melting snow sometimes works its way into the cottage. So frustrating. I think we’ll eventually need to fix the roofline, but that’s a story for another day.

So, I was out snowshoeing all by myself on the lake on another blustery morning. The wind had pretty much covered up the trail. Again! And so it was a lot of trudging through the snow. It was definitely easier snowshoeing when I could find the trail, and quite a slog when I went off the trail. And so, I thought of trail markers. Of how trail markers usually make it so much easier to stay on track. As I’m working to reestablish some good habits, until my trail is really well established, I should take advantage of some trail markers. Writing down the habits in my journal is a trail marker. There’s a good reason that habit trackers are recommended and popular. They help. Especially if you’re someone like me who enjoys checking off items from a ‘to-do’ list. Doing things in the same order is a trail marker. I didn’t head back upstairs after my walk until I did my ‘one and done’ 12 minute workout this morning. Being prepared ahead of time is a trail marker. It was so much easier to do my ‘one and done’ workout this morning than it was yesterday morning. Because I had booked marked that website. That bookmark was a like a trail marker. Yesterday I had to do a bunch of google searches and to search through old emails to figure out what the workout website because I used to do the workouts on my iPad which isn’t up here at the cottage. Now I have it bookmarked on my phone and my iPad. So it will be much easier to do that workout every morning, after my walk, before I do anything else.

A few other thoughts from my morning walk. The well-trod trail is easier to follow than to make new ground. So when you are trying to forge a new trail you may find yourself intersecting with a well-tred trail that you’re trying to avoid, perhaps it’s scrolling on social media without thinking about it, or grabbing a cookie instead of a handful of veggies. And that’s okay. It’s fine to enjoy cruise along a familiar trail while you take a bit of a rest from forging your new trail. When you’re ready to redirect your efforts you can take advantage of those trail markers to help get you back on track and to keep you there.

I was mostly able to follow the trail parallel to shore, but it was next to impossible to find the one that cut across the bay. So I enjoyed the snowshoeing along the trail while it lasted. Then simply (but not easily) forged a new trail across the bay until I again found the trail along the other shore.

Yesterday when I did the full loop into the bay near our neighbours cottage, a layer of slush had formed under the snow, making it pretty hard to snowshoe even though I was going along a previously formed trail. Even a well-trodden path can sometimes become a slog, sucking you in and no longer being the best path to be on. So today I made the decision to cut a fresh trail directly across the bay to our cottage rather than following the trail deep into the bay in front of our neighbours cottage. While it would have been nice to be on the firmer trail, I knew it would eventually suck me in and be even more work to battle the slush that had formed. So I chose to slog it out making a new trail, mostly keeping my head down to concentrate on what I was doing. But looking up occasionally for a guide post,our dock, to make sure that I wasn’t veerying too far off in another direction.

Shelli gave me a Spellbinders Crafty Advent calendar before Christmas. It has been so fun gradually working our way through the days. I was on a bit of a roll today and made about 5 cards. This is the first one. The gardenia flowers happened to be on the beautiful paper that was wrapped around the plant that my friend, Ivana, bought for me. Since I am very into gardenia flowers lately (they were the theme at my mom’s recent Celebration of Life) I decided to cut out the flowers and to make some cards with them. So that was the perfect backdrop for the card I made using the stamps from door number 13. I had made a similar card from a previously opened door (I’m not sure which door number) earlier in the week. I also made cards for doors number 14, 15 and 16. And so I was able to open door number 17. I’ll make a card using that die set tomorrow.