We had a relaxing, slow start to the morning. Cathy left about 10:00 after a simple but delicious breakfast of granola, yogurt and fruit. Danielle left closer to noon then the remaining 4 of us walked over to the Chateau, the trails through the forest and along the river are very pretty with snow still covering a lot of the ground and the paths not too messy from the melting yet. We came back for a simple lunch of soup, veggies, cheese, crackers and cookies. Flora and I walked into town for coffee and milk while Karen and Sheela stayed back to read. We had a delicious soft taco dinner inspired by the delicious dinner that Nancy had served us last Wednesday at bookclub. Flora whipped up some mango salsa to go along with the roasted cauliflower, the fried halloumi cheese and the avocado dip. We had no room for dessert. We played Bananagrams as well as Code Names. A great day filled with lots of activities and friends.
Throwback Thursday – 2010 04 10 – Hide and Seek
Saturday: Roland and Heidi had soccer practice from 9:00-11:00. I took Stefan out to Embrun for his 11:40 game (we took a bit of a scenic route since I missed a turn). Another loss. After the game, Stefan had lunch with his team out in Embrun and I headed home for Heidi’s 1:00 book club. She baked cookies and the other girls brought lots of goodies. They spend more time eating and chatting than discussing the book (Sketches by Eric Walters). I sent them out to do some sidewalk chalk art (which was in the book) since it was a beautiful afternoon. Roland went out to see Stefan’s second game. After book club, Joanne drove Heidi, Emily and Emma to South Keys for a movie. I picked up some veggies which we brought with us to the Jordan’s where we had a fun filled evening with friends including the Mortimores and Lams. After dinner and watching the ceremony for Daniel Alfredson’s 1000th game) the boys played XBox while Emma and Heidi (dropped off by Rosemary after the movie) watched a video in the basement. By the time I got around to seeking the boys out for my picture of the day they were playing hide and seek. A great day filled with lots of activities and friends.
And a photo from his parents’ negatives that Roland has been scanning.
I must have turned my watch alarm off at 7:00 without realizing it because I woke up at 7:30 to the sound of Roland showering. And so we weren’t out early enough to get our garbage, recycling and compost out so they’ll have to wait another few weeks. It’s a good thing I decided last night that I wouldn’t be able to get up early enough for a swim before picking Flora up at 9:15. I did enjoy the walk to the train bridge and back in the conservation area with Roland and Luna but it did make things a bit tight for me to finish getting ready to leave for our Montebello trip. Travel conditions were great and the drive flew by. We had about 10 minutes to sit inside in front of the gorgeous fireplace before Karen and Cathy arrived from Ottawa and Sheela and Danielle arrived from Montreal. We then walked along the river to the town of Montebello and wandered through the town with Marketa who arrived about noon. We continued walking until our 1:00 lunch reservation which was timed for Arianne’s arrival. A great lunch was followed by some more wandering in the woods. Then we walked back to get our cars and went to our Airbnb for a bit before our 6:00 dinner reservation at the Chateau. Another great meal with great conversation. We shut the place down. Marketa and Arianne had to drive back to Ottawa but the rest of us stayed overnight in the spacious Airbnb. I bought a lovely pack of kitchen towels at Costco so we could each take home a memento our girls getaway – my idea is that we will all think of each other and this trip when we are using the towels.
100DayProject Day 45
Another day with no crafting progress, but we did give a non-retirement themed card to Sheela to celebrate her retirement. I think it’s actually a very appropriate card for the way in which we chose to celebrate her retirement: a day with friends wandering together in the snow.
Card 28 | Altenew For the Guys Lesson 2 Artistic Techniques
I started this card a few days ago. There were a few vector images of the Ottawa Skyline that I really loved. This is one of them. I was inspired by the curve when I created the stenciled skyline on the envelope, back of card and inside of the card. https://stock.adobe.com/ca/images/vector-ottawa-city-skyline-design/117472716
I used a Spellbinders die cut for my sentiment. I had been looking for a ‘welcome’ die cut sentiment because I thought I could give this card to a university friend who lives in Texas now who is coming to visit us in the summer, but I came across this ‘from me to you’ banner sentiment which I think is perfect for this card. I will definitely make some more of these in the future, with this particular sentiment this card will be perfect to send to friends and family who live outside of Ottawa. I also do want to try to make it with that curved lower edge and reflecting upon water with fireworks stamped in the sky and reflecting in the water. But that’s way more ambitious that I currently have the energy, creativity or time for right now. I’m only on Card 28 on Day 40. I’m hovering at about 70% on keeping up. So, I’m off now to watch lesson 3, Cards for Boys, of the Altenew For the Guys course.
Card 29 | Altenew For the Guys Course Lesson 3 Cards for Boys
Between game and when I got home from the curling club, I was able to make Card 29. I was definitely not feeling very creative when I made this one, but it is kind of cute. While I think it is totally suitable as a card for a boy, I actually made it with Heidi in mind. Teal and purple are the City of Ottawa Ringette Association (CORA) colours. While she’s currently playing for the Gatineau NRL team, CORA is where she spent most of her many, many years playing (and coaching) ringette. So, I think this cute fellow giving hugs seems appropriate to make for her since she’s approaching the end of an era.
End of an Era
Nancy dropped me off at Brewer after we walked Luna (of course I forgot to take my usual photo in the morning since I was so busy talking with Nancy while we were out with Luna). I had about 1/2 hour swim and was ready at the pool entrance at 9:00 for Roland to pick me up to head to Ray Friel for Heidi’s team’s quarterfinal game against Montreal. It was a good and fairly close game, but unfortunately they lost 7-5. That was a team they had played several times during the season, most of them being very close and with one win against them. So her team moved into the consolation division and will have another quarter final game in that division against their most frequent opponent, Nepean.
Her team’s loss against Montreal really brought home to Heidi that the very long, very important chapter of her life in which she’s a competitive ringette player is really quickly drawing to a close.
It would have been nice had they been able to win another game or two in the championship side of the tournament playoffs and we certainly believe and hope that her team has the talent, ability and hopefully remaining energy to win the consolation side of the tournament. Regardless, we will definitely enjoy watching these upcoming games. It was a very close game in the evening against Nepean which Heidi’s team won in overtime, 9-8.
Roland and I stopped at Loblaws to buy some Canadian made dog food since Costco, where we usually buy her food, only carries brands that are made in the States. As an individual I mostly feel powerless and that I can’t do very much to help the current and upcoming tariff situation, but working to shift our purchasing habits to try to buy more Canadian products is at least a small thing that we can do. And so we’re trying. Then we went to the curling club to join our fellow Learn to Curl classmates after they came off the ice. I guess that would be referred to as après-curl. We were able to book 1/2 hour of ice for tomorrow afternoon to practice a bit since we missed being on the ice tonight and we have the first game of the Navy Curling Club Bonspiel Friday night.
Friday: Oma and Babu left Toronto about 10:30 and, unfortunately, ran into lots of traffic. The Carrancos joined us for dinner (BBQ shrimp and baked salmon; very tasty). We took advantage of being together to celebrate Heidi’s and Babu’s birthdays early. Babu loved the framed photo from Mexico of the children with he and Oma. Heidi was absolutely thrilled with her early birthday gift: a laptop. She’s been using the computer a fair bit for school work and the old laptop was either slow or its screen wouldn’t work. After dinner we watched the excellent video that Kurt had made of our Mexico trip; what a great vacation it was. Stefan commented on how the travel video is better (than others Babu has made) since he’s in it (meaning that he’s actually been there too).
How this compares to today: Sadly it has been a bit more than a year since Kurt passed away, so there will be no more shared birthday celebrations for Heidi (whose birthday is in May) and Babu (whose birthday is in April). We still have the Carranco’s as great neighbours although we tend to not see them quite as often as when the children were growing up. That trip to Mexico is still the only family trip that we’ve taken south. And family trips are far less frequent than they used to be. I do want to try to get both children to commit to coordinating a family trip every couple of years. While we do have time together on weekends in Ottawa, Toronto, at our cottage and at Castle Oma, it’s not the same as all being away together on vacation. It’s been a while since we’ve watched any of the videos Babu made. In addition to scanning in old negatives, Roland is gradually uploading old videos to YouTube which is great because it will make watching them so much easier. It’s kind of crazy how lazy we have become and would prefer to simply stream rather than load in a DVD.
And a photo from the ones that Roland has been scanning from his parents’ old negatives. I am pretty sure that given the yellow forsythia’s and a cake on the table that they are celebrating Kurt’s birthday. How fun that the photo from April 3, 2010 was also a photo of Kurt celebrating his birthday.
Thankful Thursday
Since it’s also Thankful Thursday I made sure that I wrote a Thank You card and have it all ready to pop in the mailbox tomorrow morning. I also got an Easter card ready to mail to my brother. I am so lucky to have a huge number of cards designed by Vicki in my stash. She generously makes so many card kits for the classes that I give for the Dementia Society. Usually she makes the kits by herself, sometimes we work on the kits together, often we work on the assembly instructions together and always I really enjoy putting my copy of the card together in class. And the best part is actually getting around to sending the finished cards to someone.
I made 2 cards today: Card 25 based on Lesson 5 of the Altenew Easy Ink Blending Techniques which covered Faux Watercolouring. Card 26 was a slim shaker card using the technique in Lesson 6 of the Altenew Easy Ink Blending Techniques course entitled Putting it into Practice. Since it’s almost 11:00 p.m. already I won’t be posting the details of how I made the cards. I do hope to get those posted tomorrow since I’ve been trying to use the colour scheme in the Color Throwdown Challenge #289 to which I can link my cards using that colour combination until tomorrow.
Card 25
I have been using my Gardenia Duo stamp set quite a bit lately for my class assignments. I need to get busy making thank you cards to send out to everyone who so kindly made donations to the Dementia Society in my mom’s memory. I have quite a few nice card designs featuring the Gardenias that will be perfect for those cards. Gardenias were my mom’s favourite flowers.
At 26 cards made by the end of Day 36 I’m at about 72% completion rate. I definitely have some catching up to do, both on making cards as well as posting about them. If I continue to do 2 a day for the next week that would put me at 40 cards by the end of Day 43. Definitely an ambitious goal! I did get one lesson from my next course, For the Guys watched entitled Geometrics.
Card 26
Sleet on Sunday
As forecast, there was freezing rain today. Luckily it turned to just rain later in the day and we didn’t get nearly as much freezing rain as they had been forecasting earlier. We opted to take Luna for a short walk on the road followed by a short walk in the woods when we realized that it wasn’t raining too hard and that it was actually slipperier on the roads than on the forest, especially because we stopped back at home and put on our spikes. We definitely had a sluggish start to the day. And Luna came back rather soggy from our walk. We packed up and headed home before lunch in case the roads got icier. I did some grocery shopping at Costco and Farm Boy for Heidi who has a big week coming up with her ringette Nationals here in Ottawa starting tomorrow. I also made her some pasta sauce and will make a few more things including some soup early in the week. I’ve got the carcass from a Costco chicken boiling with some celery, carrots and onions overnight. She had a practice this morning and did some school work before opening ceremonies then had lots of laundry and other prep for the week to tackle before making her egg bites, getting her smoothie ingredients packaged into baggies and back into the freezer, boiling her pasta and assembling pasta and sauce containers.
Another (10:15 p.m.) start to my writing. So it will be a short blog post today.
We had about 5 cm of fresh snow overnight so it was back to being a winter wonderland. Of course, Luna was quick to be making snow angels as soon as we were out the door on our way for our morning forest hike. The first walk of the day was just me and Luna. We did 2 more forest hikes with Roland. While the lake is still covered with ice, we’re not sure how safe it is, so we’re avoiding going on out the lake. It was such a nice day to be outside. Since my theme for the day is Snow Angel Saturday, I couldn’t leave it to Luna to make all of the snow angels so I found a nice flat patch of freshly fallen snow on the driveway after my morning walk. It was a good thing made my snow angel early in the day; a lot of the snow had melted by the afternoon.
Luna and I just did the Mount Saint Kincaid loop this morning; I didn’t have on grippers on my light hiking shoes nor did I have gators. So it was quite slippery and my socks and pant legs got wet from the snow. The addition of grippers and gators made the other 2 hikes much easier and more pleasant.
We left it too late to roast the Butterball turkey breast that we had brought up for dinner. We won it back at the Gobbler Bonspiel back in December. So Roland BBQed salmon filets. And I made Apple Crisp for dessert. I’ve added a blog post with the recipe here.
100DayProject Day 35 | Card 23 | Card 24
I made cards 23 and 24 today but will post more details about the process of making them another day. I’m going to add the photos of the finished card in this blog post then I can later link that photo to the blog post with the details about how I made it. I’m not sure how well that system will work, but I’ll give it a try. That is sort of what this 100DayProject is all about: experimenting.
Creative Treats 