happy new year

right here right now

Life is pretty good.

Lovely visit and photographs from St. Saveur today. (to be posted to flickr later once I put some actions on them in PS)

Fire crackling in the fireplace.

Glass full of Christmas cheer.

Contented child sleeping. Hopefully visions of sugar plums.

New washing machine.

Hopefully annoyed cat will stop urinating on $400 duvet soon.

Picture of laundromat where I washed $400 duvet 3 times this week in supersized washing machine.

Personalized cards made for new friend's belated birthday. (surprise)

Thankful for so much.

Life is pretty good.

It's all about the food

Let's face it, really, celebrations are about the food. The presents may be important for children, but as an adult what do you spend your time planning and executing? The meals.

Growing up in Nova Scotia I always remember seafood being part of every celebratory meal in some form. We may have had a turkey on Christmas, but we also had salmon (boiled). I haven't had boiled salmon since the last time I spent Christmas in Nova Scotia, but to this day I cannot put embellishments on salmon. Not even lemon, I like to taste the flavor of the fish.

Last Christmas my cousin, Lauren, was living in Montreal (she's studied cooking and I'm sure one day will own her own restaurant) and spent Christmas with us. On Christmas Day she whipped up a mean Nova Scotia seafood chowder. I've eaten a lot of chowders in my time, but this was without a doubt, the best seafood chowder I've ever had. Hmmm, maybe I'll give it a try for Cath and Dan's New Year's Eve party.



The clams boiling in white wine.

The tranquility of christmas eve

My favorite time is after everyone has gone to bed, the gifts are placed under the tree awaiting the excitement of the morning, and I have the tree to myself.

Peace and joy this holiday season.

Vacation finally!!

It's finally here. I can't believe that I'm off until early January. Man do I have a lot to accomplish during the next week or so. December has crept up on me and I don't know where it went. My house is disgusting, I don't have Christmas presents mailed, some cards are still hanging around, the gingerbread house is unfinished, the washing machine is broken (try and find a repairman 3 days before Christmas), and on top of it we are all getting colds. The disaster above is my dining room table. Unwrapped presents, reading, cards that I was supposed to send to a shop in Toronto a month ago, and we're having guests for dinner.

And to top it off I'm not feeling my best due to the excellent Christmas party I went to last night. Everyone from the office went to Le Confessional (the bar, not church) and ate, drank, and were merry.



To try and hide the fact that I can't party like a 20 year old any more, I gave myself a nice mud facial this morning using the amazing Bergamot and mint sea mud face mask that my friend, Cath, brought back from Scotland for me this summer.



It makes your skin feel so soft. But, alas, there is only so much it can do. I still look like I got up at 4:30 am to take some Advil and was out far later than I should have been.



If anyone knows the Christmas fairy's phone number can you please pass it on to me. I need someone to come in and wave a magic wand.

Note to self, you forgot to pick up the tickets for the Nutcracker that you promised to take Shel to see. Christmas fairy where are you?

Some excitement!

The storm may be the big news in Canada and the north west, but the the big news in our house tonight is the loss of a first tooth. This tooth has been hanging on for a couple of weeks and it's about time it came out. We are so excited.

I remember when he got his first tooth and how sad I was that he was losing that beautiful toothless grin. Now I miss that first baby tooth. The tooth fairy will be keeping it in a special place.



Hope you all aren't too snowed in. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Battening down the hatches

We're preparing for another big one. The local news is calling for at least 40+ cm of snow tomorrow. At least the storm is falling on the weekend. Although, I did have plans on finishing up my Christmas shopping tomorrow so I can mail it. I guess it will have to wait a bit and be sent priority post. We spent the evening playing chutes and ladders in front of the fire (when I was little it was called snakes and ladders, when did it not become cool to be snakes and ladders?), eating chocolate, and drinking wine (well maybe just Martin and me). A perfect evening.



We did get quite a bit done today though. We managed to buy our Christmas tree. We didn't go to our regular tree seller this year, we opted to buy one closer to home. It is up and we are now letting the branches fall. My first reaction is we should have gone to our regular seller. It seems so small compared to our previous tree. It does have a nice shape though. Maybe it is our own Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

Just looking at it again. No matter how you look at it, it is so much smaller than previous years. I guess it will grow on me. We will put the lights on it tomorrow. Usually once the little white lights are on the tree, I could be finished. That's all I need for a tree to be beautiful. But I have so many beautiful ornaments that I've collected over the years I guess they will go on. I will post pictures tomorrow along with a custom t-shirt I silkscreened today for a lovely customer in Saskatoon. You know I think that I can get it to her before Christmas.



I also wrapped and delivered some presents today. Well, delivered one present to the swimming teacher. My little monkey passed his Red Cross level 4s today at swimming.



He was also told by his karate teacher to prepare for his yellow belt exam in February. The next exam is being held in April, but there are a couple of kids who will be ready by February so they are holding exams for these kids early. I'm so proud of my little monkey. He loves karate and his teacher Stacey is amazing (West End Gym in Cote St. Luc). Not to mention that my big monkey (the husband) bought a new karate suit today and is going to start karate too. He was a brown belt many years ago and let it slip when he joined the Navy. He said that he always wished he had of been able to get his black belt. So today he talked to Stacey and is now in the adult karate class. I'm also thinking about joining the karate club as well. Won't the 3 of us be cute leaving for karate classes in our matching suits.

What would it be like?

If your life was exactly the way you wanted it, what would it be like?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately for a lot of reasons. Do any of us have the life we want? Or rather the ideal life?

I am quite happy with my spot in life, but if I could have the "perfect" life, it would be something like sam davol's, a cellist for the Magnetic Fields. I found the link to this article about him and his new life on red house. I am fascinated and spellbound. Not to mention totally in love with his home.

But I'm not complaining. We all have good health and I have the perfect family.



Maybe I would have had another child. But the one I have is the absolute one I want. He makes me laugh, he makes my heart beat faster, I look at him and see every possibility in the world. The husband isn't too bad either. I can't imagine having a more supportive partner.



I love our house, although I would move about a street or two closer to Monkland Village and have a bigger backyard (maybe with a pool).

So what would I change?

Not a whole lot I would change, but I think, like Sam Davol, I would like to have more control. I would like to have more flexibility where I can be there more for my family, yet still be fulfilled with my life. I tried staying at home once for about 9 months and thought I would go crazy. So that is not the answer, but I need to be more available for things that come up. This is something that I have to work out sometime soon. I think I need to work this out soon.

I also think that if I was going to do it all over again, instead of doing multiple degrees I would do something useful like be a photographer. I am finding this now and I sure wish I had of found it earlier. But in my family it wasn't acceptable to not go to unversity. This is what you did. It wasn't questioned. And I don't reget my years at school, just wish I had of studied somthing useful. The beauty of it is that I still don't think that it is too late.

Snow day!

This is the view that greeted me out of my front window at 5:30 this morning. Loads of snow down and more on the way.

And this photo is what happens when you move your camera.



It's no surprise that all the school boards closed the schools. Snow days are such fun. The husband when out to shovel early, but came back in and had a cappucino before heading out around 9:30 for work. It took him about 45 minutes to get there when it normally takes about 20, so that's not so bad. Coming on to the island the traffic is much worse.

So what to do on a snow day. Well to start with we phoned Ella nice and early. Then every 30 seconds after hanging up the phone I was asked "When is Ella going to get here?" the 20 minutes it took her to get here was too long! We waited patiently in the window.

Now they are outside enjoying the snow. I think they will be good and tired by this afternoon. And I can get some work done.

What do you mean you have your Christmas tree up?

I've been perusing some of my favorite blogs since last weekend (American Thanksgiving) and I was confused when people were saying that they gave in to temptation and put their Christmas tree up right after Thanksgiving. Huh? Wasn't it still November? Funny thing is I then started noticing lots of Christmas trees up here.

What is going on with this? I've never noticed so many people decorating so early before. For us the rule was always outdoor lights never up before Dec. 1st (and even then we felt that was early), and Christmas tree up by Dec. 15th because that's my birthday, not because it was time.

So now I'm feeling the pressure to decorate too. After much swearing and threatening that this is the last year he does it, the husband got the outside lights up this afternoon (just before what supposedly will be our first storm of the season). And I did put some decorations up around the house. But only enough so that it is a little festive and not too over the top.

Every year I put these two glass snowflakes in my windows. When the outside lights catch them, they look beautiful.

On the top picture you can just see my white fur trees. Normally I would never like something like this, but honestly I love them. They are so kind of 70s ice stormish.



There is a little bit more, but I'll save it for another day. Now back to the storm watch to see how big this storm is going to be.