My first Art Show ...
This past week I shared some of my paintings with my co-workers - it was both scary and very exciting.
The Crops are in ...
One of the best things about owning a little country home in the country is September means harvest time.
We are far from a true "harvest" but we grow lots enough for the two of us.
Last weekend we were able to supplement with the few items in our tiny bar fridge (yes, that is right still no fridge) enough vegetables from our garden to make it four days and not having to go into town to get groceries.
Terri loves a dish I made him - he lovinging refers to as spicy potatos - there is something special about eating his own potatos, with some of the hot chili peppers and onion.
Note to self - pick zucchini when small :).
We are far from a true "harvest" but we grow lots enough for the two of us.
Last weekend we were able to supplement with the few items in our tiny bar fridge (yes, that is right still no fridge) enough vegetables from our garden to make it four days and not having to go into town to get groceries.
Terri loves a dish I made him - he lovinging refers to as spicy potatos - there is something special about eating his own potatos, with some of the hot chili peppers and onion.
Note to self - pick zucchini when small :).
And the walls came down ...
We have been renovating for a while now ... Ok truth be told we have been renovating since we bought the house. But we have reached a new level it seems lately, when we first started renovations we barely knew what we were doing, now I think I could hire Terri out as a general contractor.
This past weekend, we reached a new level - we installed an eight foot wide header between the two main rooms. And even took the bold step of removing our propane wall heater, we hated the beast. It was so noisy that when it came on (and it seemed to come on every other minute) you could not hear yourself think.
This now forces our hand to get the wood burning stove we have always wanted.
There is something that excites us both about the idea of living as much off our own property and as simply as possible, and one thing we have a lot of is dead trees.
This weekend - we take on electricity - wish us luck.
This past weekend, we reached a new level - we installed an eight foot wide header between the two main rooms. And even took the bold step of removing our propane wall heater, we hated the beast. It was so noisy that when it came on (and it seemed to come on every other minute) you could not hear yourself think.
This now forces our hand to get the wood burning stove we have always wanted.
There is something that excites us both about the idea of living as much off our own property and as simply as possible, and one thing we have a lot of is dead trees.
This weekend - we take on electricity - wish us luck.
Ewwww that smell
I was very much looking forward to last weekend, some alone time with Terri. It had been a while and I knew we would be apart for a week and a half so I was looking forward to relaxing.
When we arrived our wonderful elderly neighbour (who spoils him rotten by the way) had her daughter and son in law over and they were cutting down trees, great, chain saws, Ugh.
After the three hour drive to our country home, we come home to this noise, then we open the door and noticed it smelled bad, I mean really bad.
Terri says I guess we forget to throw out the garbage. But we check and it was not the garbage ... we kept smelling it. Then after using our noses and sniffing around it brought us to the fridge area.
We open the freezer, and the smell instantly brought on the gag reflex, if you have ever smelled rotten meat you know what I am talking about. It is a smell you never forget once you have it in your memory.
There was rotten meat juice now running out all over the front of the fridge, at first we could not figure out what we were looking at, fridges do not just die!
I tried to help, but I just could not deal with it, it was literally making me sick. He is such a trooper, this is where as partners one comes forward and takes care of the situation.
I went over to the neighbours home to see if there was a black out while we were gone, no it was perfect weather. I can smell the rotten meat over there, I am hundreds of feet away from our home.
You know what else can smell the smell of decay, flies! God damm I have come to hate flies since moving to the country, cluster flies, deer flies, black flies, deer flies, common house flies .. nasty dirty things. By the time I get back to our place Terri has the fridge on the front lawn and is using the hose to wash it down. And there are hundreds of flies in the house.
We now have bags of rotten meat, my beautiful lamb chops, steaks and salmon I was so looking forward to cooking for us. Hundreds of dollars worth of meat and supplies - gone.
The neighbours son in law comes over and says ... what are you doing with the rotten meat? Ummmm we are not sure (garbage is picked up every two weeks) he then asks for it. You want the rotten meat, yes he says. I will use it to bait the coyotes, well being a hard core City girl I have mixed feelings about giving him something he will use in order to kill the coyotes, but hell he was going to take the meat away. Ok here you go country boy its all yours!
Now we have the meat gone but inside the fridge we have bottles of condiments: ketchup, mustards, juice, butter etc. what are we going to do with these things?
We decide to dump them, so Terri washes out each of the jars while I use the shop vac to suck up flies that are all inside the house. Light candles, and incense anything to try and mask the smell.
After hours of work we finally go to bed exhausted, early the next morning I let the dogs out and within seconds smell yet another putrid smell - Skunk!
Seems skunks like ketchup, mustards, and pickles. The dogs would not stay away from where we buried the condiments and had now been sprayed.
We have been home less than 24 hours and I have never been more tired in my entire life. It was 5:30 in the morning and I had two stinky dogs, in a stinky house.
Did I also mention we did not have a fridge at this point so I did not even have milk for a coffee. I was at my wits end. I did not know what to do, how do we get a fridge in a day in the middle of no where?
As I sat there looking through flyers and wondering how I can pay for a fridge so unexceptionally the neighbours daughter knocks on the door saying by the way we have a bar fridge that we do not use if you would like it, I loved that woman at that moment.
Good neighbours are an amazing thing, and as tired as we were and as much as we were fed up with that house and wanted to just sell it (or burn it to the ground at that time ...lol) that gesture renewed our faith in our country dream.
When we arrived our wonderful elderly neighbour (who spoils him rotten by the way) had her daughter and son in law over and they were cutting down trees, great, chain saws, Ugh.
After the three hour drive to our country home, we come home to this noise, then we open the door and noticed it smelled bad, I mean really bad.
Terri says I guess we forget to throw out the garbage. But we check and it was not the garbage ... we kept smelling it. Then after using our noses and sniffing around it brought us to the fridge area.
We open the freezer, and the smell instantly brought on the gag reflex, if you have ever smelled rotten meat you know what I am talking about. It is a smell you never forget once you have it in your memory.
There was rotten meat juice now running out all over the front of the fridge, at first we could not figure out what we were looking at, fridges do not just die!
I tried to help, but I just could not deal with it, it was literally making me sick. He is such a trooper, this is where as partners one comes forward and takes care of the situation.
I went over to the neighbours home to see if there was a black out while we were gone, no it was perfect weather. I can smell the rotten meat over there, I am hundreds of feet away from our home.
You know what else can smell the smell of decay, flies! God damm I have come to hate flies since moving to the country, cluster flies, deer flies, black flies, deer flies, common house flies .. nasty dirty things. By the time I get back to our place Terri has the fridge on the front lawn and is using the hose to wash it down. And there are hundreds of flies in the house.
We now have bags of rotten meat, my beautiful lamb chops, steaks and salmon I was so looking forward to cooking for us. Hundreds of dollars worth of meat and supplies - gone.
The neighbours son in law comes over and says ... what are you doing with the rotten meat? Ummmm we are not sure (garbage is picked up every two weeks) he then asks for it. You want the rotten meat, yes he says. I will use it to bait the coyotes, well being a hard core City girl I have mixed feelings about giving him something he will use in order to kill the coyotes, but hell he was going to take the meat away. Ok here you go country boy its all yours!
Now we have the meat gone but inside the fridge we have bottles of condiments: ketchup, mustards, juice, butter etc. what are we going to do with these things?
We decide to dump them, so Terri washes out each of the jars while I use the shop vac to suck up flies that are all inside the house. Light candles, and incense anything to try and mask the smell.
After hours of work we finally go to bed exhausted, early the next morning I let the dogs out and within seconds smell yet another putrid smell - Skunk!
Seems skunks like ketchup, mustards, and pickles. The dogs would not stay away from where we buried the condiments and had now been sprayed.
We have been home less than 24 hours and I have never been more tired in my entire life. It was 5:30 in the morning and I had two stinky dogs, in a stinky house.
Did I also mention we did not have a fridge at this point so I did not even have milk for a coffee. I was at my wits end. I did not know what to do, how do we get a fridge in a day in the middle of no where?
As I sat there looking through flyers and wondering how I can pay for a fridge so unexceptionally the neighbours daughter knocks on the door saying by the way we have a bar fridge that we do not use if you would like it, I loved that woman at that moment.
Good neighbours are an amazing thing, and as tired as we were and as much as we were fed up with that house and wanted to just sell it (or burn it to the ground at that time ...lol) that gesture renewed our faith in our country dream.
Dear Blog,
My my, it has been a long time.
If blog neglect were a crime then I would be guilty as charged.
Although I suspect you can’t really call it “neglect” as you have never been far from my mind.
I think about you all the time, little blog.
It’s just that sometimes there are so many other things that pull me here and there that there just isn’t enough time.
Today I have the time, the dog days of August.
Where to start, there is so much to say to update this space, yet not much has changed.
We plug along building our little world slowly. In fact the other day we thought we just might name our home to Slowly.
She has come a long way - with a long way to go. Terri gets frustrated there is always so much to do, me I looked out yesterday morning while having my morning coffee and saw beauty and potential.
I see how far we have come, and I am proud of him and us.
We have an apt of our own again in Toronto, I am happy to have my family with me once more. We have been apart except for weekends for almost two years. I missed them, again I look at them and cannot help but smile, with how proud I am of where I am in my life.
Yes it is a lot of work, but then all good things are.
It is all about moments, if I think of it all at the same time it becomes oppressive. I try to live in the minute I find that so much easier. If I think of all that needs to be done ... I get tired. I am 50 now after all.
My my, it has been a long time.
If blog neglect were a crime then I would be guilty as charged.
Although I suspect you can’t really call it “neglect” as you have never been far from my mind.
I think about you all the time, little blog.
It’s just that sometimes there are so many other things that pull me here and there that there just isn’t enough time.
Today I have the time, the dog days of August.
Where to start, there is so much to say to update this space, yet not much has changed.
We plug along building our little world slowly. In fact the other day we thought we just might name our home to Slowly.
She has come a long way - with a long way to go. Terri gets frustrated there is always so much to do, me I looked out yesterday morning while having my morning coffee and saw beauty and potential.
I see how far we have come, and I am proud of him and us.
We have an apt of our own again in Toronto, I am happy to have my family with me once more. We have been apart except for weekends for almost two years. I missed them, again I look at them and cannot help but smile, with how proud I am of where I am in my life.
Yes it is a lot of work, but then all good things are.
It is all about moments, if I think of it all at the same time it becomes oppressive. I try to live in the minute I find that so much easier. If I think of all that needs to be done ... I get tired. I am 50 now after all.
Getting settled ...
Just over a year has gone by since we bought the little house in Madoc.
It is a love\hate relationship we share with living in Toronto and a little home just north of Madoc.
The hardest part for me is that we are apart during the week most of the time. Not that I mind that part all that much, with the technology we have in this day and age I feel close to Terri at all times. And it only makes sense he is painting and renovating the place, and I work all day, it is such a waste of our time to have him sitting in an apt all week.
I think a large part of it is that I am bored when I am here in the apt. I need to find a hobby for this place. I did try painting in the winter and was getting into it, I should finish what I started or start a new one.
Since I was last here so much has changed, we now have quite a little family.
We have Max, or as we like to call him Mr. Man! He is without a doubt the most tenacious personality we have even been around. I do not think he believes he is a dog.
After we moved into the house we figured a cat was a smart idea. We named her Cooper after the hamlet we live in. It was a perfect name because when we got her from the farm down the road she was so young we did not know her sex yet. So Cooper being non gender specific worked.
She is so much fun and goes with Terri when he walks the dogs down the road, if you try and leave her at home she freaks. Meows so loud we can hear her out on the road and go back to get her. That is right she knows just how to play us.
Last but not least is the newest additional to our home, Rupert. He is a big loveable goof and offsets the other two much more serious kidlets in our house perfectly.
We got him from a rescue mission out of Peterborough, but then had to drive to Ottawa to get him. Max spent the entire car ride home with his head buried under blankets. We figured that he thought if he did not look at Rupert it meant he did not exist. But did and the two of them are great friends now.
I miss them all tonight.
It is a love\hate relationship we share with living in Toronto and a little home just north of Madoc.
The hardest part for me is that we are apart during the week most of the time. Not that I mind that part all that much, with the technology we have in this day and age I feel close to Terri at all times. And it only makes sense he is painting and renovating the place, and I work all day, it is such a waste of our time to have him sitting in an apt all week.
I think a large part of it is that I am bored when I am here in the apt. I need to find a hobby for this place. I did try painting in the winter and was getting into it, I should finish what I started or start a new one.
Since I was last here so much has changed, we now have quite a little family.
We have Max, or as we like to call him Mr. Man! He is without a doubt the most tenacious personality we have even been around. I do not think he believes he is a dog.
After we moved into the house we figured a cat was a smart idea. We named her Cooper after the hamlet we live in. It was a perfect name because when we got her from the farm down the road she was so young we did not know her sex yet. So Cooper being non gender specific worked.
She is so much fun and goes with Terri when he walks the dogs down the road, if you try and leave her at home she freaks. Meows so loud we can hear her out on the road and go back to get her. That is right she knows just how to play us.
Last but not least is the newest additional to our home, Rupert. He is a big loveable goof and offsets the other two much more serious kidlets in our house perfectly.
We got him from a rescue mission out of Peterborough, but then had to drive to Ottawa to get him. Max spent the entire car ride home with his head buried under blankets. We figured that he thought if he did not look at Rupert it meant he did not exist. But did and the two of them are great friends now.
I miss them all tonight.
Crissy Doll ...
When I was a little girl I had a Crissy doll.
I loved that doll, she has long red hair that come out through the top of her head. You could make it any length you wanted with the turn of a dial on her back. At the time that seemed like a break thru in technology.
I would brush her hair for hours, lost in the thoughts of a 10 year old girl.
I have been working on this painting for a while, on and off. Painting is like that in our house. Sometimes we have the luxury of long periods of paint time, other times, weeks go by without either of being able to find the time to pick up the paint brush. The real world just takes too much of our thoughts and energy, I hate blaming the real world, but sometimes it just sucks that we have to work for a living.
I enjoy getting lost in a painting. I use the smallest brushes we have, and sometimes I find I cannot get them small enough.
When I first saw Terri paint, he uses these huge brushes. I envied him the freedom of his strokes while watching him. I wondered what it would be like to create a painting, with his encourgagement over the years I now paint for my own pleasure.
Funny now that I do paint I find that I love to be lost in the thoughts of a 48 year old woman.
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