So what do you do when the first day of spring came and went and there is still this much snow?   Dig out the pit and make fire!!!  Notice the lovely bence seating we have! 
Got to be comfortable

I'm coming to get you Grandma

Love you

The best!Marshmallows in the winter pit, eat them quick.

 

and then there is the issue of having so much snow that it goes up and over our fence, now allowing Wilson access to not 1 but 5 yards in total! and for some reason the pic of this will not load for me.

Cheers, we are now smokey and our eyes are burning!

 

When bored, build a cake in front of the house, it has people looking and thinking, yup the winter has been waaaay too long at that house

and that my friends is how it still looks on March 28th 2014, we are expecting more snow later on.

and a year later, almost. . . .

Well, it is a good thing I don't do this for a living because I would be living on the street.  Almost a year later since my last post, so I will make this as short as I can!  Here is where the collages come in handy!  sometimes, I think maybe they are just a waste of time, but here they are really a time saver and for those who care to gander on this blog, it saves time looking at waaaay too many pics!


The garden was fine, rabbits were tolerable, some pesky friends were re-located, across the river and I hope they don't find their way home although more will just make this home their home so I think that's a pretty losing venture.  The usual went on around here, we re-stained the deck once more and got a new roof and all the finishing expensive things to go with it.  Looks better but now I'm poor.  Ryan the kitchen guy still hasn't finished our kitchen and although he swears he is going to do it, the day that it is finished, if ever. . ..  .  I will rejoice.

I can't find the collage of the tenting we did for some reason, but that was a fun thing as well.

fun lazy days with neighbour friends on the deck

Ken with his new leaf blower!

Halloween fun, grandma seems to really like making pinatas, lol

Flaming marshmallows!!  we love fire.

Joelle's birthday!

Ryann started ballet, she still doesn't believe this is me on stage at MTC through Studio One
(how come you hugged Miss Katherine Gramma? ohhhh sweetie, we are old friends!) Miss Katherine is now her teacher, how sweet is that??

This year has many significant dates that we are looking forward to or have already celebrated. Ken turned 60 and Garrett turned 40 this January,  Ken and I will celebrate our 30 years of marital bliss, as will his sister Carole and husband Jim.  Joelle and Garrett will celebrate their 10th year of wedded bliss as well, and Ryann . . . . well she will be 5 at the beginning of December.   Joelle and Garrett went off to Vegas to celebrate and we had the pleasure of a 5 day camp out with Ryann and of course Eddie in tow.  All went exceptionally well, whew!

Ken and I along with Carole and Jim will celebrate our years together with an adventure up to Alaska on a cruise, so we are very much looking forward to that, although we have to wait until Sept!
So far our winter has been one of the coldest recorded and although I normally love the winter, the jump start it had combined with the ongoing and sub-arctic temperatures are now grating on my nerves!
 We now know what Polar Vortex and Bombogenesis mean.  My good intentions of building another fort of some sort in the backyard came to a screeching halt after the first week of the sub arctic weather set in.  What sits in the yard is some sort of ancient looking crumbling structure.

new winter crafts!!  like flowers in the winter

I started volunteering at Lunches with Love, a program that provides bag lunches for Winnipeg's homeless.  We meet 1-2 times a month and make up bagged lunches, then deliver half to the Siloam Mission and the other half we take to the streets and distribute.  If I say it was cold, that polar vortex thing happening, the days that I was there to hand out lunch, I truly cannot believe how people manage to survive these brutal winters.  The volunteers who gather at Heritage Victoria community center are wonderful, we provide the lunch materials, make the sandwiches and the younger folk are in command of bagging everything.  The young lad who began this is Nathan Unrau, you can read more about this from the facebook page Lunches with Love.

in the sunroom, very pretty, very cold!

still making the ice candles as well

So my friends, that is it in a nutshell, into the second month of 2014 already and  looking forward to making many new memories for this year.

GARBAGE GARDENING. . . . .

My Husband:  What the hell is that????
My Daughter:  I'm not even going to ask!!!!

With our world here busting open in all shades of green and soon the shades of blossoms everywhere, why would I choose to try and grow something from garbage?
Pintrest!!  I read it a while ago and since I happened to have some "garbage on hand" I thought, what the heck, I'll give it a go.   Look at those sprouts from the celery, this is only a few days btw, as well as the green onions, the romaine, I just popped it into the water 2 days ago and already the center is starting to grow.  Amazing I think.  My husband said, nice . . . so I really didn't have to build those raised garden beds, I could have just saved a few yogurt contains for you!!!
Not really, I will take these now and plant them into the garden, I just thought it was interesting and wanted to see how quickly they grew.  Seriously, next fall and winter I will certainly throw my "garbage" into a couple containers and keep a supply going, the celery even looks pretty!!
There are other things you can grow from your kitchen "garbage" , I am going to try the garlic asap
And, it's interesting for the granddaughter to see (that's another excuse to try these things!).
Well, must go and tend to the "real garden" outside.  The rain has finally stopped and everything is beautiful!
Have fun in the dirt!

Already mid-April . . . where is Spring?

The spring isn't, it is now April 20th 2013 and the ground is starting to melt, I can see open grassed areas now in the yard where the melt begins bu there are still 2 foot high snow banks around the yard.  I made this snowman April 15th.
 My raised garden bed area is now visible, poking around the herb areas, the scents are still alive!!  I thought to start some seeds indoors but we really don't get a lot of sun, unless I want to keep the garden in the bedroom, and the sunroom. . . there have been a couple days that we actually sat in there, otherwise, it's still freezing.

It has been a much longer than usual go at winter and even though I do love the snow and cooler weather, I am itching to get out and dig in the dirt.  I also need to get all the chicken coop wire tunnel things I had to make to save my plants from the ravenous rabbits last year out and over anything that is showing through the snow as the rabbits are eating everything, nothing new here.

The kids in the neighbourhood have been ripping up the street on their bikes for some time now, it started with the poking and stabbing of the little water ways that lead to the sewers to hurry up the process.  We have some 16 little ones (OK, a few of them are in their teens, but awesome in looking out for everyone) in general.  It has become a very busy little bay and all the kids are located directly beside, across and a couple houses over from us, Ryann always looks forward to coming over now and playing with them.
I was looking at some pictures last night, 2 springs ago there was no snow in sight at Easter and we had the driveway all chalked up!

Well,  enough complaining, there is more snow on the forcast for tomorrow so complaining about it doesn't help.  Pictures of Thunder Bay yesterday were crazy, schools were closed and people were warned to stay home and off the highway, everyone it seems has crazy weather.

I still am itching to get out there, with the days longer . . . .and that sun sneering at you to get up early, it's nice to go to the nurseries to check out the plants and just be around all that general greenhouse humidity and sun to perk you up, I mean Pintrest can amuse you and has great ideas but really. . . . it's on the computer!  OK, I love Pintrest!!  they have more ideas on there than a camel has fleas!  ah to dream that someone would just come over, I'd point at the computer screen and they would go and do all that heavy stuff for me.  The artsy farty stuff I can do!!

Ok, it's wine time.  enjoy the rest of the week-end and plan for planting and rabbit/squirrel/deer plant resistant summer.

 



Quinzee !

My first thought this year was to build an igloo, from proper cut snow blocks.  I googled and watched U-Tube videos and thought, no problem!  Then I tested the snow and an igloo was not in the picture.  My friends next door are wizards with quinzee building so I thought, Quinzee it is.  I used to tunnel through the snow when I was a kid in solid snowdrifts much to dad's objection, I love the quiet, white insulating feel of being inside one.  We have a lot of snow this year, but nothing that I could tunnel out a quinzee from.

I plotted out the area and started shoveling, and shoveling and shoveling.  I packed our old large re-cycle boxes, hauled them across the yard on the toboggan and proceeded to pull them up the hill and build a rather large pile of snow!  When it was high enough and solid I got Ken to take the snowblower around twice just to blow in the snow nicely between the square blocks.

beginning was a little tedious, I have a rib that tends to pop out of place and cause a lot of pain.    However, put your big girl panties on and take a pain pill and move on.

Anywhere Joelle will go, Wilson will follow!

I was almost completed but decided to call in my recruits next door who happily removed the last bit of snow from the back of the quinzee for me, even they were impressed!  

Ryann can actually stand and I can still take the ceiling down a few inches.

I don't know about the sticking  our tongues out part, apparently that's what u do in a quinzee.  

And  remember. . . . . Do not eat Yellow Snow!!

We even had a slide going here.

It's a fun playhouse for a while longer anyways, today we have unseasonal warm temp.  I used water and food coloring to make the red maple leaf above the entrance but it keeps fading!

Ryann and I toasted the quinzee (she has chocolate milk)

Whew Grandma, that was fun!

As Valentines Day is in 2 days, we started with our special cookies.

Then I found our fire pit in the yard and started digging that out, something about having a fire in the middle of winter with lots of snow around you!!

Well that's it for now.  I finally finished those 2 quilts for the kids and the kitchen curtains are next!

Get out there and enjoy the white stuff!

SLEDDING !

SLEDDING !

NO CAPTIONS REQUIRED, PURE FUN

Get out there and . . .ski!

 I LOVE THE WINTER!

I love the winter time, everyone hates the cold, esp in the part of the country where we live, however. . .. layer and keep moving, find something that you like to do and get out there and just do it!  Find a friend that likes to do it as well, or . . . . .get your Granddaughter out there and convince her that it's fun!

For Christmas this year, my choice was to buy her some skis, cross country ones, and so I set out and found some cute, affordable little ones that I thought she might like, of course when she was over prior to Christmas, I put mine on and zipped around the backyard and she thought they were great.

Today, we went out and she was amazing.  I watched a couple U-tube videos for teaching small children how to cross country ski before setting out.  We eliminated the poles  and went with the soccer kick approach.  We have a fairly large yard and my already set tracks helped her through the snow.

Here she is rounding the corner where her tree is planted.  She fell of course a couple times and I taught her how to get up on her own which she can now do easily.  I love it, there is nothing like hearing your little 3yr old granddaughter yelling to you that she loves you while on skis.  

I hope she continues with this sport, it really is a beautiful way to get your exercise in, esp if you find somewhere where the trails are groomed nicely and go on forever.  Ken has a friend with some. . . . .hmmmm, gotta get out there, often see deer and of course the rabbits and squirrels everywhere.

Well, here is to the great outdoors, get out there and just do it!