-27 !?!

The temperature overnight in Peterborough recently was -27 C (-16 for you Fahrenheit folks). And that's before windchill. Holy Hannah that is COLD!

It makes me wonder how our flooring is holding up. Word on da WEEB is that the flooring we installed contracts in extreme cold, possibly causing the joints between floor panels to separate. I hope this isn't what's happening! *bites nails* I need to install a nanny cam so I can spy on the cottage when we're away. We don't have potable water, but we can have some high-tech spy gadgetry! Although, there's nothing I could do if the flooring was falling to bits - I'd just know about it earlier.

If the ice-out date for the lake is similar to last year, we're looking at about 60 more days before the lake begins to clear. Sixty days. That's not long. *twitch*. I can wait 60 paltry days to get back to the cottage *twitch twitch*. We need to start thinking about ceiling materials for the bathroom and living room, and I have a bunch of bathroom sewing to attend to still. In my copious free time. Of which I have none. Ahaha.

Meantime, here are some more photos du jour.

Some SUSHI from last weekend. My mouth waters just looking at this one. I think I'm snackish.

And this is what I packed to leave the house for 2 hours on Friday night. *sigh* You can't even see the gift or the change-of-clothes bag behind the hockey bag! Yuck. The car is really dirty.

And here's my favourite hockey dude, conveniently backlit by a flashlight. Freaky.

Here are a couple of photos of the wee lad actually playing.

And this one...

This photo excites me greatly: a spiffy new telephoto lens! Calloo! Callay!

Did I mention the lad was saving his pennies to buy an iPod Touch? Well, guess who saved enough money. It's vexing that my child has cooler toys than I do.

And here are a couple of photos that he took using his new toy.

Goof.

And lastly, here's my sleeping cat. The photo-a-day theme of the week is supposed to be "tired" (yes, you can get a list of weekly themes! Aren't the interwebs amazing?). This was the best I could do today.

Enjoy!

Laggard

Hiya!

Cottage update: the battery charger has been purchased. Hooray for not being stranded!

I have been sticking with my photo-a-day project, however, I appear to be failing the "posting a photo a day" project.

Let's see, I left off with knitting and messy closet, so that means we're up to....

A little love found in the snow

A never ending book report

Playing around with macro photography

And a bunch of fun at the dance studio, including (shudder) stage make up.

And some POW R FUEL batteries. Top quality.

Miss and mess

No cottage updates again today, though we are THIS CLOSE -----> . <----- to buying a battery charger (on sale at Princess Auto. ding, ding!). Perhaps this weekend?

Until then,
MOAR FILLER!

The princess has been inspired by my sweater making, and has picked up the knitting she set aside last winter. From very far away.

Another view...

and just one more...

And... here's a big red lump (always exciting)...really it's the wee lad hiding from his bedtime hugs and kisses.

AND

My office closet is a mess. I really need to clean it. There could be things living in there.

POTD round up

I've been missing a few days worth of pictures again, so here's a quick recap of some photos I've taken recently:

Yarn! I found this at Wally World, 3 skeins for $4! It's nice yarn too. It's at least partly if not completely cotton. the reason I'm not sure is because it was sold as an odd lot "Promotion Surplus". No labels. It'll knit up as a gorgeous tweed though. I can't wait. I wonder what I'll make with it? I'm thinking hat and scarf, probably.

Next up, the thing I'm actually knitting right now. It's a ski sweater for the wee lad! I made him a gorgeous nordic-inspired sweater for when he was 4, but he's long since out grown it. This one is more forgiving: thicker yarn and bigger needles.I've got about 8 inches done up the back so far.

Jeff Vader! You forgot your Penne All'Arrabiata!
(Reference this. <---Contains a fair bit of profanity; otherwise, it's just Lego and pretty benign.)

And..... a wicker ball. What can I say. I was grasping at straws. It was a lean day for photo opportunities.

Baskets

I finally found some baskets that were the correct dimensions for the shelf I built for the cottage bathroom. Remember? It has little cubbies underneath:

I had hoped to find rectangular wicker baskets, but the cubbies are 6" x 11 5/8" for no particular reason other than that's the shape they ended up being after I made my arbitrary bench measurements and cuts.

That's a pain in the butt shape, let me tell you. Most baskets are a solid 12" wide. Arg. Had I known when I was cutting, I would've allowed for that extra little bit.

Eventually I found these at Michaels, 40% off:

They're not bad!

I'm not super crazy about the angled sides, and I think they might be a little short, but they're not bad. We'll have to see how they look when I slide them into the bench.

I'm not even sure what I'll keep in them yet. I just know I like to have lots of places to store stuff.

The weekend ate my homework!

Hiya!

I did snap some photos this weekend, and if you're on my Facebook you would have already seen them, but I plum forgot to add them here too. Sorry! The good news is that you get more than just the one photo shared in my POTD folder on facebook. I might forget about you on the weekends, but I make up for it with extra goodies.

Here's the photo from Saturday:

I needed to get the princess to clean out her closet, so I told her I'd sit and keep her company and we could have some tea and cookies as refreshments when she needed a break. (For some reason, she needed a lot of breaks; at least, until the tea and cookies ran out.)

I love that you can see the swirl in the steam and also that the sunlight is glowing through the thin china at the rim of the cup.

And here are some photos from Sunday.

This was going to be the POTD for Sunday:
(my doofus cat, slain by a sunbeam, then made a little more comfortable by the princess. She gave him a ball of yarn for a pillow, and a blankie)

Doofus.

But that got trumped following a visit to Walmart. The smell of fresh baked bread wafting through the store and the princess wanting to make butter at home clinched it.

We made butter! You start with a cup of whipping cream in a mason jar, and then shake shake shake. This step took about 15 minutes. We all took turns.

Then, we couldn't shake it anymore. This is what filled the jar. Essentially, it's whipped cream! However, we wanted one step beyond whipped cream, so I divided this between two jars, and we resumed shaking.

Almost instantly the buttermilk started to separate out of the whipped cream and we were left with...

Butter!

It was sooooo very good on that warm bread from the bakery.

Mmmmmm.


Sorry I left you hangin'

I bought some cottage stuff this weekend. More on that soon.

Dull POTD

Today's picture of the day is a bit dull. Sorry! That's just how we roll on Thursdays.

We got a pretty fluffy snowfall today. All told it amounted to about 3 inches of snow. I tried to photograph the falling snow, but that's hard! So, you get a bit of an odd "What the heck is it?!" photo to look at.

Please be kind, I'm still learning.

Hives

Dangit.

Anyone familiar with my background knows that I grew into some fairly serious allergies around the time I was 12. Nearly died from the first bad anaphylactic reaction. The rest of you now know that too.

You'll understand then, why the site of my sweet boy covered in hives this morning had me on high alert.

Apart from being VERY itchy, he's no worse for wear. He got a day of cartoons instead of school, and he is happy to swallow his bright pink pills when necessary. Benadryl is the only thing stopping him from scratching like mad right now.

If only we know what triggered the reaction.

Dangit.

Oh My God The Cat Is Dead

I regularly walk into rooms, spot the cat lying on the floor, and say "Oh My God The Cat Is Dead!" (this kind of utterance demands initial caps). 

He's not actually dead. He's just been sleeping.

It's not that I wish my cat were dead (quite the opposite, in fact). It's just that he's a seriously geriatric feline. I found him as a 6-month-old stray sometime in my second year of university, and that was '90-'91. (You do the math... saying the number out loud causes me to sprout another grey hair.) He's an old boy. I'm sort of expecting old age to catch up with him one of these days.

I had an "Oh My God The Cat Is Dead" moment today, walking in to my office. He was asleep on the ottoman with his mouth wide open and his tongue lolled out. The only thing missing were two crosses over his eyes: + +

But he was just sleeping. 

Freak.

This photo is definitely the clearest, however...

He's obviously a much bigger freak in this one. Yes, he slept like that for quite a while.

Enjoy.

Diamond

Here's my photo of the day for you:

This one was taken last night as I was reading bedtime stories to the kids. Santa brought this for the princess's stocking (I think he got it for $1 at Dollarama?) but to her it's a priceless gem, and she totes it around  everywhere.

$10 of stupid?

We went to the Despot yesterday to buy clear storage bins to house all of our Christmas crap. Early in December I had started to develop a nervous tick rummaging through countless cardboard boxes trying to find certain decorations.

Clear boxes = I can see all my junk.

This is one of the reasons my desk and craft room are always a disaster; when something is out in the open, I know exactly where it is. Hide it away in a cupboard or box and I either forget that I own it, or simply can't find it. * There's a fine line that I tread between organized chaos and impenetrable disaster.

Where was I? Oh right. Home Depot.

So we were out shopping for boxes. We didn't buy any because they were flimsy junk. BUT, while trolling the aisles, I spotted a lovely faucet for the cottage bathroom! AND IT WAS ONLY $10!!

Captain: But we already bought a faucet.
Me: I know, but this one is way nicer and it's only $10.
Captain: But the other one is perfectly good.
Me: And perfectly ugly. This one is nice and it's only $10. We can use the ugly one when we put a bar sink into Peaky.
Captain: We're putting a bar sink into Peaky!? Why can't we just use the old old one that was originally in the bathroom for that?
Me: [Look of death] Are you kidding me? Listen. You're just going to have to trust me, o.k. And besides, it's only $10.
Captain: OK, but you're installing it.
Me: [inside: "Yay!!"]. Sure, no problem.
Captain: And what if it doesn't work?!
Me: Then I'll ask my Daddy to help me fix it, because he loves me.

So, for good or for ill, we bought another bathroom faucet. And it was only $10!!
(Yay!!)


*that's my story and I'm sticking with it.

UPDATE: Boxes were purchased from Crappy Tire, 50% off! (nice sturdy rubbermaid ones, too). I also bought yards and yards of Christmas gift wrap.

Photos

Nothing cottage-y in this post, unless you count these feet, which have been to the cottage before. Today we embark on Operation Blog Filler, intended to fill in the long gaps between cottage-related news with random photos of my day.

I had a tough time choosing a single photo for today's Photo of the Day, so you get two instead. I was inspired by some photos taken by the resident photographer at the princess's dance school. I wanted to hang them in the Princess's room, but couldn't afford the astronomical professional photographer's price tag. Enter the "I could MAKE that!" mantra, and behold: photos of feet:

Thanks for hanging around! I have a $10 cottage story to tell you tomorrow.

C

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Happy... New.. Year?

What the heck kind of weather is this!? +7 and foggy on New Years Day?!

Bleh.

I'm going back to my regularly scheduled hibernation.*

---

*actually, I'm toying with the idea of starting a photo-a-day assignment. I've been very impressed with the tenacity and skill of my photographer friends and their photo-a-day projects. At least it would keep me busy and provide some blog fodder during these dull months. Holler if this makes you want to scratch your eyes out; I wouldn't want this to be like being trapped viewing someone else's trip photos when you don't give a rat's patoot about their trip but are too polite to worm out of it+.

+of course, no-one's forcing you to come and view my photos, so it's not really like you're trapped. You can take off anytime you feel like it.♦
 
♦Please don't go.