Must Be Fall

It truly must be fall. Leaves have turned red, yellow, orange and have started falling by the truckload. Piles at the side of the streets of Woodstock await the snuffleupagus thingey. And Ron and I have turned to home improvements, yet again. Last Saturday we took five hours to hang about one double roll of wallpaper as a back splash in our kitchen. We love it.

The colours are not quite as you see here as there is a blue tinge and a cranberry tinge to some of the 'bricks' but the lighting for my camera didn't work perfectly. This shot of our desk cubby hole is a bit closer to the actual colour. We discovered that the fluorescent tube under cupboard lighting here is more white than the others. Now we have to go looking for new bulbs that are more white.

We really like that the cords don't show up nearly as much from across the room as they did against a cream wall. And now we're on a mission to decorate the space above the cupboards. Here is our latest acquisition from a trip to London on Sunday afternoon. I loved the red! And, no, the wallpaper is NOT yellow as it appears in this picture.

My next piece will have blue in it, I hope, as that is one of our colours. Yes, it's fall and we're cocooning once again. Mmm. Almost time to make Christmas cake.

Home Suite Home

Yesterday my spouse and I trekked around our condo area to get some pictures for his new newsletter. Since I had the pics I thought I'd post them on my blog. Below is our place (the first unit with the two pink hydrangeas blooming. I finally learned if I wanted fertilizer on the plants I had to put it on. Since then my flowers have pleased me.

Here is a shot of our 'common area' but it is much more than common; in fact, it is pretty picturesque in all seasons.

Even on this cloudy day the gazebo's attractive design demands notice.

Some of the gardens are very nicely done. We even were finalists in our city's "City Beautiful" contest this year.

I love the path through the centre of the common area, so cute and beguiling you just have to follow it. We always finish our walk up this path to our home.

In December we'll mark our second anniversary since we moved here. The time has flown and so have the stray uncomfortable feelings of not being 'home'. We are totally ensconced in our condo, body and mind.

Self-Cleaning Oven

Okay. It's a hot summer day and I've got to do something to take my mind off the heat. Go swimming? NO! Clean the oven. Unfortunately, the self that is going to clean it is me!

Here is the sludgy mess that has been waiting for this day. I can put this job off for years at a time, if I can evade that Mom-image over my shoulder shaming me. On the counter rests the new silicon oven liner thing that I bought in a lovely kitchen store in Victoria but I have to have a clean oven to put it into. After that it slides out and into soapy water for a slick cleanup, so I'm told.

I take the racks out and soak them in the bathtub while the oven cleaner seeps into the grease and baked brown spots. I wonder where all that comes from as I rarely have an oven spill. Just what is that crap? I've found that soaking and then scrubbing with SOS erases most of the crud.

Here is one rack done and dripping off in the sink. My pretty bathroom was never made for this job!

Two hours, many scrubbings/soakings/swishings later, I finally have the finished product and eggs on the stove for--YIKES!!!--I run to rescue the eggs for lunch. Anyhow the oven looks great, the silicone mat fits perfectly and I can only dream that my oven will stay clean longer.


Now I need to take a shower!

Weekend Wonders

We had a productive, interesting and relaxing weekend, mixing work with play and just enjoying ourselves. I took another picture of our bedroom paint job, this one with the pictures up. My husband did that while I was in Victoria a couple of weeks ago. If you look closely (at the second photo below) you'll see a bit of a theme happening in our condo.

While the man in the house worked on our income taxes--ugh!!!--I touched up the edges and woodwork of this paint job from last weekend. The colour is called 'Queen' and I thought it was fitting as I feel like a queen in our new place. We had quite a time rigging scaffolding to be able to reach everywhere above the staircase which winds at the top, making the job extremely difficult. Imagine me reaching the crown molding atop a ladder which we set up on the scaffolding and which Ron held to make sure it didn't slip while I did my magic above. Whew! Glad that's done. Next time we hire that area, I think.

After a relaxing drive for an hour or so on Sunday afternoon, we rented Australia and spent almost three hours watching it. Such a good movie. The images of Australia and the little 'creamie' have a way of staying in your mind. Next we sipped soup at Tim Horton's on the way to my concert in Embro. Ron took some pictures but they are not as good as we'd like because of the dim light.

We have a ladies' choir and a young men's choir, which we combine to do some joint numbers. We are small but pretty good, I think. Everyone has a passion for the music and a love of performing something special. Our director, my sister, is in the front row above at the right. She has a music degree from UWO and has made music her life so the quality is excellent. Almost all of the choir members have taken private lessons and are performers in their own right. The young men's choir has four members who have grown up with the choirs, moving from the children's choir (no longer active) to the young men's choir. Their voices have grown up, too, and with the addition of the other two, the sound is smooth and sure. I love to listen to their vitality.

I had e-mailed several people I thought might be interested and was delighted to see so many of them in the audience. We all had a snack downstairs afterwards, a great way to revel in the excitement of having performed well. (At least they told us so.)

This picture was taken in practice; hence, Director Linda is not in the picture as she was back a few rows listening to the acoustics. BTW can you find me in these pictures? Oh, a game!

Bits and Pieces

This time my title is literal. For Valentine's my husband chose and ordered a wonderful new set of dishes for our home. Oh, he checked to make sure I liked them--I did--and then did all the work. So nice. Until today. We had waited over a week for notification that the package was ready to pick up and yesterday we got that. Last night we were pretty anxious for today to come. Bright and early Ron went to the post office and picked up the two huge boxes, rushed home and opened the first box. This is what we saw.

Four of the dinner plates were badly chipped. I took this picture to include with our e-mail to the company. Of course they will replace them but we'll have to wait again. Grrr. Sometimes it seems nothing is seamless anymore. There always seems to be a catch.

On a brighter note I cleared my old dishes out of the cupboards and loaded in the new (minus the 4 broken plates.) They are lovely. We have started using them already. In the picture below you can see how well they match our counter tops. The whole condo is brighter when they are set out. Maybe I'll feel more like cooking at home now.

Let's see. What would look good on blue/brown plates?

Winter Wandering III

I thought I would put up the last shots from my snowy walk the other day. Didn't walk either yesterday or today--it's just too darn cold! The wind chill factor is anywhere from minus 20 to minus 28 Celsius. That's nasty. The weather channel predicts warmer weather coming in a couple of days. Here is a shot across the central park area opposite our condo.

And here the sign is completely covered with icy snow as are all the trees. Later in the day the trees were bare again.

And yet another icy shot with wisps of clouds almost covering the sky's blue in the background.

Finally I was home and took a quick shot of the mail boxes across from our place. They have actually migrated into the shelter built for them. The first time we went looking for our mail, we went to the third box and tried the key to no avail. Seems the mover of the mail boxes placed them totally out of order so now we are the first in the line, instead of the third. To me putting them in order makes sense but obviously not to the man on the tractor lifting them. One of my neighbours said he was totally confused, trying his key over and over, and even going home and telling his wife he needed a new key. Somehow he finally realized the mistake.

So this is my third and final post about winter in January, 2009. If you want some bracing air, spectacular snow shots in bright blue skies and a reason to keep moving while you're outdoors, come to bright, bold Ontario in winter.

Winter Wandering II

Here is a shot of the gazebo in the central park area of our condo group. I just loved the snowy trees cutting into the soft blue sky.
The evergreen in the foreground here is ice-covered and the walk is not shoveled. We went around instead of taking our usual path through the park.

Looking out over the distant lake I noticed many layers of colour in the sky over the apartment building where my mother lived until ten years ago. The misty quality was entrancing. If it hadn't been so cold I would have like to sit right down and bask!

In the blink of an eye almost the sky changed and clouds drifted over the sun, giving me this bright shot. Always a silver lining!

An icy piece of decorative grass still shoots bravely skyward, one of the last to remain standing in the winter weather.

Tomorrow I have a few more pics of this fabulous place where we live and which we love. See you then!

Snow Outside but Building Inside

Last weekend we had a powerful snow storm which kept us housebound for Saturday and we didn't get shoveled out until 5 minutes before we were leaving for church on Sunday morning. Oh, how we love living in a condo where OTHERS do the shovelling! Here my teddy wreath is looking rather droopy. He's probably freezing.

While the storm raged outside we spent Saturday morning building a closet in our new basement bedroom. We are almost ready for drywalling--saints be praised!--and are very excited about our progress so far. (We are not all that handy.) Here is the door we hung a few nights ago and it's straight!

Here is the wall we built complete with anchoring screws into the cement floor.

Here is the wall that was already there before we started and the door out of the bedroom which we used to know how to hang the new one.

And here, yes, HERE, is the the studding for the closet measured for the lovely doors we've already purchased. Say a prayer that it all fits when we're done, please.

While we were hammering, cutting, screwing (no comments!), measuring and pondering, the weather outside was pretty frightful to be out in but lovely to watch. I opened the front door at night and took these two photos:

Yes, that's snow falling, not a dirty lens!

In the morning we were packed in, but snug and warm so didn't mind. Here is our deck with almost three feet of snow.

And this is out our front door. The street is plowed but our driveway and walk are still waiting.

Here is the snow in front of our garage and I apologize for the lack of artistic quality but it couldn't be helped if I wanted to get a picture of the snow bank there!

Today is Friday and I am really hoping there will be no new snow this weekend. Our winter has been decidedly white--good, usually, but I'm ready for more sun and temps above freezing.

Sun and Fog

This morning we opened our blinds to foggy daylight--hoarfrost, my husband said--and I thought of my camera snug in my purse as I drove him to work. We passed a wonderful old cemetary on the way and I noticed the games the sun was playing as it burned off the mist.

This is one time my automatic photo enhancing buttons on my software ruined the effect rather than improving it. I loved the pink glow lighting the icy frosting on the branches.

When I turned away from the east I got sharp and clear shots and the stark black of the trees cut through the soft snowy ice on the branches.

This is the first picture I took with the sun barely skimming the horizon.

And, yet again, I turned to the glorious trees standing strong and still watching over the graves below.

Everyone is having challenges trying to keep the snow plowed for access these days, such a snowy winter we've been having, and the cemetary is no exception. The banks are high and the parking area is substantially reduced with all the piles of white stuff. We are all having to be a little forgiving as the streets have snow piled out into the right lane making four-lane traffic almost impossible. I loved the tree below with its icy crust.

Back in our condo development I took this shot of the sun trying to get to me, so eerie.

And, finally, just to remember the sky a few days ago, here are the same trees just down the street from us. They are bare and frisky in the winter sun, waving at the passing clouds. Under that brilliant blue I felt the same way!

Sunday I had quite a time trying to get my pictures uploaded and after the third try gave up, so I have some more to display another day. See you then!

Walking In My Neighbourhood

This winter has been unusual for all the snow which we've had and for how long it has stayed--since December! On one of my neighbourhood walks I found this johnny-on-the-spot which proves we're living in a new area. The 'convenience' is right beside a traffic circle and that's an empty lot behind it, probably to be built on this summer. This blue blot on the landscape brings a whole new meaning to 'freezing your butt off'!

Just down our street is a man-made lake, frozen in this picture and hard to see, but it is a lovely spot none-the-less.

Here is our end condo unit the highest elevation on the block allowing us to overlook the small park opposite our front window.

Below I've tried to get a sweeping view opposite the front gate to our condos but I really only managed a glorious winter blue sky and glistening white snow. If you look closely you can see a green flag or two at the gates, flags which have been sorely buffeted about in the wild winds we've had a few times this winter.

I finished my walk approaching our condo from another angle. This end unit is ours with its back deck and trees suffering through winter.

So what do these pictures have in common? Three things, actually. They are all of our condo, there are piles of snow in every one, and--perhaps best of all--the sky is that welcoming, heart-warming colour of blue that is so well offset by snow. I love it! And you won't hear me complaining too much about winter, only about mild, rainy or overcast days. Never about days like I've captured above. Talk about a breath of fresh air!