Nov 30, 2007

Fat quarters....





Here are the fat quarters I chose today.......

My Friday...

Today didn't start so great...I woke to say goodbye to Lloyd and then took an imitrex as I had a migraine....the side effects of the imitrex are as bad as the migraine but don't last as long...I slept in bed until 11am and was very grateful for the children who fed and dressed Sam for me!

I got up and showered at 11am and not long after, Susannah and I headed into town....we got another gift for Lloyd and the lady offered to gift wrap it for me, so we left it there and headed to Lori's Quilting Cottage.....Oh my!!!! This is the store that holds the annual charity quilt show in Sherwood Park for Breast Cancer....

This store is fantasic - I haven't been in a quilting store for so long - I had a favourite one in Lancashire in England that I would occasionally visit (Poor Nigel used to have to drive me to it as I didn't drive that far back then, and he found the whole little town so boring that I didn't go very often)!

This store here is just PACKED with the most gorgeous quilts and fabrics and items based on quilting.....it was like being in a candy store and I had so much fun looking through all the fat quarters and choosing the ones for a new project....

I got chatting to the lady there and she called out the tutor and we talked about beginners classes for the New Year....so I think a sewing machine is going to be top of my Christmas list! Then I hope to sign up for the beginners class for after Christmas!

After the quilt store, we went to Tim Hortons for lunch and ran into some English friends of ours, Derek and Sarah...they were picking up some snacks for the car as they were heading down to their apartment in Canmore for the weekend...it was nice to see them and we stood chatting for a while - it's been 2 years since I saw Sarah - although Lloyd sees Derek for lunch sometimes as Derek does some work for BCAL...

What next? Dollar store for a quick visit and then we swung by the first store again to pick up Lloyds gift - too funny!! The lady had gift wrapped Lloyds present in EXACTLY the same gift wrap that I have been using for all his other gifts!!!! How perfect is that??????

Then I had to head to Kinsmen for a meeting with my new boss....it was good to finally meet her, and in real life she is soooo nice! So down to earth and easy to talk to, and was so reassuring about everything....lets just say that I am feeling so much more relaxed about January and the start of preschool - although we still need an assistant! But she said if they can't get anyone (they still need another 5 or 6 for the county!!) then they will ask the parents registered if they would be willing to do alternate weeks with another parent)

After that we headed home....it's been snowing gently all day and Susannah and I had Christmas songs on in the car so it was really nice :)

Now the boys are about to head to WEM to go swimming with some friends....a big Christmas party thing for a hockey club and they were both invited to join in.....I think Lloyd and I are going to curl up with the girls and watch a Christmas movie and eat candy canes :) Susie had a candy cane hot chocolate at Tim Hortons today - I had a sip...Mmmmmmmm!!

Last night I had to go to the hall to help decorate - I took the boys with me...when we got there Jilles had already decorated the hall! So we all sat around and chatted about last minute plans for Sunday....everything is set ready to go....I'm looking forward to it now......

Tomorrow we are off to The Festival of Trees, and then Sunday the party....the rest of the weekend I am hoping will be quiet so I can sew :)

Have a great weekend everyone!

Bloody great :(

www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071130/cold_winter_071130/20071130?hub=TopStories

Urgh! Just what I need!!!!

But some good news! In April we are off to Toronto for a few days :) DH has another conference to attend and we are going with him :)

Nov 29, 2007

The last few days....

On Monday C was home form school, so he played various math games with A. Tuesday we went out for breakfast with a friend. Yesterday we went to Parentlink - there were two festive crafts and circle time was about germs...with songs and a story....afterwards we ran a few errands and had lunch at the mall...A chose a cosmetics set at the dollar store and came home and put her make up on :) a circus clown comes to mind ;)

Monday and Tuesday were too cold to go for a walk with -30 windchills. Yesterday A went sledding in the afternoon with S.

This morning we went swimming for a while and then to an indoor playground...lunch out again and then home where A painted with the foamy mixture :)

Thats our week so far!

Puffy snow pictures....





We tried this craft at Parentlink yesterday.....you make snowman pictures or other snowy pictures using this special mixture! It's shaving foam mixed with a little Elmers glue....stir it in with a spoon and add a little glitter....

When it dries, it stays all puffy and is all squidgy and rubbery!

The kids LOVE playing with this 'stuff' and it smells so good :)

Pram quilt.....




This is a pram quilt, baby quilt for a little boy.....this is just the quilt top and needs the other layers to be added and then needs to have the layers quilted together.....one day I'll finish it ;)

That said, I am not in the mood to work on either of these projects right now - I have a few fabrics I want to work with instead but I need more - so tomorrow I want to head to the quilt store and pick out some new fabrics to go with the ones I have, so that once the party is over on Sunday, I can actually get going :)

Please excuse the wwrinkles and folds in the work...they have been folded up and bagged up in storage for the last couple of years!

My quilting...






I have mainly quilted in the past for gifts for other people....but here are two projects that are in my quilting bag, still to be completed!

The green paper pieced quilt is a design called 'Snowflakes in Summer'....a large rectangle of green shades will run down the middle of the quilt, and this rectangle is surrounded by 'snowflakes' of green/ alternate fabrics.....in a white background.....

I haven't got very far with this - mainly because it's all hand stitched - I don't use a sewing machine! I also don't think I did ANY sewing last winter at all!

English piecing...




One of my favourite styles of quilts is created through 'English Piecing'....a technique my Mom taught me when I was pregnant with Christopher almost 15 years ago! Engish piecing uses papers as backing that are tacked to the fabric and then the little shapes are stitched together before the backing papers are removed....

I some very old quilts they find the backing papers are not removed and you can tell so much about the date of the quilt etc by the backing papers used.....

I treated myself :)


I wonder how long it will be before this nighty has gone grey in the wash.......

New ornaments for 07




Here are a few of the little ornaments I have bought this year to add to my collection :) They are already out on display as they are more 'wintery' than Christmasy :) well, the angels are just gorgeous so they are out whether they are Christmasy or not :)

The big angel is named Samantha as I bought her on my date night with my friend Samantha the other week :)

Thursday...

We went swimnning this morning...not a great day to go as a school bus of kids arrived at the same time as us...but it wasn't too bad thankfully. We swam for about 90 minutes and then dried off and had milk and muffins in the food court before heading to the indoor playground for a while....The Oilers were practicing in one of the rinks at the back so we strolled by there and watched for a while...not that the kids are interested in hockey at all!

On the way home we stopped for mail and two parcels had arrived - things I had ordered online at the weekend - I LOVE doing shopping online - last night we picked up all the things from the Sears Wishboook we had ordered online too....no having to stand in line or deal with crowds and the discounts you get online are great....I also got a parcel from CHER - Canadian Home Education Resources, with some books and games I had ordered....I'm still waiing on FIAR (our reading curriculum) but apart from that it was all there...they had called to let me know it would be delayed anyway.

The kids will be home soon...Abby and Sam have been at the table since we got home, painting with the foamy stuff again :) they love it! When the kids get home I plan to take my cup of tea upstairs and wrap some gifts....I have a few for Lloyd to wrap.

I have to run to the school to get Chris later - he's trying out for basketbal today. Then tonight the boys and I are going to the hall in the village to help decorate it for Christmas.

Tomorrow I am meeting my boss for the first time - so that will be interesting - although they can't find an assistant to run the class, so if they don't find anyone, the class still won't run! Such a shame about the area not having a class, but I'm not too bothered either way as to whether I have a job or not...I'm happy to teach or I'm happy to stay home with my two!

Tomorrow I also have some errands to run ....collect some meds, get a few things for Sundays party.....run to the quilt store....and a couple of other places I need to go for gifts for Lloyd that are easier to go to without the kids!

The kids have no school tomorrow.

Saturday we have the Festival of Trees in the morning..and there is a craft fair in our hall that I may go to in the afternoon......then Sunday is the party in the afternoon.

I'm tired this afternoon - oh and I have a big bruise on my shoulder from where I slammed the door on my shoulder yesterday lol!

Nov 28, 2007

Hmmmmmm????

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7117430.stm

Normally I believe that people arrested ina foreign land often deserve to be punished for their crimes if they are breaking a law of the country they are in, but this time I think it's ridiculous...mainly because this was a teddybear named by children.

What do you think?

For now you will have to cut and paste the link because Firefoz is not letting me create a link...

Parents evening...

I forgot to post about parents evening!

So last night we had to go to the school for parents evening....I DESPISE parents evening......maybe its to do with my belief in homeschooling - or just my knowledge that school is NOT the best way for a child to get an education - and I do NOT believe teachers know everything or know my child better than me or are any better at teaching my child than I am.....ok off soap box!

Most schools in Canada make parents evening a looooong drawn out evening...you have to do littler experiments in the classroom, go through worksheets with your child.....join in with little activities.....go through all their work...as WELL as seeing the teachers. You have to take your child with you!

Parents evening in the UK is usually the parents going to the school to meet the teacher for 10 minutes and thats it!

I was very grateful to find that this school is not the norm for Canada. Maybe some parents love to do all the little activities with their child but to be honest we do things like that all the time at home so why do I need to 'perform' for the teacher?????

WE did take Susie with us but our meeting with the teacher lasted ten minutes and that was that....basically she told us that Susie is a great student, a leader in the class and that she had nothing to discuss with us! She said Susie was the ONLY child in the class that she did not have an 'issue' to discuss with us about! So that was great!

Oh, by the way, Chris was helping to run the babysitting service in the cafeteria so we dropped Abigail and Sam in there to play! They watched a Veggietales movie and played board games and party games like musical chairs....

We went to the book fair and had a look around and then found Laurie and headed into the hall to see his Science teacher who is also Chris's homeroom/ form teacher.

Mr Mac seemed so nice - he lived in the UK for a few years and his Father In Law is from Blackburn!!!! He mainly chatted to us about his love of Rugby and his love of teasing the boys about the fact that it was the British who introduced Dandelions to Canada :)

He said that Laurie is doing great in school and seems to have fitted into the class perfectly...he says his only 'issue' is that he is one of the last to notice that class has started (ie one of the last to turn around and stop talking!) He said Laurie is a social butterfly (lol!) but that he is doing great (apart from a couple of assignments he handed in late because he was sick and didn't find out about the homework)...so he needs to remember things like that!

After that, laurie headed off to the cake stall in the foyer...and we discussed Chris...Mr Mac says he doesn't think Chris will have any problems doing anything he wants or fitting in anywhere...that he is just one of those people who things come easy to...work, friends, life etc...and he's right..but he also said that Chris ahs a habit of not putting the effort in but assuming that because he's clever he will get by...(we know this about him too) but he said that he thinks he will learn this lesson well and will soon come to realise he needs to put in effort...he did say that grade 9 is known for lower grades and less effort and I laughed and said yes we kind of assumed that with girls and his new social life that school would go on the back burner....he did reassure us though that in grade 10 most kids get back into the swing of getting the grades they need for their chosen grade, and thats what we kind of think too.....when I was Chris's age, boys and my friends were FAR more important than grades at school! When I WAS at school lol!

So all in all it was a good parents evening - actually fun really.....we took laurie and Sam home but Abigail and Susie were having so much fun in the babysitting room that they asked if they could stay until the end, so we left them there and went home and Lloyd picked them up at the end of the evening.

I won't dread the next parents evening quite so much!

My duh moment of the day!

I slammed the trunk/ boot door of my truck on my shoulder today...it feels very bruised and has been red ever since...I have a feeling its going to be purple when I wake up in the morning :(

other blogs....Rhonda etc etc

For some reason there are a few blogs that I can't seem to comment on at the moment - Rhonda yours is one of them!!! I AM reading but nothing seems to happen when I hit the comment button.

Just don't want you to think I am ignoring you!

OK so I just got through decorating 30 song booklets with Christmas stickers ready for the party...now I need to design a flyer for the store and then maybe I can relax a little before I have to go out!

Little Diva.....






Abby and Sam got to choose something each in the dollar store today....Sam chose a pack of 4 helicopters that he has been busy playing with since he got home...and Abigail chose a childrens make up set! YIKES.....she came home and went straight upstairs to put on her make up! She then put make up on Sam and Susannah....these are the results on Abby and Sam :) Oh and Sams sweater is COVERED from the foamy white paint stuff we used at parentlink this morning! I'm not sure if he had more on the paper or more on himself!!!

Our hump day........

THis morning I got up and waved Lloyd off to work at 6:20am......I watched him drive down the driveway through the snow and waited for him to flash his hazard lights (this is how he 'waves' to me before he turns the corner).

I then got back into bed and fell back to sleep for an hour......

We got up and went into town to parentlink, it was really quiet there today for some reason - maybe the cold keeps Moms with little ones at home....

The craft activities were good today...one of them was painting snowmen pictures - but instead of paint they used shaving foam mixed with glue and glitter!! It is WONDERFUL - it dries all puffy :) Very cool, so we ran to Zellers afterwards and bought glue and shaving foam lol! I HAVE to do this craft at home :) I swear Sam could have spent all morning just painting with this lovely soft foamy mixture!

The other craft was decorating Christmas tree cut outs with sequins and fake snow :)

Circle time was all about germs and the importance of not sharing them - we sang songs and heard a story....then snack time was watermelon and crackers and apple juice....

After parentlink, we went to the mall and ran a few errands there....we stopped for lunch in the food court and a lady came up to us giving us an entry form for the Christmas draw to win a shopping spree! She also gave Sam and Abby two coins each to put in the wishing well :)

We grabbed a few groceries in Safeway before heading home!

As we drove onto our driveway, the icicles on the well were sparkling in the sunshine , so I came in and grabbed my camera and walked down to take some pictures....Sam and Abby were asleep in the car...thankfully we have a heated garage, so they were in there all snug...then I unloaded the car and tidied the kitchen and when I checked on them, Abigail was JUST waking up :) perfect timing!

Now the kids are home and have had their treat.....Laurie made me a nice cup of tea.....Chris ran the vacuum round the main floor for me and Susie is just seeing to the animals.....the rest of the afternoon we plan to relax - I am hoping to finish my book finally.

Lloyd doesn't finish work until 4:45pm today as he has a late meeting :( but as soon as he is done he is coming home to pick me up and we are off into town for date night :) actually its more of a child free night than a date night I think - we will grab dinner somewhere but we also have to run into the stereo store as he wants to look at speakers - this is what he wants for Christmas this year....speakers for the tv in the sitting room......I want to go to either the fabric store or the quilting store to get some fat quarters....probably the quilting store.....I was looking at fat quarters on Etsy last night and I could get some on there but I think I am too impatient to wait to get them!

Tomorrow I have ore errands to run....then tomorrow evening I am helping to decorate our community hall ready for the Christmas season - the craft sale is on Saturday and the party on Sunday, so we are decorating the tree and walls of the hall tomorrow night :)

Have a good evening everyone!! What are you all up to?

Our driveway in the snow and sun........



Ice, Ice Baby......




Some icicles hanging from our well this afternoon...yes its THAT cold ;)

Home sweet Wintry home.....


Nov 27, 2007

Count by twos and tie my shoes....

Just like Franklin.....

A has been learning to count by twos and today she counted to 100 in 2's all by herself with no mistakes........ :) so thats the first step of multiplication done :)

Creative Inspiration...

Want some ideas for crafts and hand made gifts and home decor?

itsacreativeworld.blogspot.com/

Plenty to keep you going on this amazing blog!

YES!!!

It's done, it's all paid for and the little snow mini album on Life As Lou's blog is MINE :) well, it will be once its off of display and after Christmas when it gets sent to me :) I am so thrilled - I think its gorgeous :)

I think Lou's work is gorgeous :) Just the kind of style I love but can't seem to duplicate :)

OMG!!!

I emailed Lou and asked if she had an Etsy store as I loved her snow mini album from her blog - she told me it was available but I could reserve it...its currently on display at her local scrapbook store so she can't ship it until after New Year....but if I want it, it's mine :)

I am so excited :)

Gingerbread houses.....



A making a foamy gingerbread house from a kit :)

Breakfast at Esso...

We went to the Esso for breakfast this morning.....we ended up sitting with this strange Grandma type lady who looked quite familiar...couldn't place her though until she told me her name was VAL!!!!!!!

Only joking :) But we hadn't managed to meet up with Val since before our Whistler trip so it was nice to finally get together for breakfast and catch up on news....Abigail was totally puzzled about the fact that Val doesn't have white hair - I guess she assumes that all Grandmas have to have white hair :)

Breakfast was lovely, Grace was FABULOUS with Sam as always!!!! Deserved every penny of her tip! And it was good to hear everything about Val and her family and all those little bits that don't get blogged about (Val has a blog but it's invite-only.......)

We have to do breakfast more often for sure!!!!! I miss it :) or maybe we should walk the indoor track instead of having brekky! lol!

snowfall..




This has pretty much been the view from my window all day.......yesterday it was -15 with a -30 windchill...today hasn't been much warmer! I postponed all my errands because I couldn't face taking Sam and Abby out of their car seats and putting them back in constantly in town....

snoring......


We found Abigail asleep on my big chair last night - about an hour after she was supposed to go to bed!!! She looked so lovely fast asleep there :)

Rhubarb Crumble.....


dessert last night was rhubarb crumble made from rhubarb from our garden......this is NOT the same as a crisp at ALL....

But I should have used more rhubarb......It ws two thirds deep with rhubarb when I put it in the oven, but the rhubarb looks like hardly anything at the bottom of the crumble...still, everyone cleared their plates :)

Susies letter to Santa......

Nov 25, 2007

My blue guy......





This is Sams favourite thing to do....at home or anywhere he can find blocks...he always builds the same thing - a rectangle of brick 'walls' that he then sits in....and then he uses a single block as a 'guy' and his favourite guy is his 'blue guy'.......if you give him a real plastic guy from any toy set then he will discard the real guy with a face and legs etc and just want his blue guy - his brick guy.....he likes this guy to drive his trucks and run about the place...he gives this brick guy voices and the guy often argues with the trucks.......this yellow truck he calls his 'garbage truck'.....

Sam will play for hours with this one truck, some bricks and his blue brick guy! Going all over the house on adventures.....and when we go out in the car he asks if he can take his 'blue guy' with him......

I think its so sweet and I love to listen to him...such an imagination :)

Brothers.....






Jasper and Cairo enjoying the view from the front porch......
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