crouching in the woods

Last night we were to be found crouching in the woods midst the cobwebs and porcupine poop watching the male Grouse court his female with a VERY impressive drumming rendition :)

We could hear his drumming from our house yet the grouse was two woods away!!! Poor Susie thought it was someone trying to start up their quad!!!

We're going to go back up tonight with the video camera to try and catch him on camera :)

And just for Tanya we wil try can catch those horny frogs in action too :)

Oh the things those horny boys do to get us ladies interested ;)

Christie!

I saw your hospital room friend yesterday - my old neighbour........ :) I passed on your phone number - told her you'd LOVE to hear from her :)

hahahahahahahha :)

OMG see - I hadn't seen her for almost three years and then you mention her and then I see her :)

I passed on your best wishes ;)

Bags of bags!!!

A quick thank you to those of you who have been posting pictures of your LOVELY shopping bags :)

I've spotted them on Monicas blog AND on Susans blog so far :)

If you've blogged a picture of your lovely reusable bags then please do let us know :) so we can all hop on over to your blog to be nosy and check out your bags you old bags ;)

lol!

I've been busy painting my hives and now I'm off to make my gorgeous hubby a cup of tea and bath my stinky Sam who has been out playing in the mud :)

Goodnight :)

Hottie swap atc's

Tess don't look ;)

Be the change!

What would your board say? What would your message to the world be?

My goal for labour day

news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0902_030902_plasticbags.html

Gum is banned in my house. Chewing gum that is. It has been for a few years - This is because a few years ago some children (who shall remain nameless) came into my home and stuck gum underneath my computer desk.

So gum is now banned from my house. My children know they can chew gum elsewhere but they must get rid of it before coming back onto my property (luckily we have a large garbage can at the end of our driveway which works well for this reason)

So, with this in mind, I plan to ban something else from this house by labour day weekend. Labour day weekend - for those of you in the UK is the first weekend in September (or there abouts anyway - I think its something like the first Monday in September).

Anyway, as of Labour Day weekend, plastic grocery bags will not be allowed in my house. That gives me the Summer to completely get rid of them. We have been doing really well and moving away from them for a while now - we have stocked up with quite a large supply of resusable bags from all kinds of stores for months - we keep a stock of them in both vehicles as well as in the house and garage, so we will always have some. I've even passed some on to friends in the hopes they will use them :)

My Mom in the UK and I have started swapping reusable bags too - she has some of the Sobeys bags over in the UK now :) She likes that they have pockets inside for bottles :)

There seems to be times that I STILL end up with those dreaded plastic bags Grrrrr but more times than not now I am quick enough to say 'I don't need a bag thank you' and I get the item and put it in my own reusable bag - and yes - it DOES feel good :)

Lloyd was the difficult one to persuade - he didn't like milk spilling in his car - so I have him keep bags in his trunk so he can put the milk in a bag there and he doesn't have to worry :)

It won't be long before more and more cities and States and Provinces and countries will BAN outright the use of those nasty dangerous ugly disgusting plastic grocery bags and then I won't have to worry about them - but for now I'm giving it until labour day before they are banned outright from entering my property!!!!

:)

How about you?

Are you using reusable bags yet? Do you take them with you everywhere? How big is your collection now? Which is your favourite reusable bag???

Hey - take a picture of your favourite reusable bag and either blog it on your own blog and post a link to it here OR send me a picture of your favourite reusable bag and I will blog the picture for you :) LETS SEE YOUR BAG :)

Piccy above shows some of the bags I keep up in my closet - the blue bag is one that Susie picked out of the tresure box at school for me - they have a treasure box at school for if they are good and they can pick a prize and she picked that for me :) I t folds up into a little pocket sized pouch - it has my library books in it!

Oh and check out the new link at the bottom of my list of links!!! :)

Some of the cookies!!

Hhhmmmm I think we'll call the top one Charlie as its shaped like our pot bellied pig Charlie!

The middle one I think we will call 'Don't play with chain saws'!!!!! A lesson for us all :)

Baking cookies!

Our plans changed this afternoon as the gas board had to come over and do some work here in preparation for our renovations that start next week. So we threw together some sugar cookie dough and A and S made some cookies! Here they are cutting the dough and tasting the cookies afterwards :)

Marthas cookie contest

contributors.marthastewart.com/portal/contestGallery/marthasfavoritecookie


Martha is having a cookie contest at the moment - you can see some of the contest entries at the link above - some are STUNNING!!! The other week she had a cupcake contest and the entries were equally stunning. Today we decided to bake some cookies to enter!! Sam and Abigail baked ours and you can see our entries over on our homeschooling blog - I think you'll agree that our cookies are AMAZING :)

The painted ladies larvae - day 3

These pictures were taken yesterday - day 3 for us having them. We put them into their own little pots (well, two to a pot) with 1cm of food and we cleaned the pots of poop and webbing. I took the pictures to show you what the webbing and poop (black dots) look like though.

We can't believe how much they have grown already!!!! Several millimetres already!!!

Goodnight all :)

Hahahahaha keep on guessing guys ;)

Chris cooked dinner for the kidlets tonight :) Lloyd and I went into town - the plan was to stroll around the farmers market which I thought was still at the Salisbury garden centre - but I guess it isn't (my bad!) but instead we had supper at Timmys (yummy chicken and rice soup 1/2 a 12 grain bagel and a coffee) then we went to the garden centre and strolled around there for ages.....actually it was a lovely evening......just strolling round the garden centre together talking about our plans for the bees, the garden, the flowers, the vegetables, the porch...the land. the deck furniture etc etc.....and Lloyd being funny about listening in to the class that was taking place there.

I did buy a new hummingbird feeder ready for the weekend :) And we bought a little watering can for Sammy and a big one for Lloyd - one that I can paint little bees on :) Not that I'm obsessed or anything of course ;)

Guess what I am - part 3

Hmmmmmm Can you guess what we are?????????
;)

I BET you can't ;)

So sad!

Scrappers Haven is closing down!!!

I'm so sad!!!

I mean, I'm so happy that its because Donna is moving on to her PhD and to better things....but I'm so sad that SH won't be there any more!!! It's such a nice friendly crowd of girls - I've met some lovely friends through there!! We were hoping to get together for a weekend crop retreat! I loved the monthly online crops - even if I didn't get much actual scrapbooking done - the chatting was fun :)

Here is the Email I woke up to this morning :(

Well ladies it is with a heavy heart that I am posting this announcement.

I was accepted into a Ph.D program starting in July and this is something I have wanted to do for myself for a very long time and I also want to do it right. I need to have the time to commit to doing my doctorate work so we have decided to close Scrapper's Haven, because I know I cannot do it all.

What does this all mean, it means as of June 30 we will be closed. Starting tomorrow we will start selling off inventory at discounted prices. You can use your e-vouchers if you have some, but we will not be issuing any new ones. We will continue with the Iron Chef contest but there will be no more contest, online crops or newsletters... sorry.

The close out sale will be as follows

- week of May 1 - May 7 - 30% off
- week of May 8 - May 14 - 35% off
- week of May 15 - May 21 - 40% off
- week of May 22 - May 28 - 45% off
- week of May 29 - June 4 - 50% off
- week of June 5 - June 11 - 55% off
- week of June 12 - June 18 - 60% off
- week of June 19 - June 25 - 65% off
- week of June 26 - June 30 - 70% off

Discount coupon codes will be listed on the main page of the store and on the website.
You truly have appreciated your patronage of the last 4 years.

www.scrappershaven.ca

Another warm day :)

20c today I think. Sam had preschool this afternoon so Abigail and I spent the afternoon at the park. I met my friend Samantha there for a while and caught up with all her news.

Abigail met a friend and had a blast playing on the climbing frames and I also got some studying done which was good :)

After collecting Sam from class we raced over to Holy Spirit to get Laurie and his friend form their badminton tournament. So very glad my children don't go to that school - what a nightmare that place is every afternoon with traffic!!! It made me glad my children go to a quiet rural school!!!

Headed home and got back not long before Lloyd. My Beekeeping for Dummies book arrived in the mail which was good. We dropped Lauries friend home.

We tidied up in the yard a little and Lloyd worked on the vegetable garden - the black dirt arrives on Thursday - 5 truck loads of it!!!! Woohoo!!! All ready for the weekend!!!

Tonight we had the first thunder storm of the year :) that was nice :)

Lloyd barbecued again which was also nice :)

Lloyd and I just washed all the floors and now we are going to bed - yes at 8:30pm :) early night to read and relax. We were laughing and sayingw e wondered what people would think if we were to video us washing the floors together and blog it - would you all think the way we do it together is crazy...we have this method you see and its probably quite different to the way most people wash their floors.....

If we were Jon and Kate and were filmed all the time what would people make of us....

We were asked once to be filmed as a homeschool family for a year. A tv show were looking for a Canadian family to film for a year. We changed our minds in the end. I wonder what people would make of us if they were flies on our walls all the time lol! I'm not much different to how I am on my blog lol. Not really. Am I Val? lol!

Hhhmmmmm Charlie has eaten everything we gave her and left the tortilla licked clean on the porch...she liked the hummus and coleslaw and burger and everything else...just left the wholewheat tortilla!!!! GREAT!!!! now I have to go out and get it :(

Never a dull moment here ;)

Goodnight all :)

Fairy Door!

image1.etsy.com/il_fullxfull.25274057.jpg

I ordered my Mom a little gift for Mothers Day at the weekend and the Etsy seller was going to mail it yesterday. I called my Mom this morning to say that it was on it's way and to not open it until May 11th - as it was for Mothering Sunday!

Too late - it arrived today!!! How fast is that for service???? Wow!! My Mom had already opened it and loved it :) It's a Fairy Door :) or Fairy Portal :) This one belongs to a fairy who has gone away on holiday!

Anyway - you can place them in the garden or by your baseboard/ skirting board and you can use them to entice fairies into your home! You can also use them to entice the tooth fairy into your home to get your childrens teeth!!

You can find plenty of them online at my favourite website etsy.com!!!

I hope the link above works to see the picture!! It's just 15cm tall :)