Frosty the Snowman

Considering THIS ...... is the view from my balcony, Frosty the Snowman would be an appropriate ear worm. However, the song that's been running through my head all day ... damn CBC Radio and Daybreak North! ... is I'll Be There With Bells On by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers. Most annoying!

Seriously though ... 'tis the season! Our office has been busy receiving donations for our Christmas Hampers program, and I find myself brought to tears by the generosity of this community. Things like this ...... handmade mini Christmas stockings for our Meals on Wheels clients ... really brings the message home that this is a CARING community! I guess that's why I stuck around here after finishing my degree even though I had only planned on a brief two-year visit.

So how was YOUR weekend?

I took myself shopping on Friday night ... NOT a good thing to do this time of year, but I was on a mission. First, I wanted some new chair pads for the dining room chairs ...

... RED of course. Well, actually more of a burgundy. Suede. From Jysk (the local equivalent of Ikea), naturally. I also bought myself a bookcase and these three little cutesie moose (mooses? sometimes English baffles me) ...... because they are entertaining and one can never have too many candle holders.

On Saturday, I put together my new bookcase (haven't got to unpacking books yet) ...... which pretty much matches the Jysk china cabinet ...... that I bought and put together last summer. It's a good place from which Plum Blossom (the ceramic cat) can keep an eye on things. (The weird object sprouting upright branches on the left is a lamp ... what can I say? ... it was a housewarming gift!) Little by little, I'm turning this place into home instead of poor-student-with-no-belongings-digs! I've even got things on the walls, such as these little shelves ...

In my last couple of spaces, I never got around to putting things on the walls. I guess I knew I wasn't going to stay there very long.

One thing I miss in this place is lack of a kitchen window. Couldn't very well have a kitchen window in an apartment block ... it would look into the neighbour's bathroom, and ... well ... NO THANKS! On Sunday, I put up a little faux kitchen curtain ...

... over my sink. It's on one of those spring rods so it doesn't require screws or nails in the cupboards. It gives me the feeling of a country kitchen, and I can wash dishes and let my imagination conjure up country fields on the other side of my illusionary window. Don't laugh! It works!

Funny story ... I moved into this apartment last July, and have moved my sewing machine back and forth between livingroom, bedroom, dining room, back to bedroom, back to livingroom, etc. No corner in the place felt right for it! Eventually, I settled for a spot under my bedroom window ... which I'm now seriously regretting as I keep my bedroom window open a bit year round, even in minus twenty weather, and now it's too COLD to sit and sew under my bedroom window!

That's NOT the funny part of the story (but you can laugh if you want)! In the process of all that moving back and forth, I lost the foot pedal for my sewing machine! I knew perfectly well that it was SOMEWHERE in this apartment, that I had put it somewhere perfectly SAFE ... I just couldn't figure out where! So I sewed my little faux kitchen curtain BY HAND. Really not such a big deal ... a quick hem on both sides, a rod pocket on the top, and a nice deep hem along the bottom. Took all of half an hour. Would have taken five minutes or less had I been able to find the foot pedal for my sewing machine!

Sunday evening, I checked the weather report (minus 18) and decided I'd better dig a winter hat out for the next morning's commute to work. Guess what I found hanging right inside my storage room ... in a plastic bag marked SEWING MACHINE PARTS - DO NOT THROW OUT! Yes, the missing foot pedal! It was certainly safe!

My last little burst of creativity on Sunday was arranging a few pine cones and cinnamon sticks in this glass bowl for the little half-table in my entrance hallway ...

... the cinnamon smells so nice and homey when you walk in!

WAIT A DING DANG MINUTE!!!

WHO PUT THOSE CHRISTMAS BALLS IN THE BOWL???

finished coffee table and christmas decorating

Our receptionist dragged me out to the Dollar Store today. She said we needed Christmas decorations for our office. I'm pretty sure we have BOXES of the stuff in our back room storage closet, but she was adamant, and we must keep our receptionist happy (she's the real brains of our office operation most days ... but don't tell her I said so)!

Did you know Dollar Stores are positively EVIL places? They are full of cheap stuff ... which is good 'cuz everyone likes a bargain ... but is bad 'cuz all that cheap stuff does naughty things to everyone's spontaneous purchasing desires. Well, maybe everyone but me. I came away with one package of paper baking cups because I needed them. I kept thinking about all those poor foreign factory workers being paid pennies or less to make all that cheap stuff. It was interesting to note the source of a couple of birthday gifts I received this year though.

The Dollar Store did NOT do anything to improve my festive spirit. I did do my Christmas decorating this evening ... but I had ALREADY planned to do so. Honest!

Before I share my Christmas decorating evening with y'all, I want to update you on my new / old coffee table. The project started like this ...... painting 4 inch squares / diamonds on its surface. I painted three coats on each square / diamond. Once they were completely dry, I added one final THIN coat over all resulting in ...... very subtle wood-grained squares / diamonds between the solid red squares / diamonds. Here's the overall picture ...

... what do you think? 'Scuse the messy knitting basket on the right. And the crayon cup on the floor at the left arm of the sofa (where Little Madam C. left it). Okay, so a red coffee table isn't everyone's cup of tea. Remember that I live in a rented apartment with hohum eggshell white walls and poop brown carpets that I cannot change!

Speaking of tea ... and I digress for a moment ... I'm in LOVE! I found that most fabulous ...

... Tea Chai Spice Mix in our local SaveOn (@ Spruceland in case you're in PG ... the Parkwood SaveOn doesn't carry it). Some years ago, I took a Punjabi language course at UBC and was introduced to "authentic" Tea Chai. Since then, I've tried dozens of different recipes and spice mixes and none of them measured up to that delightful first tasting. THIS spice mix does! It's packaged in Surrey BC and is exactly the right blend of spices and heat and not sweet. You use about 4 teaspoons of spice mix to a mug of boiled water along with a regular black tea bag. I add a dollop of cream because I like it creamy. And I stir it with a cinnamon stick just because.

On to my Christmas decorating preparations this evening. First, I slipped into something comfy to wear ...

... flannel jammies with snow people and snowflakes on them (don't laugh at my crooked toes please). Then a little mood music ...

... Okay, the choices were pretty limited here as this is the ONLY Christmas CD I own. Then a little gingerbread scented oil ...

... to put visions of sugar plums or and yummy festive baking smells in my head (without the calories). Of course, I also had a little something festive to wet my whistle ...

... no, that is NOT a huge glass, it's a very tiny bottle! Oh, and finally, something sweet ... just because ...

... WAIT A MINUTE! I SEE EMPTY SPACES! WHO'S BEEN SAMPLING THE FERRERO ROCHER AHEAD OF ME?!?!?!?!?

With the appropriate preparations in place, I was ready to proceed. Plum Blossom (the ceramic cat) climbed up onto the castle top of my loom for a good view of the proceedings ...

I didn't take pictures of the actual decorating, but here's the results:

No, not the red milking stool. No, not the spindly-legged red moose ... Maeve the Moose lives there year-round. And not the Good Fortune Buddha on the milking stool. Here, I'll show you a little closer ...

... do you see it now? No? I'll move in REALLY close with my camera ... just a minute ... here it is ...

... my Christmas decoration!

Phew! I'm plum tuckered out after all that decorating! I think I'll treat myself to another wee glass of Bailey's and call it an evening. Deck the Halls, y'all!

Mining the Soul

I've developed a habit in recent years of treating myself to a concert sometime in November. A birthday present for myself, if you will. The most memorable concert to date was Julio Iglesias in 2006. Be still my beating heart!Tonight, I went to see Rita MacNeil and The Men of the Deeps. It was memorable too.Rita MacNeil is about four feet nothing tall, wears very sensible shoes, and is both polite and soft-spoken. She walked onto the stage at 7:00 pm precisely without any build up or announcement. The set was very simple ... a half dozen lighted Christmas trees and a comfy chair centre stage. I thought the sound system was a little off ... kind of echo-ish ... but maybe it was because I was sitting 5 rows away from centre stage. Rita MacNeil's talent really shone when she did a couple of old gospel songs ... Peace in the Valley for one. Made me wish my Dad was there just to hear that one.To be perfectly honest, I probably would not have paid to just see Rita MacNeil. These are the dudes I really wanted to see ... The Men of the Deeps, the Coal Miners. I have a special soft spot in my heart for underground miners and I've been fascinated by this particular choir since ... I don't know, thirty years or so. They marched through the darkened arena and onto the stage with their miners' lamps on as Rita MacNeil sang. It was magical. Rita left the stage and they did a few numbers as well as a story and a poem on their own, and I was totally impressed. They were great!

After the intermission, Rita came back and did a few more songs with them, including one of my favorites, Emigrant Eyes.

I had the amazing experience of going 9.4 kilometers underground once. When the locomotive that we traveled on was shut down, the ONLY sound was water dripping and our own breathing, and the ONLY light was our miners lamps. A person cannot comprehend the true meaning of DARKNESS until that kind of experience. Consequently, the song Working Man has a very profound effect on me. (In other words, it makes me cry like a baby every damned time I hear it!)

Fortunately for me, they saved Working Man for their final encore. In case you've never experienced Working Man, check out YouTube. There are several videos of Rita and the coal miners doing this song together. Hang in there until you see the miners turn on their lamps.

In other news, I have a new (old) coffee table. It's not the beautiful beetle-kill pine wood that I wanted (coveted), but it's price was right. I decided to "DO SOMETHING" unique with it. Stay tuned ... I think it's looking pretty good.

Isn't it time for a holiday yet?

The past couple of weeks have been REALLY busy for me at work ... several major projects in the works and thus crucial grant proposals to write and multiple meetings to attend. One of our important community contacts walked into my office this past week, and for the life of me I couldn't imagine which project she was there to discuss! She must have wondered why I looked at her with such a blank duh expression. Throw in our Annual General Meeting along with the kick off of our annual Christmas Hampers Campaign and I feel like I'm doing this ...

... and ... YIKES! ... not very well! How do I know this, y'all ask? Because when I sit down for a few minutes I FALL ASLEEP! My body has developed its very own special way of addressing stress. Oh, and I kill alarm clocks ... yes, clockS plural ... they ring and I throw them and smash them into pieces without every waking up. It's most annoying! Especially when I have this book ...

... for 7 days! It was on the express shelves at our Public Library and I thought sure, no problem, I'll just whip through it over the weekend. Nyet. Nope. Didn't happen. (The naps were refreshing though.) Now I have four choices:

1. return the book unfinished and never know what happens in the end.
2. cheat and read the last few pages quick before returning the book.
3. keep the book and pay $1 per day late charges until I'm finished.
4. suck it up and buy the book so I can read it at my leisure.

Any advice????

I did deliberately book last Friday night off to attend our local Studio Fair, the BIG craft fair of the season in PG. It's the only craft fair I've attended so far, and will probably be the last one for this year too. I bought these ...

... a $6 pair of natural bees wax candles. They smell delicious. I REALLY wanted to buy a coffee table made by a local woodworker from beetle-killed pine.

In case y'all don't know, northwest Canada has been experiencing a very serious epidemic of Mountain Pine Beetle which is killing off pretty much every pine tree around. It's devastating the commercial lumber industry. Beetle-killed wood from those pine trees has a distinctive denim blue stain from whatever chemical process that happens as its being killed by the beetle. While the wood is useless for commercial export, some local entrepreneurs are cashing in on it and making small items that feature the blue stain. And it's GORGEOUS!

I've been thinking about buying a coffee table, and would love to own some pine-beetle wood. These felted coasters ...

... would look fab on it! But I wasn't willing to pay the craft fair price. Instead, I took the guy's business card and will call him after the holidays to see if I can negotiate a more reasonable price.

Studio Fair reminded me that I haven't been adequately pursuing the creative things that nourish my soul ... so many projects and so little time! I really need to address this problem.

On a brighter note, look what I discovered this week ...

... one of my Christmas cacti has opened its first flower. It has quite a few buds so will be a really pretty show in a few more weeks.

This and that

It rained today. And I do mean RAINED! I could see the storm coming, and got about this close to the bus stop after work before the dam broke and I got SOAKED ...It was much nicer observing the storm from the dry comfort of my balcony after I got home! The skies were so dark in every direction around the city. Here's the view from my balcony:Just after I took this picture (around 5:30 pm) there was a spectacular KABOOM! and a glorious flash of lightening. I love storms. However, I wasn't quite fast enough to catch a picture of the lightening. While out on my balcony, I noticed my Scarlet Runner Beans have finally started to make flowers ...... probably just in time for the first frost! I hope the hummingbirds get to enjoy them for a while first. My two little Christmas Cacti are just covered with new growth ...Living out on the balcony for the past two months has certainly been good for their health! I know I have certainly enjoyed sitting out on my balcony with my morning tea and again at the end of the day. Not today, though. It was too windy, and I was hungry. Heading into the kitchen, I snapped a picture of one of these quilted placemats ...I can't remember if I've posted a picture of one of them before or not. And I'm too lazy to look back at previous posts to see. Or perhaps I was too hungry! I needed some quick hot comfort food to get warmed up after getting soaked in the rain on the way home, so I fried up some perogies ...And heated up some corn ...Alas, it was frozen niblets, not even this year's fresh corn. But it really hit the spot today! After I ate supper, I thought I would take a couple of pictures of stuff around the apartment, such as this new little table in my entrance hallway ...See the little "knight in shining armor" book end? One of my wacky friends decided I needed a knight in shining armor and presented me with that half of a set of book ends for Christmas several years ago. Sir Knight has a working thermometer in his shield. Very handy! I thought a single book end looked a bit silly without a book, so I put that mini-book beside it. It's a peverse sense of humor thing. Last weekend I put up these little decorator cubes ...That's officially TWO sets of things on my walls now. This is a record for me. Usually I move into a place and forget all about putting stuff on the walls until someone asks why my walls are so bare! I figured this was a safe place to put my eagle feather and sage bundle, both of which are very special to me. Oh, I also found a bedside lamp for the enormous sum of $10 at Jysk (like Ikea) ...It's the first lamp I've ever had where the lightbulb sticks up ABOVE the lamp shade. Is that normal? I've had a difficult time figuring out how to arrange my bedroom. I tried several possible layouts, and kept waking up in the morning with my head at the foot of my bed, or all of me lying sideways across my bed. Someone suggested I would continue to have restless sleeps until I arranged my bedroom furniture so that my head was pointed toward Mecca. (I want to point out that I totally do not intend any disrespect for any particular belief system here.) Apparently, EAST is the appropriate direction to aim my head for restful sleep ...Fernando the well-worn teddy bear doesn't really care which direction his head is pointed.He sleeps just fine every night. What with all that bedroom furniture moving happening, my poor Little Brother Sewing Machine got moved out of, back into, out of, and back into my bedroom numerous times. Now that the bedroom layout has been resolved, my sewing machine has a sunny (when the curtains are open) permanent corner to live in ...Look! I even hung up my thread holder, and organized all my thread spools on it! So far, Stanley the Button Jar has not expressed an opinion about this new location.Someone (not mentioning any names, of course, L.!) expressed the opinion that my bedroom was not "girly" enough. Excuse me? There is PINK in the quilt on my bed! There's a lovely red feather boa ... don't ask! ... hanging over my dresser! SOMEONE needs to re-evaluate the definition of "girly"! Mm hmm. The opinion came with this sign ...which is apparently supposed to solve the problem. Yup. Hanging a pink sign with the word "princess" on it makes me more feminine. Go figure! Speaking of feminine, I have made the acquaintance of a couple of great guys down the hall in my apartment building, and we had a delightful little Scrabble soiree earlier this week. I made some of this ... Fig and Cheese Spread ... for the occasion ...

Sorry about the out-of-focus picture. A considerable quantity of wine was consumed prior to taking this picture. Sorry I can't share a picture of the actual food. First, we were too busy drinking wine and playing Scrabble to pause for photos, and second, we ate it all! It was really good! Here's the recipe:

8 to 10 dried figs, quartered
1 tablespoon butter
1 large onion, very thinly sliced
1 teaspoon fresh thyme, snipped finely
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 pkg soft goat cheese

Put figs in a small saucepan, cover with water, and simmer 5 minutes or so, or until softened. Drain and cool. Saute onion in butter in a skillet until golden brown. Stir in cooled figs and thyme. Cook and stir for about 2 minutes, then add balsamic vinegar and cook another couple of minutes until figs and onions are glazed. Spoon glazed figs and onions over goat cheese and pass the crackers.

We decided Philly cream cheese could be substituted if you're squeamish about eating chevre, but we all really enjoyed the chevre. It was excellent with both red and white wine, and would probably even taste delightful with beer. Speaking of drinks, do you have one of these stainless steel water bottles?

If you don't, you NEED one before next summer! I've been using this little beauty for several months now. I just fill it up with cold tap water, and it STAYS COLD all day! Beats the heck out of buying bottled water and putting all that plastic into the garbage. Well, that's about all of the "this and that" I can think of for now. I'll close by sharing this thought ...