Happy 40th!

September 28, 2016 by tam

I’ve been having some grief with uploading images for this post so I am a little late in finishing this one. As it turns out, apostrophes in file names is a bad thing. 🙂

Stephen just recently celebrated his 40th birthday! As tradition with birthdays we had a lovely morning breakfast at Cora’s and then a relaxing day just hanging out. Since Stephen had some pretty big plans the next morning he had a simple birthday cupcake to celebrate. blowing-out-candle Each time one of us has a birthday we take a family picture which usually takes quite some time because it’s just a bit of a challenge for us to be serious.We finally did manage one serious one.

That night was the full moon for September. It was a beautifully clear night with just a wisp of cloud. As soon as I took this picture more clouds rolled in as they do in a harbour town and hid the moon. It was so lovely while it lasted and I was happy to get a good shot!
Stephen was up early the next morning to run a marathon (thus the cupcake shown earlier). He trained hard for months oftentimes running early in the morning before work and in the evenings after the boys were in bed. Below is a picture that Stephen took when he arrived around 6:30am at the marathon location. When Stephen first showed me this I thought nothing much of it until I realized that was the moon in the sky on that clear and bright marathon morning.

And of course, I forgot my phone at home so I was not able to take a picture of Stephen crossing the finish line. It was quite a memorable moment though. The boys were super excited to see him cross and we were all amazed by anyone who could run that far (or even walk part of it as some did!) and so proud of him for keeping up the training and making it happen! That evening we had celebrated with yummy carrot cake. That is a very tired but happy Stephen!

Solstice Strawberry Moon!

June 21, 2016 by tam

We got together with some friends on Sunday for a Father’s Day/Solstice Strawberry Moon celebration. We had a great fire and great company. The boys played soccer with the dads and the girls sat and chatted and we all laughed a lot. Eventually, it was time to go home.On the way to the car we noticed the moon rising and had to take some photos which, of course, the kids didn’t mind because when pictures start happening they know they have much more time to play!

An hour later we were in the car and on our way. But not before I made one more stop to take a quick pic. Thank goodness for phone cameras because it’s better than no camera!

Our Solstice day was filled with Happy Solstice exclamations throughout the day and when we were leaving the house to visit a friend Xman found a hitchhiker on his shirt.

We let the wee one go wild and free. I just love how much the boys love even the little creatures and respect all life. ?

Later the evening with the sun still in the sky we continued the slow work of dismantling our deck. Our boys love this kind of ~~work~~ helping out which thrills me because it feels good to do it together and there is such a good feeling of accomplishment from hard work.

Long after the boys went to bed the moon finally showed herself. The boys were too tired to wait up because of a previous late night. They had gone to bed at 1am because Stephen wanted to play some Minecraft with the boys for Father’s Day. So after some fun playing – I am a slow learner but it’s fun! – they settled into bed at 1am and Stephen and I around 2!

I digress…So long after the boys went to bed the moon finally made her way above our trees. It was now after midnight and I almost didn’t grab my camera but knew I’d regret it since another full moon on Solstice wouldn’t happen for decades. She was as breathtaking as always and at least now I’d have a pic to show the boys. ?

I have to admit that there were moments on Father’s Day where great sadness entered my heart as I just lost my father in December. Many mixed feelings that will always stay with me and continue to teach me how to live and love. We did get a really nice video chat in with my step-father and mother, wishing him a Happy Father’s Day. ?

I hope you all had a wonderful Father’s Day and Solstice!! Many blessings.

Tamara

Shubie Park – new discoveries on the usual trails

June 9, 2016 by tam

We love Shubie Park! Yes, the location has a lot to do with it as it is less than a ten minute’s drive away. But every time we visit we find ourselves discovering something new. Or maybe the same things but in different ways. We often take the same trails and see the same animals but it always seems like a new experience. I love that after all of these years my boys still enjoy the paths and often veer off of them in search of new discoveries. They have great eyes for the little things and often spot the camouflaged damselfly or the tiniest slug on a rock. They still love racing sticks in the water, seeing them go in one side of a pipe and out the other. Feeding the squirrels is always a thrill and the woodpeckers never go unnoticed!

Wintery things

March 18, 2016 by tam

This winter has been rather mild for us here in Nova Scotia and although I am not complaining it does worry me. This is not regular winter weather for Canada. But yes, it has been cold enough to still wear our winter gear – and that’s my niece in the middle of this poster! My sister and family live across the ocean from us so this is as close as I get to my niece for now. 🙂 The boys thought it was pretty cool too. The days are getting longer and with the recent time change it is still light outside at 6:30. I try to not think about it actually being 5:30 ‘old time’. Hey, if this is the way for us to get up with the light and still have it light before bedtime I am all for it!

We haven’t had nearly the snow of last winter (of which I dreaded would happen again!) but we have had a few snowstorms and school closures and the like. This picture shows the clouds descending upon the harbour and the beginning of a storm. Gotta say that although I am not a fan of travel in this weather, I do love the way it looks. It’s my favourite thing about winter. I know the boys love all of the big flakes too! But they are also big fans of playing in the snow. After a storm they dug a hole just big enough to fit them both so they could hide from cars going by. They had initially been helping me shovel but the snow was heavy and digging in the snow was much more fun for them! And there is our huge front lawn! Ha! That’s what you get when you buy a house that is 100 years old this year: no front yard and no sidewalks – but a great view of the Halifax waterfront!And of course, with winter comes colds. We have been relatively lucky in the winter as the boys may be get a cold but nothing really bad. Below is what they like to call Ember Cidre. It’s like the Fire Cidre that I make based on Rosemary Gladstar’s recipe which is a sickness kicker for sure but is far too strong for the young ones. This recipe is similar and can be made same day. So, it not as hot as fire but it’s hot enough, thus the name Ember Cidre. 😉 Cute. It’s yummy too, with just a little kick!We never got sick of spotting green as the snow melted after each storm. We love our walks and spotting moss, licken and other various nature gifts is always a treat and a blessing for us. One of our favourite sites in winter is the Queen Anne’s Lace and the way it folds into itself as it prepares to overwinter and then seed. Squirrels! We love the squirrels at our local park and trail area. Always bringing nuts for them and seeds for the chickadees. Makes our walks that much more enjoyable too!As for now, Monday shall bring a whopping snowstorm! I see tobogganing in our near future – that is, if we don’t get snowed in! Ha!

throw back thursday – Pictou Lodge Resort

January 14, 2016 by tam

I have so many images that I have yet to edit and post but many of them are over a year old! I enjoy sharing our ‘goings-on’ on the blog because I love scrolling through and seeing what the year was like, what we did, where we went, and friends and family we spent time with. It’s all so wonderful for me!

I decided to create a Throw Back Thursday blog post. I am hoping this will give me incentive to edit all of those images!

Last July we made our yearly visit to Pictou Lodge Resort. We all love the resort and look forward to the next year’s visit before the current one is over!

There is so much family that comes along that there is always someone to chat with, play with or swim with! It’s a ton of fun for kids and adults alike!

Fun playing basketball with the cousins. The ladder toss game is the first things the boys run to. These hammocks are placed throughout the resort and we just love them. It’s the perfect spot to just chill and watch family play the games. The boys were really keen to try the new paddle boards at the resort. Instead of standing they decided to sit on the boards and use the kayak paddles to maneuver. I think they would have stayed on them all day if they could! A lot of swimming was had at the salt-water pool. We laugh every time we go to the pool because it’s most often busy with just our family. One year we took a family photo and there were 97 people! 97! Wow! For the first time ever we saw a blue heron during our visit! We saw it fly overhead when we first arrived and I was thrilled to see it stayed around long enough for me to take some pictures of it on the beach. I swear I did not saturate the greens in this one bit. Aren’t they amazing? Love that bird too! You just cannot go to the beach without skipping stones! Finding skipping stones is hard work! The boys are big into Nerf and so this cool piece of driftwood happened to make its way home with us. I think that particular stone may have too. Eventually you have so many stones and sticks around the house you forget where they came from! This fire pit was a new addition last year and we were all too eager to put it to the s’mores test! There’s always at least one marshmallow that catches on fire. I’m not sure it’s all by accident, either. 😉 These are the best vegan marshmallows. So so good!How often do you get to play checkers like this! If you go to the Pictou Lodge home page there is a video ad where you can see us playing checkers! We had a good laugh when a relative told us about it. His kids happened to be in the pool portion of the ad. Yes, there are a lot of us. 🙂
The sunsets. My goodness. This one is just a hint at what you get. They can be just amazing. On the Saturday night a hefty portion of family get together for a sing along complete with instruments. It is now the boys’ absolute favourite part of the weekend. Plus, they get to stay up super late!
These orb weavers were very cool – and very busy with their dinnertime ‘guests’. Goodnight Pictou Lodge. Until next year…

Happy New Year!

January 1, 2016 by tam

We had a wonderful day yesterday, a lovely Solstice and Christmas as well.

A dear friend of mine bought us this beeswax cancel for Solstice. Every year we say what we are thankful for and look back on last year’s wish list and make another. It just goes to show the power of intention because most of our wishes from last year came true and we hadn’t even looked at the list we made last year until this Solstice!

I finally got around to finishing my fire cider (all bottled and with a kick!) and doing the third round on my bee balm glycerine. I just love the colour that the glycerine is turning!I don’t do much baking. I actually hate baking. But I love this cookie press that my mother used to use to make us cookies as kids. It’s dear to my heart and quickly becoming our own tradition.

Christmas Eve is always an exciting time and never passes without reading The Night Before Christmas from this beautiful book! Christmas Day proved to be so mild that I was thrilled about not having socks on my feet! Snow is a beautiful thing but I gotta say, bare feet are pretty awesome too! There are always Christmas Crackers to pop! Oui Oui!The boys received a few games and we all had a great time with this one. Qwirkle rocks! Even our little Gypsy received a gift. *I think she likes it!* whispered*On the 27th we had a storm and the boys took no time in throwing on their layers and getting out there!Candy cane precision.We had a wonderful new year celebration just the four of us. The boys stayed up and we rang in the new year together with some Minecraft fireworks that L made. He even made seats for us to sit in to watch the display. I can barely build and they do this! We took a screen shot in front of the banner that Xman made. Here we are in our MC skin glory!Of course today we had to toast to a wonderful new year! The boys have sparkling peach apple juice and we have mimosas. Yum! I am all ready for January! I even painted a calendar for this month and plan on doing one for every month this year. They are sized to fit perfectly into my Leuchtturn1917. Love it! If you want to download a copy for yourself just hop on over to my art blog! Here’s to a wonderful 2016 and more posting! 🙂

Tam

Hello! It’s been too long!

November 20, 2015 by tam

Yes, I see the last time I posted over here was in July. My goodness!

Truth is that I hate editing photos and I would rather being doing other things. But, one of the main reason I have this blog is for family that lives in other places and for us, as a keepsake. So today I grabbed some photos from the past month to show what we have been up to.

I have a bunch of photos to edit from our summer vacation but they are on my big camera (my real camera as I call it!) and it’s just a matter of sitting down and editing. It’s always hard when you try to edit your own pics and decide what to show when you want to show it all! Maybe later this week–it’s only been four months after all!

We got back into the swing of lessons and some winter prep with herbal concoctions. Plus I got some time to do a bit of other things with the boys and for myself.

There are a lot of photos:

Busy with herbs. Tis the season!Love our sunsets! Happy!The season for knitting!We have spent many a day outside enjoying the fall weather.Pretzel making!The Lunar Eclipse was a big deal for us. The boys stayed up late to watch. Totally worth it!
The moon the morning after the eclipse.Lessons!More fun outside.Love all of the colours!Trying to catch the leaves as they fall.
Chipmunk!
Feeding the chickadees is a favourite pastime of ours. It never gets old!We love the hemlocks at our local park. So big and beautiful!We went to a friend’s house and picked cranberries in her back yard! How cool is that! Thanks, Dawn! xx Love Dawn’s yard. There is always many a treasure to be found.My bit of time to make some fun art. (more on my blog)Birthday Lego making together. 🙂New socks!More outdoor fun!Halloween fun!Splatoon Inklings! I had to take a quick pic as they rushed from house to house!Brains! Who doesn’t love Pop Rocks?!Weekday mornings. Someone always end up getting rolled up in the yoga mat – yoga sushi!Minecraft Lego table making!It’s always a lot of fun outside. The boys loved raking the leaves and even went out to do it of their own accord. This may be why…it’s fun to bag them…or fun to play with the bag!They also decided to whittle the hammers they made a while ago so that the handles were rounds and then filed smooth. Love this stuff.With all the leaves we collected I decided to frame them. I love how they look. Nighttimes consist of games of all kinds. 🙂Home made bread. Oh man, that’s good.
Eek! The Eyes of Cthulhu!One of our bridges is being completely redone without closing it down. Amazing, right? He loves tamari almonds and loves making them almost as much!
These are a couple of big camera pics – as in the real thing and not my phone. Love these guys.

Hope you’ve had just as wonderful a fall season as we have. Yesterday we got our first taste of snow. It was a quick one and nothing stayed on the ground but still exciting and beautiful.

Our week in review | July 11 pt2

July 12, 2015 by tam

Yesterday we decided to take a morning hike along the Salt Marsh Trail. The trail extends for many kilometres and there are many parking areas along the trail depending on where you want to hike. We decided to make it a short walk as we ended up getting out just before noon and it was already hot.

It was a beautiful walk and I am glad that I brought my DSLR to take some photographs. The quality far, far outweighs my handy phone or even point and shoot. I get lazy though, some days and want to travel light. The camera backpack made the walk that much hotter but it was worth it.

This part of the trail consisted of mostly wooded areas so we super sprayed on the diy bug deterrent. X-man loves the ferns and so do I so I needed to take a quick pic of them all gathered together. So pretty.
At one point in the trail the woods open up and you see Cole Harbour. What a beautiful site. I asked the boys to hold back so I could take this shot. I love all of the wildflowers in our area, from the buttercups and horse vetch to the lupins (now fading) and daisies. Plus, the little islands that are scattered about our province as so lovely. We happened upon these hug dandelions – at least that what I figure they were but the seed pods were as big as the one of the boys’ fists! Love spotting the wild irises!

It was a great week that ended nicely with our walk. We were happy to head back, though, to the coolness of our home because the heat and bugs were getting to be too much. The rest of the day was spent tending to the garden, drawing and watching a movie.

What was your week like? 🙂

Our week in review | July 4

July 5, 2015 by tam

Stephen was waiting for his new Merrill running shoes. He got a hole in the sole early on and Merrill helped him into a new pair – awesome customer service! He was like a child waiting for Christmas day: he kept checking the tracking on the package and when the day came for them to arrive he was looking out the window more often than not in hopes of seeing Joyce, our postal deliverer (she’s awesome!). When Joyce did arrive she joked with him saying she expected to see him in a moment running in his shoes on the next street over!

Arriving a Cleveland Beach with some friends. The best sunscreen. 😉
Okay, so Xman and I found this mushroom and it’s for sure the best find in a long time! Look how big it is! On returning home I found it in our mushroom book as being a fly agaric, it’s poisonous/hallucinogenic. How ironic since I had commented on it being a very Alice in Wonderland ‘shroom that the caterpillar would love! 😉 Seriously, the coolest! I love the rocks, the seaweed, the coral, the shells and more. Always good finds at Cleveland Beach. …and good friends make it even better! 🙂 <3 Dawn and L found this awesome jellyfish on the beach. They are called comb jellies or Sea Gooseberries. I found an interesting article here about them here. When we first made our way to the beach we all had on sweaters or hoodies but once there the sky opened and the weather was beautiful. F found a crab with eggs. Geez she find the coolest things!Fun in the water!
Saying goodbye to the mushroom. It was like a beacon along the path. Thank you, Mushroom! Another morning, making the most of the weather: enjoying a bit of breakfast with my basket of things and my bullet journal while listening to the birds sing. At one point I got up to survey the garden and saw a spider’s web alight in a neighbour’s tree. At another angle I wouldn’t have seen it!

Car wash!Fun with Dixie Cups!

The boys are getting used to their new bikes and the best place near us (since we live on a narrow street with rushing cars!) is the nearby parking lot. The day went from sun to rain quickly but the boys were having too much fun to stop and the rain was warm. The pavement had been hot from the day’s sun so when the rain came it started to condensate on contact. Very cool! My witchy Willow ordered from the local comic book store. The boys love Lumberjanes so we are in there on a regular basis. If you haven’t heard of this comic book series you should check it out. It’s great for kids (I laugh my head off!) and all about the girls! We visited a friend at work and the boys got to test out a demo toy to see how well they could understand the directions and construct it before it went out to stores. Very cool stuff! Plus, she showed us their cool 3-D printer! A relaxing evening at home. Love. Happy Canada Day fireworks! It’s hard to see but just to the left of the fireworks is a white dot in the sky – that’s Jupiter. Venus is hiding behind it all. Some hopscotch fun at the local ToysRUs… …a little Pikachu drawing…

…and more hopscotch.

We had a great week and we hope you did too! Again, if you’d like to share post your link in the comments!

Here’s to the week ahead! 🙂

Emerald Falls

June 4, 2015 by tam

Yesterday we got a chance to visit a trail we have heard about from a friend many times and seen some pretty cool photos as well. The weather has always been the kicker so myself and the boys were excited to get a chance to explore here.

I have posted a lot of pictures because I had a hard time choosing what with such wonderful new life on the forest floor and other places!

It was quite a steep trek up but the sound of the rushing water made us want to make it to the top!

Xman was enjoying poking at the soapy froth – it was pretty cool, I have to say.
Here is a bit of it dried up on a stick overhanging the water. So glad that I brought my macro lens along! My camera bag was heavy but it was worth it – and a good workout up the hill. 🙂

A miniature first filled with a life of its own! The boys love seeing the evidence of beetles. It’s not often I get a photo of myself with my boys! Thanks, Dawn! 😉 The walk down was somewhat tricky in spots but hand-holding made it that much easier. I just love the little fiddleheads! Dawn spotted this spotted gall – she has an eye for them – and the oaks. 😉 …and this wing…from a June beetle. Poor dude. Love the droplets! This guy was superbusy and supertiny! and just would not take the time to pose for a portrait. Puddles do not ever go unnoticed – so fun! It’s a whole other world out there that amazes me in so, so many ways. Great beauty and wonder.