After the last week of COLD, COLD Christmas week weather, I was longing to jump ship and head right back to Palm Springs! It was hard to believe that we were lounging in deck chairs one day and freezing our butts off the next. Christmas was sooooo COLD! This year, we opted out of our huge seafood feast and BBQ'd for Christmas Eve instead. It was nice to have a home cooked meal for a change (did I really just say that??). After eating out, three meals a day for the entire vacation, we were longing for some of our own comfort food. Everyone made it for Christmas Eve and we opened a few gifts, had a few drinks, ate a lot of food and enjoyed Mom's homemade candy and chocolates. Christmas Day, we ate more, drank more and totally over did everything! So, on Boxing Day, I headed to the gym, with Megan, for "Turkey Buster". It was three hours of sweat and pain, but boy did I ever feel good afterwords. I did Zumba, Spin Class, Ripped Core, and then Yoga. By the time that I was done, I felt great! The strain of carrying my purse around for a week on vacation had started the whole neck pain thing up again and the Yoga was just the right thing to straighten it up. I should have known that a little thing like a purse was enough set things off, even lightening the contents of my purse didn't help, so I came home with a pain in the neck that even Simone could not diminish after a two hour massage. I didn't really want to start doing inventory right after Christmas, but we had to give up a couple of days of the holidays to get it done. That didn't help my neck pain either! I have decided that 2013 is going to be the year that I tame that beast. I have been living with this inflamation for too long. If I have to go to Yoga every day of 2013, then I am going to get'r'done. For me, that means, no blood sugar spikes that fuel the inflamation. Which means no sugar or white flour in my diet. While the acupuncture treatment was very effective to stop the sugar cravings, it only worked when I was going for acupuncture, and about three weeks after my last treatment, the cravings returned. Hence, I am going to have to go every month as long as I am still feeling the pull. Because Mike has to be careful about what he eats, I am going to execute a RADICAL change in both of our diets. Most of my New Year's Resolutions this week revolve around diet and lifestyle changes for 2013. I have also decided to make my Project Life album about the proposed "health" plan, in the hopes that by keeping a weekly record of our successes and failures (I expect it will take some doing to weed out the salt, sugar and white flour from our diet) it will keep me on track and out of trouble. Time will tell! Tonight for supper, I am making Fisherman's stew, as we are supposed to be eating way more fish. Mike does not know it, but there are olives in the mix. He would not eat it if he knew, so I chopped them up really small and hid the jar in the garbage. It smells good, but looks a little funny. I'll report back!

Well, we arrived back in Alberta to the cold weather - at least 100 degrees colder than our average day while on vacation. We went from shorts and bikinis (not me!) to gloves, ear muffs and snow boots in about two and a half hours...one minute we were sitting in the "way cool" outdoor airport in Palm Springs and the next thing, we were warming up our truck and scraping ice off the windshield in Calgary. I hate winter, just hate it! If I was a "trust fund" baby, or a lottery winner, I would be living in the desert for the whole Canadian winter, with the exception of Christmas. I can't imagine spending the holidays in a warm, palm tree studded place - it just wouldn't be the same. In my opinion, the only thing that our Canadian winter has going for it IS Christmas. The highlight event of our trip was the hot air balloon ride over the city of Indio, California. We were fortunate enough to find a company that had a big enough balloon to take all six of us up in the air at the same time. It was AMAZING!!! I didn't even know that we were rising in the air until we were waaaay up - it so smooth that you have no idea that you are floating away. I was not even nervous, not even one little bit...until...we stopped floating. We lost the breeze and we came to a complete and total stop. Have you ever just STOPPED, and hung, motionless, thousands of feet in the air? It is f------ scary! I had not one slight fear, until that balloon came to a stop. Then panic started to take over! It started in my stomach and felt like it was going to come out my mouth! I was crazy scared...everyone else was looking around and exploring the landscape, listening to the balloonist explain about the Fault Line, while my mind was trying to think up a Plan B. Frick! There is no Plan B when you are that high up in the air! About the time that I thought I was going to have to scream out my concern, we started dropping down. Then I had even a little more panic! I didn't know that the balloon commander guy was just ducking down a little to catch another breeze - I just thought we were going to die in someone's back yard! As soon as a breeze grabbed the balloon, we were off again, floating merrily along and all of my concerns drained away. It was amazing to me to see that I would react that way, I learned something about myself on that trip. If I am going to die, I will die with class and not utter one single word while doing it! The second thing that I learned is that a messy yard shows up from space. Not that there are many balloons floating around Southern Alberta that might fly over our yard, but I am going to take that into consideration next year!

Just three more sleeps and I am off to the desert...heat, heat and more heat, I hope! I am going to find me a nice little spot in the sun (with a cold Corona) and cook this cold virus right out of my body. What an ordeal to organize nine people to go on vacation and I am predicting that this might just be the first and the last Trodden Christmas Family Vacation. One thing that has me a little freaked out is that my ENTIRE family is going to be in one large hot air balloon at the same time. Talk about putting all of your eggs in one basket - quite literally! My fantastic, almost daughter in law came up with the idea of going hot air ballooning and my fantastic travel agent found a company that can take us all up at one time. Coming from a family of roofers, I don't think we will have any issue with the heights! California, here we come!

I am about to be politically incorrect...maybe it is the cold that I have and the fever and chills that keep hitting me, but I am home sick today and I have had the television on for company, even though I am not really watching it. What the hell has happened to our world? I guess that I have missed a lot in the past few years, not having access to daytime television at work. I have to repeat my question...what the hell has happened to our world? Really? Do we not have better things to think about and debate. Honey Boo Boo....seriously????? Or am I just feverish or have I picked the one day in the year that the populace has lost its brains? I used to have a healthy respect for the journalism of Anderson Cooper. When his name came to mind, I envisioned projectile rockets, terrorism, genocide, Anderson risking his life to get behind enemy lines to show us the atrocities that we need to know about to affect change and make the world a better place. I think, today and forever more, I will have a different take on him. Did a piece of mortar shell hit him in the head? Is he experiencing post traumatic stress syndrome? I don't get it. I am going back to bed. Maybe this is just a bad dream. People peeing in bottles to save $10.00 a month on water bills, a Honey Boo Boo generator that will tell you what her made up name for yours would be, seriously? I think I am delirious...zzzzzzz

This is how my weekend went down...snow, snow and more snow. Poor little Rusty! He got buried alive in the heavy snow that we received over the weekend. Jackie couldn't resist setting up a little photo shoot to capture the weather. Last winter, we had relatively little snow and the girls and I had no trouble getting into the workshop, but I have a feeling that this winter is going to be a bit different than last! Mike is out plowing snow off the road so that we can get into work today, and I have been busy this morning cleaning the porch and floors in the house, that are covered with a host of boots, coats and mittens. I tried to swing a "snow day" today and phoned the girls to see if they really wanted to come to work, or if there was nothing pressing, could we just cancel the day due to lack of interest. It sucks to have responsible staff!!!! They decided that we really did need to work, so we are just waiting for the road to be opened. I might just pull the "boss" card and not go over. I am really trying to get this house in order. We had out of town guests for seven days and I am feeling like I need to set things straight today, to be able to get on with this week's scrapbooking work. This weekend, one of our guests from Vancouver Island (an old school friend of Mike's) had a camera lens that I would kill for! He paid over $3000.00 for the lens and I sure wished that I could have played around with it a little more. It was massive and heavy and ohhhh so lovely!! Mike, Allan and Dario spent the week driving around and taking photos, you could see the frost on the noses of the deer, one or two fields away with this lens! I want one. I want one so bad!!! So, today as I am putting away all of the stuff that the guys left laying around, cleaning floors and doing laundry, I am dreaming of warm weather and camera lenses. One day, one day, I am going to get me one of those!

This is Andrew's new mistress - he spends all of his time with her... polishing, shining the mirrors, wiping the floors. Poor Kayla has some serious competition for Andrew's attention. I knew as soon as Andrew and Mike went to the auction sale that they were going to bid on this truck and I knew that Andrew was going to dig deep into his bank account to make it happen. The very first day, he spent his time getting the previous owner's decals off of the doors and windows and ordering more chrome on line, because one can never have enough shiny chrome! As soon as he got it insured, he was loading hay bales out of our field and heading down the road. It only took a couple of days and he was hot on the trail of a flat deck hay trailer and with a little help from an observant friend, he found one down by Fort Macleod. A little more money out of the bank account and he is in business. We are benefiting from his new toy, as he is hauling our hay out to the ranch that purchased it all. On the weekend, I was standing outside the workshop with Peyton, and Andrew came up the hill, heavily loaded. As he past the workshop, he tooted on the semi's horn to surprise Peyton. She was so shocked that she almost jumped out of my arms! The sound was so eerie and haunting! It scared her to death. I had to do some sweet talking to get her to calm down and smile, but she still wasn't too sure about that loud sound, and she kept shaking her head and saying "no,no" when I would say that it was Uncle Andrew in there. We had to go in and watch Bugs Bunny to make her happy again. I love to hear the tractor loading hay and the sound of the semi going through the gears to climb the hill in our hayfield. Andrew should be very proud of himself!

FINALLY!!! Just before the snow started falling, my water lily finally bloomed. If it would have taken a few more days to open the blossom, it would have frozen in the pond without sharing its beauty. I am still wandering around with my camera, as I am now on Day # 7 of my imposed scrapbooking layoff. My doctor and massage therapist have asked me not to sit at my scrapbook table until my neck has healed. It seems like forever!!! I don't think I have ever been without my paper cutter and adhesive for this long. Of course, everywhere I look I seem to be inspired by something that makes me want to sit down and scrapbook, and I can't. I have taken this time to photo document some of my surroundings and some everyday occurrences, getting myself into the habit of grabbing the camera, on a daily basis, as I am thinking about joining my friends with Project Life, starting 2013. I was a little concerned that the amount of work that Project Life demands would eat up my available scrapbook time and I was not willing to impact my regular scrapbooking in a negative way to be able to invest in this project. After talking to my girlfriends who have now participated in Project Life for one year, they assured me that I would not have to sacrifice one for the other. So, for now, I am trying to cultivate the habit of looking for the little things in life that make each day special. The beauty of the water lily caught my eye, as it was indeed a gift on that day. The snow came right on its heels and if not for that mid afternoon break that had me wandering around the garden, I would have missed it. One last burst of colour, before the plants turned black and died, frozen the very next day. Another season over, the blanket of snow reminding us all that very soon we will be nestled in our houses, wood fires burning, bread baking in the oven and hopefully a healed neck so that I can get to scrapbooking all of the wonderful memories of the summer and fall!

Obviously, these photos were not taken today! I awoke to six inches of snow this morning and am soooo thankful that I wandered around two days ago, with my camera in hand and captured the beauty of the few flowers that had escaped the hail this summer. My sunflowers took a real beating during the hailstorm, but most of them managed to recover enough to have a few blooms before the snow took them out. It was a melancholy day today, part of me wanted to cry about the snow, the other half of me wanted to get out the cupcake pans and mixer and celebrate the arrival of the snow. The death of the gardens, perennials and flowers earlier in the summer has meant that the final clean up of the yard was done over a month ago, so I am actually ahead of schedule - if you don't take into account the couple of rows of carrots and beets that are now nestled under a fluffy white blanket. I will just pretend that they are not out there and enjoy the smells that are coming from my kitchen. It seemed like the perfect day to bake and so I buried myself in cookbooks and flour and had a great time. No one was home, Mike had gone to Red Deer to visit his sisters and I was home alone. Gloriously so. That doesn't happen very often, so I really appreciated the peace and quiet and the calming effect that baking has on me. I am not allowed to scrapbook for the next three weeks or so, in an attempt to correct the problems that I have been having with my neck. I have a pinched nerve and spasming back muscles and after a round of anti inflammatory drugs, many, many massages, injections into my back muscles, chiropractic treatments and muscle relaxants, it was pointed out to me by my therapist and doctor that I should take it easy for a while and stop doing the repetitive stress that is causing the problem, So I have swore off scrapbooking for a month. If they knew that I was spending the time on the computer that I used to spend at my craft table, they probably would not be too happy with me!! Shhhh...don't tell on me. I just can't sit and do nothing! I think that the next three weeks is going to be hard on me!! I usually wind the day down by spending a couple of hours working on new kits for the website or completing some pages for my own albums. I can't read (don't like that one), can't do bookwork (not so sad about that!) or do anything that puts me in a hunched over position. I am getting a small taste of being cooped up already and I have only just started. They might as well have cut my hands off!! Getting old really sucks!

If I just randomly looked at these photos, I am not sure that I could find a connection between them! The photos seem totally unrelated, and I have to admit that it was a totally random weekend. Some friends and I started out with High Tea in Waterton at the Prince of Wales Hotel and ended up skinny dipping in the creek at our summer pasture on a perfectly delicious summer day...no where to be, no deadlines to meet, nothing to do but enjoy summer at its best. I jokingly called it "high tea to hillbilly"! We dressed up for the tea and then left our fancy dresses hanging in the bushes along the creek, while we enjoyed the cool water and some cool beverages. What a wonderful, lazy and most perfect afternoon. Over the weekend, we did yoga on the veranda in the cool of the morning, (thanks to Lynn, the yoga instructor from Monster Fitness), found out how uncoordinated we could be a Zumba class one afternoon and ate WAY too much food, laughed until our sides hurt and actually did a little scrapbooking just to make it justifiable. After the bathroom renovation ate up a chunk of my summer vacation, haying season bit up another huge chunk and the hail storm completely finished my vacation off, this was certainly the highlight of my summer! A couple of days of down time was just what was needed! Thank goodness that the girls were good sports about the Zumba class. (I didn't tell them where we were going) and I took a little teasing about me being in an exercise class. Me! Can you believe that? The one that claims that if I am running, it is because something scary is chasing me. I certainly did not think that I would ever enjoy going to the gym, but I have to say that I love this dance class. We had a really good workout, and then went to the lounge for a cool one - probably undoing all of the burnt off calories, but having a blast! For the record, Megan did work up a good sweat and found out that it isn't as easy as it looks. My list of favourite things about the weekend would look like this: * Myra's salmon and couscous supper * cold Corona and Pink Palos in frosty glasses * the look of horror on the other Zumba class participants when they saw Tracey taking photos * yoga in the still of the morning * the fresh veggies that Donna brought from the greenhouses in Medicine Hat * watching Jackie trying to get back in the creek and into formation before the timer on the camera went off * the hysterical laughter when we were taking turns putting our clothes in the bushes * how funny everyone thought it was that we have a road named "Spread Eagle Road" in our area. (They made me stop so that they could take photos) * the beautiful dishes that Myra brought for me (I really did not have a hand in that one, believe me or not) * time well wasted, with the best of friends Maybe the summer of 2012 was not such a disaster after all!!!

The clean up this week has been truly a big pain in the ---! What were once pristine rock pathways and flower pots full of herbs and flowers turned into tangled, mangled and rotting piles of debris. With the help of Sam, Laressa and Kate, we tackled the yard clean up, just moments after getting the go ahead from the insurance company. It may be up to two more weeks before we can see our adjuster and his team and I just couldn't stand to look at the mess any more. What a difference a few days made, with a team of determined girls and one wicked ass industrial leaf blower. We kicked some major hail butt! My blood pressure is starting to go down, I am not twitching any more, there are still a few beer left in the fridge. And by the way, FYI. Thank you, Connie, for showing up with a cooler of beer within hours of the hail!!! May God bless you!! You know how sometimes you just don't know what to do in a situation? Or what to say? Like, after someone dies and you are trying to think of a particularly wise and comforting message to give to the family. In my case, in times of trial and disaster, just give me beer. You don't have to say a word, just hand me a cold one. This week took a few more Coronas than usual, but then again, it was an unusual week! In the middle of the night, I had a thought. Which, during the light of day, didn't quite seem as genius as it did in my dream. Maybe a leaf blower would work to "blow" out all of the drifts of apples that were strewn around the trees. I have about 30 truckloads of washed rock in my back yard and it was COVERED with crap. We (and I use that term loosely, as it was mostly Laressa and Kate) tried raking it and we raked out more rock than leaves. Enter the leaf blower. I was thinking, in my dream, that if I could get the apples rolling and the leaves flying, that the landscape rock would stay put. It worked!!! It wasn't without tribulation. Andrew stayed long enough after lunch to get the cursed leaf blower running for me, helped me strap it on my back and was still shaking his head when he left the yard. It was really heavy. And noisy. If my hearing was somewhat damaged after the hail storm, it was finished off by the leaf blower episode. Not to mention that the bulky damn thing snagged on every overhanging limb and made me sweat like a lumberjack. If someone had come along with some money, I swear I would have sold the farm, thrown in the dog and my husband for free and been down the road so fast that the leaves would still have been in the air. It did save us DAYS of time, so I guess manhandling that thing was well worth the pain and effort. Note to self...wear proper footwear when handling a big leaf blower! I thought it was optional, but I should have thought better. Andrew was long gone before I realized this mistake and I could not shut it off, knowing that I would never get it started again. We had to do one big section of the yard by hand, and I literally mean "by hand". But at the end of the week, you could tell that we were winning the battle. That was week number one of my summer vacation. It isn't even a "staycation". It is a "suckcation". Big time.

Well, yesterday started out as a shipping day...lots of girls coming to work, lots of fun, lots to do. Sharing lunch together and polishing off the very last task before my summer vacation began. Technically, my vacation was supposed to start after the July long weekend, but an unexpected bathroom renovation that ended up being more complicated than originally planned, took away the first week of my vacation time. After the grout had dried and the fixtures were hooked up, I had one week of work to complete before shipping. Shipping of the calendar club and the regular club was supposed to be the only thing standing in my way of going camping and relaxing. It almost worked... We did get the kits pulled, invoiced and boxed. Kayla, Megan, Laressa and Kate went home. Andrea and I were the only ones left at the workshop when my cell phone rang. It was my Mother, and she was practically yelling into the phone to GET UNDER COVER!!!!! I went flying out the door and jumped into my truck, while Andrea calmly kept working on her computer. I was half way to the big farm shop when I realized that I should be putting Mike's Duramax into the shop, not the truck I was driving. If I only had time to save one - I was in the wrong one. I actually got down to the house, lept out of one and into the other and made it to the machinery shed in time. Opened up the huge overhead door in a panic and came face to face with a tractor and a baler. Right in the frickin way. This was the one frickin time in my life that I wished that I knew how to drive a tractor! It was parked kinda wonky, so that the baler and the tractor would both fit in under the overhead landing at the back of the shop. The frickin bale door was up in the air, even if I got the tractor started, I would have no idea how to lower the door and I could not fit in the machinery doorway alongside the tractor. There was plenty of room in the shop, but I couldn't get through the doorway because of the front wheel of the tractor being over-center. It was sooo weird. A huge baseball sized hail flew out of no where and smacked into the side of the truck. It sounded like a shot gun going off. Then there was nothing...nothing...nothing...then another baseball landed on the cement pad that the truck was parked on. It imploded, sending shards of ice flying into the machinery shed. I backed up. Nothing...nothing...nothing. Then all proverbial hell broke loose!! It was so loud in the building that I thought I would be deaf for the rest of my life. Pieces of the truck were breaking off and flying into the shed. I heard the horses going crazy between the shot gun blasts. Then the windshield, tail lights and all of the mouldings were flying. I was in direct vision of the workshop, but there was so much hail in the air, I could not see if Andrea had tried to drive away and make a break for it or if her van was still parked in the driveway' or if she had the same thought as me and might have tried to drive up under the 10 foot overhang of the workshop veranda. All I could do was wait. Then I saw my cell phone face light up - Megan was trying to call me. I answered, but I couldn't hear her or me screaming either, so I hung up. She texted me "Are you stuck in a metal building?" I was so scared that I didn't even text back that I was safe. It seemed like it lasted an eternity! When it was all done, I went over to Andrea to see how she had made out and a few minutes later, Mike pulled up with the truck that I left behind and sacrificed to try and save his good truck. As the photo shows, it didn't fair very well. We lost the fifth wheel trailer, stock trailer, two trucks, the exterior of our house, garage, woodworking shop, my workshop exterior, all of my planters and pots, the body of Mike's tractor that was in the field and our big master bedroom window. The brand new, two week old lawn tractor does not look too healthy either!! The biggest frickin' mess is my yard...I am so glad that I took pictures, just the day before the hail, of all of the flowers and the apples on the trees and all of the garden. They are not there anymore. Laressa and Kate came to help with the clean up today, but the insurance company asked us not to touch much until the adjuster gets here. So I got to look at all the destruction today and could not do a thing about it. I guess we are not going camping for the weekend (or ever again in that trailer)...I don't have to weed the garden anymore...somehow our crops are still standing and the horses got into the shed and out of the hail. No loss of life!!! However, my summer vacation is over before it started. I took these photos of the hail about an hour and a half after the hailstorm, they had melted significantly! We had to put the truck in four wheel drive to go and check on the crops, that is how hard it was to drive on those huge stones. One of them just fit in the palm of my hand and it was all sharp and spikey. I thank God that none of us got hit by one of those, however, Laressa is suffering today with a great big goose egg on her head and bruises all over her body, as she was trying to get horses under cover too. Goodbye yard, goodbye camping, goodbye summer vacation!

Boy!!! That was quite the storm we had. At quarter after four, I woke up to one of the most amazing lightning storms I have ever seen, only to remember that a few of the windows at the workshop had been left open due to the heat and our ongoing bathroom renovation. Shit!!! After mopping up water for an hour, I was totally awake and there really was no point in going back to bed. What is a scrapbooker to do? Well, grab a camera of course! The garden was pretty much flat from the hail, but the flower beds on the south side of the house were glistening with little jewels of water. Because I NEVER, EVER am awake at this time of the morning, I was able to capture these photos before they blew off. I guess there was ONE good thing about being awake at 5:00am. Just one!

Okay, I might not be the brightest bulb on the tree. I did something a couple of weeks ago that made absolutely NO SENSE. My father would be the first to agree that a lot of decisions that I make show that I do not use the brains that the good Lord has given me. I would love to be able to spell the Danish translation for "dumb cluck" that repeatedly has been directed towards me, but I can't spell it. Nevertheless, you get the drift. Case in point... Mike really, really wanted to go to the farm auction that was held out in the country a couple of weeks ago. Andrew was supposed to go with him, but at the last minute cancelled out. Mike was upset - he had looked forward to spending the day with his son. The weather was supposed to be great. He had his eye on a riding lawn mower for Andrew, so that Andrew would not have to haul ours over to his place every couple of weeks and a swather for cutting hay, so that the kids would not have to hook and unhook our tractor to be able to rake or cut or bale our hay. He felt ditched.So, Mike made me go with him. He should have known that would cost him money in some way. I mean how much trouble would you expect a girl to get into at a farm machinery auction, anyway? Really...farm machinery. I would rather have my eyes poked out. Dental surgery without anesthetic. Splinters stuck under my fingernails. You can tell how excited I was. The problem with getting out of the situation was that Mike had just given me a for-no-good-reason (except that he loves me) present of a new bracelet and necklace set from Ben Moss. It was a beauty. How could I say that I would not go with him? Shit, I was screwed. I HAD to go, or forfeit the jewelry. Crap! After the obligatory visiting with every person that you have not seen in 20 years, and the boring drone of the auctioneer got on my nerves, I decided to look around at some of the buildings that were going to be sold. Not that I was in the market for buildings, but at least they were a few degrees cooler than standing in the blazing sun, watching farmers scratch their heads about how fast the hay was ripening. Man, I just wanted to go hang myself in one of the buildings! So that is how I ended up in what used to be the cook house for the Hutterite colony. We were under the impression that all of the appliances and related "kitchen" stuff had been sold. Not so! In the cookhouse was item #1970. A professional oven - Baker's Pride, to be exact. Well, I have always said that if I was 10 years younger, that would be what I would do - open a bakery. I LOVE baking. I love watching baking shows. I own hundreds of cookbooks. Well, guess what? I now own a professional Baker's Pride oven. So, what in the hell am I going to do with it? I have absolutely no frickin' idea! It took a Bobcat and four men to get it out of the truck. I don't have any room that it will fit in. We had to put it in the garage. (For now). I have suggested that we might have to build a building for it. I know the smart thing is to put it up for sale, take the profit and buy something SENSIBLE, but I want to learn how it works. It is a really expensive oven, but I paid almost nothing for it. Probably had a lot of people laughing at me (probably calling me "dumb cluck" in several languages) but I am going to spend my time off this summer learning how to use the beast. So, if you know of anyone who might need 100 baked potatoes at once, or 10 pizzas, just let me know!!!

Just look at this photo! This little one is going to be a chip off the old block!!! I am teaching Peyton to clean, by osmosis..you give her a rag, a broom or a Swiffer dust mop and she goes to town. I didn't really have to show her anything, I guess she has been an attentive little pupil when she comes to visit Grandma and Grandpa! Peyton knows her way around cleaning supplies at the ripe old age of 14 months. Is that cute or what? LOL! The only bad thing about this scenario is that she also puts everything in the garbage, just like me. Hence, I am missing my most favourite-of-all-time necklace. I gave it to Peyton to play with and because it is so big and clunky, I had no idea that it could be lost. Sadly, lost it is... I think that she may have put it in the garbage and I threw the bag away before I noticed that the necklace was missing. I will have to be a bit more careful about what Peyton is throwing away! I sure am going to miss that necklace! Peyton remains scared of my vacuum cleaner, so I don't have to worry about her sucking anything up - at least,not yet. But,I am carefully watching my scrapbook supplies. The babysitter has taught her to colour with crayons, so I don't think it will be long before she realizes that the mother ship of paper resides in Grandma's house. Can you imagine the result, if this little whirl wind managed to get into a scrapbook room for even just a while? I may have some "customized" papers to work with!

Windy Weekend!

Father's Day weekend did not turn out in any way shape or form as we had planned it!! First, Andrew had to work and extra day and so he was not able to come until Friday. Secondly, Megan's water lines were cracked and blown up, as they froze over the winter. They did not know that until they went to fill up with water and head out to meet us. They were not able to come. Then we get to the lake and a fishing derby is happening over the Father's Day weekend - almost all of the sites were reserved. We had to park at the west end - with little protection from trees, but they were nice grassy sites, so we set up. Then the wind started to blow...and blow...and BLOW!!! We gave up on BBQ anything. We couldn't start a fire. We could hardly stand up at certain points. The guys tried to go golfing and ended up sitting in the clubhouse, warming up with drinks. When I saw this sign, I couldn't help but want to add another board to the bottom, that would say "If the rock isn't here, it has blown away and you should get to hell out of here!"

My Happy Place

This is my spot in the world, where the troubles and worries and the busyness of life do not enter. This place relaxes me and nurtures me. The cry of the loon at dusk, the bugling of a bull elk in the morning fog, the bawling of a cattle herd as they are trailed along the dusty gravel road at the base of Chief Mountain...these are the sights and sounds that draw us back nearly every weekend in the summer. In two weeks, I will be sitting at this very lake - Father's Day weekend. Hopefully, all the kids will be able to go golfing and I plan on packing up my scrapbooking supplies and getting some quality time in with my paper cutter. What else is a girl to do when she is abandoned for the closest golf course? It couldn't get much better - the view if the lake and some scrapbooking time. Now, if Peyton does not eat my cardstock, all will be well! For some reason, that little monkey loves to eat paper. I am sure that if you put all the scraps that she eats every week together, you would end up with at least one 12 x 12 sheet of cardstock. In addition, she consumes about 25 square backings off of pop dots. We can't stop her! I'm hoping that the inspiration of this beautiful place will help me with the scrapper's block that I seem to be experiencing. I have some amazing photos of the cross border Pow-Wow that I attended last summer. I've never scrapbooked a native dance competition before and I am a little challenged as to how to embellish the layouts. There are so many colours, so much going on in the photos, spectators in the photos. I am totally blocked! A few days at the lake and I will be coming home with finished pages, I just know it!

My Bucket List

Okay, one more thing crossed off of my Bucket List - picking cotton! I always wanted to see what a field of cotton looked like and how hard it was on your fingers to pick the seed pods. I might have some pretty weird things on my "to do" list, but that is what makes each person's Bucket List unique and exciting. We all want to do different things - I am pretty sure in all my years of scrapbooking, this one has never been on anyone else's list.

The field of cotton looked exactly how I expected it to - very, very big. If I was faced with the daunting task of working my way up and down those unending rows, I might just have stepped off a cliff and ended the misery! Even on this not-too-warm day, bending over and picking the pods was not an easy task! I wasn't even wearing a long dress that would get caught in the branches, and no overseer with a big whip was urging me on. I just had a shopping bag and an desire to try something new. Needless to say, it didn't take very long before I was bleeding and very glad that this was not my full time job!

After the cotton field, I strolled through a Mexican grocery store. What fun!!!! There were very few words that I could understand in that store, but some of the time I could figure out what I was looking at. I spent a lot of time in the spice section and picked up a few packages of dried chili peppers and some jars of ground spices. These might be a bit of an experiment as some of the jars are in Spanish! I guess that the people at the airport also had a good look at them - all of my grocery bags had been opened and the chili peppers had been removed from the bags, yet nothing was missing. I suppose that they had to be sure that they were safe to enter the country. Now, all I have to do is figure out what to do with them.

Now, on to the next thing on my list - a major league baseball game!

Spring!

Today, is the ultimate spring day - the birds are chirping, the air is fresh and spring like and I am experiencing the worst case of spring fever ever. I want to plant a garden, wash some windows, clean a layer of dust off the veranda and have a BBQ for supper. A little premature, I think, but I can tell that spring is not far off!
We had a Mexican Salad for lunch, and I promised to share the recipe for the dressing - it might be a little wonky, because I made it up and it is never the same twice in a row. Today's version went something like this:

In the bowl of a food processor, add:

three green onions, cut in half
zest of two to three limes
juice of three to four limes (a little less than 1/2 cup)
2 tbsp minced garlic
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
2 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp white wine vinegar
1/2 tsp seasoning salt
1/2 tsp dried chili flakes
1/2 bunch of washed cilantro - stems and all

At this point, pulse a few times to break up the onions and the cilantro. With the motor running, add about 1/3 cup cooking oil. I don't generally use olive oil in this recipe, as I want the fresh taste of the limes and cilantro to come through and not the oil. Canola would be fine!

Taste the green dressing and adjust to your taste. Some like it sweeter, some like it more tart. Some like the heat and will add more chili flakes. I just really like to taste the lime! I have made this dressing for a long time and every once in a while, I will come across a cilantro hater. I have never had anyone object to the dressing once they have tasted it. It just is so fresh!!

I usually toss the greens before serving with the dressing and then set out an assortment of:

Tex Mex shredded cheese, Cajun chicken breast, black beans, chick peas, salsa and sour cream. diced jalapeno peppers, chopped red onion, sliced cucumber, diced yellow and red pepper and crushed corn chips ( a mix of blue corn and yellow corn). Serve extra dressing on the side and presto!!! Spring on a plate!

Enjoy!!

I Get To Use Pink!!!!

With the birth of Peyton, a whole new colour palette has opened up to me! PINK. I can not honestly recall the last time that I have ever used pink...it ceased to exist to me until April/2011. I could skip that whole isle at the scrapbook store, there was no pink, ruby, peach, or purple in my pages until almost a year ago.

I can not say that I am comfortable with it yet. But sometimes you have to step outside of your box and do something different. When was the last time that I was afraid of a scrapbooking challenge? Well, I hate to admit it, but most times when I sit down at my table, I am scared spitless. LOL. My spellcheck is objecting to my use of "spitless". I guess they don't have many farm girls using that word on their blogs. Too funny! And, I might point out, that by now they should recognize the word scrapbooking as ONE word!!! It is about time!!! There has to be a million girls out there, using that one!

Honestly, with the number of albums that I have completed, one would think that I could just sit down and pull a layout out of my ---. Not so. Almost every time, I sit down with a little apprehension and fear. The pressure is felt very acutely when I have to design a layout for the website. It came so naturally to Christy, it does not to me. I used to tease Christy that she was the "queen of ugly" - just give her the most mismatched, nonsensical assortment of papers and embellishments and she could whip off a beautiful layout. Evidence of that is clear when you see that she is the reigning champ of "Iron Scrapbooker".

I think that a lot of scrapbookers are like me. A little afraid, a little lost, when starting a design. Then, about halfway through, something clicks and you are on a roll. When creating this layout, above, I stared at the Victorian, purple and cream paper for quite a while before I started pleating, punching and inking. I found a few tools when we were moving into my new craft room that had been lost for quite a while. Again, I don't remember how long it has been since I pulled out flower punches, but now that they are hanging on the wall, it so easy to see things that can be put together.

After the initial shock of the pastel colours, I was very happy with the way that the page ended up. The black and white photos look amazing on the first page of Peyton's baby album. It is hard to believe that little stair climbing, into everything monkey is almost one year old! God, am I ever getting old! My goal is to have her book caught up before her first birthday. Only about ten months behind!

Channeling Spring

I am so ready for spring to come that I can hardly stand it...yes, I am aware that there could be many more weeks of winter weather, but I choose to believe that spring is in the air! Yesterday, I got to drop in on my all time favourite store in the world and pick up a few decorating supplies to make a new table center piece. I got the coolest wrought iron fence (about four inches tall, white washed, and sooooo cute!) I also picked up a few spring birds, some eggs and egg candles! Now all I need is some time to take down the fall decorations! LOL.

While we were at the store, I saw a sign that was very hilarious. It said, "Shopping with your husband is like hunting with the game warden". I nearly peed myself, I was laughing so hard. Isn't that the truth! I considered buying it and putting it in my store, as there are never any husbands that come scrapbook shopping with their wives. Way too true!

However, yesterday, my husband was along with me in my favourite store and he was really good about the purchases that I made. Maybe he is waiting for spring too! It made the trip to Calgary a little more tolerable than I originally thought it would be. What a way to spend a leap year day - going to doctor's appointments. The decorations made the day much more interesting! By far, the coolest thing that I got was a wall decoration made of black iron that has little black clips attached all over it. It looks like an old fashion wrought iron gate and you hang it on the wall and attach your favourite photos and memorabilia with the little clips. It is about four feet tall and can hold LOTS of photos, post cards, thank you cards etc. I can't wait to decorate it up! Mike has it up in his workshop right now, making a copy of it. I can't imagine any scrapbooker that would not love it!!! What a find.

Mike did however, pull the plug on stopping at Williams-Sonoma. He just couldn't take being drug through yet another kitchen store. Usually, he is up for it, but not this time! His leg was killing him after the appointments, so we decided to go home and let him put it up. We have to be back in the city next week for more appointments, so I will hit him up for a Williams-Sonoma pit stop then. These constant doctor's appointments leading up to his surgery are important but very time consuming. Only about a month to go...

Help With My Mac

Okay, people. I need a little help. Does anyone out there know how to change the rulers in a Mac Word document to standard measure instead of metric? I am trying to journal the last few pages of my Ice Magic album. Last January, my family and I went to the ice carving competition at Lake Louise and it was AMAZING!!!!!!! I have completed an entire album this week, with all of the incredible photos that I took during the competition.

It was not my usual style of album - this time I decided to give one of Creative Memories' premade pages albums a try. The premade pages were designed in all shades of blue, taupe and red, just perfect for the colors of my photos, as most of the photos were of the ice carvings themselves, and luckily for me, all of my party wore winter clothes that had some red in them. Talk about a perfect combination! All I had to do was pop the photos into the appropriate spots and add some snowflake embellishments. Again, luckily for me, I happen to have a whole snap case full of winter embellishments, most of them being snowflakes! An album with hardly any work, but a very beautiful flow and feel.

This morning, I started out to do all of the journaling on the pages. Another thing that I never do - complete pages and not complete the journaling at the same time. I thought it would be more efficient if I did it all at once. This is when I ran into the problem! My new laptop is set for metric measure and I just can't figure out how to change it over. HELP!!!!

If anyone out there knows how to make this little tweak, I would really appreciate it. Then I can post some of the layouts that I have completed, using this EXTREMELY EASY format. Well worth the cost, when you consider that you can complete a whole travel album in just a couple of nights.

Help!!!!!