Antique Stores, Here I Come!

This weekend we are going to Creston again, and I can not wait!! Have you ever found somewhere in your life, where you are totally at peace - well, my altar to worship at is Creston, B.C. The climate, our friends at the campground, the antique stores and fruit stands...I have died and gone clear to heaven! The drive is not too long, the anticipation of fresh fruit and vegetables from the fruit stands, the opportunity to poke around at the greenhouse and nursery next door to our favorite campground - the whole experience is just pure relaxation and rejuvenation to me. This trip was supposed to be made with family and friends, but after a series of unfortunate incidences, only Mike and myself and Megan and Murray ( with baby) are venturing out. The intent for the guys is pure golf nirvana - no wind and a beautiful course to play - the intention for the girls is shopping, shopping, shopping!!! I am looking for unusual flower and herb seeds and possibly a garden ornament or two and anything that "speaks" to me in the antique stores. Megan just wants to vegetate and relax. The best part - I get to be the babysitter!!!!
I think what I enjoy best about a trip to Creston is that it does not have the "holiday jet lag" that I experience anywhere else. I have often wondered if that happens to other people, not just me. You know...you go somewhere to relax and it does not feel like a holiday. Inevitably, the night before you go have to go home, then suddenly you hit your vacation groove and you are truly

relaxed - only to have to go home the next morning...why does that happen? To me, every time we go somewhere I experience that feeling - except Creston. The second that I see the town sign, I am transported to heaven. When I die, my family should sprinkle my ashes over Creston Valley and I will be happy forever!

Spiced Carrot Muffins By Request

Where did April and May go??? I have not had time to sit down at my computer (for fun) in sooooo long...I am surprised that over a month and a half has evaporated into thin air!! Other than one really cool antique hunting trip that Mike and I took, it has been nothing but work, work and more work. Nothing exciting - except for when baby comes to visit!

The cold, chilly spring has left me at my scrapbooking table much longer than normal this spring. Somehow, getting dressed in winter colthes, to go outside and dig in the frozen chilly ground has seemed less than appealing. So I decided to finish my brother-in-law's heritage album that has been a thorn in my side for many, many years. This year, I quit talking about finishing it and I actually did it, working day and night for several weeks, trying to get it done before Allan comes to visit this month. I am about two pages away from the completion of what has turned out to be a two volume set. If I do not see tears when I gift it to Allan, he might be the next chapter in the book "Crazed Scrapbooker Kills Relative With Scissors".

I promised that I would post my breakfast muffin recipe - sorry if you have been waiting!

Spiced Carrot Muffins 400 degree oven

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp nutmeg

3/4 cup brown sugar

Mix these dry ingredients together until well blended and then make a well in the center of the bowl and add:

1 egg

1/2 - 1 cup buttermilk (or more if needed, depending on how juicy your carrots are)

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups carrot

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1/2 cup chopped pecans

1/2 cup pumpkin seeds

Mix well. Your batter should not be dry, or runny either, just a nice, moist, middle of the road batter. Bake for about 15-20 minutes until a toothpick in the center of the muffin comes out clean.

These muffins are more savory than sweet and make the perfect breakfast muffin. I cook them in Texas size muffin pans, but you can use smaller muffin tins, just adjust the time accordingly.

Let me know how your family likes them!!

The Baby is Here! The Baby is Here!

Finally, after three days of labor, Megan and Murray are proud parents of the most ADORABLE little baby girl that I have even seen. And I am not saying that just because I am the Grandma - she is seriously the cutest little thing I have ever seen. Peyton Elizabeth was born Friday morning at 10:33 am and weighed 7 lbs 2oz. She was seriously the most alert baby I have ever met - checking out the room, checking out the people that were holding her, sticking out her tongue and sucking on her hand - for just about her whole birthday. Since then, all she has done is sleep - she does not want to play anymore!! Except between the hours of midnight and 6:00am. Megan is looking a little frazzled, with the lack of sleep. Everyone is doing fine and my camera chip is filling up at an alarming rate. I would love to post a photo, but Megan would kill me! No baby on the Internet, I have been warned! I guess I have to obey - she might not let me hold her!

Spring Fever

After all of my good intentions, my personal scrapbook intervention has not been entirely successful. I have had two really, really busy and intense weeks, hence, the stuff that was piled sky high - still is!! However, I did get the stuff to Allison for the scrapbook garage sale and I have set aside some supplies for a fellow scrapbooker (that I have not met) that lost her scrapbook supplies in a house fire. The rest is just sitting there, taunting me. I thought I heard the piles whispering "I'm winning, you can not control me!" After a strong start, I have started to fade in the home stretch. My greatest asset or liability is that I work the best under pressure. So this week the pressure is going to be added - Megan is due to have the baby and my husband's family is coming from Vancouver Island after the baby is born. Lucky for me, I can always come up with some sort of craziness in my life that keeps me stressing out and working hard. I am personally held together by a mixture of over commitment and extreme OCD. It is the very fabric of my life - that and Corona with a slice of lime! We are all jumping every time that we see Megan's phone number come up on our phones - the baby could come any day now. I never did get her freezer tricked out, she finally gave up on me and did it herself. She even delivered baby items to my house that "I" should have for her baby. Talk about over achieving and OCD - Megan had to admit the other day that she is becoming more and more like me. I think every mother is like that. We just are, we have to be. Families depend on us!! So we are on the count down. Unfortunately, Megan is not cooperating - she is still working out at the gym, getting pedicures and scrap booking. No baby in sight!! I'll keep you posted!

Spring Cleaning

With a new baby on the way in a month (or less) I decided that I needed to get my house in order. No - I am not the mother, I am just the Grandmother, but I am expecting that I will be "needed" for a few weeks. Therefore, I need to be prepared in the event that Megan expects me to trick out her freezer, baby watch while she sleeps etc. etc. So about a week or so ago, spring cleaning fever hit my house.

My plan was to clean at least two cupboards or one big closet out per day. Every day. I started in the master bedroom and I CLEANED HOUSE. I am down to just the clothes that I fit into, not all of the "I might wear this again" clothes. Three large, overstuffed garbage bags left that room. Then it was on to the bathroom, six drawers, one cupboard and a BIG medicine cabinet later, that room was organized and tidy. I discovered that in another life, I must have been deprived of moisturizer! The reason why everything was falling out of the cupboards and cabinets was because I have collected a virtual museum of every type of cream and moisturizer known to modern man. I literally threw away a large garbage bag of half used tubs, squeeze bottles, pumps - I owned them all! I've used them all!!! And the worst part - I still have wrinkles!!

Then I carried on to the kitchen, living room and upper level of the basement. Two full pick up trucks worth of crap have left my house.

It was about the time that I was down to the two spare bedrooms and the lower level of the basement that I had to come to terms with my scrap booking supply addiction. These areas of my house are FULL of wooden stamps, unused paper and card stock and OLD CRAP. I just wanted to sit down and cry. I have never been able to purge scrap booking supplies. I just can't do it. So here I am with Beary Patch cut outs, Creative Memories stickers, 8 1/2 x 11 paper, PAPER DOLLS!! WHO IN THE HELL HAS PAPER DOLLS ANYMORE!! Okay, after I stopped hyperventilating, I forced myself to come up with a plan. Stuff just had to go. There was no way around it. I am self aware - I know I can not throw this stuff out. Hence...THE PLAN.

Part #1 of the Plan - pick out all of the stuff that you can donate to Allison's scrapbook garage sale. Put in unmarked cardboard box, so that no one can trace it back to you and laugh at you for still having paper dolls. Deliver in the dead of night. (It's really that bad!)

Part #2 of the Plan - Throw away all true junk. In my case, any paper that is wrinkled and/or faded, packaging from scrapbook supplies etc.

Part #3 of the Plan - Put EVERYTHING ELSE in the scrap booking room. It is piled SKY HIGH, there is so much stuff. My master plan is to collect all the supplies from EVERY room and cram it into one. This is a scrapbook INTERVENTION. The only way to make myself deal with the problem is to be faced with the problem and as there is no way in hell that everything is going to fit, I am soon going to be faced with it when you walk in the front door. By last night, nothing more would fit in the room and I had to pile some stuff outside the door. In two more days, I should be down the hallway and into the front entry way. I am not even sure if I can get everything that came back from the Bloomin' Inn into my front entry, but I am going to die trying. It is only when I am face to face with the wall of stuff that I am going to be able to come to terms with it and stop avoiding the issue by neatly putting it inside of closets and cupboards.
Part #4 of the Plan - Let it sit there for 24 hours. That should be just enough time to put me over the edge, I should be twitching by then - possibly even a convulsion or two.
Part #5 of the Plan - Go to town and buy beer and cigarettes. Usually I only reserve this practise for income tax season, but in this case, I think I might have to resort to these forms of medication.
Part #6 of the Plan - At this point in time, I should be so upset by the mess in my house that I will have an "outside my body" sort of experience and I will be forced to get rid of some of the stuff.
At least, that is the plan... I'll keep you posted!

My Obsession

I wish I was ten years younger - I don't want to go back to my teens...I don't even want to go back to my twenties ...or thirties. Give me a good solid forty and I would be happy with that!! Back before I started to ache and complain about my shoulder and neck, back just far enough that I still held out hope for paying off the farm, just back far enough that I seemed to be able to stay up all night, and still be productive during the day, back when I had the most energy, but was uber wise from all of my forty years on the earth. What would I do if I was forty again?

I would be brave, I would be daring, I would be well off enough to know that I could take a big chance and know that I could make it pay off. I would...
BUY A RESTAURANT!!!!

We, as a family, are lamenting the fact that one of our favorite restaurants is closing down next week, due to health issues with the principal owner. Separately, a few weeks ago, every one of my three kids came to me with the proposition of "us" buying the place. "Us" means that they wanted to invest in the project, but I know that "us" does not extend to doing any of the work. What they really meant was that they would chip in some money, but they expected me to be the chief.

I thought about a little. Probably more than a little. Probably more than I should have. I already had the color scheme picked out before a big jolt of reality hit me and knocked me out of my day dreaming ...I mean day scheming. I had already solved every objection that Mike had. I had fixed all of the problems. I had even done some calculations on paper. But, all of a sudden I got a picture in my head of what life would really be like if you were married to a job like that, and even more scary was the thought of having my grown children as partners.

How's this for a thought process: Andrew playing pool all day long in the lounge, buying drinks for all of his friends...Daniel, who can eat his body weight at every meal, ordering three appetisers and two mains, three times a day...Megan busy socializing with everyone, Mike phoning every day asking when I am coming home...

I decided that cute decor and color scheme aside, I was going to have to let this one pass. It is just good that I am ---ty and not forty!

Piles of Junk!

This is a little glimpse into my life these days.



How can I go from my cleaning frenzy in December - my annual purge of all things unnecessary - to this...in less than 60 days?? Where in the hell did all this stuff come from? Do people drop this crap off when I am not home?





Last night, everywhere I looked, there were piles, virtual piles of overflowing, thorn in my side, crap. It was like I was alright one minute and less than a few seconds later, I was a raving idiot. I guess I just snapped. My living room pushed me over the edge.



Imagine this. West wall. Megan's piano with a few nice decorations on top, appropriate sized painting hanging above... looks pretty good - except: IT IS COVERED WITH 20 OR SO MEDICINE BOTTLES, KLEENEX BOX, TOOTHPICKS (used), TWO SETS OF CRUTCHES, TWO ARTIFICIAL LEGS, ALL THE CLOTHES MIKE HAS WORN IN THE PAST THREE DAYS, COFFEE CUP, THREE DRINKING GLASSES, BOWL FOR CHIPS (empty), TWO STANDS FOR LIMB LINERS, OVERFLOWING GARBAGE CAN, USED KLEENEX ON THE FLOOR, AUTO TRADER MAGAZINE, EMPTY WICKER BASKET WHERE THE MEDICINE BOTTLES SHOULD HAVE BEEN...



North wall. MIKE'S EASY CHAIR, LIFT CHAIR FROM MEDI CHAIR, THAT I HATE. MIKE. NICE SIDE TABLE THAT IS NOW PUSHED OUT OF THE WAY, INTO THE CORNER BECAUSE OF THE LIFT CHAIR THAT I HATE! OVERFLOWING WICKER BASKET OF COOK BOOKS.



East wall. TOTALLY COVERED WITH MY SCRAP BOOKING SUPPLIES. CAN'T EVEN SEE THE FLOOR, BECAUSE I HAVE NOT HAD TIME TO PICK ANYTHING UP SINCE I STARTED MY LATEST PROJECT (scrap booking cruise album). TELEPHONE ON FLOOR, WCB PAPERS ALL OVER THE TOP OF MY SCRAP BOOKING TABLE, FOUR ESTIMATES FOR ROOF PROJECTS THAT ANDREW LEFT BEHIND, PHONE BOOK, AUTO TRADER, PACKAGE OF HALF EATEN CHIPS ON TOP OF THE ESTIMATES, CALCULATOR, UNIDENTIFIED VEST (probably Andrew's), EMPTY POP CAN Note: ANDREW'S FAVORITE BRAND, TWO UNPAID BILLS IDENTIFIED AS ANDREW'S



South Wall: NICE WOODEN CALENDAR ON WALL (still set to January), WELL DECORATED SIDE TABLE THAT IS OVERFLOWING WITH MORE COOK BOOKS, SEARS CATALOGUE, LEATHER SOFA WITH COATS DRAPED ALL OVER IT, COOKBOOKS UNDER IT, OPEN NEWSPAPER, EMPTY POP CAN, DIRTY PLATE WITH A FORK (???)



That was the final straw. I just snapped.



This was just one room. Needless to say, after my melt down and subsequent trip to the bathroom to cry in private, I marched right down there and took the bull by the horns. Mike was already cleaning by the time I finished my outburst. He just knew...



Two hours later, a Corona with a lime to settle my nerves and one very large black garbage bag later, peace is restored.



Tomorrow, watch out spare bedroom!