Father's Day

This year my Dad and Michael's Dad were not available to celebrate with us on the actual Father's day, so we celebrated with my Winnipeg parents and had Henry & Shirley over for dinner.

The weather was nice, so we decided to enjoy being outside in our new gazebo.

We also got to enjoy a sideshow, thanks to our neighbours, who decided 8:30pm on a Sunday evening was a great time to trim dead branches off the trees in their yard.

We had a lovely evening, and enjoyed a wonderful Supper Central meal, lime chilli chicken kabobs, which were very delicious.

another check mark on my list! Fort Whyte Alive

Look momma, I'm climbing a mountain!

How cute is that?

Walking on the board walk!

Finding stuff in the water.

Turtles sunning themselves on a log.

Taking a break from all the walking.

Some birds and a cool (literally) sod house.

All sacked out after exploring.

this is war!

at least between me and the neighborhood cats...

who have decided that my flower beds make a great toilet. sigh.

Do you see the stripes of lighter coloured dirt? That's where I spread a concoction called 'cat scat' which i found in a gardening book. Contains some lovely spices such as cayenne pepper and chilli powder. It works in the sense that the cat avoids the stuff, but that didn't stop the cats from going around it.

Does anyone else have any brilliant ideas of how to win the war against the cats?

a little pick me up

So, I got to work this morning, and started checking through my emails. The first email I read this morning at work said this:

You are ridiculously organized, Esther – that is nothing less than a spiritual gift! Looking forward to meeting you and working with our brothers and sisters there. Have an amazing Summer!

What a nice way to start the day! What made me happiest is just the fact that it means this guy actually read my confirmation email, I'm certain most people do not even read it. I often get questions about parking, what to wear, what time to arrive, which are all questions answered in the email, under corresponding headings.


Have a great day everyone!

gardening...

Shirley let me dig up some irises from her garden last year, and here they are in full bloom. The rest of the flower beds are weeded and ready for planting!

My planter boxes.

Here's the stuff all planted! Now I just have to wait for things to grow, which seems really slow this year, we've had lots of rain but not enough heat & sunshine for things to flourish.

John, Angela, and Cate come to visit!

John & Angela came to Winnipeg today to pick up a Kijiji purchase, so we invited them down for supper. They got to help us test out our gazebo, which Michael finished putting together just hours before they arrived. I wish I had an actual picture of the gazebo, but that will have to wait until another time.

These are pictures of Cate enjoying dessert. Ice cream with Shirley's chocolate cookies on top.

I picked up this cute wooden giraffe at a garage sale this spring. Cate discovered it and hopped right on! She also goes straight for the train set when she comes over.

We had a really great time, thanks for coming over! (minus the frustration of getting a pork loin to read the correct temperature, sigh.)

may miscellany

I finished a lovely pair of socks in May. The best part: they are for me!


It's a cascade sock yarn, and forgive me but that's all I can remember. I love the colors and actually kinda enjoyed knitting a plain sock! Then again, it was one of Cat Bhordi's, so the construction was new for me.
  
While on our trip to the states the other weekend, I bought fabric. I had some time on my hands on a Friday night, so I decided to try this lovely little mail sorter project from my One Yard Wonders sewing book. It was great, easy and quick. I think it looks nice too. The following day I had a birthday party to go to and I realized that I somehow overlooked the whole gift part of attending a party, so I whipped up another one is just over an hour. Awesome! I could definitely get used to that! Knitting isn't quite that quick (although I can knit a baby hat in two hours).


We also had the honour and joy of having a sweet little baby girl named Phoebe come to visit us. Isn't she cute? It was so nice to have her and her parents over! Thanks K&P, we love you!

Doesn't a baby's life look blissful?

May Long Weekend - tradition at its finest

We had the most amazing weather for this weekend. It was wonderfully warm, and then delightfully stormy.

That's the cottage.

Here's us playing on the dock:

There's always something to fix while we're there. So this time round it was to rebuild a rotting pathway below the cottage (they also fixed the shower head, which had a tendency to ricochet off when you turned the water on or adjust the angle of it)

And, last but not least, and certainly one of the highlights of the weekend, all the good food!

(that's rhubarb apple crisp & ice cream, with fresh rhubarb from Shirley's garden)

husband of the week award

...goes to Michael!

I got these fabulous flowers at work today. The card simply says 'because I love you'

Isn't that awesome?
In case you missed this older post about flowers, you should read this one about when to give flowers and when to give chocolate.

warning: this post contains mature content

Ok, so there's been some debate about whether to even post this between Michael and I, but I think it's funny and it is after all a part of my life. So, if you are easily offended by something that would not qualify for a G rating, please just skip this post. If not, then scroll down.































A coworker of mine is getting married in July. A few of the girls at work were planning a little 'bedroom/lingerie bridal shower' for her. Someone had the brilliant idea to make a special cake.
I ended up not going, and the girl organizing it couldn't very well bake the cake, because she currently lives with the person we were throwing the party for as a surprise.
How on earth do you explain away a cake this shape?




So I volunteered to make the cake.
I collected the supplies:


Baked the cake:


Perfected the color for the icing:


Used some chocolate shavings to decorate the cake:


This was the end result:


It was at the very least rather entertaining and worth a few laughs.