Last year for the Canada Day weekend we were relaxing at home. School had just ended and we had nowhere to be and nothing urgent to do. We spent the weekend painting my office in the basement. We've lived in this house for 13 years and it was still painted blue from the previous owners. Now that I have taken it over, it was definitely due for a change. I painted it white. So boring. I am already itching to repaint it.

Meredith had just passed her G1 so we took her out for a small driving lesson. I sat in the back with my eyes closed.

Isobel received a robot kit and she spent some time building it.

That and we BBQ'd as much as possible and enjoyed some S'mores Dip in the backyard. Have you tried that yet? It is DELISH!!!!

I did this page recently about last years' Canada and I'm really pleased with it. (Am I allowed to say that?) I like its clean lines and uncluttered look. 

I hope you have a lovely Canada Day wherever you are and whatever you're doing.  (Even if you're not Canadian and it's not a holiday for you.)  xo

Another Sketch for the Nerds

The Scrapbook Nerds have another Sketch up on the Forum designed by yours truly. I'm really enjoying creating these sketches but I hope I never run out of ideas!!

This is the sketch:

And here's my take on the sketch. You'll notice most of my pages are almost direct duplicates but that is certainly not the case all the time. I'm finding when I do the sketch I follow it completely. But when I use someone else's it often ends up looking totally different.

These photos were taken last summer when Meredith and I took a quick trip out to Vancouver Island to see my mother. While we were there we visited a Lavender Farm. When we pulled in a couple of dogs ran to the car barking and causing quite a stir. My mother is good with dogs so she got out and calmed them down, then Meredith and I emerged. Neither of us is good with barking, bouncing dogs. 

One of them really took a shine to Meredith and wouldn't let her walk more than a couple of steps without flopping down on her feet and demanding a belly rub.  Meredith had had a bad experience with a couple of foster dogs at a friends house that caused her to believe dogs just didn't like her. I had no idea!! 

Meredith was delighted to discover dogs actually liked here. 

We spent more time with the dogs than admiring the lavender. 

NSD Sketch and Page

Hello blogosphere. It’s been a long time. 

I’ve been creating some sketches for the gals over at Scrapbook Nerd and thought I could share some of them here. They’ve had some great challenges going on over there lately. 

One of them was a sketch challenge (created by me, yay!) for National Scrapbook Day. The ran a weekend long online crop. It was the Early Bird Challenge. Here's my sketch:

Here’s the page I did to go along with that sketch (so sorry about the bad photo!):

This page was done with photos I found on our underwater camera when we got it out to pack up for Isobel's time at camp last year. I love found photos, don't you?

December Daily

What am I doing to myself?

I really struggle at this time of the year. It is so busy!1 And I don't do well with busy.

However, I have decided to do a December Daily album. You can find details about it here on Ali Edwards blog. Mine is going to be extremely simple. With Meredith heading off to University next year and Isobel going to High School, I'd really like to record what our Decembers are like right now, then do it again next year or in a couple of years' time and see how we have changed.

Given that we are 5 days into December already the first few photos are a little lame. Most of them will be taken on my iPhone so the quality may not be the best.  Plus I'm really dumbing it down and going as simple as possible to make sure I stick to it. I'm doing it all digital and using Cathy Zielske's 30 Days of Thankful templates to complete it. The templates are designed for a 6x6 album, but I'm going to break that rule and do them all 4x4 and put them in these cute little albums from Scrapbook Nerd.  I'm going to do my best to get these done daily and post them here. Wish me luck!! I'm going to need it.

Here are the first few pages:

Another Camp Page

I don't think Camp was easy for Isobel. She likes her time alone. She likes her sleep. She's particular about her food and she likes her 'comforts' (eg. a soft bed).

The hardest part about the trip for her was the out trip. Her cabin canoed 18km. I'm sure it was exhausting. The 'Trippers' did the portaging for them and that impressed me. I have so much respect for these young women who head out in the wilderness with a group of tweens and help them navigate from campsite to campsite lugging canoes and food and setting up and taking down camp each night. Wow. I'm sure they had to deal with their fair share of tween drama too!!

One thing I wanted to stress for Isobel was for her to focus on the positive aspects of her out trip. Not the fact that it was hard. Not the fact that she had to use the wilderness as her bathroom. Not the fact that she had to navigate her canoe through some difficult rapids. And certainly not the fact that her canoe tipped and her gear floated away. But that she did something that was difficult and survived - more than survived - she experienced things not everyone gets to experience.

Camp

When Isobel was younger (9?), she and Meredith went away to Camp for a week. Meredith loved it but Isobel really struggled. She didn't connect with the girls in her cabin and she really missed being home and she didn't go back. Meredith loved it and went until the time came that she was required to do a one week out trip and stay for a month.

In the summer of 2013 Isobel reconnected with a friend from preschool who had moved to the US. This friend had gone to a Camp in Ontario for years and loved it. She ended up moving back (yay!) and convinced Isobel to try Camp with her. It was a 2 week Camp and involved a 4 day out trip. Isobel thought it might be better to go with a friend and she really wanted to have the positive experience Meredith had.

She came home tired and hungry but found it to be a better experience than before. She is our homebody though and really missed her bed!!

She took so many photos I didn't know what to do with them, so I chose the one of her leaving for camp and pulled many (but not all!) of the others into Picasa and made a collage. Picasa is great for collages.

A Page From Hawaii

During my 'blogging hiatus' we took the most fantastic trip to Hawaii. We were able to meet friends who live in Australia for 2 weeks on the Island of Hawaii and it was amazing.

One thing that struck me when we were there was how early the sun set. Here in Canada the sun was setting around 9:30pm but in Hawaii, it was setting around 7pm. I actually quite liked it. First because it was very easy to be out and about while the sun was setting and enjoy the beautiful light that comes at sunset but it also provided a nice break from the heat. The nights were not hot at all and I'm sure it was partly because of how early dark arrived.