July 20 2010-

Today is my mother's Birthday so I got her a cake! ....



In honor of her birthday & the fog I defrosted my freezer... I figure some of the ice in there has had a few birthdays too.... It took the better part of two hours... (yes it was much thicker than then manual suggested it should be at defrost time!)
The car group that visited us yesterday was the Coasters they drive coast to coast every 10 years. G only waited in the ferry ;ineup for a little over an hour... as they were running the ferries back to back. I've spent 3 hours a couple of times going both ways!
Right now Gord is trying to get a spark plug out of Money Pits engine it broke off when he tried to get it out on Sunday... so far it's still resisting removal!

July 19 2010-

Second morning in a row that we have woken up to sun... after 2 or 3 weeks of foggy mornings.... My tomato plant is still happily growing up the side of it's hanging tube... and has no tomatoes... the other three from the package are much larger and each have 2 little green tomatoes....
We got two new friends for the lonely goldfish... they both died and I found the last one dead yesterday morning... no more gold fish for that 'pond'!
On an even sadder note Zoom Zoom got hit by a vehicle last night not sure where as the person that picked him up drove him to the restaurant and G got him from there. He has joined Holy Smoke in the wild raspberry patch. He wasn't even 3. He will be missed!











G made the mistake of going to the mainland today... he is currently sitting in the longest ferry lineup he has ever been in trying to get back onto DI... only good news is that both ferries are running.. it's the 100 antique cars that decided to check out DI today that is causing the problem! The big ferry holds 28 modern cars... the small ferry holds 21... But I think most of these cars are longer than modern day cars....
We do have a new kitchen window... However I think we should extend the deck in front of the kitchen and change the window to a door.....

July 9 2010-

So far today it is warm and muggy... we've actually had really nice weather the last week or so.... G decided it was time to remove another few walls of pink vinyl from the house and replace it with shingles... Problems arose yesterday when he discovered that it was the vinyl siding and the original shingles that are holding up the second floor of the house ... the studs are all rotten!

So is the window frame.... The magnetic kitty door is in the bathroom window.

I thought I'd thrown in a picture of my 'hanging' tomato planter too... As you can see mine is not growing down... It grew to the edge of the planter and is now growing up again... See what happens if and when it gets any tomatoes! It has flowers....



Quick update on Atlanticade... We saw & heard!lots of bikers ride past, a number stopped... but even though I was a 40 point stop they only needed 100 points and they could get those without ever leaving the mainland.. so there was no real incentive to stop unless they wanted to use my bathroom!

July 1 2010-


Happy 143 rd Canada Day !!!!

Bright sunny day here.. which is nice ... St Andrew's is hosting Atlaniticade... which is a big maritime Motorbike Rally.. I'm a member of the St Andrew's chamber of commerce and was asked months ago if I'd like to give the participants a discount .. I figured sure why not... how many are going to take the hour + to ride their bikes over here... with the 20 minute ferry etc... Two days ago I got this couriered envelope full of little stickers that had motorbikes printed on them.... No clue what they were for... yesterday a small group of bikers showed up with 'passports' ... I'm suppose to put my little black bike stickers on their passport... I'm a 40 point stop on their passport... so I think I will be seeing a fair number of the bikers... will they spend money... that remains to be seen! (The only stop worth more than me is on Grand Mannan that's a 2.5 hour ferry ride each way and that ferry only runs 3 (?4) times a day....)

June 28 2010-

Pouring rain today... Much more typical June weather than the sun we've been getting most days! I bought a cute little water garden a couple of weeks ago... I decided that if I propped the 'pot' up we could have gold fish in the 'pond'... Well last week it was windy and the pot blew off the 'stilt's' and gished one of the gold fish... poor little guy! Now his buddy is all alone... but his 'stilt's' are now wind and rain proof!
We still use an old HP printer (722C) it has now decided that it only want to print in Magenta and or black... I decided to see if there was a fix for this (yea the ink is way past it's best before date) I found a help thread .... most recent post was 2001 and no it didn't help.... I think I'm going to have to get used to a magenta world... as we have 1.? magenta cartridges... What did we learn from this??? Check the best before dates on ink and don't buy it until you need it!

June 22 2010-

Well yesterday was the first official day of summer... and yes this year we are getting summer... we even had spring ....! The gallery is open for the season... so come and visit!
Where was I for the last 7 weeks? From April 27 - May 31 we were driving ... we drove through 23 states and 7 provinces... I spent 4 nights in Montreal just before we came home at the GAAC conference.... I stayed in the un-airconditioned student residence... which wouldn't have been too bad if it hadn't been 34 C (90 F) ... and to top it all off the windows only opened a couple of inches... My biggest issue with the conference was the lectures and the demos were on opposite sides of Old Montreal... So you couldn't just drop in and watch 15 minutes of a demo.. you were gone for half a day... I spent one morning watching Lucio Bubacco make one of his "gods" very impressive! A also spent one morning watching a fairly recent grad make very elaborate rings out of 'Effretti' glass... I asked her if you could wear them... She said 'of course'... someone else later asked 'well don't the little tips on the 'wings' break off? Her answer 'well of course... it's glass.. what do you expect, glass breaks!'
OK I expect any glass jewellery that I make and or buy to be wearable... Making glass that you expect to break is just wrong!

After we got home my sister came to visit... While she was here we spent a couple of nights in Fundy National park and one night in Shediac. Our cabin at Fundy National Park was lovely... only problem was the first night we had no 220 power.... that means no stove, (no problem) No heat, got pretty cool over night but it was sunny in the morning so we ate on the deck... No hot water.. ( a hot shower would have been really nice... Owners moved us to a different cabin... Yes we now have heat and Hot water... Spent the day wandering around Hopewell Rocks... Got back to our 'new' cabin My sister hops in the shower turns on the water and gets pipes clanking and NO WATER at all... We discover that the National park crews cut though the water main and there is no water anywhere in the park...! Anne was sleeping on a futon in the living room... Just before super she sat down and went right to the floor... most of the slats were missing from the sitting half... but, all the ones in the back were there! So all she had to remember while she was sleeping was that she couldn't roll over!... It actually looked like kids had been dancing on it as the slat breakage pattern couldn't really be explained any other way...
By the time we left we were beginning to feel like the bad news bears Actually in spite of the problems it was a lovely spot... and yes we will go back!
At the moment I'm back to making stained glass birds .. no beads, I did very little other than make glass birds while I lived in SK... I moved onto beads after moving here as I didn't like my dungeon... aka basement stained glass studio... It doesn't have a moat just a river!
I couldn't find my American Robin pattern last weekend, so I decided to make a new one... I think I own almost every North American Bird book that was published between 1980 and 1998... However, with the internet who needs bird books... it took me 10 minutes to find the robin pictures, and crop one in the right pose to the perfect size... then another ten minutes to adapt it to be used as a pattern... I used to spend 3 or 4 days making patterns.... So I guess computers and the internet do make life easier ... sometimes!

April 26 2010-

Gotta Love it when the weather man is wrong... we've had a week of cool sunny weather ... the forecast was cool wet cloudy weather.... My plants are very happy we have leaves on a lot of plants I don't think we normally have leaves until the middle of May!
My Magnolia is blooming

and this is a picture of my new tree... I was looking for a bonsai but found this instead... It's suppose to be hardy in a zone 5 which is what we are....
you can see the forsythia blooming in the background

and while we are doing house and yard pictures here's what Gord is entering in Home Depots' DIY contest



You will note that we still have pink vinyl siding on the bottom half of the front of the house.... some year it will be gone!

April 11 2010-

We had a gorgeous Easter Weekend here... then it got windy and cloudy. We just got back from 2.5 days in Maine. Drove down the coast to Freeport .. I took a class from Stephenie Sersich on Friday afternoon .... She was a lot of fun and there was only 4 of us in the class... My bracelet is a bit lop sided but the colours are nice... and next time my fringe will be more symetrical... I'll upload the picture later! Meanwhile you can check out her website and see what it should have looked like!
OK .. it's later... here's the picture!

Friday we got rained on most of the day... G went to Portland while I was in the class and bought boat parts... He's rebuilding his exhaust... the main cabin was pretty foul last summer if the engine was running!
The SPCA auction was last night in St Andrews so we stopped there before we came home... we had to fine tune our arrival to be in St A by just after 6! I bought the cats a new bed... A North Face Tent... It's really cute... Looks like a miniature people tent... complete with screens on the doors... so far Emm seems to think it's his... It spent last night in the middle of the bedroom floor, with Emm in it on and off all night, not sure he'll still like it if I move it... Doubt I'll be able to get a picture of him in it!