Christmas 'week'

Lola's Christmas gift--a fighter jet made of cardboard.....

It's been a busy week, but lots of fun...Mom recognized her skirt by the colour & fabric, even though she wore it over 50 years ago!  I'll share a few pics from the week....

Adam assembling the present with Archie helping/hindering the process

love this stamp from Anthropologie

satisfying the herbivore & carnivore in the family....

Christmas is exhausting--all these new toys to play with!

Thunder got a nice fat pear Christmas morning....

the only way we could even get Lola to check out the plane....we hid some cat treats underneath

I think she might be a bit too big to comfortably jump in the cockpit...oh dear! we might need to cut back on Temptations

chocolate pecan crackles

we had a nice mild boxing day--about 5 degrees, so I quickly thawed some peppermint grease patties for the bees and placed them in the hive

the bees poking their heads out just before it started raining

vanilla rice pudding

Brian's favourite cookies--Fairy Golf cookies with blackcurrant jam

dusting them with confectioner's sugar....

The Skirt

Ever since I was about 10 years old, I cut, sewed, chopped, deconstucted & reconstructed dresses & outfits from my mom's closet.  For my 13th birthday, I received a new electrified sewing machine (before that I used my grandmother's treadle machine).  My mom was very tolerant of my successful and unsuccessful crafting.  The only piece of clothing she was attached to was her Vogue Toronto ultramarine blue skirt from the 1950's which she wore a crinoline underneath.  Every few years she asked me "WHAT HAPPENED TO THE TAFFETA SKIRT?????".  I didn't chop it, so it has remained intact. Lisa brought the skirt to Cathy of Sew Busy Alterations a couple of weeks ago, and she worked her magic.  Today, she'll wear it on Christmas Day, and we are going to see if Mom recognizes it with 1/2 of the material taken away.  My money is on Oma--Brian thinks she'll recognize it, David & Adam think she will, Lisa & Colin say no way.  Can't wait to see.....

the sights & smells of Christmas.....

berry puff pancake, lemon cake with blackberry curd, grinding nutmeg (which is stored in my 'kruiden' tin--what a great word!), amaryllis blooming on the windowsill, Lisa's fingerless gloves, making speculaas cookies (with the molds my Mom picked up for me in Germany & Adam found on Ebay), separating the dust-like seeds from a gorgeous peach primula bulleyana, roving in a cloche

our barn on a wet morning

I've taken at least a hundred photos of this barn on Workman Road in Cobourg....

a barn along county rd. #1 in Prince Edward County

beautiful dusk along Hwy. #33 in Prince Edward County

 photo taken with a fish-eye camera of Thunder and 2 of the ducks

Hooray for Herma's

another visit to Herma's this weekend, a few more bottles of sauces and vinegars....Sunday dinner comprised of pork loin roast marinated in vindaloo paste, couscous with pomegranates & tangerines and boosted with pomegranate basalmic & mandarin oil, and spicy mushrooms    www.hermas.ca

Last year's dyeing experiment....I tried to duplicate the colours in amaryllis 'Clown' with Kool-Aid

Nests all over the countryside are doing double duty--mice are moving into abandoned bird's nests and using the seed heads of weeds such as dog-strangling vine

Victoria Park is lit up with the annual display--it makes it much more pleasant to walk Archie in the park after work (after dark!)

My favourite area in the park is the bandshell

last day of Novembrrrr.....

sunrise one morning this week--and yes, it rained most of the day

Adam made a plaster cast of his hand last year in school, and it is quite creepy, but also intriguing to look at.  I put it on top of the piano some time ago, and recently hung an old rusty chandelier with beeswax candles above the piano.  I wired some 'holey' stones from the beach and some blown glass discs to hang from the bottom and somehow, one of the discs got caught in his hand

time waits for no one....especially not me & my amaryllis bulbs.  They are still sitting in the shipping box waiting to be planted, and one has sprouted and curled over to meet the light

"Let me back in the barn!" When you are a 31-year-old Shetland pony, winter and wet snow don't excite, not even with a cozy blanket on.  Thunder is very anxious to get back under cover and have his daily dose of glucosamine.

love his eyes

a good day for soup; the base of the soup being Ontario field tomatoes (yes Ontario tomatoes picked green in October and allowed to ripen in a cold greenhouse)

a fall vegetable stew with lentils. Wonderful with a nice glass of wine (am I the only one drinking here?)

      

Adam & his butter sculptures

On Friday, I went to Toronto to surprise Adam at the Royal Winter Fair, hoping to catch him happily sculpting butter in the cooler.  Thanks to texting between siblings, it didn't work out to be a surprise, but it was a great visit.   There were some beautiful sculptures in the slippery substance, and Adam won 1st prize for his barnyard animals.  He was busy sculpting a rooster when I arrived.

I've had a little time to do some additional dyeing of the handspun wool--on the left is the zinnia dye, the centre skein is dyed with fennel in the dyepot and a few rusty screws for iron, and on the right a rich brown obtained from sumac flowers & wild grapes

some gorgeous lichen on a birch log