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