Inspiration at 350

You've all seen the banner to the left - now here's the reason behind it all. This article explains the dire straights that it has come to to save our planet and his words make more sense than mine ever will. Please visit the link!

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080526/mckibben

Remember

“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.” Edward Everett Hale - courtesy of the Crunchy Domestic Goddess Mom Blog

Gone and Away

Avari, my mom and I are enjoying a nice evening at the Estuary Bed and Breakfast in Comox tonight. I have my Chicks Who Click Course tomorrow morning with Karen, and then Avari's photos and then I work on Saturday. So Karen has to hang out with me for 2.5 days!

Bed and Breakfasts with kids are always a bit of a worry- especially with an early riser like Avari. It's hard to keep a wide eyed bouncy child quiet at 5AM, so I'm hoping that she has a little sleep in so she doesn't treat the other guests to a gorgeous impromptu sunrise experience.

We've spent 4 weekends at this B&B and it's great! Brenda makes a fabulous breakfast, the view is to die for (as long as you ignore the Walmart sign glowing across the estuary), and at the moment I can hear an eagle calling in the tree outside the window.

Kevin is in charge of my garden at home for the weekend, and everything was just starting to grow. The first peas appeared this morning and the most gorgeous orange and pink lilies are in bloom. Next week we'll be treating ourselves to our own lettuce!

Well, there's nothing like hanging out on a nice bright bed, so I'm going to grab my book and knitting and look for a show online to watch and enjoy the evening now that the monkey has gone to sleep.

Google Books- what have I been missing!

I was searching online for how to make an infusion with chamomile leaves since Avari is teething her eye teeth and the flowers haven't grown yet on my plant.

Well all of a sudden up on the screen came a book, in it's full glory that I could browse on books.google.ca - I felt slightly guilty browsing the book page by page, but then I started to think of it as an online library and all of a sudden my world opened up to new possibilities! Perhaps in my naive world I tend to believe what I read in a book more than what I can find on a website - so voila! The perfect compromise for a frugal person like myself.

Tapping in to creativity

I have discovered a series hole in my ability to be creative. Give me a pattern, a photo, or instructions and I'm all over it.

Stand me in front of bolts of fabric, or just give me an original challenge and I'm lost! Basically I'm a bit of a rip-off artist. Or perhaps I've never given myself the opportunity to be creative. I think there is probably a good psychological reason why I'm unable to create original material, but I haven't figured it out.

So, I've created yet another goal (which reminds me that I need to start tracking my goals on the side of my blog so that I can keep track of them). I'm going to be creative!

I'm scared!

I'm joining the Creativity 350 Campaign (banner link to your left). Basically you're supposed to create something crafty that is significant to the number 350.

???

I will figure it out! I hope.

I'm also struggling this month with my Chicks Who Click photo word. I'm not sure how to take a picture that represents the words. I've taken alot of great photos that I'm pleased with this month however they have nothing to do with Transition or Power . I just can't wrap my head around that one.

Considering that I have to send the photos to the developer by tomorrow afternoon, I'm really, really stuck. Grrrr

I'm growing things!!! FOR REAL!!!

I'm so excited! I just got back from a little walk through of the garden and things are actually producing food - yippee!!!!


There are teeny tiny little peppers growing on my purple italian drying pepper plant they are so cute!!! I also have some little cherry tomatoes, strawberries and fava beans!!! The peas are flowering and they are a towering 6 feet tall. The lettuce is ready to pick, one of the celery plants is growing something that resembles celery.

Wow, wow, wow!!! I have the most beautiful roses growing today as well- I'm in garden heaven and I can't wait to see what it will look like next year!

I'm off to see if I can find a sew along to make Avari clothes for the fall/winter...

Yesterday...

Poor Avari was having a tough day yesterday recovering from too much party junk food, and I'm having some serious mommy guilt about it. Why did I feel the need to supply the kind of food that she doesn't get daily and obviously threw off her internal system. Next year I'm going to do a super healthy but great party. In the meantime, we have enough food left in our house to feed an army- I'm sure Kevin and I will pay for it after the week in the pant button department, but it's sure good in the meanwhile!

On Sunday I baked Amish Friendship bread. Sabrina from the Family Place brought a starter by on June 11th and you let it sit and squish the dough everyday for 10 days only adding more ingredients on day 6. At the end of the 10 days, you split the starter in 4, keep one for next time, hand out the other 3 and then with the remaining, bake 2 loaves of awesome cinnamon bread. So... I have 3 starters here that I'll be trying to give away tomorrow.

I ordered a few books yesterday that were reviewed on the Comox Valley Kids website yesterday. They look incredible and I can't wait to get them (I also hid a little sewing book for myself in there as well sshhhhh...). I always feel very guilty about not buying books locally, but usually when I come across a book I like it is at night, online, and on sale. I really need to start carousing our book store more and gather inspiration from instore. The library I'm trying to embrace. Trying. I am truly a book snob. I don't like reading books that look well read. Of course that makes no sense, but I love new books! So, I tend to stick to the New Book Shelf when I go. I also am having a heck of a time logging in to the library's website, to order books that I want and when I get to the library I seem to have forgotten which books I was interested in, so the library tends to get treated second rate by us.

We got out Environment Rebate checks yesterday. What I want to do with it- Spend the entire $300 on a rocking garden! I'm dreaming Peonies for everywhere! But it will get put to an entirely inappropriate use. Tanks of gas. How does that even make sense??? But we really do want to go to Vancouver, and that will help finance the way.

The sun is on it's way out so it's time to go and do more weeding!

Adventuring....

This afternoon I decided that it would be fun to show Kevin and Avari where we went for our Herbal Nature walk a few weeks back. So, we packed all up to go to Craig Park. Craig park is north of town about 3/4 of the way to Lund. There is a big sign off of the highway and the turn off is the same for the Glenrosa Golf Course. They have a fabulous play area, tennis courts and a ball field. To get to our little adventure, we had to drive down an off road road. I wasn't sure exactly how to get there, so it took 2 tries, but we made it!

I have to admit that I need to take a course on adventuring. I would love to do more, but growing up in the city has left me with no natural sense of naturing. I was leading them down a trail but all of the alarm bells were going off in my mind! Are we on the right trail? What if we aren't? What if we run in to a bear? Or a cougar? How old are those bear tracks? Yikes! I also learned that the just 2 set aren't quite ready to go adventuring on those kind of trails! Avari just wanted down the whole time and we were a bit nervous.

So, this evening, we're going in search of some "break in" trails to help get our feet wet and introduce us to a foreign idea!