Outside my window this morning ....

There are two things wrong with this picture; (a) it's 7:15 a.m. and it's still dark outside, and (b) it's October 31 and there is snow on the ground!!! Yup, my little piece of the world had its first snow of the season last night. We were having a cold, rainy day when Mother Nature thought to herself, hey what the heck - let's inject a bit of fun into Nathalie's driving tonight: let's throw some thick, wet snow in the sky and on the roads .... !Well, I hope that for the sake of the trick or treaters tonight, this stuff will have melted off today. It's supposed to be sunny and 4C, so I have high hopes.

In case you're wondering why I haven't posted in over a week and in case you're thinking I'm back to neglecting my blog - that actually isn't the case; my poor computer caught a virus and was out of commission for almost a week while the husband was valiantly nursing it back to health. This one was a doozy, and it also ended up infecting the husband's computer, and he has lost years of archived data ... I'm really grateful that he managed to save my picture files, since I haven't backed them up in a very long time (note to self: back up picture files regularly).

So I did go shopping last weekend with sister M, although we spent less than 5 minutes inside Michaels - we made a valiant effort, but the lines at the cashes were so very long, we knew we wouldn't have the time to make a purchase. That would be because we had just spent almost 2 hours in Winners, doing a very good job of spending each other's money ("You have GOT to buy that dress/those shoes/that coat/those gloves/that scarf/that sweater/fill in the blank, it looks ADORABLE on you...!"). Actually I am pretty pleased with my purchases, which included a new short winter coat in charcoal gray, with the most adorable ruffles ... a scarf and gloves to match of course ... and a gray knit Calvin Klein dress, which looks great with tights and my new (from the previous weekend) gray suede boots. I am having a thing with gray this season, seems that's the only colour I'm attracted to!

Speaking of gray/grey, does anyone know which spelling is correct? Is it an American/Canadian thing?

I did go back to Michaels this weekend, to, um, check it out more thoroughly. It has a fantastic scrapbooking section, actually I would say that it's probably got more scrapbooking stuff than any of the other types of crafts. I picked up a few sheets of paper (lord knows I don't have enough paper already, lol...!), and a "few" embellishments, and then I wandered over to the knitting aisle and got inspired. I picked up a pattern, some wool and a crochet hook and re-discovered the joys of crochet by making myself a scarf yesterday afternoon.

So while I haven't done any scrapbooking yet this weekend, I did something creative which is almost as good.

Other than that, life is good. The girl is rocking 2nd year, and the boy seems to be adjusting well to high school. My Sens aren't doing so good, but the boy's team is undefeated to date (3 wins, 1 tie). I made a work-related decision regarding my career path that I'd been resisting making, and actually had a better week this week than I've had in a long time.

I'll make efforts to share something scrappy soon, I promise; but first, I have to learn how to stitch scans together using Adobe Photoshop Elements, because I was using ArcSoft before and that software didn't survive the illness that plagued my computer. So if anyone has links to a tutorial or any special hints ... feel free to leave me a comment & throw me a lifeline!

Ciao for now!

Happy News in my In-Box...

I have two email addresses - one for work (that my blackberry is also attached to) and a personal one, that I've had for many years. Most friends use my work email address, so mostly my personal one is junk mail, scrapbooking newsletters, racy jokes that the husband has the good judgement not to send to my work address (lol), and during minor hockey season, the boy's hockey-related stuff.

I don't usually get overly excited by the scrapbooking-related mass-mailing stuff that usually lands in my personal email in-box, but this morning there was a lovely surprise ... my weekly email from Michaels (the craft supply store) announced that the new store that's been under construction less than 5 minutes from my house is opening tomorrow morning! Yay! Scrapbooking supplies in close proximity!

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And, earlier this week the new Winners/Home Sense store (next to the new Michaels) opened up. Winners and Michaels are my two favorite stores. Happy dance!

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My sister M and I are going to check out the new Winners tomorrow morning, and with any luck, I'll be able to convince her to spend some time in Michaels too :o) And, all this happy shopping stuff just might distract me a bit from a big work-related decision that I need to finalize this weekend. Sigh.

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Well, TGIF - happy Friday everyone!

Well hi there ....

Um, wow. What can I say? It's been a busy two months! We spent whatever time we could at the trailer, which meant that our weekdays and weeknights were pretty full with work and all of the housework, errands, etc. that usually fill our weekends. Alas, we closed up the trailer last weekend ... our seven-month wait begins again.

And so fall is here, bringing all those fall-ish things with it ... chilly mornings, colourful leaves (first on the trees, then on the lawn!), the start of a new school year (first year of high school for the boy; second year of university for the girl), hockey (for the boy and for the Senators, hopefully the boy's season will get off to a better start than the Sens'!!), and of course, our annual hunt camp Thanksgiving.

We actually managed to pack lots of activity into Thanksgiving weekend. I was off work on Friday and so the husband and I drove up to the trailer and wrapped it up for the winter, after which we brought the little boat to our friends' place on Sand Lake, where we enjoyed what is likely to be the last cruise of the year ... the lake was choppy but it wasn't too cold and the views were amazing:




On Saturday, after getting most of the Thanksgiving cooking out of the way, I finally rekindled my relationship with scrapbooking. I had cleaned up my scrap room earlier in the week (funny how things just kept piling on the desk, couch and floor even though I hadn't scrapped since May!), and the husband surprised me by bringing cable in through the wall and hooking up the small flat screen TV from the trailer. So I had a clean desk and the Sens-Leafs game for inspiration. I shook the dust off a partway-completed layout and finished it up. With the exception of one card made in July, that's the first scrapping I've done in almost 5 months!! So, ya, I'm a bit rusty... I haven't scanned the result of my efforts yet, but I'll try to post soon I promise.

On Sunday I had an early-morning date with a turkey ... had that baby buttered up and nicely herbed and in the oven by 6 a.m. We were on the road by 11, two teenagers and one dog wedged into the back seat of the truck and the aroma of turkey driving us all crazy (for different reasons of course - the vegetarian girl and the rest of us just don't feel the same about turkey!). We had another great hunt camp Thanksgiving with our good friends (I think we've had this tradition for about 8 or 9 years now). Every year has its special memory ... well this year we actually started a forest fire when we left the campfire unattended to eat dinner, which isn't really a good thing, but the good thing is that we caught it in time, and were able to put it out. In all the excitement, I never thought to capture it on film.

I did capture a few moments though, including our turkey dinner inside the hunt camp:

And our beautiful girls (the one in the middle's mine. Did I mention she's 19 now? 19? Wow.):

And the boy shooting his gun ... don't worry people, he knows what he's doing. He got near-perfect marks on the tests when he went for his gun license and his hunting license last winter. Whenever I see this picture, I feel a bit wistful ... as my Dad would have just loved to see this:

And last but not least, here's what I look like when I've had a couple of glasses of wine, lol (ouch):So now that our weekends at the lake are officially over for the season, life gets back to 'normal' (whatever that is...). Weekends are now all about hockey practice, laundry, groceries, house cleaning (um, a bit of that, anyway), and visiting my mother-in-law. On the one hand I'll miss the relaxation at the trailer, but on the other hand, maybe now I'll have some time to scrap! I promise to try and keep the blog up, too, not just with drive-by updates but with some evidence that I am still a scrapper!