The Tree - A holiday hang over

In order to fit in with the general Christmas starts early trend, and to defeat the darkness, we always put up (or light up depending on whether we took the lights down) our out door Christmas lights. The tree and interior decorations always wait until after the 20th, which is Chris' birthday. Usually by then we have an idea of where we are getting our tree. This year we've drawn a blank. It could be a very serious Charlie Brown tree. time will tell.

The Shortest Day

It is time to be thankful that the days from now on will be longer. The creeping back of the light doesn't usually mean much until February, but it is still nice to know that the longest night is over again this year.

Skied To Work

It was admittedly a show off thing to do. It didn't go as well as planned. I usually take 30 minutes to walk to work. It took 50 minutes to ski to work into the teeth of a particularly nasty north wind breaking trail the whole way. Not the fun and speedy adventure I'd hoped for.

Basement Built Ins

Chris and I have used every room in our 3 bedroom home for 1, home office, 2, sewing room, 3 bedroom. So, we had our excellent cabinet maker create a built in double sized murphy bed and shelves for our downstairs room. The guest room is most times Chris' boardroom, so multi purpose was important. Our cabinet maker Marc Berube was rather fed up with working with poplar so built it out of birch. In retrospect he agrees with us that it would have looked even nicer built out of poplar. Still, all and all a lovely piece of furniture. And no, we are never leaving this house!

Last Ride

For weeks now I've been thinking it was the last day for riding my bike. Then the sun would come out, the roads would dry and I'd ride off again. Last night I ended up riding home from a quilting class in the snow! This morning the roads and sidewalks were coated with ice.

Sarah's Jamie Oliver Coleslaw

One of the local organic farmers Mom was a smart cookie and put a notice in the Garage Sales section of the paper to 'yard sale' organic produce. I swung by on Africa and picked up a few local specialties. Purple cabbage, baby carrots, spring onions and 2 kinds of turnip. The carrots, cabbage and onions became the best coleslaw ever! So simple the ingredients really get to sing.

pet update

The dog seems to be doing pretty well. We hope to find out today if she can do stairs. The cats continue their odd relationship - occassionally loving, sometimes at war.