While I've been packing

I've run across all these little projects that I kept thinking I'd get around to. I guess I should be happy that I have so much time to pack, as this has given me the opportunity to go through all those deep, dark corners in the house - you know the ones I mean, we all have 'em.

One of the things on my list has been this dress from the Burda Style website...don'tcha just love good quality, free downloadable patterns? I'll be back... there are at least two more garments I want to make from here....

As you can JUST see in the background, I'm working an an area filled with boxes , empty shelves and piles of disassembled stuff. It was sanity saving to sit down and put together this little dress. Sorry not to have too many progress photos, but I stayed up late, the light was bad for photo taking, the audiobook was good, and - well- I just kinda got caught up in the process!


Here's me, in a photo taken by youngest, doing my best Twiggy.


Hooray for summer sewing, hooray for summer.


Now back to house cleaning...we show again in the morning and I've got a loooong workday ahead of me to get to that point!

Back to the boxes, the basement, the washcloths...

:)
Happy sewing,

Lisa

Music Fest Weekend

Some of you may know that this is Music Festival weekend here in Nakusp.

The Festival grounds are quite close to our house, at the end of our block, actually (we're the second house from the corner). For 3 days out of each summer we are utterly surrounded by campers. And I mean completely. This is the high school field behind our house (there are no campers on the upper lawns, as that would wreck the underground sprinkler system). The campground 100ft away is also filled to capacity, as are most driveways, backyards and fields right nearby.

The boys have taken an interesting approach to our proximity and have had an iced tea stand two years in a row now. I love the spot that they set up at, it's within a block of our house and I can easily see them from my kitchen window. This year they not only have iced tea, but homebaked cookies and cool ties. (Cool ties are a tie that you soak in water for 15 minutes, the crystals inside absorb the water, and they help you evaporate off your body heat - we've been a sweat shop *heh* making things for their booth). Here they are between rushes:

And here they are, amazed at their own ability to earn...

Pretty nifty.


And, because I'm a silly dog owner, head-over-heels for my puppy, is a puppy photo.

All hot dogs should have a cool floor to lie on...

:)
Lisa

My summer reading

I've been reading 'Eat Pray Love', by Elizabeth Gilbert. Not quite finished yet, but ran across a passage I had to share. It seems very significant to me, well stated and pertinent to my life (and perhaps it would be to others who periodically struggle against depression).

Quoted from page 260:
"I keep remembering one of my Guru's teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments."

There you go.

Lisa

Something I found...

I little gift taped to the wall from my youngest geologist.

Parenthood can be sooo sweet.

L

House progress

We spent part of the weekend and this week at our new land. You can see that the new (to us) camper got pressed into service right away!



It was certainly much more comfortable than sleeping in the tent.




On Monday we got a chance to see them pour the foundation for our house... so exciting!



Those poor fellas are working out in the sweltering heat. They had to work really fast because things were drying so quickly. Oldest and I watched this happen from the shade of the camper, as it was almost impossible for us to stand in the sun for more than a few minutes at a time.






Here's the finished pour:




Probably not all that exciting for you non-family members. Really. It's okay, I understand. I probably wouldn't read about someone else's cement pour...





For those of you are still reading...



We're building with ICF (Insulated Concrete Forms). Very cool, very much like giant Lego.






The fella doing the work said that it's as much fun as Lego for big boys...with rebar...but you don't get to choose your colours, they only make the blocks in white - BUT the kits are REALLY BIG!




The day after they poured the foundation they came back and set up two rows of blocks. Once the two rows are in AND the forms are built for the garage foundation, the cement truck will return and pour into these forms - then we'll be able to put the floor in. And the walls should go up quite quickly from there.




Can you believe it? It's begun in earnest, now.


Whew.

Lisa
:)

Now you see it, now you don't

We spent some time in the hospital waiting area this morning....







We waited...

and waited.....

and waited.....

and waited....

and when finally they had time for us...

Check it out! New X-rays, CLEAR X-rays... and one very, very happy boy.


We spent the afternoon at the beach, swimming, fully submerged as often as possible to celebrate.


Summer officially starts today for this young man.

:)

Lisa

A tremendous honour

While I was not looking, Debra awarded me which reminds me how thankful I really am for this online network of wonderful people I've met through blogging. I don't know if I'll ever get the chance to meet Debra in person (she's in Texas and I'm in B.C.), but if I ever do, she'll get a big, big (Texas-sized) hug. If I could give the award back to her, I would. Her work is tremendous, it makes me think...it makes me drool...and most of all, it's a feast for the senses. I really would love to reach right through my monitor and touch what she's working on...maybe someday we'll have feel-o-vision for us fibre nuts.

Who to share this honour with? She's already passed it on to a couple of lovelies that I'd have had on my list...

Here are some inspirational blogs that I read as they are posted:

Rhiannon (over at Toast and Cupcakes). Rhiannon is a lovely, tremendously talented clothing designer who is busy, busy, busy. I've got a couple of her creations in my closet (all the way from Australia) and love reading about her life when she has time to post. I find her work very inspiring.

Bethany (over at Bitter Betty Industries). Bethany is always cooking up something new, whether it's wonderful vintage-styled clothing, cooking, gardening, or puppy rearing. I never know what I'll find with one of her posts, but I always know it'll have style.

Jared (over at Brooklyn Tweed) never fails to amaze me with his knitting, his spinning and his wonderful photography. Drool.

Samantha (over at Diary of a Mad FabriHolic) is always doing something involving her family, her work, her volunteer work, her knitting or her quilting. She combines colours in wonderful ways and has tremendous enthusiasm for crafting. I always open her posts to see what's going on.

Sue (over at Sue Bleiweiss) is always making new surfaces for us fibre junkies to ooh and aah at. I was lucky enough to take a class on multi-media surfaces from her last year (some of you longtime readers might remember) which opened my eyes to all kinds of new possibilities for fibre art and fibre art surfaces. I'm a huge fan of her journals, which she has made into an art form unto themselves.

Now, these are only a few of my daily reads. These are some of the wonderful people that keep my creative juices flowing, even when I can't express my fibre-lust in my own life - I get to live vicariously through theirs...

Yours,
humbly,

Lisa

We're away

In our new (to us, anyway) camper trailer for a couple days. See you soon!

Lisa

There's no school like the OLD school...

As my DH pulled up with the truck, Oldest said, "cool, we got a retro truck!"

Little does he know how NOT retro, but just plain OLDSCHOOL this whole set up is...yup, a beautiful '76 Skylark camper and 80's vintage GMC. Guess where the boys are sleeping tonight? I just took out a flashlight to them, in case they need to come in during the night.

The truck has been dubbed 'Rootbeer', and the boys want to name the camper 'Cappuccino' - I mentioned that we don't have to name all our vehicles after beverages, but was voted out. Sigh. Who am I to argue?

We'll take it down to the land tomorrow, and set up a rather deluxe (well, more so than the van, anyway) domicile so that the boys and I can spend more time down there without having to tent. And this way we'll have an easier way to cook meals and store food.

Life is good.

Lisa

Bad. Bad Blogger. Bad. Sit. Stay. Good Girl!

We've been up to lots of shenanegans over the past 10 days, but somehow I've not been able to get it together to sit down here and log them.

The boys and I spent part of last weekend down at our land, clearing sticks and watching DH get the site ready for the foundation pouring fellas...who apparently got there last night and started their work! Whee! The house is begun!

And now I can better appreciate the basic necessities of life, and just how hard it has been for DH living without them all these months while we waited for this part of the project to begin.


Here is the much celebrated outhouse (in situ), and functioning power pole. Life is good, and a bit more convenient.









We played hard, and worked hard. I 've spent a LOT of my time working on communicating with this guy:

(who would be easier to see if Blogger would stop over-rotating my pictures!!)

We're all pretty lucky that he's such a smart dog (or maybe I'm just close to his intelligence level), and that he's quite laid back. He's just starting to get a little 'adolescent' minded, making things rather interesting.


He's still very affectionate, which can be a lot to handle at 67kilos!

Not far from our new house site in Crescent Valley is an antique shop called 'Rosetown Antiques and Collectibles'. Originally sucked in at the idea of antique sewing machines (because I need more...really... - ahem), and got talking with the owner. It turns out that she is an avid sewer and fibre artist - we had a LOT in common, and she was very friendly and welcoming.
I had a look at some of her machines, her vintage clothing (gulp! - beautiful dresses from the 40's...close to my size...DANGER), and a little shoebox of patterns. This lovely Simplicity pattern had to come home with me! Sadly not all the pattern pieces are in it, but that's okay. I was thinking I might like to frame the envelope and instructions...

Yep, I think I can see myself dropping in to see Rose from time to time to see what other lovelies she has in stock.


And, in preparation for moving, I gave away the rest of my fish and took apart my 200L tank. It's really strange to have it sitting there, empty. Yesterday the power went off for a while and I found myself looking over at the tank to see if the power was back on yet - silly, as the tank was completely empty and dry, not plugged into anything anymore. Old habits really are hard to break.

It was a little bit of a sentimental time, dismantling things, as that tank has been up and running (in one capacity or another) here in our living room for the last 8+ years. Some of the fish we gave away were 5+ years old.


What you can't quite see in this picture is all the boxes that are around the living room right now. There are many open boxes in varying states of organization. It drives me a little bonkers to have things taken apart like this - I guess a little piece of me is compulsive, after all. I just want to put it AWAY. So that I can VACUUM. Then everything will be TIDY. Hrm. The things a girl learns about herself when not expecting it.

BTW...I've done some sewing, but have no pictures to show for it. I couldn't sleep in the wee hours of the morning last week and made the boys 8 pair of pajama bottoms...4 pair each. And a pair for myself. Oh, and I finished knitting a pair of socks. Oh, and submitted another assignment for the course I'm (still) working on.
Plus cooking, cleaning, walking with the dogs, playing with my boys...

Whew. I'm glad I wrote that down. Maybe the days aren't just slipping away on me after all!

Cheers,

Lisa

Happy Canada Day!

I know, I know...it's a day late...


We were too busy having fun yesterday to do anything like posting!


Nakusp has a terrific Canada Day Celebration commencing with a pancake breakfast by the firefighters (they drive around with the sirens on at 6 am to make sure people are up for some flapjacks...) and ending after 10 pm with a big fireworks display over the lake. We were lucky to have company for our day yesterday...cousins, aunt, uncle and grandparents. Life is good. We're rich with family.


Today started with a house showing (the boys, dogs and I just got out of dodge and went for a walk on the waterfront), then I did a total tear down of my smaller aquarium.
I still have my big (50gal) aquarium upstairs -with only 4 fish left in it!

A few days ago we gave away the last of our fish from the small (downstairs) tank, and today was the first chance I've had to look at taking it apart. It's so sad to see all those components drying - temporary, though. Once we're in a new house we'll set up at least one of the tanks again. I love having the fish.

The weather here is crazy hot, and the town is just hopping with tourists. I think we'll head to the beach a little later. Poor youngest has a new cast (that pesky wrist was fractured after all) and still can't get it wet. At least this time he got a fiberglass cast, so hopefully we won't have have to go up and get a retrofit with this cast as we had to with the last one (we learned that Youngest needs more than a plaster cast to get through his days...).

Happy summer,

Lisa