Going Domestic

Our meager harvest :)

I noticed today that all of the remaining blooms on my zucchini plants have turned a sad shade of purple and withered ... seems that the frost has got to them! We did get to enjoy a number of them - Chris and I like picking them when they're really young and grilling them. We harvested all of our tomatoes last weekend and they're riping indoors now. That one in the photo is called a lemonboy and it's kind of cute - it really is lemon-shaped.

Chris and I ventured into the world of home-canning and made a batch of crabapple jelly. Our neighbour has a crabapple tree that mostly hangs into our backyard :) We used the recipe from the Blue Flame Kitchen, and improvised by adding some cinnamon. It turned formerly pink jelly brown, but it now tastes like apple pie :) The recipe called for a jelly bag, and we never did figure out what one of those was exactly, though!

Ground Zero

Drat! One of the lead stories when Chris turned on the radio this morning was about how some Norway Rats had been caught in one Calgary neighbourhood over the past couple of weeks. This is a newsworthy item because Alberta promotes itself as the only rat-free province or state in North America, and frankly, I've never seen a rat out in the wild, so I have no reason to doubt this. Unfortunately, the community where three dozen of these rodents have been caught is the one that we happen to live in! The belief of municipal government officials is that they're lab rats that have been illegally released, and won't survive the winter if they don't find indoor shelter. The officials also state that they've all been caught, but how do they know, really? I am a little annoyed because the article in the local paper says that garbage pick-up has been put on hold for awhile because of the rats, which isn't optimal. Hopefully when I go out for a walk later today I'll just encounter the usual critters like the bunnies and squirrels ...

Mattresses 101

After inhaling our anniversary take-out sushi dinner, the celebrations continued at Sleep Country. Chris and I had decided that it's time to stop making do with a double bed, so we'd scoped out queen-sized ones the previous weekends. We had a particular Sealy Posturepedic in mind, but we wanted to test out a few more to make sure that we were making the right decision. And it was good that we returned. The salesperson whom we were talking with this time pointed out that the Sealy was one of their models with a pocket-coil structure, and if someone as tall as Chris slept on it continually, it would only have a life span of about eight years - something about the pocket coils being softer. He recommended a mattress with a regular coil structure for people who are taller or heavier if one wanted a mattress to have a useable life of 10 - 12 years. We had no idea! Anyway, heeded our new lesson, and ended up ordering a regular 800-coil Serta PerfectSleeper that was less than the mattress with the pocket coils! Yay us! It gets delivered in six days ...

... Happy Anniversary to Us ...

Today officially marks two years of marriage for Chris and me, but unlike last year's anniversary where we went out for a romantic dinner at our fave Italian restaurant, this year we're aiming for bites of take-out sushi in-between feeding, changing, and otherwise amusing our baby. How things change :)

The traditional gift for second anniversaries is cotton, but buying each other anything made of cotton for an anniversary gift seems unfair, as it would lead to more laundry to do :) The modern second anniversary gift is china, but we didn't start a collection of that when we first got married, and in all honesty, we've done fine without formal china. Instead I got something that I knew Chris would really like - Total Club Manager for his computer. Sometimes nothing say love the way that European football does :)

Artful Ingenuity!

Chris and I have this big blue feature wall in our empty dining room, and it's just crying out for a piece of art. We've been to the art sales from the Alberta College of Art and Design twice now to find a suitable piece, but there hasn't been anything that's been a) the right size - it's a big wall b) the right colours or c) liked by both of us. I've had two ideas lately ...

Idea #1 is to just buy a big canvas of the size we want and paint some sort of abstract thing ourselves on it. This way we get the right colours, too. One of my former co-workers shared this tip with me many months ago, and I'd kind of forgotten. I know that neither of us are real artists, but that's a beauty of abstract, right? I actually saw something similar on Queer Eye ...

Idea #2 is to scan a great photo from our wedding/honeymoon in Scotland, import it into Photoshop where I'll apply a filter for an artistic or funky effect, and then send it off to be printed as large as possible. I kind of favour this idea right now because we usually buy little watercolours of where we've had great vacations and hang them in the dining room, but somehow we neglected to pick up a single picture in Scotland. So, it would fill in a gap ...

Window-Shopping

Well, all of the bedrooms on the main floor of our house have now been repainted (cocoa-brown, silver-gray, and sunny yellow - that one's Madeline's), the floors refinished, and have new window-treatments planned. Our own bedroom requires one additional step - replacement of the decrepit aluminum slider before the winter comes. Last winter we were keenly aware that it doesn't keep the elements out, and we also suspect that it's been leaking and damaging the drywall beneath it.

Since we might only be in this house for another five months, depending on when Chris is transfered to Newfoundland, we're just looking at a PVC or fibreglass slider to replace it, but we are going to slurge and get Low-E in the hopes it keeps us warmer at night. The first contracter is coming out to look at the existing window and do some measuring today ...

Deja vu

I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not, but I have another Roman Shade to sew. It's going to become a fall tradition! At least this time, I have a rotary cutter and mat, and the serger ...

What's "Slow Down" in Swedish?

Gosh, I thought that Ikea was one of the happiest places to be on earth, but not if you're trampled in a stampede of shoppers! Story about three deaths at an Ikea, courtesy of the Globe and Mail.