Steady Progress and Summer Holidays!

Slowly but surely we have been making some progress in our house! Most of the Bedrooms upstairs have their pine flooring down and have been painted, our dad has been installing the radiators and doors in some rooms, the tiling is done upstairs, all the room's are painted, light fixtures have been going up (though slowed because our handy electrician/grandpa has been in England for the past 2 weeks), yes it finally seems possible that we might move in by the end of July sometime. 

This is our property looking North-East and it looked so beautiful last night after being freshly cut.

Wild roses are found all over Canada but is considered Alberta's Provincial Flower and it grows all over the perimeter of our "Hundred Acre Woods," which surrounds our house in a "U" shape from north to east to south.

My first week of summer holidays have been interesting…it's rather gloomy and windy out today but we have had some warm days sometimes even getting up to 26+ degrees Celsius. On Saturday us kids (Christian, Blythe, Calder and I) all went out to our cabin on the lake and spent the day suntanning/swimming in the waves. It was unfortunately quite windy that day but the sun was warm. On Sunday however our parents joined us and it was quite cold. 

Hopefully this weekend is better, I'll try and take my camera and snap some pictures of our Canada Day Weekend festivities! We'll surely be clad in our nations colours, red and white. I might even be able to snap some pictures of the Fire Works that the campground has not far from our cabin.

I hope you have a wonderful Canada Day Long Weekend and if you don't live in Canada I hope the weekend's good to you. (I think people in America might have a long Fourth of July weekend…or maybe it's the weekend after…I don't know.)

Anyway I'll be back with some pictures of that, ta ta for now!

One half of the world...

"One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other." ~ Jane Austen

I often feel this way when I post pictures of flowers and write about the little things that for people in warmer climates take for granted. While we are still wallowing under a foot of snow and below zero weather it seems as if all the other bloggers I follow are posting pictures of spring and green grass and the hope of a warm summer. As May and June come along we've just hit the green grass and blooming flowers stage. 

When I went on a trip to Toronto with my school for a week at the end of May we were melting in the 35+ weather (sometimes getting as high as 45) with 100% humidity. As we were landing in the Edmonton airport homebound, snow covered the ground. Many of us still in our summer apparel, froze on the 4 hour return home. Thankfully, for us, it was just raining in our little town and the random spring snow storm had just hit the Edmonton area.

I guess the point of all this is that even if these peonies and little wildflowers don't seem to brighten your day, they've definitely helped cheer up our little rental and been a breath of fresh air after the last 2 weeks of rain. And they are a sure sign for us Northerners that summer has arrived at last!

Potpourri

Hello Everyone :) It feels like it's been awhile…I've been fairly busy lately. The last weekend of May I went with my Aunt and Uncle and their eldest son to YC Alberta. It's held every year at Rexall Place and The Expo Centre in Edmonton, and from Friday to Sunday night we listen to Christian speakers and bands. I was especially excited about seeing Switchfoot and they didn't disappoint. I was also introduced to some new bands like for King and Country and some great speakers like Dave Overholt and David Nasser. All in all we had a great time! 

The weekend after that I assisted my mother with a wedding she was shooting in Grimshaw. It was nice to be able to snap some pictures along side her with my camera. We were both nervous but the bride was so laid back and they had a great timeline, that we wasted our time worrying. It was also nice to spend sometime with just my mom. The hotel room had a dishwasher which seemed like a luxury -- we don't have one in our duplex! Jokingly we decided to just stay there until we finished our house :)



As you can see there is a couple flowers in bloom out at our acreage! It's so pretty and refreshing. "It's lilac stealing time" my mom said! In our town there is plenty of lilacs and even some down alleyways in which we sneak a few to brighten our house!



My eldest brother Christian is always nagging me about when I'm going to bake, so one day I took some pie crust out of the freezer and made little Apple Turnovers…needless to say they didn't sit there for very long!





Mom came home from the acreage this morning with some treasure! She saw a garage sale and decided to go take a look and she found this old painted card table that she's giving to me to hang up in my room! The peachy colours will go well in my new room and it reminds us of a Paris marketplace. She also found this cute red polka dot vintage dress! Quite the find and despite it's smell it's lovely!!

Well that's all for now :) tomorrow after church we're going over to my grandma's to have homemade waffles and an array of breakfast dishes. I'm looking forward to seeing some of my family who are coming up! Au Revoir!

Victoria Day

Have a cupcake :) I made these Thursday night, because I really wanted to try out this cake recipe except as cupcakes. They turned out amazing!!  

May long weekend really woke up our small town, trailers and RVs flooded the streets Saturday, I'm sure most of them heading out to the lake. Some of our family gathered Saturday night at our cabin on the lake and we had a little barbecue and then a little walk around the campground, oh yes and a "quick minute at the park" as my little cousin said. The rest of our weekend was spent painting our house and assembling our IKEA kitchen! I actually spent yesterday, after church, making a little garden in the entryway of our path, Wanderlust. I had got some wildflower seeds to sprinkle in the soil, so that when we finally did move in I could have more of a selection of flowers to put in a little vase in my room.

Anyway I hope you have a wonderful Victoria Day, and if you don't live in Canada I hope you have an amazing Monday :)

Perfectly French

I think I look a little like Jean Seberg in my striped dress and cropped hair :) I plucked these beautiful tulips from my dearest Great Grandmothers garden. She was worried that it was going to rain so she got me to come over and mow her lawn but, mostly she wanted to keep up with her neighbours, who had also cut their lawn! Anyways she told me I could take a bouquet away with me.

Lately I have been in a sort of reading limbo, so to speak, I haven't the will to read a new book but my old favourites are almost all in a box downstairs, stowed away until the day we move into our new house. The house by the way is coming along fast, we had someone come in to mud the drywall as well as prime, he finished yesterday. Anyways I have a book waiting at the library for me to pick up, A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle. My dad has read almost all his books and I can remember when we were on holidays he would read a chapter or two to us as we lied in bed :) 

I felt like reading a perfectly french themed book, probably because I felt nostalgic about The Paris Wife which I read last year and because my graduation trip with my Grandparents is going to be in France. I dream about sitting at a cafe having coffee and reading a book! No tours, just exploring and getting to know the people at our yet to be decided location. I will of course insist on a few trips into Paris to see the Eiffel Tower and get lost in the Louvre, but I want a rural French experience. 

Well I hope your week was perfectly lovely and that you will have a wonderful Mother's Day weekend with your mom's! I love my mom so much and I'm so proud of her hard work at our house and the time she takes to make our days here at the duplex feel like home <3

Birthday's

Yesterday we celebrated my eldest brother's Birthday who turned 21! He just finished his 2nd year at university and our family number returned to 6 on Wednesday. Calder and Dad took a couple days off to pick him up from the city and they made it a boy's trip. Meanwhile mom, Blythe and I stayed home by our lonesome…we had a fun time though, we made low calorie brownies and ate it with low fat ice cream while watching a couple of episodes of Downtown Abbey :) Overall this week went by really slowly, but eating a turkey dinner and then having butterscotch pie and whip cream really helped make it worth it! Next Thursday I'm sooo…excited our school is going to the Citadel in the city and watching Sound of Music! {kind of ironic because I heard about it after I published my blog post on A Few of my Favourite Things!} Well ta ta for now :)

This is just something I've been listening to all week, Dino: The Essential Dean Martin Album

Spring has Sprung

Did I not say the snow would go away? Well it basically all disappeared on Friday with the rain. I spent this Saturday at our acreage, snapping pictures but, mostly reading. Our dogs, Ezra (4 or 5 yrs. old) and Seth (1), followed me around as I snapped these pictures. I was also experimenting with this new photo editing site, PicMonkey, I was originally just using iPhoto. Well I hope you have a good rest of the week :)

"Spring has sprung the grass has riz, I wonder where the birdies is…"