and so this is Christmas and what have you done?

Another Christmas has flashed by... without a Christian faith I find that the day is strictly a celebration of family and love for family and friends. I am struck by the need to express love on a daily basis rather than only once a year.

Yesterday was a very momentous occasion, Joshua asked Lindley to marry him, and she said yes. :)

Our family is soon to be expanding again.

We went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie yesterday afternoon. We were surprised at how full the movie theatre was! Guess we weren't the only ones looking for a family activity for the afternoon. :)

We have family coming over for lunch today which I will serve in a buffet fashion; turkey, potatoes, veg, meatballs, tourtiere, and yule log/cookies for dessert. It will be a great way of clearing out the fridge from a lot of the surplus food!

I hope everyone is having a good time relaxing over this holiday period.

Christmas comes but once a year... thank heavens!

Well the eve of Christmas is upon us... Mum and I did some baking in preparation for visitors and feasting yesterday. Today I will cook the Turkey and we will have our Christmas dinner this evening as Lindley is going to her boyfriend, Joshua's, home for Christmas Day dinner tomorrow. This is a different celebration this year as it is full of adult children and the need for compromise within a family. Emilie's boyfriend, Derrick, will be over for Christmas Day afternoon and evening with his two year old, Nathaniel. He is such a lovely little boy and it will be fun to hear a child react to Christmas again. :)

The need to compromise on celebration times has prompted Mike and I to think that we will make Yule our large celebration in future years (once we are empty nesters) to allow our children to have their own traditions and celebrations for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, if necessary. Time changes things and the biggest thing as a mother is to embrace the change and realize that it symbols growth and renewed vigour rather than stagnation.

I hope all of you have a restful and loving holiday celebration!

keeping the faith

What a wonderful weekend! We celebrated Yule four times!

Once with Thornhaven Grove, once with our Red Maple Grove, once with our family, and once as a couple. What wonderful times were spent with friends and family. Closer bonds were forged with both Gods, friends and kin.

Now to soldier on with the Xmas preparations... shopping is basically finished, turkey is starting to defrost, now baking must begin. :)

Yuletide Preparations are ongoing...

Morning all! Well last night we managed to get a lot of the yuletide shopping done along with some Xmas purchases also. Tonight we are headed out to Inkerman, Ontario for an overnight Yule party. We will be returning home after the sunrise and a celebratory breakfast. We will then crash for a few hours before we head out the door again. It is going to be a busy and sleepless weekend.

On Sunday afternoon we pick up my Mum from the bus station to spend Xmas with us. It will be fun to all be together to celebrate again.

As you can imagine, I have tons to do before we leave tonight and not much time to get it all done! I am not sure how much time I will have for posting this weekend but will try to touch base early next week and catch you up on what transpired over the weekend of festivities. :)

Countdown to Yuletide is on!

This morning I am starting to feel the effects of a cold. I do not have time to be sick! I am starting on a regime of ColdFX and Vitamin C to see if I can stave off the worst of it.

First thing today I am going to make a realistic "Things I must do" list and work on getting duties finalized and checked off the list. The floor renovation is definitely going ahead full steam. Andre, Mike's brother, came over last night and they got the rest of the subfloor up and the majority of the laminate down in the hallway. There are only a few pieces and doorway dividers to go in now. I think the kitchen will have to wait as the laminate is not water proof. I am not going to put it in the kitchen as that will be asking for trouble! I think we will buy some of the new laminate ceramic tiles that look like high end tiles but are stick on and then you grout them with special grout mixture. It is a much more durable and cheaper solution than going with more tiles!

Without putting the kitchen in the "wood" laminate we should have enough to do the music room and our smaller bedroom... Our bungalow is being brought into this century again! :)

Now on to taking the meds and making a list!....

Take time to Rest and Ponder

Update on Renovation:

Last night we managed to clear another 10 feet of the subfloor and made it to our bathroom doorway in the hallway. Tonight my brother-in-law, Andre, is coming over to help us in our efforts. Hopefully we will be able to get the rest of the old subfloor up and start, if not finish, laying the laminate in the hallway. Wish us luck! :)

On the less "mundane" side of things I have come to a momentous decision for the new calendar year. Starting January 5th until next Yule season I am eliminating television and movies from my life. I have decided that I need more time to meditate, read, listen to music and ponder things. Eliminating this time consumer from my options will free up a lot of time in my calendar! When next yuletide rolls around I will decide how much of my free time I will allot to this activity again.

Mike and I have also decided to implement a Sabbath again for our lives. From sundown Saturday until sundown Sunday we will not do any "work". No commercial work, unless we are traveling for business, or renovation work will be done during this time. We will spend this time in rest and leisure to recharge our batteries for the week to come.

I will keep you all posted on how I am handling these two "resolutions" throughout the coming year.

Life is good

Well today has been a good day so far... laundry continues. :) Making ribs for supper, yum!

We had a good time at my Mom-in-law's last night and I won the game of cards. Yay! Tonight we will soldier on with the flooring, hopefully getting up the last of the subfloor and possibly some of the laminate. Andre, my husband's brother, is coming over tomorrow night for supper and to help him with the flooring.

LIFE IS GOOD! :)

If at first you don't succeed, try and try again...

Well we discovered that the hallway floor was much worse than we anticipated! We had to remove all of the old tiles and then try to find the multitude of screws that was used to fix down the thin underlay plywood that was used on top of the old floor. The issue is that the screws were then covered with thin set that was not applied thinly! We discovered that they screwed and nailed down this plywood at least every four inches! The best method is to put a commercial ice scraper underneath the plywood and pop the floor up in pieces, vacuum all of the thin set "sludge" and then find the screws and take them out of the floor. It is a slow and torturous process for sure! Well tonight we are at the mom-in-law's for supper so will be taking a break from the floor. YAY! We will get back to it tomorrow night and hopefully clear the last bit and be ready to put the floor down on Wednesday evening.

Today is laundry and household chores before heading out for supper.

Continuing on...

Well I haven't posted for a few days but life has been busy! We had our first major snowfall which left us with a foot of snow within 12 hours. Winter is now here. LOL!

The floor is down in the living room and we now have just the baseboards to finish and then move onto the hallway floor. The floor in the hallway is much more involved as we have to take out the old cracked tile, plywood with a layer of thinset in order to be able to lay down the underlay to put the floor on. This we will work on this weekend.

We did manage to get the xmas tree up :)

Another day of Chaos!

Yesterday saw the majority of the "stuff" being put down in the family room that was left around the house. I have a chili in the slow cooker for supper and have one more load of laundry to do. I then will work on getting the furniture that is left in the living room over to the far side of the room so that we can start installing the floor on that half tonight, after supper.

Life is always busy with us and thankfully never boring!

Cleaning while in Chaos

So we have decided not to use the nice shiny flooring in the basement but replace the much needed flooring on the main floor level of our 1960's bungalow. We will need to replace the baseboards, etc. as well but this can be done at a minimal cost while we are installing it. We have moved our tv down into the basement family room so that the living room will be for reading, listening to music and visiting. Once more a hospitable sanctuary with not a goggle box in site. :)

Now I have to figure out how to survive my house being in total disarray while we are installing the floor. The living room must be finished by Sunday evening as we are putting up the tree! Wish us luck and I will keep you posted on the progress.

Getting ready for Yuletide

Wow hard to believe that it has been over a month since I last posted!

I am in the process of getting ready for the holiday season. We have two Yule celebrations, overnight vigils, to participate in and also have our own homestyle Yule celebration to get ready for. My mum is visiting for two weeks over Xmas so most of the prep must be done before December 22nd. Time to get busy!

This weekend we have a Christmas Concert to attend on the Friday night. Lindley, my 20 year old daughter, is competing in the Canadian Music Competitions this year. This Friday is their Xmas fund raiser concert and she is singing an aria for it. December 5th is our Daw Family Xmas get together before my mom-in-law leaves for a warmer climate. December 6th we are putting up our Xmas tree in the family room with hot chocolate and White Christmas playing in the background. Wow, it is beginning to get busy! Okay so time to knuckle down and get some stuff done.

I would like to do some Christmas baking tins for gifts and need to finish my Christmas Cards and Christmas gifts! I love this time of year! :) So gonna put some xmas music on the stereo and get my laundry in and pick out some recipes and get planning!

We had our first dusting of snow last night and it is getting me in a festive mood.

Final Destination?

In reading our Stoic reading for the day it emphasised the need to keep the final goal in mind. Hmmmm what was my "final goal"? Guess I got some soul searching to do again, sigh....

The wonder of family

We spent the weekend visiting family. My mother was performing in her musical/variety group and we went to see the show and spend the weekend visiting with my sisters and their families.

What a wonderful blessing family is! We managed to come away with many videos of family members, having had two new babies added to the ranks recently.

Today is my day to get back on track with housework, epublishing, etc. and touch base again with my daughters. There is a definite chill in the air this morning and the promise of sunshine for later in the day and tomorrow. We are then into rain again so hopefully I will be able to finish the winterization process today and tomorrow and get the outside ready for the winter that is about to descend upon us soon!

Thankfulness

The Canadian Thanksgiving weekend is upon us. We are currently painting our bedroom for our youngest daughter to move into. We have moved into a smaller room, downsizing our "stuff" and creating a Family room in the daughter's old bedroom. Yay, the goggle box will once again be out of the main living room!

We will probably move the piano into the living room and have a dedicated office for our e-publishing business and the household paperwork.

Michel, the hubby, made a wonderful soup for lunch (Parsnip, Pear and Leek soup). Definitely a "do again" recipe! We have chicken and black bean chili in the slow cooker for supper. I am heading out now to Leading Note to pick up some music books for our youngest daughter, Emilie. Hope everyone is enjoying the lovely fall weather and spending time being thankful for all of our blessings!

Middle of the Week

Wow hard to believe that it is Wednesday already. I had a productive day today...

Got all of my laundry done and out to dry on the lines. :) I am making a Mexicana Casserole for supper with a salad. It should be yummy!

Tonight we will hunker down and chat in the gazebo until dark and talk about our DPs and work on Oak Leaves. We have committed to getting a sketch edition posted at the end of the day tomorrow.

Sunday

We set up our home shrine and posted it to our livejournals yesterday. One more tick box on the road to completing our DPs done. :)

Today is a get things in order day. We are headed out for dinner and a concert with my Mom-in-law this afternoon. It will be nice not to be on the hook to make supper tonight. The "kids" can fend for themselves.

Back from Camping to the "real world"

Well it is a rainy day here in Ottawa. Had an amazing four days at Wellspring in Sherman, NY. Definitely a do again for next year!

Just spending the day getting the house back in order as it is definitely an inside only day.

Will write again tomorrow.

Ciao for now and blessings to all!

Change is a good thing

Woke up to an email from my friend who is spending 10 weeks in a remote location, gardening, exercising, yoga and eating right. She mentions that she has little technology access and will be sending sporadic notes now and then. She is looking forward to the change that will take place in her life over the coming weeks. It will be interesting to see her again at the end of July! :)

This made me think of what I want to accomplish this summer. I too am looking for change and have made slow steps to get there... we have implemented a new vegetarian diet using SparkPeople to track our progress. I also have the promise of yoga lessons from my Mother's Day gift and hope to soon attempt that. I also have to remember to try to walk on a daily basis. The puppy loves this! We still have to set up our home gym once the weather behaves in the evenings LOL!

Oh well, steady and surely wins the race. I must be patient and implement change slowly in my own life as there are other people involved and I am not in a strange place for 10 weeks in a type of body boot camp, like my friend. Any change is good.

Almost a year!

Wow. I can't believe it has been three days away from a year since I posted on this blog. So much has happened in the past year. I now know my Patrons, Zeus and Artemis... I now wish to be known as Nikandre Kore as my online name.