As promised another candid photo of one of the grands.........

 this time the youngest one.  He was 3 at the time and his expression says it all!

What is funny about this, is I have seen this expression numerous times.  From the age of 5 months until around 15 months he hated everyone other than a couple of people.  I just had to look at him and he started crying.....LOL  Thankfully he was the youngest of my 7 grands, so I wasn't upset, I know he would get over it and he did.

He has to be one of the most loving kids out there, along with his cousin Paige.  We always get a huge hug and told "I love you Nana."  He is super close to his Grandad as well.  When I babysit, and put him to bed.  Rather than read with him, we have a talk about everything good that had happened to him that day.  He loves that, and now his older brother wants me to do that with him as well.

I have this photo "living" here:

So that every time I need cheering up I look at that photo and smile!

The larger picture is a photo of the sunrise from when we lived at the farmhouse.

Allergies, grocery shopping and knitting....

I have been suffering with allergies for the past couple of weeks.  I am ready to pull off my nose and the only thing I can think that is causing them are the Poinsettia's I have in the house.  I keep forgetting to buy some allergy pills, but on Thursday I found some Benedryl pills in the back of the cupboard and they weren't expired.  I took a couple around 5 pm on Thursday, by 6:30 pm I felt terrible.  I had all the symptoms of a migraine, but I had no headache.  I could barely keep my eyes open, so went to bed at 6:30 pm.  I slept right through until 6 am.  All day on Friday I was about as much use as a chocolate fireguard!!!  

I went grocery shopping and honestly don't remember how I managed, as I felt so dopey.  I did cash in my points at Shopper's Drug Mart and stocked up on dh's Glucosamine and Chondroitin and now have a six month supply.  So instead of paying $110.49, I only paid $10.49.  I popped into Zehrs and thought I'd pick a few things up and ended up spending $71.94.  Mind you nearly $20 of that was allergy pills.  My final stop was Sobey's where I got my best deals.  Cheese Whiz was on sale on Friday for $2.49 - $1.50 coupon, so only 99 cents.  Spent $9.95 there, so all in all spent $92.38.  I have $20 worth of gift cards for Canadian Tire, so am planning on picking up Maxwell House ground coffee which they have on special Saturday and Sunday for $6.97 a can.  If I can get three cans that will last us six months and only cost me 91 cents when I cash in my gift cards.  So I am at least $20 over my weekly budget this week.........

I am going to work on my lists of things to do and goals this weekend, so I am all ready for the New Year.  I have been putting my silver change into my sealed pot and any spare loonies and toonies are going into another pot ready for gardening season.

Have you made any plans for 2013 yet?

Here is the scarf I am knitting at the moment.

Had a question for anyone who knits.  Do you have something you put on the end of your needles when you put your knitting down so the loops don't come off?

Finally a photo looking north of our property, lots of snow.

Cold enough that even the horses had their coats on...

The horses were out in the field behind us, busy chewing on what little grass that is left:

I read the following over on Valerie's blog and thought it was so true:

A new book has confirmed a theory that I first proposed in 1987, in a column explaining why men are physically unqualified to do housework.

The problem, I argued, is that men -- because of a tragic genetic flaw -- cannot see dirt until there is enough of it to support agriculture. This puts men at a huge disadvantage against women, who can detect a single dirt molecule 20 feet away. This is why a man and a woman can both be looking at the same bathroom commode, and the man -- hindered by Male Genetic Dirt Blindness (MGDB) -- will perceive the commode surface as being clean enough for heart surgery or even meat slicing; whereas the woman can't even see the commode, only a teeming, commode-shaped swarm of bacteria.

A woman can spend two hours cleaning a toothbrush holder and still not be totally satisfied; whereas if you ask a man to clean the entire New York City subway system, he'll go down there with a bottle of Windex and a single paper towel, then emerge 25 minutes later, weary but satisfied with a job well done.

When I wrote about Male Genetic Dirt Blindness, many irate readers complained that I was engaging in sexist stereotyping, as well as making lame excuses for the fact that men are lazy pigs. All of these irate readers belonged to a gender that I will not identify here, other than to say: Guess what, ladies? There is now scientific proof that I was right. This proof appears in a new book titled "What Could He Be Thinking? How a Man's Mind Really Works".

I have not personally read this book, because, as a journalist, I am too busy writing about it. But according to an article by Reuters, the book states that a man's brain "takes in less sensory detail than a woman's, so he doesn't see or even feel the dust and household mess in the same way." Got that? We can't see or feel the mess! We're like: "What snow tires in the dining room? Oh, those snow tires in the dining room.''. And this is only one of the differences between men's and women's brains.

Another difference involves a brain part called the "cingulate gyrus" which is the sector where emotions are located. The Reuters article does not describe the cingulate gyrus, but presumably in women it is a structure the size of a mature cantaloupe, containing a vast quantity of complex, endlessly re-calibrated emotional data involving hundreds, perhaps thousands of human relationships; whereas in men it is basically a cashew filled with NFL highlights.

In any event, it turns out that women's brains secrete more of the chemicals "oxytocin" and "serotonin", which, according to biologists, cause humans to feel they have an inadequate supply of shoes. No, seriously, these chemicals cause humans to want to bond with other humans, which is why women like to share their feelings. Some women (and here I am referring to my wife) can share as many as three days' worth of feelings about an event that took eight seconds to actually happen.

We men, on the other hand, are reluctant to share our feelings, in large part because we often don't have any. Really. Ask any guy: A lot of the time, when we look like we're thinking, we just have this low-level humming sound in our brains. That's why, in male-female conversations, the male part often consists entirely of him going "hmmmm." This frustrates the woman, who wants to know what he's really thinking. In fact, what he's thinking is, literally, "hmmmm."

So anyway, according to the Reuters article, when a man, instead of sharing feelings with his mate, chooses to lie on the sofa, holding the remote control and monitoring 750 television programs simultaneously by changing the channel every one-half second (pausing slightly longer for programs that feature touchdowns, fighting, shooting, car crashes or bosoms) his mate should not come to the mistaken conclusion that he is an insensitive jerk. In fact, he is responding to scientific biological brain chemicals that require him to behave this way for scientific reasons, as detailed in the scientific book "What Could He Be Thinking? How a Man's Mind Really Works", which I frankly cannot recommend highly enough.

I posted another book review yesterday here "Miss Scarlet's School of Patternless Sewing," by Kathy Cano-Murillo

A bit of this, and a bit of that........

Sunday was a perfect day, we did very little all day and it was nice.  Dh did do a couple of jobs outside and tested the snow blower to make sure it was working.  Otherwise we just vegged out in front of the fire.


I found a photo of the venue for the wedding that I thought I'd share:

My mother brought over some magazines for me to read, as you know I am a magazine junkie. They included a couple issues of BBC Easy Cook magazines.  They include all sorts of recipes and the two she brought me had a few recipes I think I want to try.

I also got the 2012 Milk Calendar with the newspaper this weekend and it also has some super recipes on it.  I think that's going to be my calendar in the kitchen this year.

Have another super busy week ahead of me.  I want to get the house cleaned from top to bottom.  I have all the bedding washed, dried and ironed from when our visitors were here. Just need to get all the rooms cleaned ready for the kids coming over at Christmas.

The weather is now cooling off and feels like winter weather now.  We have been lucky though as the snow has been north of us, which is just as well, as I still don't have my snow tires on my car.  Do you put snow tires on your car for winter and if so when do you normally put them on?

Skywatch Friday

Not a cloud in the sky, just some smoke.......

For more Skywatch Friday posts please click on this link

Thank goodness for Dh.......

Our washer drains into a sink which then drains into a pump which then pumps the water up to the septic/sewer line and out into the spetic bed.  On Wednesday I was doing laundry and when I went down to the basement to get it out of the washer, I found water everywhere on the floor.  I figured that the hose had come loose.

On Friday did more laundry and the same thing happened; so this time figured that maybe the bottom of the washer had rotted out.  Anyway did another load and discovered the pump wasn't working; instead of pumping the water up to the septic pipe it was just pouring out the pump all over the floor.  What a flipping mess.

Anyway my dear dh came home and stripped it down and repaired it, and now it is working fine!!  So that saved us $300 thank goodness.

I went to get the mail from the mail box and it was full of mail on Friday.  Unfortunately at least six pieces of mail was for other people at other addresses!!!  To cut a long story short I got the phone number of a "higher up" individual and they are going to see what's what.  I told them I am fed up of the situation and they are not to use my name............so we'll see what happens.

Friday's sunset........pretty nice eh!

Back again........

Thought I'd include a photo of one of my roses.  Not a huge fan of roses, but have to admit this one is really pretty.

It's been a hot and humid few days and it's only going to get worse this coming week.  Although dh got the electrics all done for the central air, it won't be up and running this week, as we are now waiting for the central air guy to show up!  So we will be suffering for all of this week no doubt with the heat.

The yard sale was a total waste of time.  6 people actually stopped over two days and I sold 12 vhs video's for $5 and three of my dad's bird houses for $50.  Plus I got well and truly burnt, so I am even redder than I normally am.  One good thing I did do was catch up on my reading, so that was good.  I will not be having a yard sale again though.

We were invited to the neighbours on Saturday.  I popped down for an hour.  They're Italians and they were barbequing.  I had a lamb chop and some wings.  I passed on the lamb's liver, kidney's, heart, lungs and as it was a little boy lamb his pee-pee!!  The host was very generous to offer it to me though, wasn't he...LOL

I hope you will think of me around 2 pm-ish on Monday as I am having my tooth extracted.  Can't say I am thrilled about it, but I am fed up with having this toothache.  Mind you after 10 days of antibiotics, it's only a minor throb, but I bet that it will flare up again. When this one is extracted I will be down to one back bottom tooth in my mouth. 

Today's Flower

One thing I am seeing popping their heads through the soil are the irises, so I know I will be guaranteed some colour in the garden this year.  This is a taster of what they will look like in a few months time.

For more today's flower's photo's please click on this link

Today's Flower

This is an apple scented geranium  You HAVE to click on the photo to see the flower better.  I couldn't get a good photo at all?  This has flowered since I got it back in the summer of last year.  I have taken a cutting of it to give to a friend, as I know she will love it.

For more Today's Flowers photos, please click on this link

Skywatch Friday

These photos were taken around 6:30am on Satuday January 30th. It was a bitter cold morning and we had this lovely full moon.

For more Skywatch Photos please click on this link

Today's Flower

This is another photo from the archives.  I can't for the life of me remember what this plant is called, I though it was part of the primrose family?  I had this growing at the other house, wish I had transplanted it and brought it with me.

For more Today's Flower's photos, please click on this link

Unblocking toilets and other things.......

Over on Expat Mum's blog she is talking about unblocking toilets and children.  As I was saying there I am an expert on this subject.  I just hope my dear darling children are going to read this.  Oh and a warning if you're eating DON'T READ THIS!!!

So two houses ago, we moved into a brand new house.  We had an ensuite bathroom, so the kids were the only one using the main bathroom.  The builders had installed the low flush toilets, which we thought would be great as we paid for our water usage in the city.

Almost from day one, the kids' bathroom toilet was blocking up and overflowing.  Where did it overflow you ask, under the floor into my above stove kitchen cupboard, and if I was really lucky.....into the above stove microwave........whoever is saying icky, icky, icky, I so agree.

So why did our toilet not overflow, because unlike our dear darling children we do not use half a roll of toilet paper everytime we went to the bathroom.  I mean I bought caseloads of the stuff, as we were forever going through toilet paper.  They would go through a toilet roll in their bathroom every day.

Then on one overflowing session, dh took off the toilet and it was full of Q-Tips.......yep they were shoving Q-Tips down the toilet........duh.......that also blocks the toilet!!!  We eventually had to change that toilet to a regular flushing toilet and things were fine after that.  Still went through as much toilet paper, but the water flushing through the toilet was enough to get rid of big wads of toilet paper.  Oh the joys of having teenagers in the house!!

Here is a photo of Molly, she is laying on the mat in front of the fire:

She brought me a present the other evening a dead bloody mouse!!!  She looked so sad when I was jumping around in a panic, and she looked as mad as hell, when I threw it out.  So much so I sat down with her and told her that although I am very proud of her, her mummy isn't too keen on dead bloody mice in the house.  She still didn't look too happy, but a day later she seems to have forgiven me.

Now when Molly is outside she is always on a leash, as with her being a Beagle she has a habit of following her nose regardless.  So it came as a surprise the other night, when I called for her to come in, she trotted up to the patio door, minus her collar and her leash........

It was even a bigger surprise on Monday morning, as I was doing some ironing and looked up to see her wandering around the fence........her leash doesn't reach that far....on further investigation, it turns out her leash had snapped in two.  So dh is making her another leash this time out of aircraft cable which is stainless steel and shouldn't break.

I was talking to someone on Monday and her friend is fostering a 3 year old Dachshund............I have always loved "sausage dogs"  Its a little girl and to my mind would make a perfect friend for Molly, but dh doesn't think its a good idea...drat!!

Did you remember to put your money in your pot for the Daily Savings Club today?

Today's Money Saving Tip:


Make sure all your electrical devices are on a surge protector. This is especially true of your entertainment center and your computer equipment. A power surge can damage these electronics very easily, so spend the money for a basic surge protector and keep your equipment plugged into such a device.

Today's Flower

Well the wind is howling, the snow is coming down and overall its a nasty day, so I thought I would pull up another photo from the archives, of a warmer time, and here is a close up of the middle of a sunflower.

For more Today's Flower photos, please click on this link

Today's Flower

This is more of a reminder to myself, that I need to buy some Clematis for the garden next year, as I don't have any at this house.  This one was growing at the other house.

For more Today's Flower photos, please click on this link