Corning Museum of Glass

Back in June we decided to make a quick trip to Corning, New York, as I have always wanted to go to the Corning Museum of Glass.  Following are some photos from the trip.  Please read the last bit of the post as well if you can.

This display was the lobby of the museum.

Now one of the things I did was make my own vase.  Below is what I made.  I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and it was well worth the price.  I did this one but there are many more you can do.

It has the shape of a heart in the bottom.

I also bought this vase from the store.  I could have spent a small fortune in that store.

I also picked this pen holder up at Vitrix Hot Glass Studio in Corning.

We stayed at the Econo Lodge in Painted Post, which is just a few minutes from the museum and it was an okay hotel, stayed in better, but have also stayed in worse.  Good value for money.

We thoroughly enjoyed the museum.  We arrived at the opening time and stayed until later in the afternoon.  There was something of interest for everyone.  Even hubby was interested in some of the technical things about what glass is used for.  Everyone was super nice.  They have a cafe with typical cafe food at slightly higher than average prices, but typical for a place like this.  I would recommend everyone visiting this museum, well worth the money.

Now I don't talk politics or religion generally on this blog, BUT my fellow Canadian's are probably not overly happy with us for spending a few days in the States.

However, not that I need to make excuses, but we were ready for a break, not a long break just a few days away, as we had a lot going on at the time.  I had always wanted to go to this museum and I don't want a certain person (D.T.) making me wait for four years until he is out of office (we pray and hope!!)

Crossing the border, both ways, was a breeze.  All the horror stories we had heard online and in the news didn't apply.  Everyone we met in the States couldn't have been any nicer if they tried.  They were as fed up with D.T. as we Canadians are. We left on a Tuesday and were back in Canada by late Friday morning. 

We are going away for a few days next month and are spending those days in Northern Ontario.

There is another museum I would love to visit and that is the Tiffany Museum, but that's in Florida.  Has anyone ever been to that?  Also does anyone know of any glass museums in Canada?
 

Only in Canada

do you see a man walking around with winter hat, coat and snow boots, wearing shorts..........I just shook my head as believe me; even I thought it was cold!! 🤷

I will say though I spoke to a mail man once and he said, he made a point of wearing shorts into December!!!

British or Canadian?

(image credit)

When people ask me where I am from my standard answer is: "I am a British born Canadian."  We hold dual citizenship and there was no doubt in our minds that we would become Canadian citizens as soon as we could.  We are lucky that we didn't have to give up our British citizenship; if we had to though I think we would have.  We carry Canadian passports; and have no desire to carry a British one even though we could/can.

Canada is home; the UK is where most of our family live and it's where we go on vacation to.  A lot of expats still say they are going "home" when they go back to their country of birth, I do not.  We have strong roots in Canada.  Our children have married fellow Canadians, have super careers here and have Canadian born children; our grandchildren.  Canada has been good to us and we are thankful for that.

Do I miss the UK; very much so.  As I said most of our family are in the UK.  They are getting older, and along with that comes the problems of aging.  If we lived there I would be able to help out more with various members of family.  As it is, all I can offer is support from the sidelines; it's not the same.  Add into the mix the pandemic and things become increasingly more difficult.  We were due to go to the UK in 2020, that obviously was cancelled.  We knew this year would be a no go; so we have our fingers crossed that we can go in 2022.

As our children were 5 & 3 1/2 when we came to live over here, they have little to no memories of living in the UK.  Dh and I were 25 & 30 and we still speak with a British accent, the kids sound as Canadian as people who were born here.  As we age our memories are viewed through rose tinted glasses.  However in real life things are totally different.  In our last couple of visits I for one have found that how I remembered things and what things are actually like are night and day.  I feel more and more like a "foreigner" every time we visit the UK.

The UK has a huge part of my heart and always will have.  We prefer to watch tv programmes from the UK.  Our sense of humour is very British.  The way I speak and the way I spell and write things are very British.  That's part of me and it will never change, but Canada is home.

Are you living in a country that you weren't born in?

Couple of funny things..

I posted this on my Facebook page last week:

It seems I may be a bad influence???

Liam was talking to his dad and they must have started talking about the pond by our house.

Liam (who is 3): "and there was a bloody great big snapping turtle in the pond, dad."

Dad: "who told you that?"

Liam: "Nana."

Liam: "and snapping turtles bite people, dad."

Dad: "and who told you that?"

Liam: "Nana."

Funny thing is, I remember saying that to Liam, as I got the shock of my life to see a "bloody great big snapping turtle" in the pond...LOL

It also seems I am not the only one in the family that uses the word "daft."

Paige called her mother daft the other day.....oops!

Also we pronounce the word GARAGE - GARIDGE. Nora now pronounces it garidge and Liam is forever correcting me and telling me it's GARAGE not garidge.

Oh the joys of having a British accent. We have lived in Canada now over 32 years now. Dh, I and both kids have all now lived longer in Canada than the UK.

2nd best country in the world to live.........

Canada.

We were beaten by Switzerland.  I think it's the best country in the world, until I have had to shovel snow 7 days in a row, then not so much!!😒  

See where the country you live in ranks by clicking on this link.

30 Years Ago Today..........

we arrived in Canada.

(four Canada keyfobs, to represent the four of us)

Two adults, two small children (5 & 3 1/2) straight off the boat airplane.  We landed in Toronto and made our home in Brampton, Ontario.  30 years later, although not in Brampton, we all live close by.  

Both children attended school; went to university, and have since gone on to get married, have great jobs and have presented us with the best grandchildren, grandparents could ever wish for.  Basically, they have achieved everything and more that we hoped they would achieve by moving here.

We have moved several times, I had several jobs, dh just the one............his second job in his working life, he will have been there 30 years on June 6th.........he doesn't like change...LOL Made many friends and have lost some special friends for various reasons.....mainly due to death.

Canada is home, I have lived here more of my life than Britain.  Dh will achieve that status at the end of January 2020.  We became Canadian citizens as soon as we could and are privileged/fortunate that we can still retain our British citizenship.

Both dh and I sound British when we talk, but when people ask us where we come from (especially when we're in the States), my standard response now is we are British born but Canada is our home.

Canada has been very good to us and we have no regrets about moving here.  Our only regret I guess is that I wish we had the rest of our family in the same country; but that will never happen.

A Happy Anniversary to us.......

Some thoughts about our trip.

We love going to the States.  They are such a patriotic bunch, flying the American flag everywhere. They truly believe their country is the best and I admire them for that.  Only once did someone mention how bad Obama is and as I said to him, "who would you prefer him or Donald Trump, running the country?"

He muttered something and as I then said, I was from Canada, and honestly we are no better off with the bunch of "misfits" we have running to be the next Prime Minister!

As many of you know, we are British born and as we came to Canada when we were in our 20's, we still have our British accents (dh and I;) the kids though sound as Canadian as the next person.  It totally confuses everyone and for some reason American's love hearing us talk?

Anyhow, we have got our response down pat now when people ask where we come from:

"We are British born, but live in Canada."

I must admit I think I blushed bright red from head to toe though one day, as I was talking to a cashier when I noticed another lady standing next to me, just looking at me.  I thought I was holding up things, and of course I apologized......I am Canadian after all...LOL  We apologize for everything, whether it's our fault or not.  Anyway she said no she was enjoying listening to me talk, and then turned around and told her friend to come and listen to me talk.  At that point I just clammed up, as I couldn't think of a thing to say.  

I honestly don't think about my accent and it surprises me when people notice I speak differently, as I never hear it.

The majority of the people are so well mannered; at least with us.  I guess it helps that we always say please and thank you, and if a job is well done I will let people know.  Whenever I talked to the ladies who took care of our hotel room, I always said thank you for a job well done.  I did find though that some people were just plain rude with people especially in the fast food places.

We were in one place and the daughter who was my age or older and her mother, were just plain bloody rude to the girl behind the counter.  Now granted she was as slow as molasses, but even so, don't be rude and disrespectful.  

I finally said to the mother and daughter, "you both seem to be having a bad day?"

Now I am not sure if it was my accent or someone spoke to them, but they both stood there with their mouth's open!!!  I don't remember what they said, but their attitude didn't change with the poor server.....LOL

My only gripe........I wish the exchange rate had been better, as I couldn't/wouldn't/didn't spend anywhere near as much as I normally do when do there.  The one thing we did find cheaper was the gas/petrol; they have super cheap prices for gas and we paid as low as $2.26 USD per gallon.

I look forward to our next visit to the States.  

I wonder whose bright idea this was?

It was announced last week that Kanye West is going to be the headliner at the closing ceremonies at the Pan Am games in Toronto.  Now I don't claim to be an expert of Kanye West, but what little I have seen of his music, most of it is bleeped out due to all the bad language he uses or I can't understand a word he says. Honestly I can't say I had heard of him, until he got together with Kim Kardashian.  

Also as the games are being held in Canada and we do have the odd high profile musician that is Canadian, Drake, Celine Dion, Shania Twain, or even at a push Justin Bieber, so why on earth couldn't they hire one of them?  Pitbull who is also American born is another star performing and also Serena Ryder who is actually Canadian.

Now as you probably know Canadians are a polite bunch, but this has got a lot of people angry and there are a lot of online petitions going around trying to get Kanye West replaced.  Obviously this isn't going to happen, as no doubt Kanye being the astute business man he is will have made sure there is a cancellation clause in his contract.

Then just to add to all the drama we have the Toronto Mayor John Tory announcing that it is great to have someone performing who has done so much for our (Canadian) music industry.......hello he's American....LOL

Now granted the poor man did go on and make a video basically making fun of himself over his gaffe, which I see can't be shown now due to copy-right laws.

Oh well on a brighter note all this makes for headlines which brings in more publicity for the games and Canada.........

Remembering........

When I was visiting blogs, Randomosity had a youtube video of The Proclaimers.  Do you remember The Proclaimers?  I think their most famous song is this one:



I love their music and I think I know all the words to 500 miles.  The Proclaimers are Scottish and I am English; our accents are completely different despite what a lot of people think.  However when I sing along to this song I develop a pretty good Scottish accent I think, which I think is very funny.

As for remembering, back in 1988 The Proclaimers were performing a gig at a place reasonably close to where we lived in England, called Kendal.  However we had booked to come over to Canada for a week for dh to find a job and to double check we wanted to come and live over here.  Although bummed because I couldn't go and see The Proclaimers, no regrets at making that trip to Canada, as it was the first step in coming over here to live.

Then this will make more sense to the Canadians out there.  The government has finally caught up with me!!  I still have the red and white health card. Got a letter in the mail a couple of weeks ago to go and get one of the new ones.  As it has your photo on, it has taken this long for me to feel and look human again.  So off I went on Tuesday to get it done; so I am guessing every five years I have to get it redone?  I liked the red and white ones as they had no expiry dates on them.

Was in and out the office in under five minutes and at least half of the time was spent talking about our Ford Fiesta's both the lady in the office and I own!!  Got to love small town living.

I went to knitting also on Tuesday and left early as I was so tired.  So due to that fact I did not get an opportunity to catch up on everyone's blogs sorry.

For Shelley here is a link to the fish cake recipe.

Well would you believe it, they let us back into Canada!!!

We're home.  We left Sunday afternoon, bit of a story behind that; and drove up to just past Cincinnati and stayed overnight there and arrived home late Monday afternoon.

Will get back into the swing of blogging after today.  Got some things to catch up on, including a pile of laundry.  Still got lots to share with you all about our trip.  We had a wonderful time.

I have a weather announcement for you....

See the snowman below? Well that's the only snowman you should see this year....why?

We have gone and bought a snow thrower, this one to be precise. So it's guaranteed that as we have bought a snow thrower finally, it's bound to be a snow less year, it's sod's law.

Not sure why it has taken us over 19 years of living in Canada to finally get around to buying one. It may be something to do with the fact that me and dh are getting older and our body aches in places it didn't in prior years, and shovelling snow doesn't help the situation. Or it could be the fact we live on the bend of a crescent and the snow plow driver just loves to dump 4 feet of heavy wet snow on the end of our driveway, which has had me in tears a few times wondering how on earth we were going to move it?

I do know after last years continuous snowfall we knew there was no way we were going through another winter without a snow thrower. The one we have bought is a bit big for our current driveway, but it will be great for when I move into the country.

So there you go, aren't you glad we bought a snow thrower!!!!

P.S. As I am writing this, Wednesday evening, it's snowing........but we'll just ignore that!!!