Off to work today......

covering for L as she is off today, so I am guessing I will be run off my feet as it has been busy at work recently.

Managed to get the grass cut for the week, but if it keeps raining it will grow like mad again no doubt.

All the berry bushes are just hanging in fruit, as are the wild apple trees.  My apple trees are bare again, but as this is only year three I am not panicking......YET!!!  I even have a dishful of blueberries on my three bushes, so lets hope the wildlife don't take them as they are not ready yet!!  Don't have any strawberries though as the squirrels have stripped them clean.  Must think of a better way to protect them from the little devils next year.

Well my cup of tea is finished, Molly has to have a quick trot around the field yet, and then it's time to go to work.  I start at 8am and have to be out of the house by 6:45am as it takes me an hour to get to work and you never know what the traffic is going to be like when I hit the city.  Roll on 5pm when I will be home again back to the peace and quiet!!!

Have a good day!

Gill

Fundraising for the church again........

However this one is a little different as its the diocese we are raising money for this time.    The church I go to belongs to the Diocese of Toronto and covers a huge area encompassing 26,000 square kilometres.  The diocese want to raise $50 million over a period of 5 years for various projects.  Each parish church is asked to try and raise a certain amount depending on how big their congregation is.  The church I belong to has been asked to raise $65,000, the other church in our parish is being asked to raise $25,000.  As you may have guessed we have a very small congregation.

The thing that is different about this though, is we are only asking each parishioner to donate and are not asking anyone outside of the church to donate.  Now when I first heard about this I thought it was a stupid idea and why should we give the diocese more money, but if we raise our $65,000 we get 40% of those funds back to do things in our parish.  If we raise over $65,000 we get 75% of those funds back.

Where do I fit into this, well I refused point blank to go visiting the parishioner's to ask for money, so I am co-ordinating the volunteers who will visit the parishioner's.  Despite being brought up not being encouraged to give to the church we will personally be making a monthly donation for the next five years as what they want to do with the money if we raise our goal is very worthy, including many renovations to both churches that are well overdue and also giving some of the money to some local causes.

This fund raising is completely separate to any other fundraising we do for the churches and is completely voluntary, and is above and beyond what we would normally give to the church.  We technically start fundraising as of yesterday, but already we have reached 38% of our goal for the church I attend, St. Luke's and I think around 10% for the other church St. David's.  The campaign is technically only being held for 5 weeks, but will probably go until the end of August.

What are your thoughts on fundraising for the church?  As I said before giving to the church is something that doesn't come easy for us, as we weren't brought up to give to the church.

Irons, kettle and hoovers......

are all items that I go through on piece in our house.  I don't know what it is, but they need replacing on a regular basis with me.


Irons are the worst one usually lasts only a couple of years......if I am lucky.  Followed by kettles, which are always iffy, although my dad and step-mum seem to go through them more than me.


Now my Kenmore hoover which is only a couple of years old is on the fritz.  I think the power head has gone and the performance indicator light is permanently on all the time now.  Mine is similar to this one:

However I am considering splashing out for a Dyson one in the future, any thoughts?  We mainly have hardwood floors in the house, but we have a number of rugs and they get covered in Molly's dog hair, so I need a one that works well on rugs, plus we have carpet on the attic stairs and will have carpet on the main stairs eventually.


Nothing seems to be built to last nowadays though does it? What wears out quickly in your house?

Dinner Party........

On Saturday night we had dd future in-laws up for supper along with dd and hubby to be.  We do know them but haven't seen them in a long while, so it was good to catch up with them, and we talked a little about the wedding.

Now I don't know about you, but when inviting people over for supper I prefer to spend time with them, rather than spending all my time in the kitchen?  So I try and make as simple as possible a meal, and Saturday nights meal was no exception.

We had chicken breast stuffed with ricotta and spinach, then wrapped with bacon.  They are baked in a 375 oF oven for 45 minutes.  I also made roasted baby fingerling potatoes, Caesar salad and garlic bread.  For pudding we had wibbly wobbly pudding and with our cup of tea I made carrot cake cupcakes using this recipe.

I was able to prepare everything ahead of time and so I was able to spend more time with our guests.  We have friends coming over in a couple of weeks time and I think I may recreate this recipe for them as well.

What's your favourite dinner party menu?

Sorry............

Just haven't felt like blogging.

Life is pretty mundane at the moment, the weather sucks and honestly nothing much has been happening.

Worked both Tuesday and Thursday this week.  I normally only work on a Tuesday now, as I have too much to do at home to work more.  Anyhow the money will come in handy as it cost $200 to put a new exhaust/muffler on my car this week.  Had to take the car back to the garage on Friday as they hadn't tightened the screws enough and I even heard it rattling, so it had to be bad!!  So I guess I won't be using that garage again...........

I see gas prices are finally starting to drop.  I paid $1.215 at a Canadian Tire gas station on Friday.  I wish it would drop to below $1 a litre, but I guess that'll never happen.

For those of you who are not in Canada, we are on week three of a postal strike.  It's a pain in the butt, and I wish the government would get on with legislating them back to work.  It's really going to hurt Canada Post, as I have signed up to get some statements online now.  I know at work we are emailing invoices out as much as possible.  Again we have registered online to pay bills.  So when this strike is over we will not be using Canada Post for a lot of things at work, and I am guessing a lot of other companies and people will do the same.

Did anyone watch the new series "Combat Hospital?"  I have to say that was one of the best shows I have seen in a long time.  I am normally in bed just after 9pm, but stayed up to 10pm to watch this show and I am glad I did.  If you have a chance make sure you catch it.

"The Book of Negroes," by Lawrence Hill

In some countries it has another title "Someone Knows My Name,"  Dd gave it to me on Sunday to read and by Monday evening I had read it, so as you may guess I didn't get a lot achieved on Monday.  It was one of those books that you had to keep reading as you wanted to know what happened next.

The book is partly fact and partly fiction and the main character Aminata is a girl/woman you just want to reach out and hug.  She goes through so much in a lifetime that it makes you realize how easy we have it in our lives.  The history of slavery is something our generation doesn't have to deal with, but what those poor people had to endure is just terrible.

It was also set for part of the book in the Carolina's which is a part of the States I love and some of the places mentioned in the book I have been too.  It is also set in Nova Scotia in Canada, and I had often wondered why there was a large coloured population over there, and this explains why.

Now in between reading this book, I did manage to go into town to see about getting a quote for a new exhaust/muffler for the car.  It will cost around $200 (incl taxes) and I get it put on, on Wednesday morning.  Add that to the $525 I spent on the car last week getting new ball joints on it, June has been an expensive month fixing my car.

I also did a couple of large loads of laundry, therefore had a big pile of ironing to do.  I also picked up 5 cauliflower plants, 4 butternut squash plants and 1 spaghetti squash plant for the veggie patch.  My dad was kind enough to plant a pile more potatoes, some onions and carrots on Sunday when he was up.  Plus he brought up another three tomato plants to add to the four I have and I have four sweet pepper plants.  So all in all I should have a few things to harvest later on, again thanks to my dad.

Got work today..........enjoy your Tuesday..........

Been busy..............catch up time........

Spent all day Thursday in the garden, which resulted in me catching too much sun and me being in bed before 8pm.  Still got a lot achieved and the garden looks sort of tidy.  Still a mountain of work to be done but better than it has been.

Friday spent all day in the house cleaning......I know shocker......but even I was fed up with wading through the mountain of dust!!  When dh came home he said he was going to do some sanding..........I gave him "the look," and suggested he wait until after the weekend!!  He agreed..........pleased to say "the look," still has the desired effect!!!

On Friday night we attended the Strawberry Supper at the church, yes I persuaded dh to go along.  We had ham with various salads and strawberries, cream, ice cream and a sweet scone, it was yummy.  Plus there was juice to drink and tea and coffee.  Purchased a lemon meringue pie from the bake sale and a couple of things, all in all a good night.

Saturday was our 28th wedding anniversary.  We set off with one plan in mind and ended up doing something completely different, which included going grocery shopping, looking at a couple of stores for a garden swing and various other things.  We got home around 1:30pm and decided to go to the local pub/restaurant for a late lunch.  We have been here before and as the weather was just wonderful we sat out on the patio underneath the magnolia tree, it was perfect.  We both had a lamb burger with goats cheese, mint and capers, with a Cesar Salad.  Dh had a couple glasses of Strongbow Cider, I had orange juice and soda water.  For dessert I had Pavlova with exotic fruits and cream, and dh had rhubarb pie with ice cream.

It was so relaxing and peaceful and a perfect meal.  We got home around 3:30pm. 

We decided to have a go at chopping/shredding some more twigs.  That bloody machine is dangerous.  I kept well back out of the way.  It says it can chop 3 inch twigs.........in reality I would say 1 inch twigs is quite wide enough.  We managed to get three bags done which I want to put underneath my strawberries.  Mind you something is eating my strawberries, and I have a feeling I know who/what.  It has four legs and hops around a lot!!

My dad is coming up tomorrow for Father's Day so I will discuss the ins and outs of this with him.  The kids are also coming up, I am making lunch for them all.  Nothing exciting, just burgers and sausages in the grill, with fingerling potatoes, Cesar salad and coleslaw.  I have to bake though in the morning as dd is having a bake sale at work and nominated me to make something.......thank you dd!!!!  As I pointed out to her she is as capable as me to bake something, but she just doesn't feel like it!!!???!!!

Anyhow to all the dad's out there Happy Father's Day to you all............