Nathan is EIGHT!!

Yesterday was Nathan's eight birthday. It's hard to believe the time has gone by so fast - and yet Nathan has always been one of those kids that is so much "larger than life" that it's also hard to believe he is only eight; he is so confident and self-assured. He is a kid who knows what he wants and is not afraid to go and get it! I am in awe of this incredible person who I have the honour of mothering. It's been a wild ride so far!

For his official birthday celebration, we headed up to Christie Lake (a local conservation area) with half a dozen boys for an afternoon of fun with some medieval weapons. This has been a big interest of Nathan's for the past few months. Using directions from The Art of the Catapult, Nathan helped his dad build a trebuchet and a couple of catapults (all kid-sized!) Nathan helped with drilling and sawing, and Joe figured out how to make it all work!

Here's Nathan getting ready to fire the trebuchet; the catapults are to the left.

Two of Nathan's best buddies give it a whirl. We had a few different sizes of projectile to experiment with. The projectiles hang from the trebuchet via a piece of string, and we discovered that the string length makes a difference as to how far the object will travel!

Some sword/lightsaber action rounds out the battle component of the afternoon!

A new Gamecube game!! I know what the birthday boy will be doing as soon as we get home...

The new lego sets needed to be built immediately!!

I think it's safe to say that a good time was had by all! I love all of Nathan's friends (most of whom we have known for years). It's been so much fun to watch all these boys grow up together and discover so many new passions together. We are so pleased that they were able to share in all the birthday festivities!

An Afternoon at the Farm

The Community Shared Agriculture farm we belong to (Plan B Organic Farm) has an annual "Farm Day" near the end of the season every year. Today was the day!! We had fabulous, warm sunny weather and enjoyed a menu of local organic foods: Sausages or burgers, salads (from farm produce of course!) and organic ice cream to die for (seriously, the best ice cream I've ever eaten - Mapleton's Organic).

The only bummer was that I forgot my camera. Waahh!! I missed some seriously good photo ops. The kids (and there were a lot of them!) piled bales of hay into various configurations - a fort, an "igloo", and eventually a tallish tower-like structure. This led to jumping off said tower into a loose pile of hay below. The kids were all just in heaven - literally radiating joy from their pores as they soared through the air into the hay pile below. The parents were all being totally cool and relaxed and just letting the kids revel in the whole farm experience.

We also got to take a tour of the farm, meet all the farm dogs (there were several - and yes, Noah was in his glory!), chase chickens and roosters, play with the farm cat, and pick a pumpkin to bring home. It's really amazing to have such a close connection with the people who are growing your food. I was walking by a field of salad greens, and realized I would be eating some of those very greens in a couple of weeks.

All in all, the perfect way to spend a fall afternoon.

Bursting Back into the Blogosphere!!

It's been an embarrassingly long time since I've posted anything to this (or any!) blog. I needed to take a break from my cyberlife for a while to focus on some important things in the rest of my life - with my kids, my hubby, and well, a bunch of other things too.

I'm finally feeling like diving back in to a somewhat-regular blogging schedule, so hopefully you can count on posts appearing here fairly frequently once more! I am also going to stop trying to maintain multiple blogs and just use this one for everything and anything I feel like blogging about.

A quick update on some of the things we've been up to over the past few months:

In mid-June, we joined a bunch of other unschooling families in Watkins Glen, New York, for our second annual KOA Kamping Adventure together. It was great to see our friends from last year and meet some new friends too!!

The boys enjoyed hanging in their buddies' camper!! We hope to get a chance to visit them again before next year, now that they are moving a couple of hours closer to us.

In July, we went camping at Balsam Lake Provincial Park, and spent a day visiting with friends at their cottage on the other side of the lake.

Here's me with my friend Jenn's baby girl Paige, enjoying the lake

The rest of our summer was spent hanging out at the community pool, chatting with neighbours on the porch, and enjoying informal visits and spontaneous playtime with friends.

Nathan has developed quite an interest in medieval weapons in the past couple of months. This started with Age of Empires and a fascination with trebuchets. We are now exploring a book called The Art of the Catapult, and hope to have a few weapons constructed for a full scale boy-battle for Nathan's birthday party at the end of the month.

Noah is passionate about dogs right now and has to go "meet" every dog he spots when we're out and about (and that kid sure does have powerful "dog radar"!) He needs to know all the critical information about each dog - name, age, breed, gender. He then proceeds to tell each dog owner all about our dog, Marley.

Now that we're half-way through September, it's time to start thinking about the many holidays and birthdays we have coming between now and the end of the year, and do some advance planning so we're not completed overwhelmed. Oh yes, and I need to finish doing my fall preserving - more on that in the next post!

6 Weird Things About Me

I've been tagged by Zamozo for a game of "6 Weird Things About Me" that's going around the unschooling blogosphere. I have to tell you 6 weird things about me then tag 6 other unschoolers to do the same.

Well, first things first. 6 weird things about me.
1. I have freaky feet! Not only do I have Morton's toe (second toe longer than big toe) butI also have a way big space between my big toe and second toe.

2. I am a total library junkie. I know all the library ladies at my local branch on a first name basis. I frequently have very close to my limit of 50 books out at any given time. I put so many books on hold that I am always at the limit for holds on my card, and have quite a few on my husband's card too. Yes, it might be time for some sort of intervention, lol!

3. My husband and I have been together since we were 16 years old (we married at age 24). Based on past experience when people learn this fact about me, if you don't find this extremely adorable, you will most definitely find it weird.

4. I will fall asleep in the car (if I'm not driving) unless I knot or do some other type of activity to keep my brain alert.

5. I'm a bit obsessive about the cleanliness of my kitchen counters (crumbs-aaargh!!!) and the way my bath towels are folded.

6. My taste in music could best be described as "eclectic". If it's not rap, jazz, country, heavy metal or Whitney Houston, I probably like it (although I might not admit it). I have yet to meet someone else who enjoys both Beethoven and Abba!

Okay, now on to the tagging part. I'm pretty desperate on this, since I've been tagged pretty late in the game, and I honestly can't find 6 more unschooling bloggers I'm familiar with that haven't already been tagged, so I'm going with 4 because I don't have any more time to track more down!

Robin (I can't believe she hasn't already been tagged - if so I missed it - but her blog's still a must read anyway!)

Pam (who hasn't posted for a long while, maybe this will spur her to action?)

Billy Jean (a local unschooling mama)

another Chris (whose blog I've just found and who doesn't know I exist!)

Toboggans, Freezing Rain, and Blackouts

Today was one of those calm and peaceful winter days that make winter worth having! The snow finally showed up yesterday, which was fabulous; however, it changed to freezing rain overnight which left everything as slippery and crunchy as could be. The schools were all closed today, so the neighbourhood was much quieter than usual without the hustle and bustle of kids being picked up and dropped off from school. Once the freezing rain finally stopped after lunch, the local toboggan hill was booming though! We spent a good hour flying down the hill and clambering back up the slippery slope again and again.

Just as I was about to start making dinner, the power went off. We waited 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes. Nope, the power wasn't coming back on any time soon. We cooked and ate dinner by candlelight, which was kind of cool. Luckily for us, we have a gas stove, so we were able to cook on the burners, otherwise it would have been peanut butter sandwiches for dinner (not exactly satisfying after an afternoon on the toboggan hill!). After we cleared the dishes away, we decided to continue our game of "semi-perpetual Monopoly" by candlelight. We started the game a few days after Christmas, but because it takes *so* long to play the game to the end, we've just played for 1/2 hour or so at a time, and put the game aside until we're in the mood to play again. It's interesting how the darkness adds a totally different feel to routine, everyday activities. We hadn't gotten far with the Monopoly when the power magically returned - by then, the lights had been out for almost 2 hours and the house was starting to get noticeably chillier than usual. I wouldn't enjoy not having power on a regular basis, but it did add some interest to the day, and added to the quiet and calm feeling (no TV, computer, radio or lights for a couple of hours-ahh, peace!)

An Urban Wildlife Adventure

Earlier this week, our local paper ran a story about a beaver (possibly *2* beavers) having set up house in the Hamilton harbour. This is very exciting for our community as it signifies a major improvement in the water quality (the last 15 years has seen a lot of work done on restoring our once extremely industrially-polluted harbourfront area).It's also pretty darn cool to have a beaver build a lodge in such an urban location (right on the edge of one of our biggest city parks). As soon as we read about it, we were all super excited to go check it out, but our family schedule didn't give us a chance to do it during daylight hours up until today. So, we all bundled up early this afternoon, and off we went to the Harbourfront to track down the beaver lodge. We didn't have any trouble finding it, and were able to walk up very close to it to take a good look. We didn't actually have a beaver sighting (they usually only come out at night) but we pointed out to the boys where the beaver(s) had chewed down small trees to build the dam (as well as one that had been partially, but not totally, gnawed through). This resourceful urban beaver also scrounged up several used planks of wood to use in building his lodge! The city is considering planting some willow trees in the spring to help keep the beaver(s) from taking all the shade trees. Apparently, willow is a favourite of the beavers (something I didn't know before!) We've seen beaver lodges in zoos before, but this is the first time we've seen one "in the wild" (if the middle of a city of nearly 500,000 people can be classified as "wild"!)

[Here is where I had planned to insert a photo of the beaver lodge; apparently blogger has other ideas right now as I can't get it to upload-arrgh!]

While we were down by the harbour, we also had some fun observing the winter waterfowl. We actually "discovered" a new species that we'd never observed before. When we got back, we got out our bird books (while enjoying a round of hot chocolate to warm us back up!) and identified it as the American Coot. We found out that we'd never seen them before because they overwinter on the harbour, but leave in early spring, and we're usually not spending much time down there until late spring/early summer. Up until we hunted down that piece of the puzzle, I had been wondering how there could have been such a large number of them on the water when I'd never seen even *one* before!!

Family Goals for 2007

At this time of year, I can't help but get very introspective. I always find myself (like many other people, I imagine) looking back over the past year, taking stock of what went well, and what didn't! Then, of course, I like to try and figure out where I'm going in the year ahead.

I always make a whole list of goals for the different areas of my life at the beginning of a new year, and I've set a lot of personal goals for myself already. What I've been pondering over the last few days is, what are the things I want to work on in my parenting and family life this year? Overall, I think we have a great family life, and I really noticed how relaxed and loving we are together over the holiday season. I think the biggest thing that I would like to change is that we have gotten into a habit of not spending much time together as an entire family. The boys are off doing their own thing (together or separately) and I am doing my thing, hubby is doing something else (or is just not here because he is busy working). We definitely still connect and share with each other over the course of the day, but I have often stopped and thought "gee,when was the last time we did something together, all four of us?". Over the holidays we had quite a few opportunities to do things as a family, and I would like to make sure it happens more often! I think what I will do is suggest we have a "family day" one day per week, where the general focus of the day is doing something together as a family. This will probably not be the same day every week, as hubby's schedule is ever-changing due to his work as a realtor (that also means he works a lot on the weekends, the usual time most families have their "family time!") So, we'll have to take it week by week, but I think it should work itself out once we get in the habit of planning for some special "connecting" time together.

Christmas Greetings!

I haven't posted here in a few weeks now -we've been far too busy enjoying all the fun of the Christmas season. Finally, here are our Christmas greetings!

Please join us in a friendly game of Christmas "I Spy", McLaughlin style. Use the clues below to learn all about what we did this year.

In the above picture, find the following:

2 soccer balls and 1 soccer trophy (Nathan played soccer again this year, and Joe coached Nathan's team as well as being the assistant equipment manager)

a pair of swimming goggles (we all did lots of swimming in pools and lakes throughout the year, Noah continued with swimming lessons)

a hockey glove (Nathan is playing "pond hockey" this winter, and there's lots of neighbourhood road hockey going on all year round!)

a baby blanket, a sleeping baby, 2 stuffed animals, and a large safety pin (no, we didn't expand our family this year; we welcomed our friends Jenn and Bruce's new daughter Paige into the world)

a flashlight, a lantern, and a water bottle (we took several camping trips this year, including a very cool trip to Watkins Glen with several other unschooling families)

2 dog biscuits and a large red dog toy (we added another pet to our ever-expanding menagerie; Marley, our lab-shepherd cross - who is still very playful even though he's 10 years old!)

the CN Tower (we spent a weekend in Toronto in May at the first ever Toronto Unschooling Conference, hanging out with friends and making new ones)

2 pinecone critters (the boys have been participating in a nature program at the Royal Botanical Gardens, learning about everything from insects to hibernation)

a Lego dog, a set of knitting needles, and a bead snake (we have all been busy creating and crafting a wide variety of projects all year long!)

That's it for our game of I Spy - hope you had as much fun playing as we did creating it.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

From Karen, Joe, Noah, Nathan, and "The Menagerie" - Jessie, Chloe, Marley and Spark.

Learning All the Time...

As the great John Holt said, we really are learning all the time - I just haven't had the time to blog about it lately! Life has been all aswirl with busy-ness and most nights I have been falling into bed exhausted (but content) at the end of the day.

Earlier this evening, I was sitting in the living room knitting, the Just Like Heaven soundtrack was blaring, Nathan and the dog were wrestling together (loudly), and Joe and Noah were debating the relative merits (or lack thereof) of the Spongebob movie.

A short while later, we were all (including the dog!) packed into the kitchen making gingersnaps and goofing around. And I just finished snuggling in front of the fire and watching 50 First Dates with my honey while the kids drifted in and out intermittently to join in the snuggle.

I love my life...

And now I need to go to bed once more!!!

A Ghoulish Halloween

A quick Halloween post to show off my two little ghouls. They definitely revelled in being very spooky, creepy and mysterious.












Here is our "Most Popular Pumpkin of the Year", the SpongeBob jack-o-lantern created by Joe. Almost every visitor to our door commented on it!

Happy Halloween!!!

Fall Fun, Featuring Noah the Horse-Headed Boy!

We went on another jaunt to a local apple farm yesterday and I snapped this hilarious pic - the horse put his head right in front of Noah just as I snapped it! We were laughing so hard at the resulting photo that another family asked to take a look at our camera to see what was so funny.

Okay, so we are easily amused but this has all the makings of a classic McLaughlin family photo.





Joe also got a good photo of both boys (with their own heads!) hanging out with the bunnies at the farm. As you can see, Noah's already getting geared up for Halloween (Halloween runs a very close second to Christmas in holiday importance around here).









And oh, yes, I remembered to get a pic of this sign that I missed out on last time as we were sans camera.

Love it! I think I should make one to hang outside my house.

McLaughlin "Urban Farm" Gets Ready for Winter

Wow, it's been a month since I last posted here! That's probably because life has been very, very full in the last few weeks. I hosted a baby shower for a friend of mine on September 24th, then the next weekend we had two birthday parties to celebrate Nathan turning seven (one friends, one family) and last weekend was Thanksgiving here in Canada!

In amidst the flurry of all those activities, I've been busy harvesting, preserving and preparing my garden for winter. We had our first frost this week, so I got everything done none too soon.
Now I have green tomatoes ripening in a basket on my countertop, a fridge full of peppers and celery, and a variety of dried herbs stashed in my spice drawer. I also transplanted a bit of my oregano, parsley, and basil into small pots for my kitchen windowsill so hopefully they will thrive and I will have some fresh herbs throughout the winter.

Another project I've been working on in the garden is putting together a couple of cold frames to grow spinach and lettuce. This is the first time I've ever tried this, so we'll see how it goes. After looking at a few different cold frame constructions, I settled on a less-traditional but hopefully effective design. This is build with three layers of brick (it's a lot deeper than it seems from the photo). The white cloth at the side is agricultural cloth, which will cover the top to keep in the heat (held down snugly with more bricks). Nathan helped me lay some of the bricks for these. I chose this setup rather than the wooden frame with an old window type of design, because I have both limited storage space and garden space and I can totally disassemble these in the spring when I'm done using them for the season (I put the bricks and agricultural cloth to different uses throughout the course of the growing season).

I've also brought in two of my pepper plants to see if I can keep them going through the winter indoors; I've read of others having success with this and I have a large southern facing window so I figured I'd give it a shot. New peppers are still forming on the plants, so things look good so far.

Overall, I'm fairly pleased with the first season of my biointensive gardening experiment. The biggest success was definitely the bush beans (green and yellow) - they were amazingly productive and delicious to boot! The greens (lettuce and spinach) and the peppers also did very well. The hanging tomatoes were reasonably productive; I'm hoping to have some nice planters to plant some on the deck next year as well. My raspberry canes seemed to be thriving and produced a few handfuls of berries (not bad since I just planted them this year). We'll have to wait for next year to see how the blueberries do! I had a few failures too - the pumpkins, watermelon, and cucumbers all died off without producing. Next year I am hoping to add a dwarf pear tree to my mix of fruit; I've read they can be grown in large planters (such as a 1/2 barrel). What with my indoor gardening experiments, tending to my cold frame veggies, and planning for next spring's garden, I should be plenty busy all winter!

Community Connections

Yesterday was one of those days where you could just feel the forces of "abundance" at work.

First, we decided to hold a "freecycle" day to pass on all the stuff we no longer need. We got up early and hauled out boxes of toys, housewares, videotapes (our VCR finally died and won't be replaced since we have a DVD player), clothes, furniture, and lots of other good stuff. We put out a couple of big signs indicating that everything was FREE but we still got a lot of people coming up and asking us if we were sure we didn't want money for anything, or *why* the stuff was free. We've gotten a lot of good stuff from our local freecycle group (including a washing machine when ours kicked the bucket) so we were more than happy to "pay it forward" and pass on our unneeded items. Most of the stuff cleared out by noon, and the remainder was posted to our local list.

By mid-afternoon, we were up at a local farm (Myer's Apple Farm) picking - yes- apples! I was a bit disappointed that my favourites (empires) weren't quite ready for picking yet, but we came home with a large bag of Cortlands which are pretty tasty too. We forgot to bring the camera, which I was already bummed about, but I was really annoyed with myself when we got to the farm and saw this great sign: "Drive Carefully - Children Being Children". Hopefully we'll go back and pick some empires, and I'll make sure to get a pic then!

From our apple picking excursion, we continued on to our CSA (Plan B Organic Farms) for their end-of-season barbecue (we'll continue to receive shares until the week after Thanksgiving - that's Canadian Thanksgiving by the way). We got to take a tour of the farm, which has been expanding every year. There are now 400 shares per season; just a couple of years ago it was closer to 250. Plan B has made great efforts to develop relationships with other local farmers so we get the most variety possible in our food boxes - fruits and some vegetables that they don't grow themselves. They also offer a "local fruit box" option - although they don't grow any of the fruit themselves, it is all from local farmers.

After the tour we had a fantastic meal at Plan B - organic meat, a variety of salads from Plan B's harvest, watermelon and organic ice cream (Mapleton's - totally divine). There were about 200 people there (about 50 of them were kids!) and it was just a great community-feeling experience. We got to chat with a few friends we hadn't seen in a while, and make some new friends too! The kids all had a blast running around and playing with the assortment of friendly farm dogs. Again, really too bad we forgot our camera!

When we came home from the farm, the rest of the stuff we had left out on the curb with a "free" sign was gone, and my neighbour had left a bag of clothes on the porch for the boys (full of pants with intact knees, which my guys desperately need!) I had also received an offer from another freecycler of some books I was looking for - very cool.

The theme for the day was definitely Sharing Always Creates More - more friends, more fun, and more abundant living.

The Joys of Not Back to School

Well, school's been back in for a whole week now, and I'm more relieved than ever that my kids don't go to school. I could sense the anxiety building in many of the kids around here as the big day approached. It's almost spooky how empty the neighbourhood seems after having the streets filled with kids merrily playing all summer.

Ah well, at least our family is not a slave to the school system! Although we can't exactly ignore the fact that my kids' best friends are now in school all day, there is still plenty of fun to be had. The weather has been unseasonably cool and wet the last couple of weeks, but we had a couple of nice warm afternoons and headed out to the park one day and for a nature hike with the dog another day. The boys have been immersed in a Wallace and Grommet game (for Gamecube)they borrowed from their babysitter (an awesome young man named Dan - the kids love him so much they ask us to go out so he can come over!)

Let's see, what else have we been up to? Many of our days are so unstructured I have a hard time thinking about what we actually "do" all day.

Noah recently built and painted a model of an AT walker all by himself. Nathan build Jengo Fett's ship out of Lego (with a little help from his dad).






I've been busy "harvesting" our bounty in the garden, and starting to put the garden to bed for another year. I'm hoping to find some time to build a small cold frame and trying to extend our season by growing some greens in it.





Joe has been working hard at sprucing up the place. We have been redoing both the kitchen and bathroom (not a gut-everything-and-start-over, but painting, new mirrors/lights, that type of thing). Now we're looking at the rest of the house and realizing it needs a lot of help too. I got the itch to rearrange/spruce up the dining room (adding several furniture repainting projects, plus a sewing project and a lot of reorganizing/general cleaning out of stuff to the mix!)

We have a few outing planned for the upcoming weeks as well. The boys are headed to the Royal Botanical Gardens this afternoon for a homeschoolers' program on "Bugs". This program is running every other Tuesday afternoon until just before Christmas, and I think the boys are going to really enjoy it as they both love anything to do with "nature".

Other planned trips/outings for the near future: our homeschool group's "Not Back to School" picnic on Thursday, a visit to a donkey sanctuary, a visit to Dutchman's Gold (a local honey producer), and a trip or two to the Ontario Science Centre. We'll probably also hit some local farms for apple picking and other fall fun. This Saturday we are attending our CSA's end of season barbecue; this includes a tour of the farm so it should be really cool (although we've been members of this CSA for a few years, we've never managed to get to this event due to scheduling conflicts).

(Blogger is not being my friend right now - for some reason it is not uploading my photos. I somehow managed to get one in, but it doesn't like the rest! How annoying - I will give it a try later on.)

Summer Fun (and Frustration)

I've been a very naughty blogger of late - it's been well over a month since I posted here. In my defense, I'll say I was too busy trying to enjoy every possible minute of summer weather before it disappears for good. As today is cool and rainy, I guess I have no excuse but to get down to the job!

Some of the hilights of the last few weeks:


We went camping for a week at my dad's trailer up near Tobermory, ON. We had mostly great weather, with the exception of one day
of pouring rain. The boys had a great time kayaking with my dad (their first-ever kayaking experience!)

Lots of hanging out on the beach, swimming in the lake, and roasting marshmallows was done by all.


We also had a relaxing family day at Wild Waterworks. I wasn't sure if the boys would like the wave pool or if it would be a bit overwhelming for them. I needn't have worried! They were totally in their element and weren't a bit nervous at all (although I have to admit *I* was a bit nervous for them, since the pool was absolutely packed, and those waves are darn strong). Their favourite was the Tube Slides; special waterslides that you ride down on an inner tube.


We've also been trying to keep up with the veggie garden, although it's suffered in the last couple of weeks due to the extreme heat we had earlier this month (over 45 degrees Celsius with the humidex!)

Nathan's clutching the baseball-bat sized zucchini we came home to after our week away.





Yesterday, we went on our annual outing to African Lion Safari. We had a great time, as usual. Between the waterpark and the animal reserves, we can hardly go wrong (since two of the things our family loves most are water and animals.) The Birds of Prey show was really cool (did you know that Peregrine Falcons can reach speeds of 200 km/hr and are the fastest animals on Earth? Well, you do now!)

So, you can see we've been having a lot of good times. But there have also been some not-so-fun aspects of the last few weeks. We've been battling head lice (yes, eeeew) along with every other family on the street. This has necessitated an hour or two of daily head combing - I really will be happy not to see quite so much of my family's scalp sometime soon. To add insult to injury, the dog has fleas with an accompanying allergic dermatitis (we did have him on a flea medication, but obviously it didn't work) and is apparently underweight according to our vet. So he's now on antibiotics and a new flea medicine, along with a beefed-up diet. Yes, we get to purposely plump up the dog. As a final test of my sanity, I went into the bathroom last night and was just about to use the facilities when a mouse zipped out from behind the toilet and down the hall. I'd like to know exactly what my lazy old cats have been doing. Excuse me, isn't it their job to keep the place rodent free? I informed Jessie and Chloe I was going to have to confiscate their kitty kibble if they didn't shape up soon.

Lice, mice, and fleas - I bet we won't have too many would-be houseguests clamouring at our door anytime soon! We really are reasonably hygenic, I promise. Sometimes nature just seems to win the battle anyway.

I guess with all those goings on, that's how July evaporated and August is on its way to disappearing too. I have that rather melancholy feeling I always get in mid-to-late August when I can no longer deny that summer is drawing to a close. We still have one more big trip (camping in Balsam Lake for the week before Labour Day) so it's not like all our summer fun is done and over with yet. But I know it'll be fall soon. And even though there's lots to love about fall (my wedding anniversary, my kids' birthdays, the anticipated arrival of my friend Jenn's first baby, apple picking, and a hundred other good things) it still means winter (with its cold and dark ways) is not far off.

Ah well, time to get back to enjoying the little time I have left in Summerland.

I've really been consumed with my knitting projects lately, so I feel the need to make some sort of written record of all the projects I've got swirling around in my head. Now, just so you know, I'm not anywhere near the most talented, skilled, or creative knitter out there. I doubt, however, that you'll find anyone who enjoys it more than I do! So, here goes, all my dirty little knitting foibles revealed for all to see.On the needles these days: This section is a bit complicated by the fact that most of what I'm working on falls into the Top Secret (a.k.a. gift) category. Let's just say that a very close friend is expecting her firstborn in 2 1/2 months, and I'm also trying to get a jump start on Christmas gifts! I have a wee something waiting (and waiting, and waiting) for some grafting to be done and it's finito. Kitchener stitch intimidates the crap out of me so I've been procrastinating on this puppy forever and a day (ok, a few weeks...)-I have the first of a pair of socks about 1/2 way done (using Melanie Falick's Magic Spiral Tube Socks pattern from Kids Knitting) These socks are quick, fun and easy to knit, and are a very one-size-fits-all deal, perfect for when you're not too sure how big the recipients' feet are! Also, still need to finish a scarf for my poor old hubby (it was supposed to be his Christmas present last year - he got a box of yarn wrapped under the tree, and is still patiently waiting for the final product). He's not too worried that it's not done yet these days, what with the 48-degrees-Celsius-with-the-humidex weather we were having until very recently. Next up: Oh, Lord, I have far too much ambition for a knitter of my (not so great) speed and skill. Here are some of the projects I have planned once I get all that other stuff done:-Seed Stitch Beret and Scarf from Two-Stitch Knits in Knit Picks Elegance (alpaca/silk blend)-Einstein Coat from Sally Melville's The Knitting Experience: Book I in Knit Picks Sierra (wool/alpaca blend)-Not Your Standard Issue Sweatshirt from The Yarn Girl's Guide to Beyond the Basics in Knit Picks Main Line (cotton/merino blend)-a pair of dressy socks for myself using Knit Picks Palette (100% wool). Haven't picked out a pattern yet, but I have a few sock knitting books so it shouldn't be too much of a problem!Can you tell I went on a Knit Picks shopping spree?? And the best part is, all of those are going to be for little ol' *me*! I hardly ever knit for myself, so I figured it was darn well about time I gave myself a few treats.As if all that wasn't enough, I have recently unraveled three (yes, three) sweaters - one that I just didn't like anymore (in Paton's Beehive Shetland Chunky - kind of a turquoise green with a tweedy look to it), another that had all the pieces completed but that I'd never sewn up (and didn't like anymore) in some acrylic chunky yarn (yes, acrylic, I know, but I have a plan), and another that was my son's and was a very nice sweater (knitted by a friend) but had received fatal damage to one sleeve (I'm not sure at all what the yarn is, it's sport weight-ish and feels like a wool blend of some type). So I have a number of different ideas as to what to use all of these yarns for!To add insult to injury, I keep adding more ideas on almost a daily basis for "quick little gift projects that I can do in next to no time" ha ha ha and both of my boys want me to knit them a scarf since I'm making one for daddy. Oh, and hubby would like a nice knitted vest or two to wear with his dress shirts.Clearly, I'm as delusional as they come and will be up to my eyeballs in yarn for the rest of this year!

Veggin' Out!

After basically ignoring my garden for the past couple of weeks (except for not-frequent-enough watering), I spent the bulk of this afternoon out frolicking in my "cabbage patch".

Here's a photo of the main raised bed; as you can see it's quite a jungle in there! This side of the bed has spinach, bush beans, onions, carrots, and assorted herbs (you can see the mint in the bottom left corner).




Here's the view from the other side of the the bed; zucchini, pattypan squash, cabbage, and some more bush beans (also some lettuce that has majorly bolted!) Oh yes, at the very back you can see the pumpkin starting to climb up towards the deck. I'm so excited- the plants are starting to flower, and if we actually get some pumpkins to grow the kids are going to be ecstatic.










The green beans have arrived! I spent about an hour picking them this afternoon, and there are more on the way.








I've gotten into playing around with the camera and taking some artsy kinda shots of the veggies. Call me crazy, but I really think they are just gorgeous (the veggies, that is, not my pics!) I am pleased with how some of the photos came out, but my digicam is not that sophisticated and I can't get the closeup shots I would really like. These will do for a start; I particularly like this cabbage one.







Here's a pattypan squash just starting, with the blossom still attached










Today's backyard garden harvest! I cannot believe how many green beans I picked (there's got to be at least a couple pounds there) as well as a bunch of spinach and what I could salvage of the lettuce. There are a couple of wee onions too that had gotten mostly uprooted in yesterday's storms. We had some of the green beans for dinner - I cooked them to perfection and they tasted incredible!




I think I'm going to have to brew up a batch of Lettuce Soup to use up all my lettuce before it spoils. No, I'm not joking, I really do make a soup with lettuce, and it's actually quite tasty. Most importantly, it uses 16 cups of lettuce to make a normal-sized batch of soup!

The other really cool thing I did this afternoon (when I wasn't out communing with the cabbage) was teach Nathan how to knit! He was watching me work on my knitting, and asked if I could teach him how. You should have seen his face light up when I told him I would teach him right then.


This is as far as we got, but Nathan did a couple of stitches of cast on, plus most of a row of knitting, with me sitting behind him and doing a bit of hand-over-hand with him. Oh yes, and he specifically requested blue yarn to learn with (his favourite colour). He wants to work on it more tomorrow. He says he's going to knit Marley a sweater - gotta love that kid!

Life is Good

This weekend was one of those truly wonderful (and not-common-enough) ones of which summer memories are made.

Nothing spectacular happened. Just full of those simple, small but contented moments that, strung together into a couple of warm, sunny days, are exactly what we all long for when we're pining for summer in the middle of January. The kids ran up and down the street all day playing with their friends, and I got some time to do a few things on my own (in between intermittent supervision of the swirling mass of children).

I went for a glorious bike ride full of hills, puttered around the garden, strolled over to the library, and just basically did what I felt like for most of Saturday (is there anything better on a warm Saturday afternoon than sitting on your front porch, sipping a coffee, and knitting, while watching the world go by? No, I didn't think so.)

Saturday night we all went to see Ice Age 2 at Dundas Valley Conservation Area. This is a really cool thing - all summer long they do a "Films in the Forest" program, where you get to see movies outdoors on a giant, inflatable movie screen. And, if you have a Conservation Area membership, like we do, it's only $2.50 for the whole family to get in! What a great deal, and a whole lot of fun.

Sunday morning we got up late, strolled down to the park (with Marley of course) then came back to hang out on the porch when it got too hot. We did a bit of errand running in the afternoon, but as boring as that sounds, it was highly satisfying since we actually got everything we were looking for (how rare!) - and I snagged two new knitting magazines at Chapters.

Most importantly, the raspberries are here!


To my great delight, the canes I planted this year have yielded a (very small) but luscious little crop of raspberries. Not enough to do more than nibble off the bush this year - I don't know how long till I have enough to make jam, but I'll surely enjoy whatever we get. Did I mention raspberries are my absolutely, positively favouritest fruit of all?







The rest of the veggie garden is shaping up nicely for the most part too (although there are some scruffy areas in the main bed as I had to pull a bunch of bush beans which were succumbing to something or other, and all my broccoli bolted right off the bat without producing anything edible ::sigh::)

In this photo you can see a zucchini plant in the middle (it's enclosed in a mesh "cage" to keep it from taking over the entire bed, that's why it looks so tall) Potato plants (also in cages) are to the left, with bush beans, peppers, and assorted herbs somewhere in the mix too. In the hanging bucket is one of our "upside down" tomato plants, which seem to be doing all right so far - they are starting to flower and a couple of itty bitty tomatoes have formed. If all continues to go well, we should be up to our armpits in summer squash, beans, peppers, and tomatoes in no time.

Ahhh, summer!

A Sticky Canada Day Tradition

Okay, I'm cheating a bit (all right, a lot) here by writing this post over a week after the fact, but hey, at least I've finally managed to get it done!

We continued our long-upheld Canada Day tradition - making strawberry jam. It is one of nature's cruel little quirks that it needs to be *hot* for strawberries to grow, thus forcing strawberry jam making activities (including the picking of 12 quarts of said strawberries) to be conducted in the most blistering heat ever seen in Canada. I swear there is nothing hotter on earth than the middle of a strawberry jam making session. I always feel like I've lost about 15 pounds by the end (yeah, sure).



While I was in the process of cleaning up my jars in preparation for sterilizing them, I came across this label still attached to one of the jars (I took it off and stuck it onto one of the completed jars afterwards).

Although you can't make it out in the photo (well, if you look *very* closely, you can just make out the swirly loop of a "J") it says in very faint ink "July 1985". In my handwriting! I was 14 years old in July 1985 - that must surely have been one of the first batches of jam I ever made. Cool. And the jar's still in service 21 years later. That's cool too. Canning is one of those activities that connects you to the past in so many wonderful, mysterious ways. And the jam is darn tasty too.

The final product:



We cranked out 20 jars altogether, plus a bit more which went into the "surplus" jar then straight into the fridge!

YUMMY!


Happy Canada Day everyone!

The McLaughlin Menagerie Expands Again!

It's semi-official now - we have a new member of the family! We took our "potential" dog Marley for a test drive this weekend and we all fell in love (the dog seems to love us too). We were supposed to take him back Sunday night, and he's still here. The original plan was that we weren't going to take him for good until the middle of July or so (his current owner is moving to Mexico at the end of July). We've all bonded so much that I don't want him to leave us (and he's eating up the twice-a-day walking and ball throwing sessions we're giving him - he was only being walked once or twice a week at his old house).






Here's a couple of pics of our new doggie (he's a shepherd-lab cross, and yes, he is LARGE).
















How can you not love that face??








Well, that's all the update I have time for right now! Stay tuned for the scoop on our Watkins Glen camping trip - as soon as I get a chance I'll upload some pics.