Spring time update

I wanted to post a few pictures showing some happenings at Fork in the Creek. I've done some nature walks in our big beautiful yard, as well as in Bird's Hill Park. This season is all about being fresh and gives way to new life in the garden and in the woods. I haven't spotted any morels yet. My current life quest is to find these little gems to try for the first time!

Like a hole in the nose

 Break through!
This is a weird post, just to warn you!
As I sit here typing away, entering my oh-so-fun manual part numbers into the computer system at work, I start playing with my ear piercings. I always forget that I have a second hole in each year, but for some funny reason I decided I wanted to know if an earring would still go through after all these years of not using it. I think to be exact, someone in middle years school said a second piercing wasn't cool so I promptly took it out and never used them since. Well what a thing, it went through with no problem at all. If it can go through after all these years why doesn't my nose piercing let me after a few minutes when it fell out last year? or six months after or even up until about a month ago? After many failed attempts at my nose piercing before today I chalked it up to the fact that I had to get it done again. Boo! Apparently you can't just walk into your local Claire's at get it done like I did the first time. You actually have to go to a Tattoo Parlor and get a pro to do it, and of course its $60 bucks on top of that! Regardless, it's been on my mind for a long time that I wanted to get it re-pierced, it's almost a missing part of me. My girlfriend totally understood what I meant when I said that!
Anyways back to today, I was jiggling around my earring in my nose hole and by golly it went through, with light force and only watering eyes! It didn't hurt near as bad as the other failed attempts, I guess I just had to line up the holes! You know what they say about getting your ducks in a row? No? Not funny? Ha ha, ok....
Needless to say, I am one happy gal! My friend the nose piercing is back, its been a long time old friend! You were missed

Friday, thank you very much

It's Friday today. Its been a short week with Easter Monday off, but it has still been a long week. Its Friday today. Thank God. It hasn't been overly busy this week, working on the sewer pump (yeah), and getting my brakes fixed on the little blue truck. The beautiful joys of being a home owner in the country.
I've done a few more curtains for the camper. I'm more than half done on that project and already thinking about starting my next project. Its really enjoyable to get my feet wet again in the sewing department. I've put off doing anything having to do with sewing, crafting or making until ALL the house renovations were done. So now I'm releasing myself to my creative flow.

Since I've started living with JT I've been after him to start a give away bag for all his extra clothes. He doesn't have just a few shirts or jeans here and there that don't fit anymore, he has bags and bags and bags of stuff that are currently sitting in the bottom of the closet. He won't consider parting with them. I suggested at one time that we should get a quilt made from all the T-shirt logos that he loves so much. He loved the idea. Or maybe it was his idea? Regardless, for the past couple years I've had it on my mind to find someone to take on this gigantic task. I would expect them to charge top dollar for their precious time so I've been putting it off knowing I would need some big gift like this in the future. Recently I've dusted off the ole' (new) sewing machine to take on the camper curtain project. I've got to thinking that there is no reason why I couldn't do some of it myself, at least start to cut up the shirts into squares and sew them into place.. How hard could that be? That would also in turn help to free up some of the space that the bags of T-shirts have been taking up in the closet. Good idea Ashley! Saving a few bucks, organizing and at the same time contribute to my new "be creative" obsession. I have to finish the curtains first though, we have to funkify the 1970's Prowler before camping season starts. Only a couple more weeks and we'll be packing up and heading out to the first race of the year with a full summer of weekends schedules right behind it.

Oh, I also wanted to report that I tried my hand at water color painting yesterday. I suck, of course, but it felt really great to start releasing some of the images I've had in my head onto paper. It's very exciting for me to realize that it is ok to be crafty, artzy or whatever you may call it after years of bottling it up and pretending that I wasn't. I'm not doing anything to sell or to show off to anyone, I'm doing this for me, and I like it. The picture below isn't something that I've done obviously, but its definitely something that I can capture in my mind to refer to and maybe even one day work toward doing myself.

3 words to describe this summer

Gardening, Reading & Making

04/04/12 Seed Starting Fun

I started my seeds last night. Pulled out the seed trays, dug out some soil, grabbed my new bundle of seedy joy that were delivered yesterday via the wonderful Canadian Post and introduced them to the ratter tatter bunch that are stowed away over last winter in a broken Ziploc container that has been relocated fifteens times in that last couple months with all the renovation activity. In the back of my mind I always feel that I never have enough seeds, I'll run out, not have enough to plant and keep us fed for the winter! Gasp! What am I thinking? As it stands right now at home, on my dining room table, there is enough seeds in enough packets to feed a whole community. That's just it though, they are seeds, that need to be planted, that need to grow big. So moral of the story is GET THEM IN SOME EARTH! Than maybe you can feed that community Ashley! Nothing is going to grow unless you give them a warm, caring space for them to spread their roots. To allow their tiny little leaves to reach up for the sun, until they are all big enough to join the jungle called the great outdoors and grow into big edible wonders. The journey from that tiny little seed, to the towering plants that bear beautiful, nutritious fruit is an extremely long and a very taxing one.

So many elements come into play. Location, temperature, light, and soil conditions just to start. Than there is our lovely mother nature, who seems to test the limits each year, or test the farmer/gardener in other words. In between the seed coming from the house to the big gardens, there is a constant array of predators trying to take there share or the bounty. White cabbage fly, I will beat you this year! I will not allow you to take my beloved Brussell Sprouts and destroy them to nothing like last year. I am in control of what goes on out there! Don't even get me started on trying to fend off the herds of deer that wander through our yard in search of the perfect seedlings night after night. After all the love and tendering (fighting for their lives) from March to August, it is finally time to pull the first beautiful tomato off the vine, write a post to proclaim that harvest has finally arrived, than make it into a mouth watering tomato sandwich. Toasted Multigrain bread, butter smeared delectably across, Miracle Whip (I'm a firm believer in the use of mayo and Jon does remind me of this, but there is something special about the Zip in Miracle Whip in a tomato sandwich), topped with the vine ripened tomato in my garden tomato, and finished off with freshly ground pepper and sea salt. If you are lucky and can wait that long, add some bacon and lettuce to the mix. Take a bite of the fresh gooey mess, the concoction of melted butter and Miracle Whip drip down the sides of your mouth.  There is many aching mouths by the end of the first couple days from the acid in the tomatoes and the rub of toast on the top of your mouth. Heaven, in no other words.

What inspires? In short, EVERYTHING!

There is an an endless list of things that inspire me right now. My favorite line these days is "I can't believe someone can actually speak the words "I'm bored."" What a foreign concept. How can someone be "bored"?  when we've been given such endless opportunity to try and learn how to do new things, to challenge ourselves in every waking moment? We live in Canada people! Let alone try to get done the regular everyday 'to do's' and chore lists. Call it an addiction, call it having too much time on my hands, but searching, viewing pictures and reading about countless topics of things makes my heart soar with inspiration and energy! Projects that make me want to drive straight home to start right away, this very instant, help me make this work day end faster so I can get home! There are also things that I would love to try in the future and that I know would take time to start and set up. So instead of rambling on about a few topics, I'm going to collect a short (or sometimes long) list of what I'm currently diggin`. Lets be honest, my opinions, interests and attention span seems to change rapidly in this big wild world of ours.
So, without further audieu;
I'm loving~ Blogs! Hello brand new Fork In the Creek Blog!

I'm realizing~ There is creativity and energy inside me waiting to be released, I'm allowing it to start to shine through, quite the process I do say!

I'm Excited~ To find big chunky knits to decorate my place with.

I'm Dreaming~ of the day when I can start planning my big beautiful white tent wedding. Sssshhhh, don`t tell anyone...

But as for tonight, I will be organizing, wish me luck, this is a chore in itself....

Whatever you do today, with whomever you do it with, may it be grand!

Spring organizing, or just call me silly

The aftermath of major house renovations is organization. Everything, not just the rooms that you actually renovate, but every room and corner of the rest of the house as well. The concept is simple. When you need to start working in a room, you clear it out to than jam pack everything into other rooms, maybe to the point of kicking in the contents so they stay and shutting the door very quickly. When the lovely masterpiece which is called your Reno is finally complete, its time to pull and drag everything out of its temporary holding spots to finally put those pieces to their final resting place, or at least a permanent spot until you get sick of that and have to change everything around again.
I am hip deep in a mound of stuff. Taking the suggestion to purge purge purge. "Why keep things you don't even look at, need or use?" Mike (at work) claims. He is damn right. I'm getting rid of those odd items that for some reason I felt indebted to hold on to. Hopefully at the end of this beautiful day there will bags of clear bags of clothes to give away to good will, and boxes of items for the garage sale that we are going to have. Not to mention things in their places. Garage sale, that is news by the way, Jon proclaimed instead of giving things away, we should have a garage sale with his parents this summer. Good idea Jon!
When the organizing is done, and all the clothes are hung up in their new closet organizer, it will be just in time to start cleaning, than maybe decorating things how I want them. Not to mention starting some seeds by the end of March. Always something to do. I can't figure out for the life of my how people can say that they are bored? Bored, what is this word?

Just a quick pic of one side of the house before the siding was done. Reno pics to come soon, the great reveal!

What's in a name?

Since we moved to our beautiful 30 acres four years ago this month, I've been constantly searching for that name, the right name. "Why do you need a name for this place?" Jon would ask as I bounced a few names at him such as J&A Farms, A&J Farms, or By the Creek Farms. This is our place, a special place, a place that needs to be defined as the greatness it is. It has to describe us, but yet tell its own story. He mentioned my name searching to his dad, well of course he would jump on the brain storming wagon to try to find the perfect name to describe the little escape that he spends so much of his time at. "What about Fork in the Creek?" he says one day. I'm not sure why, I dismissed this suggestion as an option, put it on the suggestion pile. It wasn't I don't know, Farm-y enough! I thought. But you really don't have a farm yet if that's what you were going for?
Frustrated, I figured no name for now. I would bring it up again at a different time. I put it in the "will get back to this" file.
Not until some time later, until probably just recently jumping into the blog world, did the topic arise again, I needed some beautiful name to describe what we have, what we are over here just east of highway #212.
Fork in the Creek. Hmmm.....
Geographically correct, yes.
Fork, best  used in food situations and directly related to our lives, and best describes what I love to with with on a consistant basis. Something that follows me where ever I go, what ever I do. Food
To top it off, we are constantly connected in one way or another with the creek.We watch it going up, we watch it going down, we  Half the time that we are canoeing across it when our driveway floods, but another story for another time.
By golly, I think we have a name!

Hence forth, we are now Fork in the Creek!

To go or not to go, that is the question

Should we stay home and chill out this weekend? We've been go go go since I don't know when. We are well overdue for a weekend of not going anywhere, doing stuff around the place and just not planning a damn thing. OR we can go on the last sled trip of the year? Jump on the sleds and head out to Jen and Gerry's cabin to hang out with them and come back tomorrow morning? It's supposed to be +16 next week, say goodbye to the snow and my first season of snowmobiling. No, Yes, No, Yes. Totally on the fence. After getting an email from Jen this morning saying that Gerry will be off work by five thirty and they will be out to the cabin by 8 at least to catch the Jets game, well how can we not go? So yes, we are in for the last winter adventure of the year. Going for a massage (heaven) right after work, than heading home to pack up some stuff to stay over night. Now I'm super excited. Such is life I guess...

Brand New

So this is my first step in. I'm here, wading in the waters of the blog world. After countless hours of following my favorite blogs, I've realized that I have lots to share and talk about on my own. I don't have specific topics to speak on each and everyday. I dabble in this, I obsess over that. There seems to be a few items of interest that I keep going back to though. I can say I have a fairly green thumb. I'm learning more and more with every book that read and every seed that I plant. I like crafting things, but until recently I haven't really been set up to craft much, but oh how I've been thinking about it. I like to travel, here or there, just getting away on different adventures. Cooking seems to be an everyday adventure in itself. I have the feeling that this might be only the beginning of my cooking and baking career. Of course there is much, much more, which I intend to share with anyone who cares to listen. Seat belt is on, onward into the blogging adventure....