Glass Blowing...

In my efforts to keep my brain occupied & out of renovation mode, I've been taking a variety of clinics & courses over the past few months.  French Cooking, Bread Making, Bead Making (jewelry), Running, and most recently, Glass blowing.  What fun that is! 

Glass blowing is taking molten glass & sculpting, blowing &/or moulding it in to different shapes.  It was hot & physical work but I enjoyed every minute of it.  It wont be my last class either...

The list of what can be made is infinite but we started with the simple stuff: paper-weights, fish, goblets & bowls.  It takes YEARS to become proficient in working glass, knowing how & when to manipulate it, dip it, draw it, blow it, flash it, jack it... (this is starting to sound a bit riske)   

Pictures of the finished products to follow in a few days...

2 year old stuff

(this is a draft entry that, apparently, was never published.  It's so funny to read this now, knowing how advanced her language and physical development is...)


Maya is changing SOOO fast! Here are some updates on what she now does...

Things she says:
-help (hep)
-up (uppa)
-yellow (sounds more like lellow)
-ok (more like o-tay)
-baby (be-be)
-cereal (ce-al)
-Milk (mik)
-Liar! (i-ah!) ...its an inside joke...
-A-ha!
-Good Job! (goo-ja)


Things she signs:
-help, down,
-chair, table, swing


Things she does:
-walks up & down stairs standing
-walks her baby-dolls around house in stroller
-pushes the big stroller
-says 'hi' and waves to many people


Things she knows:
-She's always right (I need to get used to conceding things)
-Body Parts
-Colours
-Shapes


Things she loves:
-Toys & her dog woofie, her dolls Mei-Mei and Jade, her cat Jennifer
-giving kisses anywhere, anytime
-Yogurt
-Japanese Food
-watching her 'Baby Einstein' and 'Baby can Read' videos


Things she doesn't love:
-green beans, tomatos, mushrooms,

Sesame Street...

Sesame Street came to town in July so we HAD to go see our buddies.  Maya was so excited to be going that she barely spoke of anything else all that week and her toy Elmo didn't leave her side.

Finally, event day arrived and she chattered excitedly all morning.  We went to the 'pre-show' which, unfortunately, was nothing but wood paintings of the characters & some recorded music from the videos.  The show itself was definitely more engaging.  What outwardly appeared to be an wide-eyed coma on Maya, was her being utterly mesmerized by the show.  The only way we knew she was still alive was the blur of her hand-to-mouth popcorn eating frenzy.  We guessed she liked both of them...

     

     

Golden Ears...

The 'gang' got together for camping again this year, as we have each year for over a decade.  The faces have changed (the addition of kids and a couple more families), the location has changed (from backpacking to a mountain site to car-camping in a provincial park) but the adventure gets better every year.

This year, we only managed one camping weekend, but we made it a good one with 5 tents crammed on to a double site + day visitors to add to the fun.  There's no photographic evidence of the really silly shenanigans and I'd like to keep it that way....

   

Canada Day...

Every year, I take Maya over to our local park where the nearby church hosts a free Canada Day community celebration.  It has dozens of games (with prizes), bands, hot dogs, freezies, fire trucks, face painting, the Canucks mascot, pony rides, bouncy castles, etc, etc, etc and EVERYTHING IS FREE!!!  It also gets bigger & better every year...

This year, Maya decided she was ready to try sitting on a pony.  Not wanting her to change her mind again, we headed to the pony lineup before doing anything else.  True to her word, she got on with a smile on her face and rode like the wind.  OK, more like a light breeze but you get my point....

The deck...

The 5-year mark in this house was reached in February and it gave me a bad case of the reno-itchies.  I'd only planned on staying in this house for 5 years but with the market the way it is, and my not having an income, we decided we couldn't afford a new house quite yet.  So, I felt compelled to fix this one up a bit.  Luckily, I didn't go too overboard with it...

With guidance from a staging & colour consultant, I made some cosmetic changes around the house, adding/changing accent pieces, plants, picture arrangements, furniture arrangements, etc. 
-We dismantled the guest bedroom and moved our office upstairs so we could work together, spread out a bit more and get access to sunshine
-I hired some millwork guys to build us a closet for the main bedroom (it looks great!),
-I bought an enclosed cabinet for the bedroom to hide my shoes/boots/purses/sweaters :-)
-I had the Laurel hedges removed from the back yard & had a new middle-deck constructed with a privacy lattice screen,
-I had some concrete work done out at the front, public sidewalk
-I bought a new dining room set
-I've been purging a lot of big items that we no longer use (many of which are Maya's unused toys, strollers, tricycles, scooters, etc)

Work to be done this year
-new furniture for our new deck
-dismantle the main floor bathroom, remove carpet, repaint room, install vinyl floor in simulated bamboo/reed pattern.
-repaint dining room
-repair/repaint door frames in bedrooms

Work to be done next year
-new kitchen counter-tops (ideally, I'd like to replace the whole kitchen but I don't think it would be worth it)
-new fences around the whole property (they're old & rotten)

Sadly, the reno-itch for this house has begun to spill over in to the other house and now we're considering replacing the kitchen & bathroom in the upstairs suite next year.  It's going to be an expensive couple of years....

  

          

     

 

Trail-a-bike...

Maya's best-buddy, Lucas, often comes to school on a trail-a-bike.  Since first seeing him on it, Maya now becomes extremely excited any time she sees one.  Excited, as in, screaming 'trail-a-bike! trail-a-bike!' multiple times a day and making us deaf.  We started to get the idea that she might be ready for one herself.  So, I trolled Craigslist and found one with the specs I needed. 

The smallest trail-a-bike was still a bit big for our tiny girl but we tried it out anyway.  We did a few practice laps up and down the lane to let her get the hang of the wobbly feeling.  In no time, she got the hang of it and now she's hooked!!!  Goodbye stroller.  Goodbye bike trailer.  Goodbye tricycle.  She doesn't want anything but the trail-a-bike....