What's Your Style?

This morning I was doing my usual blog browse and I was reading one of my favorite DIY blogs Young House Love. They had a "fab freebie" post yesterday and although I can't enter the giveaway (it is only for people in the USA and I'm in Canada :) I was curious about the super easy, fun quiz they were talking about. So I went on over to the HomeGoods website and clicked on stylescope to start the fun quiz. It is really easy and fun, all you have to do is pick out the five images that "speak" to you and you're done. Easy as that! Do you want to know what my "stylescope" is? Oh and there are a bunch of different styles you could be, with fun names like Boho, Vegas Baby, Spa Life, Set Sail, New Country, etc...
So what was I? I was Farm House Glam of course! This is what that looks like,


                                                                 { source }


with a touch of New Country which looks like this...



                                                                  { source }

Personally I think I'm more the other way around (I even have a bunch of the things similar to the picture above like horse pictures, the lotus candle holders, barn star, not a guitar, but I do have a fiddle :) but who can argue with the experts eh? Anyways it's a fun little quiz and there a bunch of beautiful images to get inspiration from, so you should check  it out!

So, did you go check out the quiz? Do you agree with the analysis or do you feel they are totally off the ball?  Are you like me and feel like the second option is closer than the first? Tell me what you think in the comments below and we can discuss! :)

P.S. Just so you know, I haven't been paid or "perked" in any way for this post and the opinions expressed are entirely my own :)

Happy 10th Birthday Nyla!

Dearest Nyla,

We cannot believe it has already been ten years since our first little girl came into this world! Nyla you literally changed our lives when you came along and we were so happy and nervous (and scared!!) to be parents for the first time :) You do your best to be patient with us parents as we always say that since you are the first, you are our "experimental child" :) You are such a wonderful big sister (most of the time). 

You are an amazing reader and a huge lover of animals. We love you very much sweetie and are so proud to be your parents. We hope you have a wonderful day,
Love Mom and Dad
xoxoxoxo

What a busy, fun weekend!

Last weekend we had a busy fun time and it felt like the beginning of the weekend was still summer and by Monday it felt like fall. Ah well, such is life in the great white north :) Actually one of the reasons I love where we live is that we get the best of all seasons. We have the beautiful fall foliage and falling leaves of autumn, of course we get snow in the winter (enough to ski at the ski hill 25 minutes away without the use of snow machines), the crocuses and daffodils of spring and the hot beautiful days of summer. But I digress! 

Our kids (all three of them) were invited to a friends birthday party on Friday after school. Since that friend and her family have a gorgeous house and property on the lake and since it was a gorgeous hot Indian summer day, the friends took all the kids who wanted to go, on a tube ride. Well Gabe and Cady were all over that! (Nyla decided to stay and watch from the dock) 

They had a blast! The friend also had a piñata for everyone so that was fun too. And of course there was the requisite cake and ice cream :)

Thank you to the Alexander family for such a wonderful fun time!

This weekend the kids were back into soccer games on Saturday morning. Thankfully it was a lovely day again. Cadence got a little bored while watching her brother play :)

On Saturday afternoon I decided to take the kids to a beach since it was still so gorgeous and warm out. Pat was doing a course so it was just me and the kiddies. Isn't this view gorgeous!

We decided to pick up some friends to come with us,

sometimes you need a brave friend to help motivate you to jump in ( and holding hands never hurt either :)

I just love the picture above :) Those five have been friends since Gabe was about a month old and they always have a great time together.

Sunday, I forgot to take pictures, but we went to a fall fair with my mom and did another special thing for Nylas birthday (which is actually tomorrow)including a picnic. Then on Monday, when the girls were done school, we went to my moms and helped pick  plums off their tree because a bear had decided to climb the tree the day before and broke a few big branches off. We didn't want the bear to still be attracted to the tree so we had to pick them all :)

Notice how bundled up they are? Well Monday brought autumn with a vengeance and it was windy and freezing! This tree did so well this year, there were TONS of plums.

Stella did her best to help "supervise"  :)

The kids helped a ton, partly cause they were small enough to climb the tree without breaking branches :) You can see in the picture above one of the branches broken by the bear :( I love how it looks like a big alligator mouth trying to eat Nyla in this pic :)

I can't believe this week is almost over and we're almost to the weekend again! We have another busy weekend with soccer games, another birthday party to go to, and another fall fair on Sunday. Maybe this time I'll remember to take pictures :) 

How about you? Has fall come to your corner of the world? Are your weekends crazy busy as well? Do you have any resident bears breaking branches in your yard?

Something to Ponder

I'm Back!!

Hi!  It feels like it has been a long time since I blogged last. I guess it hasn't been that long but the last post I did on my phone which isn't quite the same :) I finally brought our computer in to be looked at and they must have fixed it cause it's working great now. AND I have Internet service! Amazing I know :) I had planned to do way more posting over the summer, but most of the places we stayed didn't have Internet service, boohoo :(

But, now we are back to normal (ha ha whatever that is!) and I'm looking forward to getting back into the swing of things around here :) I'm planning to give a tour of our current living space and update y'all on what's been going on lately as well as sharing some recipes and various other excitements.

First things first though, I wanted to share with you a book that I read this past week called "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas"

This was an amazing book and although it isn't very lengthy it is incredibly thought provoking. 

The caption on the back reads,

 "If you start to read this book, you will go on a journey with a nine-year-old boy named Bruno. (Though this isn't a book for nine-year-olds.) And sooner or later you will arrive with Bruno at a fence.

Fences like this exist all over the world.

We hope you never have to encounter one."

This book was written a few years ago and maybe I'm behind the ball with it ( I got it at our local thrift store, never heard of it before) but I just had to share my thoughts on it. I think everyone should read it :)

Have a great week!

Have you heard of or read this book yourself? Or maybe you saw the movie? I'd love to hear what you thought of it.

First Day

And they're off to a brand new year of school. We have one in Grade 5, Grade 2 and one in Kindergarten :) Everyone was so excited this morning, especially little mister Gabester! I will try and be back later this week and by then my computer should hopefully be fixed.
Hope you all have a great week!

Homemade Raspberry Jam

From the vine...

to the freezer :)

Are you wondering what happened to our deck progress?

    Yesterday as I was reading back over the last couple months of posts (which didn't take long as there are so few of them :)  I realized that I inadvertently left everyone hanging about the progress of our deck redo. So, I apologise for that and I'll tell you that what happened was this.
    We sold our house in April with the closing set for June 30th and part of our agreement with the buyers was that we would fix up our deck before they moved in ( you can read a bit more about all that HERE and HERE ) basically the deck was deemed unsafe by their inspector and as the buyers had two kids of their own and she was planning a daycare in the home a bad deck would be no good (even though we were told by our inspector when we bought the house that the deck was just fine ) Anyways, so began the journey of the deck redo. Everything was going well, permit acquired, contractor chosen, demolition day happened ,and we were off to a good start. Except we didn't plan for the weather to be the wettest, rainiest spring that blasted records set 30 yrs ago! Seriously, it was bad. Our local soccer fields were flooded so much, there were people canoeing on them, streams and rivers flooded over their banks, it was pretty bad.  




     So, what happened with our deck? Well it got put on hold of course until the weather cleared up and everything dried out a bit. By that time, we had moved out (during a downpour!) and the closing of our house finalized and the new owners moved in. Luckily the new owners were very understanding and were OK with the work finishing during our transition. But, I still haven't gotten a chance to go back and ask them if I could take "after" pictures. We've driven by and had a look and it turned out very nice indeed, we just wish we could have had a chance to enjoy the new deck for a couple days! :)
      So, there is the story of our deck. The highs, the lows, the crazy weather, thankfully this summer the weather has cooperated and we've had lots of nice hot sunny days!

So, how about you? Crazy weather? Projects that didn't quite pan out the way you had hoped? Having a good summer?

A Beautiful Day for a Hike

A few weekends ago, Pat and I had a hankering to go on a hike. Since the friends we were staying with had the same idea, we all went together :) We went to a place called Ross lake and it was just gorgeous! It is days and moments like this that I am so grateful for living in such a beautiful part of our country. All the pictures taken in this post were taken with my new iPhone and I'm not sure why they are so washed out :(

We are pretty fortunate that our kids love to hike as well. They still talk about their favorite hike so far which was to Idaho Peak last summer ( you can check out that excursion HERE ) Gabe was my little hiking buddy so there are quite a few pics of him and the girls stayed way up front with our friend who is a super fast hiker (the fact that she has legs up to her armpits might possibly be a reason why she is so fast ;)

This huge boulder was right beside the trail so Pat and the kids had to conquer it! Stella really really wanted to join them. :)

Awwww family photo op :) When we got to the lake we took off our shoes and waded in the nice cool water. I should mention that it was a really really hot day in the low 30s so it was especially nice to have this pretty alpine lake to cool off in.

And of course we had to have a snack, trail mix of course! My little guy was so cute perched on a rock with his bare feet and his trail mix I couldn't resist sharing this pic.

Part of the hike was to pick our way through the bottom of this old rock slide. I thought it looked pretty cool so I told the hubby to go pose for me :)

And last but not least I had to share this picture to give you all some idea of how high up we were. This is only about half way up the drive part of the day and the hike was about 45 minutes each way ( I think).

All in all it was a great hike and a lovely day, I'm really glad that we are having such gorgeous weather after the extremely wet spring we had!

Have you been on any good hikes lately? Do you like hiking or hate it? Enjoying some gorgeous weather?

Our life this summer so far....

Hi!
I want to apologise first for the serious lack of posts this month. I had planned to keep up the pace but found that a few places where we stayed in our "New Home" had no cell service and unfortunately the little gadget I picked up to have mobile Internet relies, of course, on cell service. So here
we are and I am going to attempt to update you all on our life lately.

We've been doing a LOT of reading (there's no TV in the trailer)

We've been discovering native "wildlife". Meet Toady the toad whom we discovered close to our campsite one night. We've also seen a few deer, a black bear and a moose! Welcome to the great (not so white) north!

Pat and the kids have done a bunch of fishing. The kids are getting to be quite the little fisher people, Cadence and Gabe like casting from shore, and Nyla really enjoys trolling in the little boat.

This is the view from one of our campsites in one of my favorite places.

And then more reading!
This next month brings us swimming lessons, a wedding, a visit with some family from far away, harvesting and planting in the garden and hopefully more time on the beach!
How is your summer going so far?