Hello blog. How are you? I've been thinking about visiting you lately and dusting off the keyboard in an attempt to write out a post. It's been 4 1/2 years since my last update and life has been rolling along at break-neck speed. Somedays I feel as though I've been hanging on to a life preserver and other days I've found myself drowning in all the change. 

I suppose it is good to recognize when you don't like change, my hand is raised at the moment. It's not a place I thrive in. I don't like reinvention. I'm not a great at it. I mostly just want to live a quiet simple life, with days blending into one another and a predictability that comes from all things stable and calm. 

 

Maybe that's why the idea of blogging never fully leaves me. It represents a time in my life when things felt really good. When I could count on my days being mostly the same and creativity thrived, however these past few years I have felt very challenged in the latter. Change will do that and when I feel challenged by my circumstances I can get pretty quiet. Like hold-all-my-cards so tightly against my chest that I forget that I have to still play the game. It's not a good scenario all around.

So, blogging may just be the thing needed. A requirement of sorts to show up. To write and create and at the very least it will give me a chance to clean up this space a bit. When I moved it from typepad to a free blog hosting, the formatting went wildly wacky. I'm not even sure if blogger is adequate, but for now it will have to do.

I think I'd like to keep things pretty simple here, posts will be projects I'm currently working on, maybe some cool things I'm cooking up in the kitchen, creative stuff like that. The days of posting about my kids & homeschooling are behind me as they are onto the next chapter in their own lives. You'll have to be satisfied with photos of my four-legged furry kids. They are the companions that stick to me like glue these days. Oh and I have no idea how often a post will happen as I'm terribly out of practice with blogging skills - photography & writing posts, etc. But I do want a place to catalogue my creative endeavours and maybe one day find a small community of creatives who are doing the same. In the meantime, I may be the only one reading my own posts, and that is fine too. But let's give this thing a roll shall we?!  

In a nutshell

Hello blog world.

It has been almost 8 months since I wrote my last blog post. A terribly long time to be away from one's blog don't you think? At the very least it is a sure fire way to lose all your blog readers. While I didn't intend to do that, I'm sure my switch from blogging platform Typepad to Blogger last March (2014) didn't help in that arena as well. Good thing I'm not in it for the readership.

In spite of my effort, I will press on in blog land, in one form or another. It's a nice space to come to. I know the blogging thing has morphed over the past few years. People don't read them as much, and a lot of the new ones that pop up now are super techie with tons of advertising. It's all fine with me, people have to do what they feel led to do, after all no one size fits all.

June 2014

July 2104

Sept 2014

Oct 2014

Jan 2015

Jan 2015


For me however, I think I will keep this space simple. When I first started this blog - back in 2007, it was for me an online journal of sorts. A place where I could look back and see some of my accomplishments and also capture snippets of my life with 4 kids - those young magical years filled with sweet times together. I love looking back on those years in my blog; mostly because I have been lousy at putting photo albums together and  those images of my little kidlets are readily available.

So if this is the case - keeping the blog alive - where have I been for the past year? Well, as with all things best intentions get laid aside for practicality, and I am a practical girl. The short version is the hubby and I continued our 6 year long renovation on the duckyhouse. We started in July optimistically thinking we could rip it off in 3 weeks. Excuse me while I pause and laugh my face off. Hahahaha. Good one. Well it lasted until Christmas, mostly. Then I feverishly threw the house together for Christmas, including wrapping gifts until 4:00am on Christmas Day. Lame I know. Such was my year in 2014. I was very happy to see the end of it and start a new year.

So far this year has been good. I'm a month into 2015 and I finally got my word -  "fearless". Yup, I'm planning on being fearless this year. I might need help with it once in a while but fearless it is. I've got a few big decisions looming and perhaps, just perhaps being fearless will help me get to where I need to go.

Photos are from my instagram account June 2014 - Jan 2015

welcome here!

I'm making myself at home in this new space and looking forward to making new friends! Hope to see you around :)

knitting, notes, etc

Are you in the midst of endless winter like we are? Argh! I really don't mind winter and having grown up in the Canadian Prairies I'm a big season fan, but this winter is trying my patience. *so. much. cold. so. much. snow.* Proof you say? Well here is my son who is 5'9" shovelling snow at the back door. It's getting hard to know what to do with the white stuff.

It hasn't helped that our crew is sick yet again. Hence my absence from the computer. We are taking it all in stride and doing our best to keep our spirits up. Even if that means mid day basking in the sun from the indoors. For a brief moment it gives me the illusion that everything is green and growing outside. Yes I'm a dreamer.

minted

They arrived! A sweet package from minted.



I ordered Thank You/New Year cards last month for those who attended a big famiy birthday party that we had in late 2013. Besides the "thank you" portion, I owe family & friends updated photos of my growing crew.



I've been waiting to get them all addressed and sent out before I committed to this post. No sense in spoiling the snail mail surprise for the recipients who are reading my blog.



My thoughts: The photo is 5 x 7 in size with a nice matte finish. It will be easy for people to frame later on, if so desired. I ordered 25 cards plus envelopes and I didn't bother with their proof reading service so that saved me a bit extra cash. Shipping to Canada was via FedEx and cost $9.95, great for over the border.

Overall, the process was simple and delivery was quick. I really enjoyed my minted experience and I will definitely be ordering from them again.

fox and shop

Thanks for the mudroom love, I'm still delighted with that space and happy to have another project crossed off my list.

This winter we have had a backyard visitor. He comes a couple of times a week around mid-morning. He has comes very close to my backdoors and thankfully our dogs have not seen him yet. I'm not sure what the attraction is, as we do not feed him. But we do back on a lake so our yard is highly accessible.

I know it is mating season for foxes. I sure hope he finds what he is looking for. I'm so tempted to sit him down and explain that the city is probably not the best place to find a mrs. foxy fox but since he is here, my logic is irrelevant.

Isn't he lovely?



Onto other things... It's shop upate time and I have some gorgeous new vintage sheets that I've listed. I've actually listed over 20 new prints, so go check them out. Vintage sheets are like sunshine wrapped up in a blanket and I'm sure most of us could use a little reminder this time of year  :)











I do want this blog to be filled with eclectic bits of my life (foxes, fabric, etc) and part of that will include etsy shop updates. Hope you don't mind (In the rhetorical sense).
Well, I am off and running out the door. Have a fabulous Friday, xo.

2014 - hello world, I'm back... I think.

I can't promise in what capacity but I am here today and that is an excellent start. So where have I been for almost the past year? Well, I've been here at home, just not online in this space.



Nothing tragic or dramatic happened, just life getting in the way and me being a practical girl, something had to give.





Last year around the same time as my last post, the family computer died and since necessity is the mother of invention I gave my Mac *sniffle, over to the kidlets for their needs. This was a scary adventure in sharing, but ever so needed. After all, minecraft can't be put off!!



I also gave them my creative space as I wasn't getting much done in that arena due to ongoing house projects & exhaustion from a low iron health problem that my doctor and I were having a difficult time getting on top of. I'm pretty sure working two part time jobs while continuing to homeschool my crew, didn't help said iron troubles.



So how are things today? For me personally I have been slowly building my iron levels back up and am starting to see a resemblance of my old-self and I'm feeling those crafty urges again.



On the job front, I have resigned from my part time jobs and am now currently unemployed as of mid-December 2013. I admit I feel the odd pang of worry about not working but with homeschooling the crew I think it might be for the best for our family, for now.



As for computer sharing, after months of research and deliberations we finally decided to purchase a (couple of) gaming pc's for the kids. It was hard to go back to the pc world, as we are mainly apple-friendly, however we just felt that Mac products were a waste for what our kids' computer use (school & minecraft). So, under the Christmas tree last month sat a couple of extra special "shared" gifts that the kidlets were so patiently waiting for. Of course I now have my Mac back, which appears to be working fine.



Fyi, the photos in this post are from my instagram account. One photo for each month. If you want to see more, hop over to my instagram account - duckyhouse- to catch up on my life and of course you can always check out my flickr account.





I suspect this blog will either undergo some physical changes in the near future or perhaps it will discombobulate and become something different all together. I haven't worked out those details yet and I'm sure there will be a learning curve along the way. For now lets leave this long post with a Happy New Year 2014 and next post will have details about the photo below

september/october highlights

Happy Be-lated Holidays and New Year!! I'm popping in to finish up my last update on our summer/fall happenings. I originallly started this post back in early December but then I got caught up in a whirlwind of activity and BAM, here it is the new year. How did that happen?

A week after the big wedding we loaded up our minivan & small trailer and headed down south for 3 weeks. Destination: Walt Disney World Florida with a pit stop in Tennesee to drop my mum off for a visit with my sister - who had recently relocated with her family close to Nashville.



Wow, let me say that again "WOW, what a drive". I should have ordered t-shirts that said "I survived 3 - 12 hour days of driving with 7 people in one vehicle". Now don't get me wrong, it wasn't a bad roadtrip by any means. I just have pre-twins memory when we would make 3 or 4 long road trips per year into the US (the boys & us). Things seemed to be simpler and there were way less bathroom stops - lol! I guess it is pretty unreasonable to expect everyone to have "to go" at the same time but when you know you got a deadline you don't want to be stopping everyhour if you know what I mean. So as you can imagine after the first day this mumma got a little more militant and threw phrases around like: "you'll just have to hold it", etc.  Crazy I tell ya!



By the end of the 3rd day we arrived in WDW late in the evening in time to crash into our beds. The next morning we woke up and headed out to the parks. We had a 10 day hopper pass including water parks & more. We couldn't have asked for better weather, in fact it was a tad bit too warm some days but I think that had more to do with the humidity - it was relentless. Side note: It feels a bit ridiculous writing those words right now as the local temperatures here are -17 celcius and I would love to be too warm ;) 

Well what can I say about WDW that hasn't been said. It was 29 years since I was last there and the rest of my family were first timers. We stayed on site at the All Star Music resort recommended by a couple different people - Krisite, a new bloggy friend who had recently taken her brood down there (and who happens to live in the same city/neighborhood) as myself and another friend who treks to WDW a few times a year (lucky/crazy duck - she lives in Louisiana so her trekking is a little easier). Another local friend of mine does the time-share thing with her family every Christmas at WDW so we had a plethora of helps and recommendations to make our trip great (and yes we did the dining plan).







Some of our favourites were: Typhoon Lagoon - alas no pictures as we spent our time in the water doing the big wave, water slides and snorkeling. Our family favourite restaurant was Teppan Edo in Epcot and eating at Crystal Palace in Magic Kingdom with the Winnie the Pooh Characters. The Haunted Mansion still remains one of my personal favourites. We really enjoyed the Hall of Presidents, American's really do a much better job with patriotism and honouring their past than us Canadians. We loved Animal Kingdom and didn't get enough time to see everything - we were supposed to go a second time on our last day but one of the girlies passed out in the hubby's arms and needed to sleep off her exhaustion. Miss Abby's personal favourite was Tom Sawyer's Island, I'm going out of my way to put that part in so I don't forget. I'm pretty sure there are more things I'm forgetting to add to this list but that'll have to do.









After WDW we headed over to Universal Studios for a couple of days. I had a mission: to see Hogwarts. I have to admit that I was probably more excited than my kids at this point - big HP fan :)  The ride at Hogwarts was probably the best ride I've ever been on. I'm not much for roller coasters and turning upside down so for me the ride combination of virtual reality and movement was just perfect. We ate at 3 Broomsticks, tried butter beer and went to Honeyduke's Sweetshop. All in all it was a pretty satisfying experience and I did get the sweatshirt!



The rest of Universal was just okay for us. We enjoyed the Indiana Jones show, Jurassic Park & the Spiderman rides. I think if you aren't a big roller coaster lover Universal Studios runs out of stimuli pretty fast. I'm glad we went because we had some great fun at a few attractions but overall I don't think we would visit it again if down in the area.



Okay, enough said I think that sums up our summer/fall: a relaxing summer, a big wedding, a family trip of a lifetime/road trip (next time we are flying), and since then we have settled into homeschooling and winter.  Now if you made it through this l-o-n-g post congratulations and thanks! Here's to hoping my next update will include something a wee bit crafty now that the days of being indoors have arrived. Woohoo, lets here it for winter **brrrr**

september celebration

I'm back with another update and this time I'm covering the earlier part of September and I have one word for you *wedding*

My niece decided to tie the knot with her secret highschool sweetheart. It was a big deal for our family since a) we haven't had a wedding in a while, b) it was my sister's only daughter, c) I've watched this girlie grow up from a wee girl to a big girl (insert 'where have the years gone' & tears), d) she was my flower girl some 19 years ago and e) my twin girlies were her flower girls.

Well weddings along with being fun, require a fair amount of organizing & spiffing up as you can imagine. Thankfully my niece, my sister & bro-in-law took care of all the organizing and we as guests were left to making sure all were bathed and properly clothed for the event. My shopping started early when I found some awesome flower girl dresses in spring for my girlies which my niece approved of *sweet*. Buying early meant I didn't end up having to spend hundreds of $$ on their dresses later or panic that time was running out. Shoes on the other hand were a completely different story. I could not find anything suitable in this fair city of ours so I gave up and went to the internet where Zulily saved the day. After the girls were set to go I had to turn my focus to the two scraggly teens that seem to be growing faster than a golden retriever in his first year of life. Since dress pants & ties are not required homeschooling attire in our home, the boys needed the whole 9 yards, pants, shirt, ties, socks & shoes. I cut the fellows some slack and did not make them wear a full suit. As for the hubby, he was pretty good in the dress up department, though he did get a new shirt, tie and shoes. Me on the other hand, I needed a whole new ensemble. I went with an strapless formal gown, shoes, etc. Okay so the reason why I'm spilling all the details in print is because that's pretty much all you are going to get. Yes, I forgot to get a family photo (of us) except for a wee instagram shot on the way to the church in our chariot (minivan) *ugh* - you'll have to cut me some slack as I had more important things on my mind like making sure the girlies were good to go down the isle. Enough said, lets take a peek at the day's events starting with the rehearsal.
















~ rehearsal night where the girlies get their walking practice.

~ on the way to the church, all dressed up and nary a picture to show - no I am not naked - remember strapless gown.

~ the girlies doing the stuff for real and doing a fabulous job at it

~ my niece and her daddy taking that walk

~ the bride - so beautiful

~ the happy couple cutting the fantastic cake my sister made!

So ends the day and they begin their journey. I'm sure they will make a wonderful life together. I'll be back with an end of September/October update soon. xoxo