Iona is 1!!

It's hard to believe that my "last" baby is one today! I know that past experience has led you all to not believe me when I say I'm done, but I am....seriously!!! And that makes it harder to see her growing up, I've been trying to savour all the moments and she is especially delicious. Happy Birthday, little nacker, mummy loves you!

Potter Puppet Pals

I'm probably really behind on the fad...but for those of you who are as out of touch with pop culture as I am, will probably enjoy this:




The kids have me playing this over and over, they think it is hilarious

"bother"

In the list of books below, bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you want to read, put brackets around the ones you won’t touch with a ten-foot pole, put a cross (+) in front of the ones on your book shelf, and asterisk (*) the ones you’ve never heard of. (The ones I've left...well, I could take 'em or leave 'em)

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. [Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)]
5. +The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. +The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. +The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L. M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. *Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. *A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. *Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. [The Stand (Stephen King)]
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. +The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J. D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. *The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. +The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. +The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. *Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. *The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. +The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. *The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. *The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. *I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. *The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. [Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)]
44. *The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. [She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)]
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. [The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)]
59. +The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. +Interview with the Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. [Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)]
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. +The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. +Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. *A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. +Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On the Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. *Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. *Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. *Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
8. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. *Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. *Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. *The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. [The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)]
96. The Outsiders (S. E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. *A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Wow, it looks I like I'd better get to the library!

There is knitting happening...

I've been SLOWLY slogging along making Finn his Gryffindor scarf...I think I made it a tiny bit too wide for a kid, and I'm doing it stockinette in the round, so it's taking twice as long. Not to mention that it's tricky to get any of it done with "boo-nibbler" constantly wanting to be the centre of the universe. Imagine the nerve! ;)

No school, it's a snow day

We lived through our first official snow day! School was cancelled and our street was buried under 2 feet of snow for most of the day until the plow finally came by. Poor Matt spend more than and hour snowblowing our and the neighbor's fronts and then got reburied when the plow went by. But it was a lovely quiet Valentine's day. The kids had fun on their surprise day off and we had a nice dinner even though we had to use what was in the house.

We got a cool new furnace today! It's going to heat our attic and basement and we can finally go ahead with finishing both areas. So that means we are a step closer to building our new bedroom and me getting my studio built. YIPPEE for me! I wish that I had more baby-free time so that I could put the rest of the house together, but at least I've got a ton of hired hands descending on us to do a bunch of jobs.

One Handed Art Making

I've been trying to get some things made - thank goodness for Craftster swaps that give me deadlines to work for. This cool altered Altoid tin was for a nice lady in the UK who was a closet goth, I covered the top with purple silk quilted with a spider web and the beaded spider is actually a pin that comes off. I think I like the inside better...

The sides are cool cobalt microbeads and w/a transulcent overlay on the bottom.

I've just finished this piece and I'm planning on making a lot more along this line - it combines collage, altered art and stained glass YIPEE! The back and then the front! "she"

There's a pagan in bushes!

We finally found some other like minded folk out this way (thank goodness for the one other pagan family in town we already knew before the move!)...they are out in Kitchener, but they have an amazing kid group and we are planning on checking out their circles. Their next workshop is on Fairie, but I don't think the kids will sit through any type of "adult" discussion on the subject (although I'm a bit wary of what the adults would be talking about anyway...FLAKE ALERT!). But the kids really enjoyed talking with other pagan kids and they learned a few things and made some candles for Imbolc which made our sabbat celebration more meaningful for them. We've been trying to get back to our spirituality...I'm planning a cool garden with quarter altars, etc. Not the stonehenge I wanted, but someday.....

I've just found this amazing website with the most astounding art!!!! www.michaeldemeng.com I love his use of found objects and the small scale of his work - very intimate. I've been hoping to capture some of that sacred past in my stuff....keep trying. Maybe I need more layers of meaning.

Very busy down on the farm...

Well, I think we have all been adjusting well to the addition of our latest princess. As to be expected of our clan, she is enormous! 15 lbs last count. I've been keeping sane, catching minutes to knit Fin's Harry Potter scarf and play with my soldering iron making cool glass encased collages:

The kids really adore Iona, and most days I don't have to get them to leave her alone (thank gods for school!) The only glitch is that she seems to be sensitive to caffine - so no coffees for Mama. Which is not so good for a sleep-deprived, snowbound, cabin feverish, Toronto exile. Oh, did it sound like I'm not having fun in Leathertown? It's been tricky not driving and there not being much going on in town and it's too yucky to walk to the library, etc. I've been finding the people are a bit narrow-minded, but I've decided to give the drop-in another try and I've signed up for a papercraft workshop this weekend, so maybe I'll meet some nice people there. I really miss my friends and hangouts in the Big Smoke :(

But on a cheery note, here are my cool kids!