Spring!

I know, I'm weeks behind posting pictures of spring, but that's the way my life works sometimes.

Spring officially starts for me with the sighting of the first crocus.  

Our local off-leash park has been especially green this year.  

I love the way this path just kind of meanders through it.

This tree is just down the street from us.  Every year I'm blown away by how huge it is, and by how many blossoms are on it.

Tree in the park

Our back garden smells SO good right now!

Sorry, this is a really crappy photo, but considering it was taken from my office window, across the road and several hundred yards away, it's not bad.  This little calf is just minutes old.  He was just standing up on wobbly legs.  You don't see that from a highrise office downtown!

Our last week-end in Canmore was wonderful!

  This is the view from Cari-Ann's front deck.  Nice eh?

Bill & Vi came up to install the doggy gates that they made to keep Muñeca in.  Taz is helping her favourite person in the world to test them out.

We spent ages at the Quarry Lake off-leash park watching dozens of avalanches.  Cool!

I'm pretty sure we woke this guy up on one of our walks.

On a completely different note.  I've been thinking of trying my hand at quilting.  I'm gathering the accoutrements, but I haven't gone as far as actually buying fabric yet.  I love the idea of choosing fabrics and making patterns with it, but the idea of sewing still scares the crap out of me...

I thought I'd start small, like maybe a pot-holder or something.

One of my co-workers just had a baby, so I decided to make a pair of baby moccasins for her.  Over the years, I've made probably a dozen pairs of these, but none in the last couple of decades.  I was surprised to find that Tandy Leather still sells the kits.

They turned out okay, considering how long it's been since the last pair I made.

A rainy day.  This was taken from the kitchen window.  I just like the streakiness.

No rain today, though.  Bright & sunny - perfect for painting a chair.  More on that later,

Mountain get-aways

Cari-Ann is in Bolivia for 5 weeks and she generously offered to let us use her house while she is away.  We've been having a blast pretending that we live in Canmore.  Well, on the week-ends anyway.

A couple of weeks ago we drove up in a snowstorm.  It was kind of spooky the way the mountains were just barely visible.

Cari-Ann lives in a quiet neighbourhood right at the base of the Three Sisters.

There are miles of bike paths and walking trails, and we've explored most of them.

Around the 'hood.

Whatcha lookin' at Taz?

Taz is fascinated by chipmunks and squirrels (and there are a LOT of them!)

Along the trail

Not a great shot, but this robin is building a nest in the tree right outside the kitchen window.  She didn't stick around long before she was off for more construction materials.  I've been checking the window regularly to try to get a better picture, but I haven't seen her since.

We're pretending to be locals, but we give ourselves away by going gaga over the wildlife.  

Lots of deer, and elk in the neighbourhood.

At least they use the crosswalk.

This would've been a nice, but I clicked the shutter just in time to get a butt shot.

A reflection in a neighbours window.

And now for Taz's favourite part.  The local off-leash park is spectacular!

We've been thinking that it might be time for a change of address, so it's been fun test driving Canmore.  Of course, unless we win the lottery, that's not likely to happen, but we've had 3 wonderful week-ends pretending...(one more to go!)

Bye bye Lola

Lola was on holidays at our house for a couple of weeks while Lesley & Dave were in Hawaii, but she went home last night.  Look at this face!  Is she adorable or what??!!

This is her "Let's play with the ball" look.  Actually it's her only look.  She is completely obsessed with her ball.  We got this look even after an hour at the park playing with the stupid ball.  As soon as we got home, it was like we'd never been out.  If you ignore the look, she'll nudge her ball a little bit closer to you, then a little bit closer, then a little bit closer....the ball has to actually disappear before she'll give up.  Now that she's gone, we have to go around the house and retrieve all of the tennis balls from the tops of shelves and from out of cupboards, wherever we stashed them when we couldn't take the game anymore. Except for the one-track mind, it was fun to have a little dog around the house for awhile.

The only problem was that I couldn't say her name without hearing the Kinks...

•♫♪♥¸.•*¨*•♫♪Lola, L-O-L-A Lola, la la la la Lola♫•*¨*•.¸¸♥ ¨*•♫♪

I tried another Pinterest recipe for dinner tonight.  

White chicken enchiladas with green chile sour cream sauce

Of course I substituted seafood for the chicken.  I also added some sour cream to the seafood and sprinkled it with cayenne pepper. (Not enough)

Maybe I wasn't very hungry, or maybe it's no fun cooking a big meal then not having anybody to share it with, (Dan isn't feeling well) whatever, it wasn't that great.  Kind of bland.

It wasn't awful, and it WAS quick and easy, so I haven't written it off completely, but next time
I'll add more heat. (extra chiles)

I'm back

Had a little discussion with myself about whether or not to continue blogging, and decided what the heck...

If nothing else, it serves as a memory aid when I need to know when or where something happened, and frankly, I need all the help I can get in that department.  

It also makes me take photos, and taking photos makes me notice things that I wouldn't ordinarily notice.  

It also justifies the new camera that I bought for myself.

This is the Canon SX260 HS

I spent a week in Hawaii, lugging around my gigantic Canon Rebel with the honkin' big 18-270 lens and I hated it.  I was totally uninspired to take photos because it was just too much trouble to dig it out of my bag.  I'd read about this new one before I went to Maui, and I thought I could just go down to my local camera store and pick one up to take on holidays with me.  Nope, didn't work.  It was too new, and nobody had it in stock yet.  I think that's why I didn't enjoy the big camera - I had my heart set on taking this new one with me, and I couldn't.  

This baby has almost twice the zoom of my big camera  (500mm!) and it fits in my pocket!  

It's also a pretty colour, but of course that doesn't matter to me at all :)

My first coupla weeks back at work were brutal!  Two 5-day weeks, and I was by myself for one of them.   Had a few re-entry problems.  Just minor things like, y'know, forgetting how to do a cheque run...that messed up a couple of days right there.

Anyway, I'm back to the regular 3 days a week now, so this was my first mid-week break. 

I've had a pretty productive day today.  

I've been baking since early morning and the house smells wonderful!

I made Feta/ricotta/spinach rolls that don't exactly look like the picture on the recipe, but they are delicious! 

I made 2 apple pies (sin canela) 

and I had some pastry left over, so I made a few cheese scones too.

Mmmm...mmmm!!!

I had planned on making shrimp enchiladas for dinner, but I'm thinking Chinese take-out sounds pretty good instead.  I've had enough cooking for one day.

Anyway, welcome back to DTL.  I'm enjoying spring this year more than ever.  Things are just starting to green up and bud out.  I love it!

Bye for now

I know, I know, I haven't been keeping up this blog very well.  Maybe I'm suffering from blogger burnout, or maybe I'm just lazy.  Whatever -  it's time to switch over to Mexican Madness now anyway.
See y'all over at http://cheryl-dan-mexicanmadness.blogspot.com/

I'm not promising to be any better over there, but if anything is happening for the next few months, that's where it'll be.

Alzheimer's and technology - not a good combination.

This week's theme in the 52-week photo group is BRISK.  Yes, really.  I'm guessing that's because autumn is Monica's favourite time of year and she loves brisk weather.

Taz & I headed up to Tom Campbell's hill this morning for a brisk walk on a brisk autumn day.  Took a few photos, but nothing really screamed BRISK to me.

Headed over to Coop after our walk to pick up a couple of props that I thought I could use instead.  I don't know what happened in my brain, but it slipped sideways a little and somehow "brisk" became "crisp" in my head.  I bought a bag full of nice crisp Granny Smith apples.  I thought I could take a bite out of one of them and arrange them artfully somehow.  In case that didn't work, I also picked up a good-looking strawberry/rhubarb crisp.  I was feeling pretty good about how I'd cleverly thought of a different way to show "crisp", until I went to Facebook to upload one of the pictures to the group and...Crap!  BRISK!!  Not "crisp", you idiot!!

All is not lost.  The apples will probably find their way into a pie tomorrow, and the strawberry/rhubarb crisp will probably go to waist, not to waste.

I was having trouble with my i-Phone.  I could receive e-mails, but I couldn't send them.  Last week I went to the Apple store in Market Mall and one of the geniuses there (really, that's what they call them) checked everything out and determined that the problem was with my internet provider, not with the phone.  Came home, did a few hundred tests with my phone and Dan's and guess what?  His worked fine and mine didn't. Same internet provider.  Today, I went online and found some Q&A sites that I thought might help.  Nope.  I spent about an hour on the Apple site, the end result of which was an appointment to have them phone me on October 22nd!!  I tried contacting Shaw, but of course, because they're a communications company, communication with them is not possible.  I finally talked to a helpful salesperson genius at the Chinook store and she put me on to a website that would test my password.  It was determined that my password was too weak.  In my efforts to change it, I managed to mess up Dan's access to the entire Shaw account.  (Shhh, he doesn't know yet)   but finally, after about 2½ hours, I somehow hit the right combination.  Unfortunately, after 10,000 attempts using different passwords, I now have a password that I have NO CHANCE of remembering...Do I dare risk going back in and trying to change it?  Um, no!

Chemo caps

This is the crocheted version of the chemo cap. The instructions say that this is a 2-hour project.  Yeah, right...It's started at the top and you work your way down.  If I'd followed the instructions exactly, it would've come down past my nose.

And look.  If you turn it upside down it makes a handy basket.  That's the knitted version in progress.

And the knitted version, completed.  This one is started at the bottom and you work your way up.    Because I made the crocheted one first, I knew it would probably be too long, so I was able to adjust the sizing to a more appropriate length.  If I'd made this one first, it would've become a tea cozy instead.

Of the two, I think I prefer the look of the knitted one, but it was more difficult and took twice as long as the crocheted one.  And it's not finished when the knitting is over - the back seam still has to be sewn up.  (Pain in the butt)

Fortunately, there is no-one in my life that needs these, but a portion of the proceeds from the yarn purchase is contributed to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation and they were fun to do.