vacation all I ever wanted

Music Tuesdays is preempted this week. It's been crazy busy here and I'm just not feeling it tonight. But I still wanted to post so here goes.

This past weekend was the Labour Day long weekend. We had plans to go up to the cottage. We didn't. The weather was likely perfect since it was beautiful here at home so that wasn't the reason. We just needed some time to chill. This trip to the cottage would have been an all work and no play one. So we've just put it off for a month or so. But since Steve had already booked Friday off work, we found ourselves with a four day weekend. Sweet!

We didn't do a lot. I had a list of things I wanted to accomplish and almost nothing got checked off. But that's okay. Steve spent a lot of time with Alex, taking the bulk of the parenting duties off my shoulders. It was a nice break for both of us. He got to spend time with the little dude and I had time to do other things without having to worry about Alex. And since Steve will be leaving for Indonesia and Japan on Friday and will be away for 10 days, it was nice to have a bit of a parenting break, since it will be just me for a little while.

We did get out of the house. We met our friends Colin & Leslie and their kids at Canada's Largest Ribfest here in lovely Burlington, Ontario. It was crazy busy but we enjoyed some yummy food and got to hang out friends that we don't see nearly enough.

Yup. That's a lot of people.


The Boss, hard at work.



mmm...

Tomorrow is my cousin Janet's wedding. I better go rest up.

photo Friday

photo Friday

The addition of the music Tuesdays feature has really helped me keep up with the blog. I find that I am more motivated to get a post in before the next Tuesday rolls around, simply because I don't want this to be a blog of just music posts on Tuesdays. So I've decided to start a photo Friday feature in hopes that it will get me blogging even more. And I do take a lot of pictures that just end up sitting on my hard drive. Also, I'm over a year behind in updating my Flickr, so this might help with that problem as well.

Okay, enough talking. Here are few pics from our last trip to the cottage.

The black squirrel was scurrying up a tree with a mouthful of sunflower seeds we had thrown out for the animals.

We think this gorgeous heron nests on the property. He doesn't normally get this close. The picture is a bit fuzzy because it was taken through the glass of the front door.

Enjoy your summer weekend!

alvin, simon, theodore?

We spent about 5 days at the cottage last week, basically just getting it set up for later in the summer when we plan to be up for 2 weeks. As is the custom, we put peanuts out for the wildlife. As you will see, the chipmunks are extra friendly this year.

if a picture paints a thousand words...

Just got home from a full day of work and an excellent massage. I'm sipping a cup of tea before bed and writing up a quick post. Well, writing may not be the best description. I'm too tired for words, so here are a few pictures I took this summer at the cottage.

We had a rainy spring and early summer at the cottage resulting in an more mushrooms than I have ever seen.

A spiderweb on a foggy morning.

Misty morning on the lake.

Family of loons.

A maple leaf that peaked too early.

Blue jay in a tree.

One of the odder fungi I came across.

The old heron that lives on the point.

some wild, wild life

Steve and I spent two weeks at the cottage this summer and they were heavenly. We had been up for a week in June and returned for the first week of August. The weather was perfect for the August trip and we spent most of our time doing a whole lot of nothing. It was the mental break we both needed.


I spent a lot of time working on my latest addiction, photography. Ever since I bought the new camera, I have been obsessed with taking pictures. I'm slowly learning how to use some of the cool features on my camera but most of my pictures are still pretty crappy. I think I'm currently averaging about 1 good photo for every 20 I take. But I am learning more as I go along. I have also discovered the joy of iPhoto. I've been spending a lot of time playing around with my photos, cropping, adjusting and just messing around with them to see what I could do. But I digress.


The tradition at the cottage is to put peanuts and sunflower seeds out on the front step every morning to feed the animals. It doesn't take them long to sniff out the grub, so I sat patiently with my coffee and camera and waited. After a day or two, they got used to having me around and weren't at all concerned that I was just a few feet away from them. I ended up with some excellent shots of the squirrels, chipmunks and various birds that would come to feed. The chipmunks were even running over my feet and eating out of my hand!


I still have quite a bit of editing to do, but these are a few photos I took during our last trip to Otty Lake. I'll put a bunch more on my Flickr stream soon. There are already some unedited ones up from the June trip.

squirrel cam

Life has been crazy hectic lately and I'm behind on a ton of stuff. Especially the blogging. I have about 10 posts in the works but can find the time to get them done. For now though, I will entertain you with a little video I took up at the cottage.

if we took a holiday...

I'm off to the cottage and will be offline for the next 8 days. Wonder what I'll be doing without internet access? This might answer the question.

...everyone here knows how to cry...

Every summer, we spend a couple of weeks at the cottage. Steve's grandfather built a rustic cottage on a large, lakeside property outside of Ottawa many years ago. As a result, we always have a summer vacation spot. I often jokingly tell my unmarried friends that it's wise to marry into a family with a cottage. Truly, I am only half joking. I am very thankful for the cottage and love having somewhere to take a holiday that doesn't cost anymore than a week off at home.

Part of our cottage ritual is a trip to nearby Smiths Falls to visit the Canadian Hershey Chocolate Factory. Here you get to view part of the factory floor (my favourite is where they make the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups) and buy chocolate for cheap! Sadly, Hershey announced today that they will be closing the Smiths Falls plant. 400 people in a town of 9,000 will lose their jobs and an area institution will disappear. As a chocoholic, this makes me very sad, as much for my chocolate addiction as for the local economy. I worry about the effect that this will have on Smiths Falls and hope that they can recover.