Sunday, October 31, 2010

Halloween 2010

It is that time of year again..... Candy time or as it is "officially" known as Halloween. Jen has had a bit of a cold this weekend so while she was sleeping in the kids and I (ok mostly I) worked on this year's pumpkins.
We had two pumpkins to crave, one which was to be Isla's would be a more traditional Jack'o'lantern style pumpkin, and one which was to be Keir's was a Start Wars themed pumpkin. If you remember last year's and of course I am sure you do ;-).... Star Wars Pumpkin's are a recurring theme in our house. Keir chose to do Captain Rex from Clone Wars (a cartoon Star Wars series).
So  we started with a pencil drawing on a piece of paper (actually I traced it of the computer monitor!) then you pin that to the pumpkin and proceed to use a pin to "trace" the line by marking little holes every so often on the lines.
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the you basically connect the dots with a marker on the pumpkin:
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Then it is just patience and carving!
Here is Keir's pumpkin finished
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And here are the rest of the pumpkins lit up (yes that is snow on the ground!!!)
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The one good thing about carving pumpkins is the seeds, you can roast them  and they are delicious. You go from this (pumpkin goo as Isla called it):
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to this:
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you soak them in salted water and then roast them in the oven with more salt, and they come out as salty delicious goodness!
I mentioned already that it snow overnight last night, so we woke up to a blanket of snow on halloween, I really don't remember that last time we had snow on the ground for halloween. So in the afternoon we made a snowman to go with our pumpkin.
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On to the costumes and trick or treating:
this year Isla was a Zebra:
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and Keir went as Tintin, who is Tintin you ask? I grew up reading the Comic book and Keir found one of them while we were visiting my parents one time and has become a big fan as well. For those of you who don't know Tintin look like this:
and here is what Keir looked like complete with Snowy the dog:
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Here is a close up of the hair:
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Isla was very reluctant to actually go out trick or treating but eventually we got her out. She has been going through some "i am scared" moments recently. But after the first house, the little light went off in her head that people would give her candy if she said the magic words:"Trick or Treat". Well there was no stopping her. We ended up doing all the houses on our street but they still got a ton of candy:
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We managed to get them to bed with minimal suger disruptions. All in all a good night!
I will leave you with the pumpkins and snowman in the same photo, not something you see everyday
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That is all for now
Take care
Ewan

Friday, October 29, 2010

TDIH Friday October 29th

Taken from this original post, here is a pic from October 29th 2007
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I called the post my two favourite ladies, and 3 years later they still are :-)

Ewan

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Sewer, Mud, Jack-hammers and dust

In a post last week I hinted about some renovations that were happening at our house. When we bought our current home, we knew that the area we were moving too was on septic systems, we also knew that the area was going to be put on to the City's sewer infrastructure. Last summer they dug up our street  to put the main sewer line in. And this summer the sewer system in our neighbourhood became operational, so we could start the process of hooking up to the sewer system.  What does that involve you ask? Well it involves Mud, Jack-hammers and dust! More precisely dig up your front lawn and run a lateral from the City Sewer line to your house, and then (in our case) we chose to 're-plumb' (i just made that word up) by running new plumbing pipes out through the front of the house to hook up with the lateral. You see our septic system is in the back yard and to connect to the sewers you can either continue to go out the back but re-route it around the front or you can 're-plumb' your house and make the interior plumbing go out the front.
So on October 6th  they (the nice people at Plumbing Now) started work.
Here is the starting point, the pipes going into the ground is the holding tank for the basement toilet and right in the middle of the picture you can see the pipes going out of the back of the house to the septic system.
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Here they have removed the holding tank and started to 're-plumb' out the front
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next they run it to the front of the house
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and out the front of the house, yes that is water in the trench they dug. It rained biblical amounts of rain the day they started....
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as a point of reference here is what that section of the room looked like 48hrs previous:
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of course cracking open concrete floors brings up lots of dust, so we on top of moving everything out of the way we had to cover it up with tarps and plastic
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From this blog entry title we have covered Jack-hammers and dust... that only leaves mud: here is what our front lawn looked like as they installed the lateral:
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All of this happened right before Thanksgiving weekend.
There will be a part two to this post, the work is finished but I am still working on putting the room back together.
Ewan

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Leaves and RIP Mr. Caterpillar

It is officially fall here in our neck of the woods. And fall means a couple of things: apples, cooler temperatures, changing colours, and raking leaves. Today the kids "helped" rake up the leaves in our backyard. And by "help" I mean jump in the pile we had just raked!
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and then throw the leaves everywhere
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but really who can stay mad at such cute faces
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While we were raking we uncovered a caterpillar, a woolly bear caterpillar to be precise (I never knew that is what they were called until tonight, another plus for the internet!). In the past Isla has been very infatuated with caterpillars (much to Jen's angst- she really doesn't like caterpillars!) and tonight was no different. She immediately stopped raking and proceeded to play with "Mr Caterpillar". Keir and I continued to rake when about 5 minutes had gone by and we heard Isla shreek! You see she had decided it would be a good idea to put a laundry peg on "Mr Caterpillar". Well you can sort of guess what happend next... Poor "Mr Caterpillar" came out on the loosing side of the encounter with the laundry peg. There was a little bit of caterpillar blood leaking out of Mr Caterpillar. Isla was beside herself, literally balling her eyes out. She was so sad and in between sobs she would ask if Mr Caterpillar was going to be ok.
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Inspecting the damage:
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The actual damage:
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Mr Caterpillar wasn't actually dead, but I don't think he was feeling to well or was going to make it through the night. Here he is trying to flee the scene, the wet mark all around him is his blood:
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All in all it was a pretty traumatizing experience for poor Isla (and I imagine for Mr Caterpillar as well).

RIP Mr Caterpillar!


Ewan

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Sunday Supper October 17th

Another installment in Sunday Supper, this time it is Pesto Pasta with BBQ Sausages and Veggies
First step is the Starting ingredients sausages, onions, tomatoes, fennel, carrots, green and red peppers, zucchini:
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Then we take it to the grill:
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15-20mins later we have the grilled veggies:
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Cut them up and place in a big bowl
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and the grilled sausages
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Cut them up as well and into the same big bowl:
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Then throw in heaps of cooked penne pasta
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Next up is the pesto, goat cheese and peccorino romano cheese:
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and add those to the bowl
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and mix together
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Then we are ready to eat!!
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Best thing about this is the leftovers for tomorrow's lunch!

Take care
Ewan

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Thanksgiving 2010

So I have been a little quiet on the blog front but that is because of some little renovations going on in our house have been taking up our time. But more on the renovations later this week, for now I want to focus on is this past weekend, Thanksgiving Weekend.
We went out out to the Cottage for Sunday and Monday. It was a beautiful weekend weather wise which helped as the cottage doesn't have any heat! We had a great Thanksgiving meal on Sunday with Jen's parents, Grandmother, Aunt and Uncle. My parents also made the trip up to the cottage. The next morning we went for a walk at Foley Mountain Conservation Area which is in Westport. Westport is a cute little town on the Rideau Lake system, it is very busy with cottagers and tourists all summer long. Geographically it is right below the start of the Canadian Shield. The Canadian Shield is a massive geographic formation from a long, long time ago (see the link back there if you want to read more about it). Enough with the Geography lesson.... Foley Mountain is actually _on_ the Shield so you can get some pretty spectacular views from some of the trails.
An Example Spy Rock Lookout
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It is huge drop off down to the Town of Westport, you can sort of see little Marina in Westport in the Picture
And if you look behind the people in this picture you can see the Town of Westport
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Here is a pic of Keir trying to get a little to close to the edge of the lookout:
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And of course once Ilsa saw Keir do that she wanted to get down to the edge as well
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After spending some time at the lookout, we went for a walk on on of the many trails.
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It was a really great morning in a really beautiful location!
Here are some more random photos from the weekend
Mr Frog at the cottage
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Keir and Isla
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Keir and Isla being silly
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Boat at the Cottage
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There is a whole bunch more photos here

That is all for now
Take care
Ewan