shutting down

I think I'm going to shut down my blog for abit.  I need a space to be able to express myself without anyone reading and judging or even knowing to much of what I have to say .. so in case you try to access and aren't able to .. it's not because I blocked any certain person .. I just locked the whole thing up to everyone except myself.

See you on the flipside .. hopefully!

right now (no. 1)

I read this on a blog I keep up with and thought it was a neat idea to scoop for myself.

thinking- about some life changes I'd like to make in the near future.

feeling- relaxed, just enjoying the peace and quiet

eating- nothing

drinking- water

reading- Our Canada magazine that came in today's mail

watching- Prison Break .. Season 2

smelling- fresh autumn air coming in the open front door, fresh laundered clothing

hearing- some birds chirping, a neighbour trying to start a vehicle

loving- having the day off even if I do really need the hours

hating- (and loving) how fast my girls are growing up, having just thought about how much they've changed in just the past five months is mind blowing

hoping- to have the best birthday ever 

waiting- for the girls to get home from school

planning- on moving on up in this wee little world that is my life .. time to look for another more satisfying job

at the car wash

Of her own free will, Alissa asked if she could wash the car yesterday.  I willingly helped her get the garden hose attached to the front, and let her go crazy.  I'm not overly picky with how she cleans it, anything is better then how it may have looked before so sure .. play with water and bubbles.
And the best part is I got all these photos without her realizing it.  :)

top five sunday loves

1. I love that Alissa decided she wanted to wash the car all on her own. She did a really good job too!

2. All the colours we own in our nail polish stash. I went with a very subtle light pink with white tips on my toes .. aka french tips.

3. My neighbour has a garden this year and has an over abundance of tomatoes. She asked if we like tomatoes and oh YES we do! The yellow ones are apparently sweet and the two green ones I plan to fry up. Mmm

4. Obviously I love this song .. who doesn't? But today I saw the video for it for the first time. SOOOO cool!

5. Tacos for dinner. A favourite we all like!

it's looking pretty orange!

As I was perusing facebook this morning, I noticed Michaels was having these cute pumpkins as their free kids craft this weekend. As is usually my luck, their free craft falls on a weekend I don't have the girls so I felt compelled to take advantage of this chance.

They were super easy to make, and aside from a little tape holding, I didn't help them at all. The Craft Lady did instruct them on the steps that were needed and in what order, but I think they turned out super cute!

They're small, but what I like is that they're the first fall decore I have out right now. And they sit nicely on the fireplace hearth where my candles are awaiting to cozy up my home once the real fall weather hits. Which has been lately, but I haven't gotten around to lighting all the candles just yet.

I think I may want to make more of these. Maybe out of patterned paper from my overflowing scrapbooking stash.

If you'd like the instructions, check out the Crayola's website. Apparently Michaels scooped the idea. :P

woohoo

Three more days until the new season of Dexter!! I don't have HBO so I have to wait a day or two until I'm able to view it online. Can't wait!!
Here's a sneak peak that I found via the Dexter fan page on Facebook.

LOOOOOOOOOOVE this new single by Kings of Leon.

holeward bound

Some days I wish I could just crawl into a hole or crevice in the earth and let my life pass me by. I know I'm not the busiest single Mom in the world, and I like to keep a low profile, making my life as simple as I can or I already know I'd go insane .. but this week just seems crazy. And one way I'll know how crazy it was is if I make it to the weekend without doing any little chores. Because so far these past two days all I feel like doing once I get home is putting my feet up and doing N.O.T.H.I.N.G. But alas, dinner needs to be made, dishes done, planners checked, homework supervised, notes and forms signed or filled out, etc etc. If I could afford it, we'd eat dinner out .,. or rather, order in.

Ordinarily I can handle this kind of life, but work's been crazy busy and my feet and legs ache, my back is yelling at me and my patience has run dry. The girls have photo day tomorrow, 'meet the teacher' on Thursday evening, and next Monday is their first pro-d day already. I swore I'd never say 'when I was a kid' but we never got nearly that much time off nor did we have such short days. So is it not important that children spend as much time in school as our forefathers did? We're raising stupid kids!

I guess I have to take back the whole 'not doing chores this week' thing. A load of laundry is processing as I type because tomorrow is photo day afterall and Hailey suddenly has nothing to wear.

Smile cookies are back from today (the 20th) through to the 26th. What makes me the most excited about this is that I get to wear a t-shirt promoting them, instead of the button up, collared black shirt that is the normal uniform. Yay! Okay but in all seriousness, if you're craving a cookie, try the smile cookie. It's an ordinary chocolate chunk cookie that we always sell, but with the smile added to it. It costs $1 + tax and the 100% of the proceeds go to your towns local charity and in our case here, ours go to our towns hospital.
The downside is I had to try selling them to nearly every customer. But I kept count and I personally sold 9 today and then bought three to take home with me .. so that's 12! :P

As I was perusing blogs this morning, I came across a post on one particular blog I've read for quite some time. The author has quite a quirky personality and I love her humor, so when I clicked on her post and this photo popped up .. I laughed.

And then suddenly a photo I have of myself came to mind.

I wonder how many women have tried to hold something long and narrow in their cleavage? (or boobie crack as my daughter has recently called it). Hmm .. food for thought huh? ;)

sunshine

After what was a pretty busy day, then turned dead enough to be sent home from work early .. I decided we'd make use of what was a dismal day but turned into a gorgeous sunny fall afternoon, and head for the seawall. The girls wanted to stop at the playground first for a ten minute quick play and then we continued on walking over to the water.

This is their most favourite place to hang out when we're down at the seawall. Balancing along these cement tide blockers while people pass along the bridge above. They scope the waters for hermit crabs, starfish, oysters and muscles or anything living. Today they found three starfish, two hermit crabs in shells along with lots of other mini crabs, and a centipede looking thing. Now I wish I had taken it's photo but at the time it grossed (and sorta scared) me. I've never seen anything like it before.

This photo was taken before Hailey joined Alissa in the 'rolled up pant leg' look and waded into the shallow waters. I love late afternoons like this! :)

weird

I'm in a weird funk today. I thought maybe keeping myself busy with baking muffins and banana loaf, putting on a big pot of chili (big so we have lots of leftovers), doing a project with Alissa and now settling in to watch some shows on the computer .. in my jammies and snuggled under a blankie would be the perfect way to spend the day since it's overcast and raining and just a very chilly fall day. But there's this cloud over me. And then I realized what it was.

Today it's been 7 months since my Dad's passing. Will it ever get easier to remember my Dad without the tears flowing? Will there ever be weeks and months go by without that heaviness that seems to suddenly appear and leaves me wondering until I remember? Will I have memories that don't make me want to cry, even when they're good memories? Time to do what I always do .. occupy myself with something that gets my mind off things.

chewy

Alissa recieved a homemade gum kit from a friend on her last birthday and up until todayI've never had a good chunk of time to help her mix up a batch, until today. This is Cool Candy Kiss, it's a combination of extreme mint and watermelon. It's quite the process and we've discovered that we'll have to experiment a little with amounts to make the right strength, but it was fun. The kit came with everything needed aside from the food colouring and the disposable microwaveable container (which I now know why needs to be disposable .. you can't wash the residue out).

There are many more recipes to try .. and it'll be fun finding out how they look/taste. In the meantime, Alissa's bringing these to school for her friends to try.

to egg or not to egg?

This is what's for breakfast this morning. Mmm, just wish I had some bacon to go with it. Probably a good thing I don't tho .. it's a much healthier version without. But oh, I'm craving meat!

*photo from the internet

permission

I don't usually add people onto facebook that I don't know or feel like I know enough to trust with any information I put out there. I have my privacy settings set high, I have only people I want to able to see my photos, and I don't post to many statuses that I won't own up to without turning red.
But after last weekends outing with some coworkers, the friendship requests started coming in and I accepted a few. I did open up a new group so I could restrict them from nearly everything because we've all heard about the horror stories of work finding out things said on facebook. I made it so that my photos albums weren't viewable .. even tho I share photos on here and have had my blog accessible off and on over the last few years, it just seems different in my books.

This afternoon at work, one of the girls I befriended mentioned she noticed I must be into photography. I said yes, but asked how she knew other then my profile photos, the rest are blocked. She said she could tell by some of my profile shots. Wow .. nice compliment hey? She said a group she belongs to may be in need of a low budget photographer for a shoot, but also she asked permission to have access to my photos. It was a nice enough compliment that I came home, went online and allowed her access.

Scary? yes .. and I don't even really know why.

over the years

With it being still the start of school, and having posted new photos for this year just yesterday, it got me thinking. I should collage up the girls first day of photos since the start .. so voila, I did. Since my computers crashed several times since, I had to be inventive with where to find copies but I did it.

It was neat for me to look at how much they've changed.

Hailey broke her collar bone the day before grade one, and if you look closely, you can see the padded brace peeking out of her shirt neckline. Thankfully it healed quickly because it was her right!

first day of school photos

Gone are the days when I could pick out the girls outfits for school, but they did pretty well this morning. They were so excited to pack up their new backpacks and set off. Our school changed the hours of operation so they start school at 8:45, which makes us have to hustle and get there fifteen mins earlier then any other year but neither of them are crossing guards this year so at least we don't have to be there even earlier.

I straightened Alissa's hair as per her request and even tho her hair is pretty straight already, this gave it the poker straight look and so cute and LONG!

Hailey begged for messenger bag this year and although she has to carry a binder this year and it may get heavy. I could totally steal her bag that's how much I love the pattern for myself.

So here's my girls, entering grade 4 and 6.

S day!

Today was the 'first' day of school! I put it into quotes because as if we can call one hour as the first day, but that's our district for ya. All they did today was the grades lined up in their classes per lists up on the wall (younger grades in the gym, older grades outside on the basketball court), then their teachers took them to their classrooms and hung out for an hour. During that time, the parents just hung out in the gym having coffee and cookies that were provided. I caught up with a few moms, found out what was new in their lives, how the summer went, etc. Now with me working, I won't be around the school as much so won't get to know any new parents or teachers as well.

Alissa has the same teacher/classroom as last year. Its a grade 3/4 split. I love the teacher as Hailey had her for two years as well, so I'm happy.Hailey's in a grade 6/7 split which surprised her so much. One of her best friends is in the 5/6 class and she's so sad about that. The only reason I can think of that Hailey's in the higher split (after looking at what other grade 6s are) is she's in the upper spectrum academically? It'll be nice she'll learn up rather then down but ummm, do I really want her making friends with 7th graders? ack! She's not ready for the grade 7 boys!

Today I measured the girls. Hailey's up three quarters of an inch since June and Alissa's up a quarter inch.Tomorrow I'll bring you first school day photos!

stranger!

hi hi .. I know hey .. it's been awhile since I said anything! I've had a pretty tiring week and just glad to have a weekend to myself. The girls are gone for three days and two of those days were mine in their entirety. Last night I went out with a couple people from work, but landed up making it an early night because I'm old.

Actually that had nothing to do with the night ending early unless you count my foot being stepped on by some strange chick wearing stilettos and it caused enough pain that I just wanted to leave and get home where I could inspect it. Except that one of the girls I've become friendly with didn't want to stay on her own, but also wasn't ready to call it a night, came over and we ended up drinking a bit more and yapping until way to late.

Good news is I think there's always room for new friends with not so much weird baggage. :P
Bad news is my foot still hurts and it's swollen and I've been forced to rest/ice it today.

Who wears stilettos these days anyway, and who's even able to dance in them? Jesus!