The leaves have nearly completely fallen and that signals Halloween.  This, at minimum,  week long build up comes with lots of fun, sweets and some more then disappointing costume choices and idea. I can come up with some pretty fantastic ideas but my execution of these ideas is often less then stellar.  I have learned over the years that less is more, don't dismiss a bought outfit and always enlist help when you know your way over your head.  

This year we are keeping it pretty low key.  With the actual day being on a Monday, if you have been around any child you know that they have already had their "pre-game" for the last week.  The Halloween "jet lag" will commence promptly on Tuesday morning.  Monday will be orange and black day for the regular work hours and little known fact, I do not own anything orange.  So I quick search on Pinterest brought me to the Jessica's blog called Cutesy Crafts .

What you will need is a t-shirt, freezer paper (you can get this from any grocery store), pencil (for drawing), fabric paint (I decided to use black and glitter), scissors, another pencil for dipping in the paint (I used a larger one and a regular sized one for different sized stamps) and an iron.  

Using the freezer paper, you can make any shape you wish and simply cut it out.  I had never used this before and I have to saw, why didn't I know that freezer paper existed and is a thing for crafts??  From there, you put the "shiny" plasticized side down and iron it until the edges adhere to the t-shirt.  

Keeping the shapes on the shirt, go a head and get creative!  I applied black first with the larger sized eraser and then went back in with silver.  After that, let it dry, peel of the designs and you have a custom t-shirt!  You could obviously use this for really anything.  To set the paint, I let it dry over night and then put an old, thin towel over top and go over the paint with a hot iron.  

Overall, I am pretty happy with the way this Pinterest short cut worked out!  Easy, cheap and the kids will love it! I think I followed the important life lessons I learned from Halloween past.  I kept it simple, I reached out for an idea and gave myself enough time to get it done. Let's see how tomorrow turn out!

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My partner and I love to have adventures.  Nothing too extreme, just the type of adventures that you jump in your car and drive for a while to a predetermined or completely new place and explore.  Often we find newness in places well travelled and will continue to go back to revisit through new eyes and seasons.  

Today was no exception. With the leaves, for the majority, on the ground, the starkness of the landscape along the small but vibrant colour that remained made for some stunning vistas.  But in the details is where I find the most beauty.  

Tonight, as I edited these images, the film The Secret Path was streaming.  This was a creative documentary done with collaboration from Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip which outlined the experience of a child through the residential school system in Canada.  It is interesting how in a moment, your perspective changes.  You seem to not really see what you were doing with the same lens as a moment before.  

What I want to leave this post with is simply this; beauty can be found in healing.  Beauty can be found in the wreckage.  We can grow from our darkest moments. Find beauty, reach out, be kind to one another.  

​xoxo

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Fall is here and almost gone.  Yes, it is true that although we have 4 distinct seasons, fall seems to be the most fleeting, the most dramatic and because routine starts again, the biggest risk of illness.  

Every year I try and try to stay healthy but every year it feels like Russian roulette.  The cold/flu hits and makes day to day life that much more difficult.  I have learned that during this time keeping to my usual activity level leads me to be more ill, and in the long run harder to recover so I stop...mostly.  I have been still trying to walk just to keep the legs moving but not bring up my heart rate while battling a fever.  

This week, trying to eat was a chore.  The thought of cooking left me lifeless and the attempts to eat was just truly unappetizing.  Soups have been the easiest for me to eat and while I wasn't truly inspired for the final result, it did give me moments of enjoyment to cut up and photography some of the ingredients.  

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I have been playing around with coffee as both a rub and marinade.  I have used KCups and actual grounds in soups and other meet dishes. I have also read that instant coffee works well but honestly, we just don't keep the stuff in the house although I am sure it would work just fine.  I have been loving the depth and richness it has given dishes and really, no over powering coffee taste at all.  In fact you wouldn't know if you weren't told that it is in the dishes.  

There is something about onions. You can find multiple website based articles telling you about the amazing health benefits of eating, cooking and even putting onions in your socks...yes this is a thing.  I believe that onions, along with garlic, probably have many medicinal qualities but I will keep them out of my socks and in soup.  

Making soup is the best way that I have found to clean out the fridge.  No two soups ever taste the same and somehow celery is always an ingredient.  Celery never seems to be fully eaten and there is always a stalk or more drying up in the crisper but in a soup it doesn't matter.  This year, our market seemed to have a plentiful bounty of celery which I insisted on buying every week.  This may account for my well stocked stalks.  

Somewhere I have read that the deeper pigmented vegetables are, the more nutrients they have.  Luckily, all of these veggies have needed to be used.  I also read the beet soup is actually used in some areas of the world as we use chicken noodle soup.  

​So there you have it, a blog that rambles and doesn't make much sense at all but really an small opportunity for me to feel slightly human, slightly productive and maybe a bit more inspired to actually eat the food.  

Although I know that my body needs the rest, not being able to run on some of the most gorgeous fall days we have seen in a while makes my skin crawl.  I am hoping one more rest day will give me enough energy to kick it.  Cheers to beets, garlic and anything healthy...down the hatch they go! 

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It been a while since I have put fingertips to keyboard for my blog.  The summer has been full of work and play to move our home plans forward.  Without boring you with the details, some of my creative outlets went to the wayside while important life details needed my attention.

Nothing gets me more into the creative mood then the changing of season, an opportunity to begin again, try something new and view your world through a different lens.  In my little corner of the world, we are blessed to have 4 distinct seasons which are just as dramatic in terms of change as you could well imagine.  

Fall is full of colour, dramatic landscapes, stormy weather, cool nights, warm drinks and time spent indoors with family and friends.  Here in Canada, we celebrate Thanksgiving in October which is typically timed so that the leaves are turned into their fall colours just perfectly, family and gatherings only seem to make the landscape that much brighter and it screams for you to go outside and enjoy before snow keeps you wanting to be inside rather then out.  

To help bring a bit of the outside in and to be able to bring in some of the outdoor colours, I jumped on a Pinterest trend of using a hallowed out pumpkin as a vase for fall flowers to have something to add to my family's Thanksgiving table.

One of our local farms (Belluz Farms) has a pumpkin weekend in which they celebrate all things harvest, round and pumpkin in nature.  That weekend we picked up pie pumpkins (perfect for roasting and freezing the pulp for cooking or baking later), 'boo' pumpkins (white little pumpkins for decorating and later to add to your compost pile), decorative pumpkins (grey green and great for composting), jack-o-lantern pumpkins (what the name implies) and this interesting pumpkin called a Kakai pumpkin. It isn't only because of it's interesting colour but that the seeds inside are hulless which means the seeds are green in colour, easier to eat and I would say have an almost nutty flavour to them.  

What I wanted to do was be able to use the seeds but have a purpose for the interesting look.  Bring in Pinterest, my local Saturday morning market and there you have it,  a cute gift to bring to dinner and an interesting discussion starter as well.     

With cold weather settling in, the wild flower variety at our local Thunder Bay Country Market is getting pretty limited however I was able to make due with some cut wheat from Moss Cottage: The Urban Farm Chick and a small bundle of leaves, dried wheat and miniature sunflowers from Mile Hill Farms.   

As you can see, the seeds are a beautiful dark green with little pulp which made separating it fairly easy.  If you follow me on Snapchat (RunnerByDesign - daisyjanie) you might have seen that one of my best tips for making pumpkin seeds that I have found is to NOT rinse them.  I find that by rinsing them, you have to add so much oil of some sort to them and they don't have as good and rich of a taste.  Do clean them as best you can but after that simply put in a bowl, mix with melted better, add corse salt and any other seasonings you would like and roast them in the oven (350F) for about 10-20 minutes depending on the seeds and your oven.  Just keep a close eye.   

Once you have your hallowed out pumpkin your ready to get some flowers, shrubs or any other items you would like to display into your pumpkin.  The thing to remember is that pumpkin will really only last a couple of days inside after it has been opened so you can get a bit more life out of it buy putting it outside as a lantern but really what you need to think about when building your masterpiece is taking the pieces out so that you can get some more enjoyment out of the flowers etc.  

The rest is your imagination.  I used a mason jar so that the flowers can easily be taken out and displayed after the pumpkin is no longer.  The burlap I used to fill in space as most of the flora I had were tall and I wanted some volume on the bottom.  After the pumpkin is discarded, the burlap can be used to wrap around the mason jar to give some texture.  I had enough wheat to keep a bundle for myself and wrapped it with burlap and the ribbon it came with.

Mostly, I loved using my hands and creating something that can be enjoyed.  Going to a gathering where we are fortunate enough to have plentiful food, bringing more seems like it would be missing the point of being thankful.  Using what we have around us and somehow honouring the beauty from our area to me fit just a bit better.  What I love about creating something for someone is that it always look different and it's a true expression of love and connection from one to another.  

I hope each of you have had a lovely weekend, enjoyed the outdoors and time with family and friends alike.  


"I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual."
       ~ Henry David Thoreau

​xoxo

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