 Life goes by far to quickly. One day you are wishing that you could make all the rules and the next day you find yourself there in throws of being the rule maker, except it isn't nearly as glamorous as you thought and you wonder where the last two decades went. I try to slow life down in those glorious two days called Saturday and Sunday. Those days are not without commitments, places to be, tasks to accomplish but in those in between moments, we try to make life happen. To make memories and connect. Saturdays are usual filled with market morning bustles but this week we decided to skip it in lieu of heading to one of our favourite coffee stops Saint Paul Roastery. The atmosphere is very laid back with the focus being on the coffee which they do very well. The shop is nestled into our downtown core and connects to a record shop, New Day Records. We could literally get lost for hours between the two places as both make you want to waste your day. Also, the large windows allow for some great people watching which I could get paid to do.After coffee, and in between dance class, we also wanted to fit in a hang out with one of our very best of friends. Since we were already downtown, it was time for some lunch and more coffee. This day, we chose another favourite stop which is Sweet North. It is an all around perfect place to go if you have a wide variety of request in your party as they can do a simple coffee or serve a hearty lunch. After lunch, we headed to another great shop downtown which is Thuja Floral Design. This florist shop specializes in bringing local plants into flower design. They also have plants such as succulents to add to your home decor. We purchased a couple to add to our collection and with plans to make a felted vessel for the small succulent. Hopefully, I will be able to share that in the near future once I perfect the design and the execution.Sundays for us have routine. We start with church first thing and the rest of the day is a combination of play and preparation for the week ahead. We are in the midst of renovation which also means we try to keep ahead of the ever changing needs of DIY.One of our favourite places to spend time is at home. As it is said, it's where you story begins and I say continues. It is our place to be ourselves, relax, invite others and really enjoy the time with the ones we love. In many ways, our home town feels like our home but maybe just the backyard. 
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 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.  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.  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. 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.  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. 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.
 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.  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.  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.  I have noticed that my blog has become less of blog and more of a photography sharing. Although this meets part of my creativity, I also started this blog as a means to share thoughts and my journey in different areas of my life. With this in mind, I am shifting my blog today with only one image and many thoughts.
Yesterday was a Saturday jammed packed, although most of our days feel this way, the tasks for this Saturday was really driven by what we wanted to do. For me, it started with connecting with a friend during a run. She has moved to California and although technology keeps us together, it can never be replaced with a run through one of our favourite trails here.  Today, the ceremony marked the official end of grade 8. Grade 9 is merely a couple of months away, and although there is the unknown to contend with, there is also the beauty of the future, starting fresh and creating memories. Some snaps of the more formal images as sometimes these moments are what make for some great memories :) Intention - the word of the moment for me. It is a word which has many meanings; purpose, present, with emotion, meaning, follow through, purposeful, boundaries, mindful... and I could go on.
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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
August 2017
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