Ocean to Prairie

Sorry, sorry, sorry! Time sure has got away from me these past few weeks. Oh... it's been a month? Oh dear. Since my last post we had Thanksgiving, a Royal Visit from my parents, and a huge dump of snow. Where do I start? Thanksgiving went great. Drove down to S. Alberta to Bear's folk's house for the weekend. His brothers were there so Bear reverted to a 12 year old and it was most amusing to watch. The boys, plus their dad, built an arbour to prevent the eavestrough from spilling water on the walkway and have it freeze in the winter. I am a victim of this ice, so I was pretty happy to see a resolution as well as to see the boys working together to create an awesome structure! As per Thanksgiving tradition, I ate too much still paying for it, one day my pants will fit again . The food was great, company was greater, all in all, a great weekend. The next weekend my parents made their Saskatchewan debut. First visit to the Homestead! I was excited and nervous  my co

The 'harvest' is finished, the mornings are frosty, Thanksgiving is upon us! This is my first T'giving out in the flatlands and it seems to be just as important out here as it does back home. Bear and I are heading to his folk's house to meet up with his 'brudders' to have a great time. What are you thankful for? I am thankful for... ... a great guy lovvvvve!  who is moulding me from an Island girl to a homesteader. Its been a rough go, but I'd like to think I'm managing pretty well for now . ... new family that is not too far away that we get to celebrate the holiday with . mmm turkey. ... wonderful friends old and new who have supported me though this endeavour. ... awesome parents that are visiting next week! woo! ... a warm home thanks to a new furnace and water tank, all work of my lovely Bear. ... my family on VI who produce the cutest kids. They give me hope that I too will have adorable, wonderful children.  I could go on forever! I

A few years back friends and I used to dub September as "Not-Sober-September". Those days are long gone, and my liver thanks me for that. What a fast month this has been! I'd like to think the reason why it flew by was because I was SO EXCITED to go back home to Victoria for a weekend. Bear and I hopped over to celebrate my nephew's first birthday. Such a fast trip with so many good times. Friday: we started the night out having dinner with my parents at The Keg. Now, every Friday we go for steak with friends at a local lounge/restaurant. Those steak nights have been forever ruined, at least, until the buttery flavour of the sirloin at The Keg vanishes from memory. That was a good steak. Meatatarian here! Wait, isn't that just saying I'm a carnivore? I like meatatarian...  I was glad to see my parents and be able to see their new house too. They recently moved back to the island from mainland BC. Although it is not as far, we shared similar longings for th

Game of Thrones Winter is coming! Okay, maybe not as dramatic or serious as in  Game of Thrones ,   but preparations are still to be made! We got word the other day of a frost warning for last night, so we had to scramble to save what veggies were left in the garden. We've had quite a bit of luck with cucumbers as well as tomatoes. But, unfortunately, our tomatoes still were not ripening! Okay, ONE ripe tomato. Just one fully ripened tomato. Bear and I tended to the plethora of tomatoes on the three vines we had. All green. Yes, except for that one ripe tomato. She's our winner! The rest Bear layered in a cardboard box with newspaper. A tomato and newspaper parfait. Bear had the joy of doing this alone as I was at an Arbonne party. Sucker. Thank you, love you! Anywho, we've been planning on making pickles with our wee pickling cucumbers for the past week or so and a frost warning got our butts in gear! Coinciding with our winter preparations, we found ourselves at 

I. Made. Perogies. Yep, made my own perogies. Actually, Bear helped too. We made perogies. We were home from our Labour-Day long weekend camping trip, soggy from the weekend of rain, when I realized I really wanted some perogies. Sadly, we were out of perogies in the freezer. What is a girl to do?!  I thought to myself, it can't be all that hard. Just some p'taters and a pastry. I even have all the ingredients! ... I think. I begun my search for a recipe at  Allrecipes.ca  and I found this recipe to be suitable: " Grandma's Polish Perogies ". Only one glitch: I did not have baking potatoes, just red ones, and I did not have sour cream. But, I did have a container of Greek yogurt. mmmm . I figured a p'tater is a p'tater and Greek yogurt is the same consistency as sour cream. What can go wrong? Not a lot, actually. The title to this blog is rather misleading. I whipped up the dough, as the recipe suggested, and prepared my p'taters. Since the ori

I know, I know, I'm getting lazy at blogging. Its been a busy week at work and we were away last weekend. Anywho, amongst my adventures out here I have realized a few more things: RR #8: Turn signals are optional. I don't even want to get started on this one. It's a long rant! RR #9: Being the only car at a 4-Way stop is quite intimidating. RR #10: Being the only car on the highway is intimidating! RR #11: One will pass a RTM house at least once a week on the highway. I get quite the thrill passing a massive house on my way to work.  A small post today. I'm tired...

As you know I've been tackling the job of restaining our dining set. Since I'm off for the next few days VACAAATTTIOOOONNN!  and there isn't a chance of poor weather for the next while, I thought I'd get to staining these suckers. The stain we chose has the stain and polyurethane in one:  Mixwax Polyshades  in Bombay Mahogany. Now, we should've realized with the keyword 'Mahogany' that the stain would have a hint of red. Hint of red is an understatement. The swatch we based our decision on was much much  darker. When I opened the can I laughed cause it looked like I stole a pint of O negative from  Canadian Blood Services .   Please donate blood! I thought maybe the stain was like hair dye-- the colour is scary and misleading at first, but you still get the desired outcome. Well, after a few coats, the stain is still pretty red. Since we were shooting for something more along the lines of espresso (with a hint of red), we're going to do a final coat ov

Tis the Civic Holiday long weekend (BC Day back in Victoria!) here in Saskabush. I thought I'd take the weekend to finish up a few projects and get some things done around the house since Bear and I weren't going 'to the lake' like everyone else in Saskatchewan seems to do. In November Bear and I purchased a dining set from the  ReStore  in Lloyd. The chairs were marked up, as was the table. We decided it would be great to refinish the set and stain the wood to match the rest of our living area wood furniture.  Again, that was in November. I was gung-ho at the start and sanded one chair. The day I decided to sand was windy and I was not a happy camper. We didn't have access to the garage at our old rental and I didn't want to sand inside the house, so I held off for better weather.  Better weather came, as did a new house! I put off this project for so long that I had actually forgotten we were refinishing the set. That is, until I purchased another item for r

Last night Bear and I made deliiiiiiiiiiiish floats. Now, these weren't your ordinary float. These were floats made with Kraken rum, and home made vanilla ice cream. YUM. To make such a delicious treat you will need: 1 awesome glass 1 355ml can of Coke (we used Coke Zero, watching our figures, you know)  1-2 oz of Kraken Rum As much vanilla ice cream you desire Pour the rum in the glass first, then add the ice cream, and lastly the Coke. Give the drink a bit of a stir before you chug down-- all the rum is still at the bottom! Enjoy! xo

I am happy to announce that not only am I growing viable weeds and rogue grass in my garden, but also yummy vegetables! woohoo! Currently we have rows of crisp lettuce, radishes (very potent!), carrots, and green onion (grunion). The radishes have been ready for a while now, and boy is the flavour strong! Well, some radishes are strong flavoured, others not so much. So, when make a salad its like tastebud Russian Roulette when taking a bite. Will it be tart, or will it be sweet?! Ack! Its a tart one! The carrots smell so good. I happened to pull a few this evening to see how they were coming along. I good sacrifice I'd say. I don't expect the carrots to be grocery store sized, but what we have now is looking great! As I said before, the smell is amaaaaazing. Who doesn't love the smell of fresh carrot? Who?! Spending all this time in the garden has been a little taxing on my knees. Did I mention I was 80?  Knowing this, Bear gifted me this evening with a set of foamy kne

I love mowing the lawn. Crap, I shouldn't say that out loud or Bear will definitely expect it from me all the time. Oh well . We have a sweet 'Zero Turn' lawnmower. It goes like stink (read: fast), and it makes mowing 2 acres of grass quite easy... which is why I like it so much. eaaasy . I was mowing two nights ago,  so proud because Bear is off galavanting on his motorcycle in Montana,  and I let my mind wander when I'm out cutting the multitude of grass (and weeds). I was going around the perimeter of the 'front' lawn when I realized I was making all left turns. I then realized mowing my lawn is like... slower, grassier, solo-driver Nascar. Lefffft... lefffft... lefffffft...  I was quite entertained with myself and thought of a hilarious blog post that I would soon post after mowing the lawn. Sorry, the hilarious blog post was soon forgotten because I started to mow down alongside the driveway. Typically, mowing along one's driveway does not allow som

Those who know me personally know I talk about Shutterfly -- a lot. I love it! Shutterfly is a website that you load your pictures onto, and do pretty much whatever with them! Their printing costs are low, they make great photobooks and they have a lot of other photo gift products too. Now, the secret with Shutterfly is that they send you coupons every couple of days. Some coupons are for 20% off, some 50% off, and my favourite... the FREE coupons. I've been using Shutterfly for a few years now and I don't think I've paid full price for anything. Even when you sign up you get 50 free prints! (You'd think they're paying me to endorse their company. They're not!) A few weeks ago I received a coupon for a free photobook.  Sweeet!  Just what I was waiting for! I wanted to put our Ireland trip in a book to send to my Gramma in Victoria. There are two options for photobooks, you can create your own from templates and place the photos and embellishments as you like

We have hard water. Blast. It sure makes cleaning tough, and it makes our brand new dishwasher look like a chump. Rinse aid does squat. I have yet to find a great cleaning product that takes away the calcium deposits (aside from CLR, cause I gotta do counters and the like) for surfaces foods and face products will come in contact with. But, I have found that soaking my utensils in a bit of water and vinegar takes the white gunge away! Hooray! I was afraid the white film would be permanent. I have also learned that there is a product called "Lemon Shine" that'll help with the dishwasher. Oh, yes, we do have a water softener... its just not hooked up right now. Soon.

RR #5: Grass on highway meridians are free-game for farmers to cut for hay. Thanks guvmit for the free hay! RR #6: Weeds will always return... with vengeance. RR#7: A prairie sunset is always a beautiful sunset. I am compelled to take photos every night! An oldie, but a goodie. Winter 2010.

Warning: this is a bit of a touchy-feely post. This past weekend Bear and I went to a 'Cousins Campout', where I got to meet a lot of Bear's extended family. It was a short, but great weekend. He's got a pretty awesome family. One of the reasons for gathering was Bear's grandpa's 90th birthday. His GPa is looking pretty good for 90. After a few surgeries this past year, he's still going strong. While chatting with GPa and GMa, I thought how wonderful it would be to make it to 90. To see the world change around you. To see your children grow up, and for your children's children to grow. In the last 90 years there have been devastating wars, huge developments in technology and science,  and an evolution of music from jazz and swing to pop-rock and dubstep (what is  dubstep anyway?). That made me wonder what will happen in the next  65 years until I am 90: will we reach Mars? Will I see a world war? Will music get better? I guess I'll find out. An

A few weekends back a friend of mine came out to visit from Edmonton. She too is a "Ocean to Prairie" gal and we've known each other since we were wee. Since we were 10 years old, I think. I wanted to show my friend, K, the sweet new digs Bear and I had, so, we took Bear's truck out for a bit of a spin around the property. Bear jokingly warned us to not get stuck. ha! who get's stuck in their own field? All was going pretty well as we bombed through the grassy fields until we hit a patch of thick grass (that I thought was just... thicker grass) and our momentum came to a standstill. Crap.  I looked at K, and she at me. Crap.  K climbed out of the cab to see what we were stuck in. Mud. Double Crap.  K offered to push the truck while I tried to rev out of the rut. She pushed from the tailgate of the truck, and I pushed the petal down. Rrrrrrrrrrr. Nothing. Rrrrrrrrrr. Nothing. Okay, this time with feeeeeeeling.  Rrrrrrrrr. Nothing.  Crap. Crap. Crap! After a f

Western Skunk Cabbage. Rural Realization #1: Skunk Cabbage of the West Coast actually smells like skunks. I now get a little homesick and wish for the coast when I smell or see a skunk. Way to go stinky creatures. RR #2: One cannot possibly be upset when near a canola field in bloom. Honestly. Something that sunshiney yellow is infectiously happy. RR #3: Cabs of tractors are intended for one person. Yes, two people can fit, but seating is optimal for one. Also, air conditioning is intended to cool one person only. RR #4: Invest in OFF. Layer up. Protect the booty. Not sure about anyone else, but the mosquitos love this girl's tushie. A few bites on my legs, one or two on my arms, 50 on my butt. Yes, I'm wearing pants when I'm outside. Maybe they're drawn to the largest mass? ... s'all for now. I'll continue with my Rural Realizations throughout!

Best booty shake in the garden! Yeh-huh I work out... side!

Alright, so I am already diverging from my "country bumpkin" posts. But this post is still somewhat related. That's what I'm telling myself and who cares? It's my blog! In May Bear and I went to Ireland to see our good friends get married. The bride was from Co. Waterford, Ireland, and the groom from Saskatchewan. What a freaking awesome time! We first landed in London to visit my good friend Tanya for a few days. With Tanya we saw Buckingham Palace, walked the Thames, said 'ello to Big Ben, among many other things. Our time in London was fantastic. One of the most memorable expeditions was our trip to the British Museum and to Abbey Road Studios. An anthropologist and Beatles fan's dream! Woah!  Foyer to the Museum The foyer to the Museum is breathtaking on its own. But once we got into the Ancient Mesopotamia exhibit, I just about died. A few years ago I took a first year Art History course. It was pretty much archaeology of art in Mesopotamia.

I've always liked the idea of being self-sustaining. Being able to grow my own food. Well,  this is where the self-sustaining dream gets a little tough for me. I have no experience. I first moved out of my parent's home at the age of 19 and into an apartment with a friend. At Christmastime, I got a little poinsettia. Two days later, it died. So then I got a little cactus. Yes, I also killed a cactus. From here, I became a tad scared of keeping green living things around. I should have realized the apartment was far too dark for anything to live in happily. The next place we lived in was much  brighter, but by then I was far too engrossed with school that I did not find the time to play with plants. Out here in SK, Bear's and my first place was a rental so we started small in the plant world. Throughout the winter, I managed not to kill a corn plant and some lucky bamboo. Along with these plants, my confidence grew (oh my, I'm hilarious).  Now that we are in a place of

Ah! The inaugural post to my blog. I've been toying with the idea of making this blog for quite some time. The inspiration came to be shortly beforea trip to London and Ireland in May. I pondered on what I would write while trying to fall asleep in a smelly hostel room. Did I manage to write it all down? No. I was not that prepared. A bit about myself: I grew up on the mainland of BC and have always been surrounded by farm country, but never was an active member. I moved to Vancouver Island at 10 and there I fell in love with the Pacific. Her deep blue colour, the roar of her waves and the sealife she holds is just amazing. Yes, I have personified the ocean... just like a pirate, D'arr. Since the big move at the age of 10 I've always been around the ocean, until now. In my fourth year of university I fell in love with a boy, let's call him Bear, who came out from Saskatchewan to visit his brother, whom I was friends with. The courtship continued for two years by long