Odds and Ends

My Autumn View

I just had to get outside this weekend and get a picture of our backyard Japanese Maple.  The one at the front is definitely not a spectacular looking one in the fall but the backyard one sure is.  I thought I better get out there or it would be like Sian said in her blog yesterday I would have missed it.  This is the view we get out of our bay window in the kitchen.

 
It's not quite as brilliant as it has been in some years past but I guess we'll put that down to a very dry summer.  None of the leaves anywhere in the area are as brilliant as other years.  Guess Mother Nature was having an off year.  :)

 

Raccoons

I promised Mel the other day that I'd tell our raccoon story as The Tomboy is interested in raccoons.

During the summer J noticed that the thing extending the downspout at the east side of our deck was not connected anymore and on a closer look it was obvious that something had been chewing at it and the boards blocking off that part of the underpart of the deck had been moved or should I say chewed through. Great! That could only mean one thing - something was underneath the deck. We were most definitely hoping it wasn't skunks and after that we hoped it wasn't raccoons.

As time passed there was no more evidence of anything being under the deck but still we didn't know for sure, that is until about 2 weeks ago. Now I've always been told that raccoons are nocturnal but one afternoon as we were sitting at the kitchen table I spotted a young raccoon out on the lawn (in broad daylight). When J went to look out the window he saw a huge one (the mother we assume) right by the deck steps and soon there was the mother and 3 little ones traipsing across the lawn in single file with mum in the lead to the fence on the other side of the yard where we lost sight of them. Great - Not! I mean who wants any animals taking up residence under their deck and they can be dangerous and carry disease.

While they were gone J quickly blocked off the entrance they'd made with a 5 gallon drum filled with water and some extra bricks we had from getting our interlocking done. We kept our fingers crossed that that would do the trick and for a couple of days we didn't see any evidence of them. That is until that Friday evening (broad daylight again) when we were out on the deck while J was barbequing burgers. We both froze when we saw the big (Momma) one sitting under one of our trees just staring at us. We were afraid to move in case she didn't take kindly to it. Pretty soon a smaller head peeked out from a different place than where we'd thought they'd been coming from and then another head. Both of them scampered over to the big one, climbed the tree and crossed over onto the fence and ran away on it for their nightly excursion. The third little one never did show up - guess something had happened to it.

This time J blocked both places off with the bricks and the water bucket and tried something else that someone at work had mentioned had worked at their place - I don't know what it was but I guess it did the trick. So far we haven't seen them around and what J had put in their way has not been disturbed. Keeping fingers crossed that I didn't just jinx things. :) So long as no evidence of them keeps up, come spring we'll have to make a more permanent deterrent to something getting under there.

Sorry there are no pictures - the cameras were all upstairs (now one is kept in the kitchen) and the time we were outside we didn't want to move in case she thought we were threatening her babies.

Our Cold House

Saturday I kept mentioning to J how cold the house felt but we put it down to the rain and high winds and the fact that the room we were in has big windows on 3 sides.  It was cold enough I was actually wishing for a hot flash.  :)

That night we were so cold and it didn't help me much that J seemed to have a grip on the covers so that he had the bulk of them which is unheard of - he likes the room cold for sleeping.  I honestly felt like getting up & putting the duvet on the bed.

When I went down in the morning to have some breakfast I saw out of the corner of my eye that the indoor/outdoor thermometer was reading 64F.   Yikes!  No wonder it had been so cold overnight.   I thought oh no this can't be, we just had the fall inspection done on the furnace a couple of weeks ago and the serviceman said everything was good.  The only other thing might be the thermostat being kaput but it's fairly new and the serviceman had checked it out too.  Sure enough when I went into the dining room to check it I discovered it was the problem.   A few weeks ago we had put the thermostat on the function where it would be either heat or AC but over the very warm holiday weekend we must have changed it over to just AC.  DUH!   Once the heat button was pushed the house started nicely warming up thankfully.  Talk about being glad that it was fixed so quickly and better yet at no cost.  :)

The lesson learned - make sure once the cold weather comes the thermostat is on heat and not even the heat/AC function!

Yesterday Was One of Those Days

It started well and then slowly became very aggravating and all because of one thing - my 12x12 photo printer or maybe it was me. 

The day started with me finishing the second assignment of week one in the Design Your Life workshop.  I did this one totally digitally.   I know summer really doesn't end for over a month from now but parts of the garden are finishing up while the fall stuff is starting to come on so I thought I'd do a layout of some of our favourite perennials we've planted over the years.  So following Cathy's template for the assignment I came up with this.

The journaling reads  When we started our gardens back in 1987 we were mainly into annuals but gradually we’ve learned that it’s much less work if we replace them with perennials plus then we seem to have more flowers throughout the season.  These are our most favourite ones we’ve had over the years.  sadly squirrels and such have done away with some of them though.                     

Supplies:  Template from Cathy Zielske, Kraft paper from Jessica Sprague's Digi in Deep Class Week 1 Cre8 mini kit, title font is Brush Script and the journaling font is Courier New.   The black around it is just a frame I added when I placed it on here.

It's a double page 8 1/2 x 11 layout and I've never really done that size before so it felt really weird.  I picked the green for the journaling block by using the eyedropper in PSE8 on that little bud just to the right of the columbine.

Here's where it started to get aggravating.   I decided to print it off to put in my album of class assignments.  That worked ok so I thought  I bet I've got a bunch of 12x12 digi pages that I haven't printed off yet so while I'm at it I may as well print them off too.  HAH!  Not!  I put the 12x12 paper in, picked all the options for printing including borderless.  So what do I get one side with no border, 2 sides with 1/8 inch borders and 1 side with 1/4 inch border.  Of course leaving off parts of the layout like part of the title etc.    OK, let's go back and try this again.   Maybe I did something wrong.  Nope - it came out the same.  After many attempts at trying different things I decided maybe I should just check the manual - ok so I was using the wrong feed for it.  I changed that, sent it through again and got the same thing!  It was just so aggravating.   I went in and did an update of the software and driver, changed to different software for the printing and no matter what I did - the same thing happened.

This morning I thought ok, enough of this I'm writing an e-mail to Epson Support and see what they say.   Just before I went to do that I discovered something, I'm using old supply and even though it says fits 12x12 it gives the measurements as 11.6 x 11.6   ARGH!  Wish I'd seen that yesterday.   I've now quickly checked the 2 new packages of it and am relieved to see they are bigger and they say Exact 12"x12".    Keeping fingers crossed.  Maybe I should have just sent them to Costco for printing.  :)

Ten Things I Love About My Garden

Shimelle has started something called 10 things on the 10th for her "Beyond Blogging for Scrapbookers" class and today is the first time we're doing it.  If you'd like to see everyone else's 10 on the 10th posts please check out Shimelle's blog.

Here's my first post for it. 

Some of the wonderful late spring flowers blooming in our yard in June.

 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 

Well That Week Slipped Right On By Me

I’ve been busy doing various things this week and before I knew it bingo – it was Saturday. 

I registered for Candice Stringham’s “Oh Shoot Digital Photography” at Jessicasprague.com and we’ve just finished up the second week of it.  Between the classes, the daily e-mails, the assignments, the gallery and her twice weekly chat sessions it’s been busy.   So far we’ve discussed shutter speed and apertures in the class sessions.  Our first assignment was to take pictures that showed speed in one and then the same subject were the action was frozen.   Practically everybody seems to have small children but the option of using children in the pictures wasn’t open to me so…. I came up with this idea, well actually J is the one who suggested it.  Here’s what I submitted for my first assignment.

 
  

The neighbours must have thought we were nuts with J driving up and down the street as I snapped away when he went past. 

This past week’s assignment was to take 2 pictures where in one the background was blurred and the other where it wasn’t – again of the same thing.  I decided to take pictures of one of our peonies in bud.

 
  

Next week we go on to manual – that should be interesting.

In the midst of all that, Stacy Julian’s (Big Picture Classes) redo of Library of Memories now called Photo Freedom started up and as someone who had taken LOM I was entitled to take it for free I jumped right in on that.  It started Thursday so now I’m busy with that too – why do I seem to take more than one course at a time?  ARGH! 

So what else has kept me busy – decluttering and organizing.  Following Mel’s idea on decluttering – do something every day – I’ve been busy getting rid of old clothes.

 
 
Two bags went out to the Canadian Diabetes clothesline drive on Tuesday.  I hope someone can use the 7 pairs of jeans, 1 pair of slacks, 3 blouses, 1 suit, 1 blazer and would you believe – my going away outfit.   Boy was I ever shocked when I saw the size of the waist on that.  It was tiny compared to what it’s like now.  I’ve also got rid of numerous magazines and crossword/sudoku books that were finished (don’t know why they were still hanging around), boxes and manuals, etc. for things we don’t even have anymore.    We’ve got the old computer equipment that we’re getting rid of nicely put aside waiting for the town’s electronics drop-off day and I’m working away at an ad to place in the local paper for some items that I want to sell – like my Grandmother’s wardrobe I shared about the other day.

As for the organizing – I’ve been trying to organize my digital scrapbooking supplies in Picasa and that is a chore all on it’s own.  It seems like whenever I sit down at the computer I’m busy putting tags on everything so if I want say a patterned mainly red paper I’ll quickly be able to call up all the ones I have and so on.  So far I am only up to the C’s in that.   I’m making sure I also tag everything with where I got it from and who the designer is so that I can give credit when I share anything I make with them.   I should have been doing this all along but…..  I think this Picasa file is going to rapidly take up space on my new 1.5TB external hard drive. 

 
 And now what am I on to today – thinking about what story I’m going to share tomorrow for Sian’s Storytelling Sunday. Please come on over and check us out tomorrow sometime.

Five on Thursday

It's that time again.  This week it seemed to come even sooner than normal what with Monday having been a holiday here.  Today it's all about blogs both old and new.  

As part of Sian's, whose blog I mentioned in this post, "Christmas Club" and now her "Story Telling Sundays" group I've discovered Mel and her wonderful blog "I Speak Melsh".  Among other things, lately Mel's been on a decluttering project and with her sharing how well that is coming along it's inspired me to get back at decluttering/downsizing here at home. 

Another blog from Sian's "Christmas Club" and "Sunday Stories" groups is Becky's Scrapbook Burblings.  Becky aside from sharing about scrapbooking also shares her miniature work on Mondays and I'm truly amazed at the amount of detail she can get in those projects.

The Inspired Room is a home decorating blog that I love drooling over the pictures at and figuring out how I could get those looks in this house.

For craft storage ideas I love checking out the Crafty Storage blog.  And boy some of those craft room pictures she shares - I just wish mine looked like that.  :)

Finally, I couldn't forget about food now could I?  One of my favourites for that is the Tasty Kitchen blog.  

 

 

Early Evening Sunlight

As we sat out on the front porch Friday night I couldn't resist going in and grabbing the camera. I was really taken with the way the early evening sunlight lit up the west side of our Linden tree especially contrasted with the blue sky.

 

Kitchen Sink Taps

Yesterday for some reason I was thinking about the time a few years ago when I greeted J when he came home from work with “How’s your plumbing skills”.   He immediately thought oh-oh.   I’d been washing something up and when I went to turn the tap off it wouldn’t.    I can’t remember now if there was a turn-off valve there or not then but there sure is now.   So much for plans for the evening, after turning off the water we were off to Home Depot for a new tap.   Nuts to fixing the one that was there, it had given us enough problems. One trouble with replacing it is that we have to take the back off of the island to get to it.   I think we’re going to become experts at doing that.

Why do I mention this?   Well this afternoon I was ready to wash a new pot along with some glasses and things that wouldn’t or can’t go in the dishwasher.   I turned on the tap (the one that we had replaced the other one with) and the flow was so slow and hardly any pressure that I thought “Great they’ve turned the water off somewhere”.   Hmmm, no such luck.

I checked the powder room and the laundry room taps and they were fine.   I checked to see if there was a leak – no.  Next thing, call J at work to see what he could suggest.  His response – check to see if there’s a warranty and that he couldn’t get to it today as he’d be late coming home. 

Meanwhile it’s a good thing that the laundry room is on the same floor because that’s where things are going to be getting washed for the next day and a bit.

 
 
The washing machine makes a good counter-top.

 
 
I’m thinking I need a bigger bowl or whatever because some of the stuff more than likely won’t fit in this one.

Who's Braver

It’s been a glorious weekend here.  So much so that we’ve had the sliding glass door to the deck open and while we were enjoying the wonderful fresh air yesterday we heard some weird noises coming from outside which immediately had us checking outside to see where it was coming from.  

Me: “That sounds like it’s coming from under the deck.  What do you think?”

J:  “It can’t be, I built it so nothing can get under there.”

Me: “I don’t know but it sure sounds like under the deck to me or really close to it”

J (walking carefully all around the deck while listening): “Hmmm, I think you might be right but how on earth did anything get under there?”

Me (chickening out):  “I’m going inside just in case its a skunk”

J: “That sounds like a good idea”

Me:  “So what do we do?”

J:  “We need to find out what it is.”

Me:  “I’m not going anywhere near there – you can run faster”

J:   “Hmmm, ok so neither one of us is brave.  Let’s just call some animal capture service instead.”

So the answer is neither of us is that brave when we think it might be a skunk and family under there.