CHRISTMAS 2016

We woke up to a fresh coat of soft snow on the ground for Christmas morning and the sun was shining. It was glorious...  and on Boxing Day the kids went wild in the snow.

Christine helped the boy make a snowman. They even made a snowdog, but it's not finished in this photo.

Grampy George made a snow mountain for James and Daniel to slide down from.

Mama and Daddy had snowball fights and tumbled in the snow.

James is enjoying his hot chocolate milk after  playing in the snow. He looks exhausted.

And so is Daniel.

Christmas was busy as usual with family and stray visitors and little people. I kept my spending in check and as per my budget but everyone got plenty of gifts under the tree. We kept up with Christmas traditions of going to church for the Christmas mass. We no longer have midnight mass at our church.( No Pics.)

As per tradition, Joe made Belgium Waffles with real whipped cream topping and the boys devoured every bit of it. 

Another Christmas tradition Christine started is The Elf on the Shelf brings a new book during advent right up to Christmas Eve.  His name is Choir and he brought the book you see on the table. Choir watches to see if James and Daniel are good boys and reports to Santa.

The Christmas turkey was huge as we were 18 for dinner. I roasted the turkey and the girls did all the rest.  That was easy on me...  Roasted turkey with sour cream mashed potatoes, carrots, squash, peas, cranberry relish, dressing, gravy, Broken Glass dessert to crown the meal and wine.

Sorry,   no one thought of taking a picture of the food but the  kid's plates were filled first as Daniel wouldn't wait a minute longer.

There were so many presents for the game that it had to be played twice so not everyone is shown here.

Cypress wanted to use my camera to take photos. 

Liam got some present on his lap and grampy is calling the cards.

Bill's turn at choosing  a present.

This is one of the many present Cypress won in the game.

Uncle Sandy's turn to pick a present.

This year, the present game was a bigger hit than last year.  The present game was introduced to us by Nicole many Christmases ago and has become a serious tradition at our house.... We had over 60 gifts for the present game as more people brought more gifts... This has become serious business...

Our new tradition this year was a toast of Scottish whiskey to remember Nicole. Everyone got their turn to talk about a memory about Nicole. There were tears and laughter in remembering and lots of hugs... This was a solemn time. A photo of Nicole was on the buffet with candles that were blessed.

Nicole was much present in our hearts. We also held my brother in law, Henri and my sister Leona and family in our thoughts and prayers as he's is in Palliative Care in hospital during the Holidays.

 We worked on a puzzle, another tradition we usually do on Boxing Day. Jackie got the puzzle out  on Christmas afternoon. Christine and I finished it late that night and we went to bed.

This blog is to record these memories for posterity.  I missed taking a lot of pictures but at least, I have mentioned how we spent Christmas Day to the best of my memory.

Now on to the New Year. It will be a quiet event for us. No sparkles or gala but a quiet evening at home.

Thank you for stopping by and leaving a comment. Happy New Year everyone.
Julia

SIMPLE THINGS THAT BRINGS US JOY

Sometimes it's the little things that brings us joy. To my grandson Daniel, it's his new cap he got from grandpa when he came in November. He loves it so much he would not take it off and even wore it to bed.  It says Quality Seeds on the cap. We all know he's Quality Seed.

To James it's it new spiked hair do. He puts the gel on his hair himself. It was his idea.  Here he is sporting it in his school picture.

For me it a new set of shelves in what was a cluttered closet in the office that is now home for my over flow grocery bargains. I tell my granddaughter to help herself if she needs something in there. The shelves were so easy to install. Home Depot has everything you need.
Yep, I need to dust my lover doors...

What little things brings you joy?

Thanks for stopping by and bringing me joy.  Hugs, Julia

DR LISA NICOLE BOURQUE OBITUARY

For those who haven't seen our daughter Nicole's obituary, I've decided to print it here for the family records of which my blog is all about. To us she was our beloved daughter  Nicole, to her students and colleagues she was known as Dr Lisa Nicole Bourque.

          Dr. Lisa Nicole Bourque
            1966-2016

It's with heavy hearts and great sadness that the family of Dr. Nicole Bourque announces her sudden and unexpected passing in Glasgow, Scotland.

Nicole was born in Fredericton to George and Julia Bourque on July 25th, 1966. She graduated from Fredericton High School in 1984 and went to the University of New Brunswick where she completed a degree in Anthropology with First Class Honours.
Her outstanding scholarships earned her a prestigious Commonwealth Scholarship which funded her pursuit of a PhD at the University of Cambridge (Girton College).
She won an O'Brian Foundation award to fund her field work in Ecuador which resulted in her outstanding thesis "Of Soups, Saints and Sucres".

She received her PhD in 1993 and joined the faculty in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow, where she spent her entire career, her final position being that of Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology.

She was deeply committed to her work, her students, and her faculty colleagues. An open, friendly and caring person with a winning personality  (and a good listener), her expansive knowledge and easy manner made her a stellar conversationalist. She was bubbling with life and made so many long lasting friendships everywhere she went.

Apart from her life as a scholar, she was a free spirit who, the moment her work was done, loved to travel. Over the years she visited dozens of countries and became somewhat  of a polyglot.  She was a mountain climbing enthusiast and climbed mountains all over the world. She was only the second  Canadian woman to climb all 282 Munros in Scotland and the first from New Brunswick to do so. Munros are mountains that are over 3000 feet in height (914 meters).

Nicole was very humble despite her many accomplishments, too numerous to mention here. Her passing leaves a big void at the University of Glasgow, and amongst her colleagues, students, friends and family.

Nicole is survived by her parents, George and Julia Bourque, her beloved siblings, Jacqueline Bourque (Bill Briggs) of Fredericton, Vaughan Bourque, of Fredericton, Dr Christine Bourque (Joe MacDonald) of Ottawa, nieces Jordyn Bourque and Nicole Briggs, and nephew Vincent Briggs, Simon Briggs, Liam Briggs, all of Fredericton, James and Daniel MacDonald of Ottawa, and one grand nephew, Cypress Fletcher of Fredericton, and a large extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Visitations will be on Sunday, Nov. 6th, 2016, from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00p.m. at St Francis of Assisi Church, 2130, Route 102 (Lincoln Road). A celebration mass will be held on Monday,  November 7th, at 12:00 noon, at the same location. Interment to follow in the cemetery. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to St Francis of Assisi Parish.

The family would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to the many thoughtful, supportive and helpful people of Glasgow who assisted with the many tasks the family faced. These included friends, faculty colleagues, and government officials. Online condolences and sharing of memories may be sent through www.bishopsfuneralhome.com

                                        ❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦❦
         
Thanks for all your show of support and caring at this difficult time.
Hugs, Julia and family.                  

IN AN INSTANT, OUR LIVES HAS CHANGED FOR EVER

On October 18, my somewhat normal life came crashing down. I arrived home from the barn after dark and was a bit late. I was met at the door by my husband George. He held out his arms and delivered the news to me as gently as he could, of our beloved  Nicole passing away in Glasgow, Scotland. I was in shock,  disbelief and denial. It just couldn't be. Oh God, oh God, oh God,  no, no, no, it can't be. That's impossible...  This can't just can't be.... I wailed... I wanted her brought back home. Loosing a child at any age is so very difficult. We expect parents to leave us first, but not a child.

Nicole was so full of life and enthusiasm about everything and everyone. She had just finished painting her flat.  Had returned from a week in Berlin,  had gone to Spain to volunteer at the Pilgrimage Office  of Santiago De Compostella, and had just returned from Virginia USA from a symposium on pilgrimage study at the College of William & Mary where she made a presentation.   This was the third year in a row that she was invited to the college to make a presentation as she was considered an expert on  pilgrimage. She was to return to teach  her PHD's students in Anthropology early in November.

Just days earlier we had been in contact like usual by email. My two other daughter were always included in the emails and we replied or commented on each other's discussions.  I always ended my emails with  I love you....
She had made plans to come home and spend some time at the cottage at the lake this coming summer and everyone was looking forward to it.

As soon as I realized that she was gone, I asked George to call our youngest daughter Christine in Ottawa and I was going to break the news in person, to Vaughan our son who lives next door and  our daughter Jackie who lives about 10 minutes drive from our house. I'm glad I did as the news was so very hard on everyone. As I entered the house, I was greeted with smiling faces and  one by one they said, Hi Mamoo...   As I shared the sad news, my throat felt restricted and my words were barely audible but they were heard from the deepest part of everyone's soul.

Jackie's agonizing screams filled the room, with such pain and disbelief. I held her for a long while, and everyone were dealing with this unbelievable news in their own ways. A very sad way to end a normal day. After a while, I returned home in the darkness of the night. It felt so unreal, like a dream from which I wanted to wake up from.  Everything changed the moment we received this tragic news.

There was a message from the Glasgow police constable on the phone and we had to wait till the morning to return their call. In Glasgow, they are four hours ahead of us...
We were assigned a very nice  lady liaison  police constable to help us with information we needed. Her heavy Scottish accent was a bit difficult to understand and there was so much information. I asked her to send the information by email and that was so much better. Then there were constant phone calls and emails from  Nicole's colleagues from the University of Glasgow who wanted to help in any way they could. They would make hotel reservations, pick up at the airport, transport them when possible, even pay for their accommodations and taxis or anything else that was needed.

 George's passport has expired over a year ago and he needed to reapply for one but mine has expired less than a year ago so it needed only to be renewed. In order to get the passports in urgency, we needed a letter from the  High Commission of Canada Consular Services in London.  This was sent in a PDF file so I had to print the document from my computer and bring it to the passport office.  Passport photos needed to be taken.

George needed to have two unrelated people sign the form and one had to have a valid passport and needed to sign the back of one of his passport photo.  We finally found his accountant who was able to help us but his passport was at his house and not at his office downtown. He called his son and Got the passport number, date of issue and expiry date.

 To speed up the process, we needed to pay an extra $50.00 each for each passport.  My husband had cash, but they didn't take cash... I used my debit card and paid for them both. We both renewed our passports for 10 years.  Our passports were applied for on Thursday and they would be ready for pick up on Monday at noon, otherwise it would take 10 days. What a complicated procedure it is to get a passport quickly.

George wanted me to go to Glasgow with him and Christine. Jackie also wanted to go but her passport would not be ready on time.  I decided that someone needed to stay home to take care of the farm in case something happens and to be a contact. Once we had a date that the passports would be ready, Christine arranged for the flights. She would fly from Ottawa to Halifax and her dad would fly from Fredericton to meet her in Halifax, from there they would fly to London and then to Glasgow. Scotland.

Christine paid for all the flights and made arrangements to stay in Glasgow for 10 days.  I printed the itinerary and gave the document to George to look at. They were flying on Tuesday  October 25.

On Monday October 24, I went to pick up the passports and doubled checked the name to make sure everything was correct.  I noticed that the passport had only one name instead of the full name and I checked the itinerary had his full name. I told George that he will not be able to get in Glasgow with different names. They both need to be the same. I emailed Christine and she quickly fixed  the itinerary with Air Canada and I printed the new itinerary. A good thing I noticed it as it was almost time to leave.

The night before he was leaving, George got a call from John Deere Dealer in Woodstock N.B. that his tractor was repaired and needed to be picked up. Also the vet called to say that she was  coming do do herd health at 9:00am on the 25th. Herd health is when they check all the cows for pregnancy.  He told them that she would have to come at 8:00 am.  He milked the cows in the morning,  got through herd health and came home. I made a sandwich and a mug of coffee and he was off with his friend with the truck and the flat bed to Woodstock New Brunswick,  and two and a half hour later he had the tractor back on the farm.

He had advised his bank that he was going to use his Visa in Glasgow Scotland and a teller typed something in a computer and when he went to use hiss vVisa , it was rejecting his transaction so he needed to go back to town to the bank to get this fixed. Just what he needed... While there he also bought travel insurance.  He needed a hair cut so he had to get across town to his barber.  Meanwhile he still  had not packed his luggage and I did that for him. The only thing I forgot was his cell phone charger.  By now, I was almost chewing my nails... I think a good drink of Scotch Whisky would have been what I needed but it was time to get to the barn. lol... Living with a Last Minute Man is really hard on the nerves...

Wait a minute.... Christine reminded me to make sure that he took a shower before leaving and I did...  and  he barely made it to the airport in time to make his flight. The airport is only minutes away. A very good thing... I had to get back to work at the farm so George's sister Pauline whisked him to the airport and off he went.
Now, I'm breathing a sign of relief...

There's more but it will have to wait. The important thing is that he's off to his destination for now.

Thanks for reading just in case someone finds me here.
Hugs,
Julia

IT'S BEEN GOING AROUND AND I CAUGHT IT, BLOGITIS...

Yes, I caught Blogitis... On April 14, I wrote this post and it has sat in draft until now....
This will be my last post and Of Petals and Wool will be no more. I seemed to have stalled as you must have noticed and I noticed other bloggers are posting less and less also,  I have lots to share but I don't feel like it when it comes time to post... so I think that I'm just too tired to continue blogging. I'm phasing out of some social media and I know everyone will do just fine without me. There's so many other things I want to try my hand at.

It's been a learning experience, interesting and wonderful but it's time to move on and I'm really thankful for your support and friendship.... I've been thinking about this for a quite a while and I finally made up my mine. I spend a lot of time visiting other blogs and emails everyday and just find it too time consuming. Life should not be spent in front of a computer as there's more to life but somehow it's easy to get sucked into this trap. I remember time before Facebook and how free I felt not going on Facebook anymore and now it's time to let go of  Blogger.  I didn't subscribed to Instagram, Pinterest or Twitter and I'm glad I didn't. Those hours all adds up day after days, year after year.
I've been raking the yard and tidying up. The gardens are waking up and are calling me. There are so many of them. The house needs cleaning, painting and my oven, oh my goodness, it really needs cleaning lol. Before Blogger, my oven usually was cleaned regularly before it got disgusting and the fridge too, lol... ... I have rugs to hook and meals to cook,  books to read and wine to brew...
I'm relearning handwriting analysis and find it fascinating. I started to learned it in the 80ies but business got in the way and I put it aside and forgot part of it.

So THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH for all your comments and encouragement through the years.
I wish you health, peace, contentment and success in all that you do.
Hugs,
JB

GOD IS BUSY

As I promised Annie,  a blogger friend, here is the little poem I was inspired to write  on April16, 2009. It has not been refined and is raw as I scribbled  it in my little note book after a very busy day.  It's called God is busy. I hope you enjoy reading it to reflect on some of the gifts we receive from God.

               God is Busy
Busy is a word I use often, God is busy too.
He's busy breathing new life in his creatures, big or small.
He's busy sustaining the world he created.
He's busy holding the sun, the stars and the moon in their orbits.
He's busy making the streams flow and the ocean roar.
God is busy.

He's busy making the sun rise on a new day and the moon light the night.
He's busy changing the seasons.
He's busy unfolding tiny buds and delicate petals.
He's busy giving us beauty and diversity.
God is busy making raindrops and rainbows. He's busy moving the clouds with the wind.
God is busy.

He's busy making sure that colors are beautiful and the sounds are heard.
He's busy with the song birds with each feathers of their plumage.
He's busy growing fruits, berries and vegetables.
He's busy warming the earth.
God is very busy.

He's busy loving us and showering us with gifts.
He's busy healing our hurts and diseases.
He's busy caring for us.
He's busy inviting us to his banquet.
But He's never too busy to listen to us.
God is busy.

He's busy giving out talents.
He's busy giving out the senses.
He's busy coming down to us in Jesus His son.
He's busy teaching us.
God is very busy.

He's busy giving us our individuality and uniqueness.
He's busy giving us each our own fingerprints, our own voice and imagination.
He's busy giving us musical notes.
He's busy giving us sleep and rest.
But he's never too busy to hear our prayers.
God is very busy.

He's busy giving us pleasures.
He's busy reflecting our images in mirrors.
He's busy giving us knowledge and wisdom.
He's busy showing us how to live for Him.
But he's never too busy to forgive.
God is very busy too but he always make time for us.

God is busy counting each hair on our heads.
He's busy preparing a place for us.
He's busy giving us hope.
God is busy giving us more love than we can hold.
He's busy showing us how to share that abundant love.
God is busy but He could use our help to continue His work.

Yes God is busy too.
He's been busy for a very long time.

By Julia Bourque.
All copyrights reserved.
Do not copy without permission from the author.

I welcome your comments and wish you a great weekend as we get ready to turn another calendar page.
Hugs, JB

MAYBE I WANT TO BE A KID AGAIN AND PLAY WITH GOO

Of course when we were kids, we didn't had white goo or Play Doh to play with but I can remember helping mom make bread and I loved playing in the dough. It was warm and gooy and I would add more flour to make it into a real bread dough. I could even shape them into loaves at 8 years old way back then.  It was more play than work.

These are pictures that I got from my daughter Christine on March the 4th. James teacher sent these to her with this quote.

This is me and I'm stretching the goo. It's smooth, soft, squishy, stretchy and sticky. I got to wash my hands now.
James is 5.

I hope you have a great day. Thanks for the gift of your comments.
Hugs,
JB

CAN YOU HELP ME IDENTIFY THESES VISITORS

I was working in the office yesterday when I saw a flock of birds hoping around eating crabapples of my tree in the front yard. At first I thought they were juvenile cardinals but they did not look like the juveniles in my  bird book. I checked on the Titmouse but they didn't quite looked like those either. They have some bright yellow on the tip of their tails and some yellow and red on their wings as well as black and white. If you look carefully, you can see a little tuff on the top of the heads when their heads are up.

Sorry, the quality of the pictures is very poor. 

There was about 12 to 15 in my tree and I took the pictures through a dirty double pane window with my zoom lens. I wish I could have gone out to take clearer pictures but they were quite in a feeding frenzy so I let them be. They would have been camera shy anyway.

I sure hope you can identify what kind of birds they are.
Thanks for stopping by for a little visit.
Time changes forward on Sunday and it's looking more and more like Spring is trying to poke holes in Old Man Winter to get him out of the way.  It's warming up.
Thanks for your comments.
Hugs,
JB

I DID IT MY WAY

I finally finished printing all my blog posts from 2010 to 2015 with comments. It took a lot of ink and a lot of time but at least it's done. I have a small section that are missing the comments as I had no way to retrieve the comments as they were erased purposely from my emails a long time ago. Had I known I could have used them as link to print my deleted blog posts, I would not have erased them of course, but it is what it is... I haven't calculated how much I spent on ink and paper and I really don't care.

I've reprinted those posts that I first printed without comments as I feel that the comments were so important to me. The joy I felt at reading all those comments through the years from my friends in good times and in bad and appreciating all the support they have given me, made it an easy decision for me to print the comments. It has convinced me that I should keep on blogging.

The comments that we receive from friends are really the catalyst that keeps us blogging and it's a sharing that goes beyond borders and continents, religion and race. My blogger friends are a diverse group of individuals  with a diversity of interest who are most generous with their positive and encouraging comments and they are also loyal and helpful.

When I first started blogging, I posted every day. I would comment back and forth with my followers who commented but as my followers increased it became almost impossible to comment back as I didn't had enough time.

I gained a tiny bit more experience with printing my own blog. It would have been nice having them in book form but I think they would have been very pricy with comments. I know 25 binders is a lot but they are printed on one side of the page only. I really enjoyed reading a lot of comments from my dear friend Kim of Millie's Mat who was one of my earlier followers shortly after I started blogging. We were both commenting with a lot of humour even way back then and we still do.

I post less often now because of lack of spare time but I hope I'll be able to keep it up.

On a sadder note, I just got back from my niece Lise's funeral in Bathurst and I was gone for three days. I went by bus because of the storm and it took double the time to travel by bus  than when I go by car. To save money, they go the long route instead of doing two separate trips.

 Lise was only 34 and died after a lengthy illness. She was always positive and looked on the brighter side of things. She was given a year and a half to live but she only lived for one short year after diagnosis. It was a bitter sweet event as I hadn't seen my family since my mom passed away in 2009. Thank you to all of you who emailed me with your condolences. I'm sorry I never had a chance to post to let you know I would be away from the computer before I left. It was pretty hectic for me to get ready and as soon as I got the word of when the funeral would be.  You wouldn't believe how much snow there was in Bathurst after the storm. Some places got freezing rain and the north of the province got snow and wind.

Thanks for your visit. I so appreciate your comments.
JB

AN AFTERNOON IN THE LIFE OF CYPRESS

On Monday I  was asked to look  after my great grandson Cypress for a few hours. He got his first haircut and he now looks like a little man...  Cypress loves to have his picture taken and always wants me to get my camera out and then he wants to see the pictures of himself.
For the benefit of the family, I included lots of  Cypress photos, so bear with me.

As some of you know, Cypress is obsessed with roosters and every time he comes for a visit, he wants to see the laughing roosters on Youtube. He watches it over and over.

He's eating some corn puffs that doesn't have any additive and it's my snack of choice.

It's back at watching the laughing roosters and munching.

It's now time to feed the hungry bear.

He's giving me the sign of peace I hope. I wonder where he learned that. He stuck his fingers in front of the camera and my camera is set on auto focus. The fingers are clear but not the face...

I told him to smile and instead he's hamming it up for the camera, the little toot. He's got snack of clementine, banana, and corn puff and great grandpa says that I'm spoiling him. I think they are healthy snacks...

Climbing on the coffee table with his cat and bear. He thinks it's cool to have the cat on the bear's back.

Great grandpa wants to have his picture taken too. Cypress looks so serious when he gets his photo taken sometimes. He looks right into the camera.

He climbed on the chair and saw some grapes on the counter and wanted some.

Now it time for a sip of milk. See the frame on the table. There's a rooster inside, what else. He got a little ice cream cone too but I didn't take a picture of that either.
     

Cypress loves to clean and I gave him a damp dishcloth and he scrubbed the fridge door and he was also scrubbing my cupboard doors. They really need a good scrubbing.
I missed a good shot of him sweeping the floor and using the dustpan. I was busy making soup.

Last summer when I was babysitting Cypress, he was getting tired and I turned the music on my laptop to  Canon in D, by Johann Pachelbel; Original Version Youtube and he listen to the soothing  music and he fell asleep. Now he still love that music so much and he watches the ladies playing the violins and will listen to it for a long time. I find it very soothing too.

He was busy scribbling  and started with one and then with two pencils he found on my desk.

I hope you enjoyed this little bit of vignette with my little great grandson Cypress. I had a great time although I didn't get a lot done.
Thanks for visiting my little blog and know that I really appreciate your generous comments.
Spring isn't very far away. Stay healthy and safe.
Hugs,
JB

TOO MUCH STUFF IS WORST THAN NOT ENOUGH

Welcome to my new follower. Blogger has ceased to remove followers from my blog and it's nice seeing my number go up by one this week instead of going down...

I'm continuing on my goal to declutter... I got a spurt of energy this week and I started to go through my recipe books one by one at every opportunity I got and slowly but surely as I put them in boxes and bags, I became totally detached from them. They will find a new home with The Salvation Army. They are good people and they helped us during the big flood when we had to move our cattle.

I used to love going through my cookbooks and trying to come up with some yummy meals but I would get overwhelmed by the choices and I realized that more often than not, I would end up making my old comfort recipes. I wish I could wiggle my nose and taste from the cookbooks but in reality it would only taste like paper.

Another thing I realized is that we are  basically using the same list of ingredients on a continuum but we rearrange them in different ways and cookbooks are OK but they are a money making businesses. I'm not a foodie but I love and appreciate a great variety of food including ethnic food.

I've wasted hours and hours going through those big full color cookbooks over time and enough is enough. I really don't need another recipe. Even though this is my second purge, I still have more than enough. I'll never live long enough to try them all, so as I kept going through my cookbook stash, I became less and less enticed by the beautiful pictures and the promising good taste, it was like I was too full and nothing looked appetizing anymore.

I still have more cookbooks to go through and will cull some more but I can live with less and live better. It actually already feels good to get rid of them. I won't be buying anymore. I bought the majority of those cookbooks at Value Village during their book sales and whenever I would see one that I must have.

I can find any recipe on the internet if I need to  find one for free.

Thanks for visiting and leaving your comments. I so appreciate them. HAPPY VALENTINE DAY everyone.
Hugs,
JB

AT LONG LAST I FOUND MY BALL

When my daughter Christine was here for Christmas she asked me for the salad dressing shaker she had bought me the Christmas before. I told her that I hadn't used it and frankly I had totally forgotten about it since I had tucked it in the cupboard way back then. Christmas time gets pretty hectic for me...

I searched in the cupboard and found the shaker and she wanted to show me how slick it makes salad dressing.  I opened the shaker and as quick as a wink the little heavy ball flew out and rolled under the fridge. We both tried to retrieve the ball with all sorts of contraptions, but try as we may, we just couldn't reach it from it's hiding place.

Today I remembered about the lost ball and I had the idea to bend a metal coat hanger and see if I can retrieve it. In a few seconds I had the ball out from under it's hiding place.

   This is a pretty neat gadget and my daughter uses her all the time. I'll be using it too since I don't eat bought dressings unless they don't have soy by products.

I might have to wait till the price of lettuce goes down to try my new found ball. lol.
It took me a long while to come up with that idea of using a coat hanger. My mind is slow but I guess it still works.

Thanks for visiting. Please leave me your comments, they cheer me up.
Hugs,
JB

CALL ME CRAZY BUT WHEN I SET MY MIND TO DO SOMETHING, I JUST DO IT...

You may ask,  why would anyone in their right mind want to print their blog posts themselves when you can have them made into books? Well... I've been blogging since August 2, 2010 and I've been procrastinating to have my posts made into books every years. There are just too many posts, thats why and I like a challenge anyway. Why not?

Color ink and even black ink for my Canon printer is very expensive but still, I really wanted to be able to read my old post in a hard copy when I want to check on certain events that happened during my blogging period. Reading old posts is invigorating when one get stale and yes, I've gotten stale...

You may remember,  one day I accidentally deleted a bunch of posts when I clicked  Delete  to erase a sentence from a post I was working on late at night, I made up my mind that somehow I would print my blog posts as soon as I could fine the time before I loose any more but  I didn't know how I was going to do it. It was just on my goal list.

Anyway, when I first tried to print my blog in portrait, some of the words were  missing on the right side and also the side of the photo was cut off too. Then I tried to print it in landscape.

These two photos shows you how it would print only part of a photo when there were a certain amount of words on the page and it would need two pages sometimes to show the whole photo and there was a lot of wasted blank spaces. Very disappointing format but I was glad to have retrieved my lost posts anyway.

 It worked and the pictures were larger but depending on how many words were on my paragraphs, it would sometimes cut off part of the photos so I had to print another page to get the whole photo.  It was better than noting but I was still not satisfied.

 Of course it didn't print the comments. It took a lot of paper. It only printed on one side of the page  and I had to print  each page separately. Still, I'm not giving up. I know there must be a better way but I'm clueless.

My next try got me excited, as I could print a whole bunch of posts from one click and it would print about 47 pages in book form but the draw back was that it printed each with the dates going backward instead of forward.  For example, the first post was dated December 30, the next post was Dec 27, and so on... so to read the post as they happened, I have to start to read at the back of the book to the front and all the comments are there.

This is how I found my lost posts....
I had gone into my old emails and found out that I had deleted a lot of my old blog posts  because I never thought that  I would someday need them since all my posts were on my blog anyway.
I couldn't remember what I had blogged about in the missing posts so long ago.

 I found a couple of comments regarding my blog  that wasn't deleted. I clicked on the email and the comment showed up and also the title of the post. I clicked on the title of the post and lo and behold, the whole post showed up.

At this point I was getting encouraged... but it was only one lost post. I scrolled all the way down and all the comments were right there as they appear on my post when I read the comments. Then I printed this post. In one click, the whole post got printed with comments. The only thing missing was the header but I don't mind because it's saving me a lot of color ink.


When I first began to blog, I would delete some posts from my email as I had them in my blog and I thought they were safe there. The only thing, since I deleted those emails,  I had no record of my old posts to print...  Then in my desperation, I found a few comments followers had made and I clicked on one of them and then I  clicked on the name of the post and lo and behold, my whole post appeared. I was so happy to be able to find that post at least.

 Then at the bottom of the post, was Previous Post and Older Post. I could go back and print the post and even the comments got printed with the post. I clicked on Previous Post and the whole previous post and comment appeared on my screen and I printed it.

Now I can print the posts with comments in the sequence they were written.

It's a small victory and I'm happy that I succeeded in printing my blog posts. Sometime you never know what you can achieve until you keep trying.

So these are my blog posts from August 2, 2010 to December 31, 2010 in three binders.  I was blogging daily then and was just getting started.

Thanks so much for your visit and know that I love reading your comments.
Hugs,
JB

RUNNING BEHIND ON MY BLOG POSTS...

Just a quick post... This past weekend it was George's 72nd birthday. I had intended of baking a cake and making a big pot of Chili.  My daughter Nicole Skyped from Scotland to wish her dad Happy Birthday. We talked for about an hour and with the time difference and our schedules it's difficult to make time to Skype.  I ran out of time to bake the cake in time for lunch and decided that I better rush to the Co-op and buy one. It just so happened it was also Reid's birthday on the same day. For those who don't know,  Reid is our employee.

Here is Reid and George bending to fit in the picture,  getting ready to cut the cake. It's a bad picture as my camera was set on Closeup and I didn't noticed.

A closeup of the cake.

Again a bad photo because my camera was on the wrong setting. We had just sat down to lunch with a bowl of hot Chili on a cold day when some acquaintances were returning a rope they had borrowed to secure bales of hay on their truck the week before.

They were invited to come in and we shared a meal together to celebrate George and Reid's birthday.
I had even toyed with the idea of baking a corn bread but had to settle on regular bread.

It was very nice sharing some stories.

My daughter Christine sent me these photos of the boys. James is a very picky eater but he just love the burger at Five Guys in Ottawa.

That's a big burger for James. Daniel ate all those fries.

This was the last bite.  I can't believe he ate the whole thing.

Thanks for visiting, my blog friends,  I really appreciate your comments.
Stay safe and warm.
Hugs
JB