Wednesday, December 31, 2008

New Year's Eve day visitors

After a month in the house , and after gazing out the kitchen window everyday in hopes of seeing some wild life....we finally had some visitors. What I thought was just one doe turned out to be 3! They weren't took scared, and I threw some apples out for them.

Happy New Year!

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Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Season's Greetings!

Well, Christmas Eve day is here, and Christmas Day is nearly here. We are spending a quiet holiday at home, and I can't be glad enough. The weather is frightful, and it is snowing, and I don't want to be the poor stranded travelers that are trying to get home for the holidays. We are looking forward to Molly's Christmas, as she is now 2 1/2 and she will be so fun tomorrow!
I can't wait to see her reactions to Santa's visit.

I wish you a very warm, safe, and memorable holiday whatever your beliefs.
Season's Greetings!

A little bit of history...

My mom sent me a package with a clock that my grandmother cross-stitched in the mid-sixties. My granddaddy framed it for her. It is now proudly hanging in my kitchen. It actually fits the color scheme quite well. So that is great. :) My grandmother, and granddaddy have been gone from this earth more than a decade, but a little piece of them is always with us.




 
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Saturday, December 20, 2008

Living in a Deep Freeze

Well, the past week, and a bit we have been in a deep freeze here in Quesnel. It is currently -30C/-22F this morning. That is some kind of bitter cold. It is life as usual though because you have to keep on keeping on. Where I am from, if it got this cold, everything would be shut down. Milk, and bread fly off the shelves at the smallest mention of snow. Here is it life as usual for the most part. We just bundle up , and go. Greg, and I had to bring in some more fire wood, and shovel a different path for our wheelbarrow yesterday, and by the time we were done we both looked like victims of the Titanic, or some frosted over explorers of Mount Everest. My breathe froze the hair surrounding my face, and Greg's goatee, and mustache was full of chunks of ice. I got a vision of what I would look like with white hair, and what I might look like in 15 yrs. I would have taken a picture, but didn't really want to bring the camera out in that kind of cold.

It is going to be this cold for at least the next week. It is amazing that it has to be at least -40C for a week or more to kill off that stupid pine beetle....they apparently make their own antifreeze from the pine sap.

Well, Christmas is nearly here, and we have just gotten our tree last night. I am going to decorate it today. We were going to just cut a tree off our land, but there is so much snow, and so cold that it is too brutal a task. So we purchased a cut tree from a guy that had been bundled up all day, and in the cold since 7:30a.m at the Walmart parking lot. Poor guy....the things people do to earn a living.

We are going furniture shopping today, and I hope to finish up the last of the unpacking in the kitchen today,and all I will lack is my craft room, and a couple of things in Molly's room.

We hope you have a safe, warm, happy, and peaceful holiday!

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Life in the Bush

Well, I guess you could say we live in the bush, there isn't even a street light near our place . So at night it is truly dark!! I remember the first night, that I couldn't even see my hand in front of my face until my eyes became adjusted to the dark. I get around ok now, and I think we sleep a lot better now because it is dark, and soooooo QUIET! No street noise, no show offs racing down the street, no sirens, no noisy drunks, just peace and quiet. It is heaven. The sun rises through my kitchen window and it is so beautiful. We haven't seen any big wild life yet, though I hope we see a moose at some point, definitely deer. I have seen a very large red headed woodpecker a few times.

I am slowly getting things sorted out with the unpacking and hope by this weekend I will have most of it done.

We don't have cable here, and opted not to get satellite. So we pick up one channel on the antenna, and that is E channel. Of all channels why the heck is it Entertainment tv? You would think it would at least be PBS. So Molly watches a lot of DVD's. I am getting sick of the same old ones, and I have got some ordered, and a friend is suppose to burn us some dvd's of 24 hrs of Treehouse TV. In the warmer months, we will be spending lots of time outside, so no need for the tv at all really....though Molly gets bored with playing sometimes , and wants to watch her "deedle d" as she calls them. :)

We have a gizmo we use through Telus to get our high speed internet over cell signals, and it is kind of pricey, but since the internet is my link to the outside world, it is important to us for personal stuff as well as business.

I have ordered a steel jeweler's block and hammer, and hope to learn to work with wire more, and explore my creativity.

So many plans ahead!

Cheers!
Jen

Monday, December 01, 2008

We are moved in finally!!!

Well, after 8 days of moving stuff from our old place to our house...we are officially MOVED! We are officially house owners!! :)
YEAH! You can't imagine how happy I am to finally after many many years to have a place of our own! I can hardly wait to get this place organized, but I am going to take it easy for a day, just to recoup from the move. I was never so glad to be done with that. There came a time when I just didn't have it in me to move another box or thing. I told Greg to help me move a reasonably sized box, just because I couldn't bring myself to pick it up. I was sooooo tired!!

It is all good now, and the house looks like a tornado hit it, but I hope not for long!

Winter has set up shop in Quesnel, though by this time last year we had lots of snow already, and it was freakin' cold!! So far it has only gotten down to -8C at night. It has been hovering around freezing for the high.

We are trying to get accustomed to a wood furnace, and oil furnace.....no wood or oil, no heat.
So far the furnace hates me, and I have difficulty getting a fire going, but usually get it going after fighting with it. I am loving the wood fire smell though, and since where I came from having a fire going was more for ambiance than warmth for the most part, I wonder if the romanticism will soon wear off every time I have to trek down to the basement to load the furnace with wood, or crawl under the deck to retrieve more wood when it is -30 outside. I think we will have to store more wood indoors. We do have a cool trapdoor in the basement we can bring the wood through though, and not have to bring it through the house.


I took Molly for a walk around the yard today, and down to where the two out buildings are....boy there is a lot of junk that we now own!
I guess come springtime we will be doing a lot of clean up.

We are on well water now, and that sure has been a blast from the past. The look, and the metallic smell of the water reminds me of my summers as a kid on Lake Martin. It has been interesting. I think we can get some kind of filter for that, but we are still learning. We have a water softener too....so much to learn!

We are loving it here though....for the first time in a long time we can actually see the stars at night. It will be so cool this summer to sit outside at night, and stargaze. I will have to brush up on my constellations. I wish we were able to see an Aurora Borealis, but I don't think we are quite far enough north.

Well, I am looking forward to having a lot more to write about with having started a new chapter in my life. For so long, there wasn't much to write about. Interesting times ahead! :)

Cheers!
Jen