Friday, July 29, 2011

At this time of year



This is what's happening for himself. Hardly see him when the sun is out, the sky is building up to nice fat, fluffy clouds and that's okay. I get to do my thing, whatever that is and we stay out of each other's hair. Today, I am making a large pot of vegetarian chili. Never made it before and am combining three recipes and throwing in an added bonus at the end...a secret ingredient. If I told you what it was, it would no longer be a secret. I don't know how it will turn out but it all goes out to the glider club tomorrow night for their chili bake-off contest. Along with that, a dish of three bean salad and they'll all be flying on internal air, not external.


Sara, good news in the cholesteral department and weight loss. Congratulations. Once you change your diet and get used to it, it may be hard to go back to eating the way you did before.


Marion, no more snow? That was it for the winter?


Right now, my smoke detector doesn't like the 100% humidity outside and is cheeping its head off bothering the dogs who are barking at it. Can't do anything about it right now, himself is over down the hill visiting a neighbour and I don't know what to do with it. Believe it or not, it is raining gently and the windows are all open, creating as much humid air inside as out.


Miss AnnieBelle attended her first dog show last week-end, not a participant. Took one look at all those dogs and all those people, slipped her collar (I didn't have a show choke collar on her at the time) and ran off. I yelled, my breeder friend yelled at me, don't yell at her, I called her with my squeaky wiggle-butt voice and she came. Things I have to learn. I slipped her show collar on her and she was fine for the rest of the morning. She was good. She loves other Aussies, doesn't like the big dogs.


Rosey

Thursday, July 28, 2011

A bit of good news

OK, going to celebrate with carrot sticks! The Cholesterol total has come down from 186 to 163. The LDL (bad stuff) from 133 to 91. The blood sugar from 117 to 93.
This is from 3 months ago. Have been 90% veg. diet for the last 3 months.
I sing the prases of "Engine #2 Diet by Rip Esselstyn.
The nurse practitioner is happy, I'm happy. Weight down 12 lbs. Not great, but better than it was, and will stay the course for 6 more months at least.
Frankly, other than ice cream, I'm not tempted to eat much during the heat of the summer. Have found that I like fruit sorbet as much, if not more. Still lots of sugar, but no fat.

Went to the dog park later than normal, 9AM instead of 8AM. The dogs were happy, I was dripping when we got home. Meeting a GF for lunch, then staying inside working on the space man quilt for the day.
Sara in Fla.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

going, going, (nearly) gone !



This was taken yesterday, but we have had another very sunny day today and nearly all of the snow has disappeared.... That's it for this winter I guess !! Hopefully the ski fields will have managed to retain more of the snow than we have !


Rosey, that naughty puppy has got you around her little finger !!! Enjoy !


The Hong Hong family get airborne tonight . I hope they have a good journey and manage some sleep. The other family take the ferry back to the bottom of the Nth Island this evening and then drive a wee way out of Wellington before taking a motel for the night. Hopefully they won't be too exhausted when they finally make it home tomorrow....


We enjoyed our two days of being confined to the property.(how would we cope in parts of America and Canada in the winter time !) Adventurous neighbours came visiting on both days which we all enjoyed. They work in town(but took the day off because of the ice on the roads) and don't have the time to be neighbourly very often.


I also made inroads into a very good book by Doris Lessing (African laughter) It records her impressions of Zimbabwe (where she grew up) on four visits over a number of years...


Hope the week is going well.

Marion

The world upside down

Marion, I can now smile when I think of your winter in New Zealand, the land of the green. And now, white. What a beautiful sight. It is picture postcard pretty. What did Holly think of it?
From Kathi's dogs swimming in the cool waters of Idaho to the heat in Florida and here in southern Ontario, which thankfully as abated for awhile...a nice breather from the hot, humid blanket that settled over this parched area...we even had a thunderstorm with rain early this morning.

Miss AnnieBelle has me flummoxed. She has taken a fancy to my kitchen island cabinet on one corner. Not Bitter Lime, not covering the area with duct tape, not putting plastic in behind the duct tape, nothing is working. In sheer desperation, I have taped her stuffed possum from friend Susan in California, with duct tape, over the corner. I wonder if that will mystify her any? Why is my stuffie taped to the kitchen cupboards upsidedown? She's a monkey. Hard to get mad at her. She has mischief written all over her face.

Rosey

Monday, July 25, 2011

cold here too !



We are having our coldest period of weather for nearly a hundred years !! All very pretty and quite exciting. This is what we woke to yesterday. It froze last night so is likely to be around for awhile.


Not so much fun for those living in houses where the windows don't close properly, or even the doors, in some cases. Some streets are still using Porta Loos... It's been nearly a year since the first earthquake last Sept. Progress must seem unbearably slow for the people in those worst hit areas...


I have tried without success , to post several times lately. I was interested to read in some of the comments below, that others can "comment" but not post. That seemed to be the case here too. Hopefully this will work !


Holly (the dog !) loved the snow yesterday and pranced around in it every time we went out. We spent some time shaking snow off the lower shrubs and trees and cleared a path to the front and back doors and a pathway around the outside of the house. Any more and my husband would have gone in search of a snow blower or whatever they are ! I doubt that he would have found one in NZ. !! We have plenty of fire wood so had a cozy day inside, some neighbours popped in later in the day. There was a general air of excitement around, some would say we need to "get a life " !!!!


DD#1 is due in NZ on Thursday with her four children. She plans to have a few days in Auckland with DD#2 before coming down here . Unfortunately DD#2 and family have had to go to a family (in laws) funeral , many miles away (the length of the Nth Island and then some...over on the ferry to the top of the Sth Island) They drove through very difficult conditions yesterday and got as far as Wellington. The funeral is on Wednesday. I am now anxious about them rushing back up to Auckland after the funeral . Such a pity and not the best start to what is a very "big deal" holiday for the HK family. They are due down here next Monday.


Might go out and take some more photos. ! The sun is out and it is very beautiful out there...


Have a good week.

Marion.

Brrrrrrrrrrr!!

Its cold here and yesterday we were told there may be snow on the Waitakeres, we missed that but most of the rest of NZ has quite a covering . This area is supposed to be nearly sub tropical!!!! Doris, you poor dear,I am so pleased I have a top loader. I also use a homemade liquid cleaner. A lot of others use fillers which look lovely and bubbly in the machine but are quite useless to clean the clothes. I have quite a few allergies and find homemade cleansers really help. There are a lot of recipes are on the net. I am also in love. My friend and I go to lunch once a month and this time we went to a new quilt store. She had so many bright fabrics and a lot of Kaffe Fassett it was a joy to go there. Normally I don't like his fabric but the florals are great. I am taking my DIL there soon to buy heaps. Wednesday actually was one of the best days I have had recently.A new quilt shop, a lovely lunch, and 2 garden centres in one day. Jeanette and I have been friends for more than 20 years, what more can I say. Must go and wake the dog, he doesn't do cold mornings. Hugs to all from a cold Bee in NZ.

the laundry wars ;-)

. . . well, that is what my DH calls it. I call it the Detergent War. LOL ;o)

I am still trying to get the hang of our front-load washing machine. Sheesh! It has been three months now.... but that learning curve is still there, and it is all in HOW MUCH DETERGENT TO USE. There are two "camps" on how much HE detergent to use in HE machines, and what do I know? It's all new to me. One 'camp' says to use what the HE detergent label says and the other camp says to the "use half the recommended amount". (this reminds me of quilters arguing over which size between needle to use for hand quilting-LOL)

Some of my cotton knit shirts were downright scratchy and stiff, and sheets were getting crunchy --- all from detergent residue --- due to detergent overdosing. I'd been using the recommended amounts, and sometimes half the amount. I FINALLY called the toll-free consumer support number for my machine and talked with a representative, who told me to use one-fourth of what the detergent label says. Seriously? one-fourth? The salesman told me that but I thought he meant regular non-HE detergent, and I wasn't taking any chances by using that stuff and having a suds-athon in my new machine. Apparently this machine uses so little water that it doesn't take much detergent.

In the meantime, Bob rolls his eyes at me running into the laundry room on a regular basis, with flashlight in hand, to check for suds, etc He has accused me of watching the laundry more than the TV. LOL Well, I think he was right, but it is far more interesting than most of what is on the TV. ;o)

I spent all one day, last week, re-washing our clothing, multiple times and without detergent. I checked the rinse cycles, and if I saw any suds or bubbles at all, I kept rinsing until there were none. Things are feeling soft again. I truly do not understand why the owner's manual of this machine does not say to use 1/4 the recommended amount of detergent. Gah!

It is still better than beating the laundry against a rock in a river, or using a hand-crank wringer washer, but ... gah!

Welp, I've procrastinated enough and need to go outside and mow the lawn. blech!
Hugs to everyone!