Ahhh... the weekend's here !

The feeling of being free for 2 days is always exhilarating ! I am super super tired so I am looking forward to sleep longer than during the week, relaxing, taking pics of tulips at the Tulip Festival and perhaps even gluing down that layout that has been waiting patiently on my scrap desk !

I went to my chiro this morning and talked to him about "labyrinthite" - a condition I have sporadically but that I used to have almost steadily for 2 years. He gave me some exercices to do in the morning when I wake up having vertigo feelings in order to get rid of them faster. I am looking forward to see the results after having tried those exercices next time I wake up with vertigo.

On the school front, my grade 4, 5 and 6 students completed their Mother's Day butterfly chipboard books today and I am so thrilled about that ! They were just gorgeous and so very creative in the decorating and the written poems. But I saw SO many butterfly books, helped so many students with their books, attached so many ribbons to the books, punched so many holes in the pages - for the students that couldn't do it by themselves -, supervised the dolling out of the rhinestones (that the students so much loved that I had to keep an eagle eye on them if not many students would not have the pleasure of using some as some students were, ahem .... taking loads of them) that I was close to getting fed up with this project. Wow ! So happy that this project is over and done with and that regular English lessons programming is on for the next few weeks ! LOL I don't want to see another butterfly chipboard book in quite a while, thank you very much ... even though I wanted to make one with a different theme for myself ! That will be in the far far future I predict ! LOL

We went out for pizza tonight and it struck me again, while watching Rafael walk over to the counter to get our pizza slices, how he is growing ! He is walking in an assured manner and that is good to see. I think that in about a year, he will be as tall as me. I am not hard to beat though, at 5 feet 2 inches ! ;)

There's 6 weeks of school left and one can smell the end drawing near in the school. Tired teachers, educators and other school personnel have a little new spring in their step, looking forward to the end of the school year, counting the weeks or the days left. I do too ! It has been quite a difficult year, although a rewarding one.

I'm leaving you with one of my favorite photos of this lovely goldfinch (chardonneret in French), taken just outside my kitchen window. Have a great evening !

A delightful outing !

Yesterday afternoon, I met with my friend Hélène and we went pickniking in the Rockcliffe Park ! My first picnic of the season ! It was quite lovely ! We had great weather, the sun was shining brightly, albeit the wind was a bit cold. Nevertheless, we had a great time chatting while each eating half a wrap complemented by fresh vegetables and fruits ! Yum !

Then we drove to Ottawa's By Market and walked to the Major Hills Park, which is one of the Tulip Festival sites which incidentally started last weekend. Near the entrance, we stopped to admire this ship made up of empty fish cans : pretty impressive construction indeed !


This is one of the views that greeted us along our walk : we both love and never get tired of seeing the graceful architecture of the Civilization Museum across the river in Hull.


Hélène and I were trying to get a photo of both of us while stretching our arms for an auto-portrait when this nice young woman came up to us from behind her ice cream kiosk and offered to take photos of us with our cameras ! How kind of her !


This was one of my attempts at self-portraits before the ice cream lady came up to us ! LOL Still pretty cool though as a pic ! What do you think, Hélène ? ;)


Of course, we did get to admire the lovely tulips and photograph some of them. I definitely need to go back to Major Hill Park though because we didn't have enough time to see the whole display of tulips.



Hélène, it was wonderful spending time with you ! Time always go by so fast when we're together !

Have a great evening, everyone !

What an awesome weekend !

A great weekend indeed ! The sun was shining, the birds were chirping away, I love these kinds of days !

Today, we went to visit my sister and nephew and Rafael had the chance to play with his cousin and also his best friend from school, Ashley, who lives 3 houses away from my sister's. Ashley told my sister, when she learned that we were coming over, that Rafael was her very best friend at school. It was my first time meeting Ashley and I loved it ! She is a very assured young girl, with great manners and a lively imagination. Seeing both she and my son playing and talking together, I could see why they connect so well !

We also had fun playing with one of my sister's birds, the lovely Wally below ! Isn't he gorgeous ? He can't fly so he keeps coming to land on us, it was just so sweet !


I have started taking pics of the lovely tulips that have made an appearance lately ! Many more pics of tulips will be taken in the next few weeks I am sure ! I just love tulips, there's something so simple and yet magical about them ! This photo and the bird photo below were taken with the rented lens 100-400 mm from Canon. You can click on the photo and see how clear and sharp they are !


Birds keep enchanting my life ! I love taking pics of them everyday from our dinette's windows and in nature ! Here's one I took yesterday ! Their bright yellow color just makes me feel so happy ! This pic was taken with the lovely lens 100-400 mm that we rented for the weekend. I feel a little sad that we're returning it tomorrow. Oh well, we'll rent them another time !


My favorite tv show "Tout le monde en parle" is on right now, so off I go ! Have a great Monday tomorrow !

En amour avec les oiseaux ! BIRD-LOVERS !

J'adore les matins de weekend ! Ils sont relaxes, très agréables ! Pierre a le temps de déguster son café en lisant La Presse, j'ai le temps de déguster mes fruits en lisant La Presse et Rafael déjeune et puis joue avec ses jouets ou il lit. Ouais, c'est une famille de grands lecteurs, ici !

Et puis, de notre dînette qui a 3 murs de grandes fenêtres, on a l'occasion et la grand plaisir d'observer les oiseaux ! C'est un vrai régal visuel ! On commençe à être bons à connaître les habitudes des cardinals, des chardonnerets, des rouge-gorges, et des autres espèces d'oiseaux qu'on voit régulièrement. Pierre et moi prenons photo après photo ! Des photos des oiseaux qui viennent manger dans nos mangeoires à oiseaux ! Et vu que ce weekend-ci, on a loué un objectif 100-400 mm, on s'en donne à coeur joie encore plus que d'habitude ! Pierre a même installé notre trépied devant une fenêtre pour prendre des photos plus stables. Personnellement, je trouve un meilleur équilibre à tenir la caméra moi-même, même si celle-ci est plus lourde avec le plus long objectif loué.

Rafael et moi sommes allés au Rona vers 10h pour aller chercher d'autres graines pour oiseaux et j'ai décidé de faire l'acquisition d'une petite mangeoire pour attirer les colibris : j'ai hâte des voir de plus proche ! En même temps, on a fait l'achat d'une autre pôle à 2 courbes pour y accrocher d'autres mangeoires à oiseaux, histoire de pouvoir observer et photographier de notre dînette davantage d'oiseaux.

As I was saying in French, we are book lovers here, and also DH and I have developed a passion for birds ! For our vantage position in our dining room which has 3 walls of large and long windows, we are fortunate to be able to take photos after photos, close-ups actually, of the birds visiting our birdfeeders ! Every day, we see finches, cardinals, and other types of birds and I'm getting quite good at figuring out their lifestyles. Like when the male cardinal gets food and then goes to the female cardinal to put the food in her beak ! It's just so cute ! They look like they are kissing ! LOL

THis morning, DS and I went to Rona to purchase more bird seeds and got by the same token, a birdfeeder for hummingbirds - I am SO looking forward to observing them up close - and we also got a new double pole to hang up more birdfeeders on it so that we'll have more opportunities to observe and photograph our friendly birds !

I'll be back later on today to add pics on this post ! Take care and have fun on this NSD ! I hope to be able to scrap later on today ...

1st of May

Wow, it's already the first of May ! Time sure goes fast, especially when one is always busy !

At work lately, well at the school where I teach, so many activities all of the time ! It's one of the perks of my career and I just love it ! Let's see ... among other things ... In March I was asked to prepare something for the inauguration of our school's literacy library nicknamed affectionately Ali Baba's Cavern ! :) So I purchased a frame at Winners and filled three of the 4 picture slots with pictures of books and students reading and the fourth slot I filled with CS, rhinestones and rub-ons to write the name of our literacy library. My frame was a big hit during the inauguration ! I was so pleased but mostly I had such fun going around our school, taking pics of our students reading ! I also did a pretty big display of more photos on the bulletin board near the literacy library's door, photos of students reading, photos of hands turning book pages, etc. It was actually a collage of photos interspersed with punched shapes and punched borders. Very neat, actually ! People commented in great detail about it. Again, I had much fun creating this collage with 3 of my grade 6 students.

Lately, my grade 3, 4 and 6 students are passionately creating a chipboard book for Mother's Day. Such creativity is displayed ! They paid for the chipboard book and I supplied all of the patterned papers, the rhinestones, the stickers, the letter stickers, going through my scrap stash to let go of stuff I didn't think I was use finally - and my students had a field day with all of that stuff ! They created gorgeous pieces of artwork - I am sure that many mothers are going to be teary-eyed in two Sundays, when they see and read their children's Mother's Day's book. Such heartfelt poems and messages were written in these books also ! Most of all, I really really enjoyed watching the process of creativity unfolding in my classroom. Almost every lunchhour recess, I've been opening my classroom to my grade 3, 4, 5 and 6 students and it is just so so amazing to watch all of these different grade students working together, sharing tips and creative ideas, creating side by side, laughing, etc. I witnessed another wonderful noon hour today, gosh, my classroom must have had almost 40 students in it ! Lots of good noise and very tiring but very satisfying also ! A classroom filled with creativity, laughter. Such a joy to witness. Wish I had had the energy to take pics of it but I was too busy guiding, helping, explaining and watching ! :) But boy was I ever tired when I left school at 12:40.

Late this afternoon, my husband came back home with a surprise for me : he had finally rented (after me asking for it for the past several months) the Canon lens EF 100-400 mm Ultrasonic with the image stabilizer. I AM IN LOVE !!! We took photos of birds at our birdfeeders and boy, are the photos ever sharp and in such focus ! It bears repeating, I AM IN LOVE !!! LOL Such great lens ! I want to purchase them even more than before and I've been salivating for these lens for months now, over a year actually ! They are just awesome !!! Well, since I've not been spending any money on scrapbooking stuff for the past 5 months, I think that these lens just might make it into our home by the end of December. But it would be so great to have them for this summer to shoot all of these birds that I am so fond of. Yup, I've become a real bird-lover !

Anyhow, it's late enough : I am really tired and my bed is calling my name ! LOL Have a great evening and I promise to come back soon, sometimes this weekend, with pics ! Take care !

I'm back ...

... into blogland, that is ! Almost 3 months have gone by since my last post. Too much physical pain (neck and right arm) led to the decision to stay off for the computer, for one thing, until I felt better.

That extra time led me to thinking about simplifying further our lives. Hence, we got rid of a HUGE amount of stuff that was in our home during the past 2 months. Furniture, toys, books, clothing, decorations, teaching material, picture frames, art stuff, yarn, etc. I brought loads of teaching material that I will not use anymore to a new teacher at my school - she was ecstatic. And then, my clearing out in my home inspired the same teacher to do the same in her home. :)

Most of my March break (and DH took the week off) was spent clearing our basement (more than half of the stuff is gone, lots of empty shelves and plastic containers - we can hear our echo) and transforming DS's toy room into a family library (very very nice) and putting back into their original boxes most of my son's Playmobil toys in order to sell it. That took a lot of time !

We brought 2 trunkloads of stuff to the consignment store (DS toys, clothes, books) - for which we got a few hundred dollars for it, still more $ to come - we brought boxes of books to the used book store - got very minimal amount of $ for them but we care more about simplifying our home and recycling - and we donated a large part of the rest of our stuff to the St-Vincent-de-Paul organization. We also simplified our garage and the room where we store coats, work bags, etc.

What a relief ! And I must say that our home was far from being cluttered.

The simplifying still goes on, every week more stuff goes out. Our closets are getting leaner as well as shelves, pantries. We see more and more empty shelves everywhere in our home. We gave away most of our holiday decorations (Easter, Halloween, Christmas) and only kept a minimum of Xmas things. We threw out a lot of stuff also.

The good in all of that ?

- We breathe better.

- We have more time for activities, relaxation times, time with friends and family.

- Cleaning duties on Saturday mornings go a lot faster !

- Our son loves the fact that he doesn't have a playroom anymore and much less toys : he just takes out what he needs for his play time in the library (he has his toy-games cupboard in there) and then puts everything back in his toy cupboard afterwards, instead of leaving it ready to play with the next time, like it used to be). He commented a few times that he has more time to play because he has less stuff to deal with. A powerful lesson indeed" !

- I play piano everyday, in our "new" library room (we moved a IKEA shelving unit that we had in the basement (got rid of most of the books from that unit) and another IKEA shelving unit (the same kind) from DS's bedroom to assemble in our library. It's awesome to play piano in a toy-free room ! My family loves the fact that I play everyday, DS now asks me to play longer when I sit at the piano and he can sing most of what I play, since I play daily !

- We have purposefully reduce to a minimum our shopping-spending since the beginning of last December. We were already not going to malls for the last three years (if not more), and now going to the store feels also foreign to us, as if stepping on another planet. We go to the grocery store and very very rarely elsewhere. Our desire to eliminate anything that we don't truly need is very strong. I see all the stuff in the stores and the only thing I can think of is, "Most of this stuff would be cluttering our simplified home and life and would end up pretty quickly in a get-rid-of-it pile." I have no desire to spend nor acquire.

We have re-acquainted ourselves with the difference between "want-desire" and "need". So simple really. We also plan before buying our groceries, buying only what is needed for a week's time. Less food in our cupboards. The store can stock it, not us. :)

It's hard to describe in words the feelings that these changes brought in us. The calm in us, the deeper breathing, more enjoyment of our lives, more content, the feeling of more space in our life. More time to just be. Ahhhh ...

NOTE : The simplifying is not over yet. It will be when everything that we have in our home is actually used in a more or less regular manner and nothing more will be residing in our home. Like I won't get rid of a punch because I haven't used it in 2 weeks, type of thing.

Less is so much better. For us. And that comes from a girl (me) who has accumulated a LOT of art stuff during the past 20 years (pretty much the only category-department where I did spent). I used to think that I would rather have some stuff that lasted to show for my spending. Now I think exactly the opposite ! :) I prefer consumables. They don't add to a person's stash of any kind.

Stay tuned for pics of our newly simplified home. Too bad I didn't think of taking before pics. Also coming, pics of the 2 other Valentine chipboard books and some Project 365 layouts. Many photos. THe photographing has been going strong. Photos taken every day. And now that spring is here, the birds are visiting our birdfeeders in a large number which provides DH and I with lots of photo ops !

Take care everyone ! I would love to hear what you've been up to these past few months !

For the next while ...

I will not be blogging for the next while as I have health issues that need to be addressed asap. I'll be back in due time with LOs of Project365 plus the other 2 Valentine chipboard books.

In the meantime, take care !