Still here ...

This week has gone very quickly, like they the previous ones ! I've been working a lot, napping during several afternoons to heal my body of the cold that invaded it and took my voice, I started the end-of-the-school-year routine in my classroom (pulling stuff away from walls, etc), designed Father's Day's cards for my grade 2-3 students.

This afternoon, I spent more than 2 hours in our basement pulling stuff for the consignment store and some stuff to give to my colleagues since it doesn't look like I'll be teaching some subjects in the near future so I might as well take this teaching material out of our home and have another teacher use it. I also prepared a little pile of stuffed animals and misc. stuff that my husband and son left at the nearest St-Vincent-de-Paul red bin as soon as they got home. While in the basement, I threw a couple of loads in the laundry machine. I made a pile of books from my teaching years in grade 3 for Rafael to look through and decide if he wanted them - if not, out the door they go ! LOL Edited : He took them all except for 2. I love his passion for reading and learning ! :)

Barb, if you're reading this, let me know when the silent auction at your sons' school is - I'll be happy to donate something like the previous years !

I gotta go ! We're dropping off our 2 bins of stuff to Boomerang Consignment Shop and then we're coming back with a pizza and a rented movie ! I'll be back during the weekend, in between report cards and around the house. We have a long list of things to do but I'm feeling really good about having done 2.5 hours of it this afternoon ! What a great headstart for the weekend ! Getting rid of more stuff feels so good ! Simplicity is soooooooooo much better than having lots of stuff ! Amazing how, as time went by, I just want to be surrounded by simplicity. One could argue that I'm now allergic to stuff surrounding me ! LOL This way of living my life has a lot to do with my personal growth of the past few years. I know more about who I am inside, rather than defining myself by what I do, what I wear, what I own, etc. Life sure has its advantages as we get older ... and wiser ! :)

I'll be back with photos of the mini-scrapbooks from my grade 6 girls, called MY BOOK OF FAVORITES.

Have a great evening, everyone ! Bonne soirée, mes copines francophones !

Procastinating ...

I am usually not procrastinating but today, I certainly did ! I had planned, among other things, on starting to write my students' report cards but ... I didn't. I felt too tired. DH and I went to bed past 1 a.m. last night - I haven't done that literally inYEARS ! - and I paid the price today. But, it was well worth it : last night was so much fun ! :) Anyway, the report cards will have to wait another day before I start them as well as the other stuff on my list to do ! Life goes on !

I mostly vegetated today. I stayed in my pjs the whole day, sent some emails, did very little housechores, had chats with DS, savored DH's lunch (steak and veal on the BBQ - can I just say YUM !), then went for a 2 hour long nap. Niiiiiiiiice ! :)

This afternoon, I was inspired by a lovely page done by Nathalie V. (see link to her blog on the side bar on the right) and I thought of going upstairs in my scraproom to lift her page but that's as far as it went (the thinking part) because I couldn't muster the drive to do it. Oh well, I'll lift her page one afternoon this week, that's one of the benefits of working half-time. Thanks Nathalie for the inspiration !

Today will end like I started it : slow and relaxing. DH is cooking some chicken breasts on the BBQ and fresh veggies are broiling. After dinner, we'll take out a boardgame to play with our family. That kind of thing. I have a busy week ahead so a relaxing weekend was good-timing : the school end is near, always more to do at this time of year plus a couple of appointments scheduled after work.

Hope your weekend was as you intended it to be ! Have a great week ! :)

Finally !

Yes, finally, the good weather is back ! It was hard having 3 days of rain in a row. That means, since I'm teaching in an elementary school, that all recesses are inside the school - which means some students being more active than usual in class (read disruptive and having difficulty concentrating on the lessons and the work) because they haven't had the opportunity to use up their energy playing outside. Sigh. But I understand them because I would find it hard to stay cooped up inside all day. I need my time outside, rain or sunshine !

My family and I went to get reacquainted with nature this morning after those 3 rainy days by stopping by at Petrie's Island just outside Orleans. The chirping of the birds, a Canada Goose family strolling on the river, a heron meditating quietly nearby were all very soothing to the senses. I also enjoyed watching the many people fishing nearby. There's this quality about fishing - tranquil, living the present moment, cultivating the virtue of patience - that appeals to me although I've never had the opportunity to fish in my lifetime.

Besides working at school (3 weeks left before the summer vacation !) and hiking in nature, I've been playing lately with colorful scrapbooking papers, and all I can say is YUM ! My circle and square punches have been very much loved also ! ;) More about that soon !

My entire family of 3 - LOL - took a lovely long nap this afternoon ! :) It felt sooooo good ! Right now, DH and DS are busy preparing our dinner and then I think that we'll be heading outside again. Gotta take advantage of the lovely weather !

I'm leaving you with this photo of an Oriole that we saw this morning, jumping from branch to branch, from tree to tree, in search of its food. These birds are really difficult to photograph as they move sooooooooo fast ! Hence, I didn't have the time to adjust my camera to shoot upwards towards the sky for this photograph so we can't truly see their lovely bright yellow-orange color that makes me happy - but one can see how these birds just sort of throw themselves in the air towards their next destination ! LOL



Thanks for stopping by and take care !

Tooth Fairy money, rain and a cute little swamp sparrow !

This morning, Rafael showed me the 5$ bill that the Tooth Fairy left for him under his pillow ! He had a big smile on his face ! I asked him if he wanted to deposit it in his bank account.

"Huh-huh", he said, shaking his head.
" Are you storing it in your wallet ?" I pursued.
"No, I will be using it later on today to buy some batteries for my flashlight and other battery-operated objects that I have."

And that's what he did. After dinner DH and Rafael went out to do two very quick errands. Rafael came back with 5$ worth of batteries, saying that it was 1$ for 4 batteries so he got 20 batteries. I commented that he could have bought less batteries at a time and save the rest of the money for later. He said that his father told him (after telling him pretty much the same suggestions as me, about saving, letting the store shelve the products instead of it taking up space in our home, etc) that that's how he will learn the value of money : by making his own choices. So true ! I remember my parents doing the same thing, letting us figure out the best way to spend-save our money by trial and error. Perhaps Rafael will realize in the future that it might have been better to buy less batteries at a time and save the rest of his money. But knowing him, most likely, he will use ALL of those batteries without wasting any. Besides, like he pointed out, it's almost camping-season and he will be using his flashlight a lot besides his other battery-operated gadgets! LOL

After my morning's teaching, I stopped by Scrapbox to see the store owner about those Impressabilities that I bought for my school about 2-3 weeks ago. Without wanting to do any play on words here, I wasn't impressed at all at the embossed impressions I got with the Impressabilities (with the school Cuttlebug). The embossing was very faint, not a neat embossed result like with the Cuttlebug embossing folders. The store owner graciously offered me a store credit and I got some beautiful Basic Grey paper from the very vibrant Lime Rickey collection instead. Those will do just fine for my students Father's Day project - and I bought 5 sheets for myself. I will definitely be challenging myself to use these new pps VERY SOON as the big scrap stash that I already have is the main reason why I've cut down drastically on scrap purchases since last December. I am so happy about that ! :)

And we had more rain today ! As soon as I got out of the bus around 1:30 p.m., it started to pour. I was ready though, with my umbrella in hand. I enjoyed my ride in a double-decker city bus (OC Transpo) - it was my first time sitting on the second floor of this kind of bus. Very cool ! The only drawback about the rain these past two days was that I couldn't go and photograph birds. Yes, I'm THAT addicted to photography ! LOL

I'm leaving you with this lovely bird, a swamp sparrow, that I shot a few weeks ago in our backyard ! It reminds me of the penguins' babies, with all that softness and grey color. My son and nephew, who are both enamoured of penguins, have each this very soft and cuddly baby penguin stuffed toy - hence the comparison with the swamp sparrow !

Hopefully, I'll be posting some of my new layouts this weekend .... if I have the time to scan them in between writing my students' report cards !

Take care !

Great Blue Heron and a lost tooth !

Yesterday evening, I drove down to Petrie Island in the hope that I would have the opportunity to photograph some birds - yeah, it's getting to be an obsession. ;) I was secretly hoping to see a heron, as herons are my favorite type of birds. A good example of how effective visualisation is, as I was driving over the bridge leading to the island, I spotted this heron standing in the water at the far end of a part of the island. :)

Keeping my enthusiasm in check in order not to be disappointed if the heron left before I would get to see and photograph him, I put on my boots to trudge into the woodsy muddy area to the end of this part of the island, and lo and behold, this beautiful heron was still standing there, quietly. Awww ! I snapped quite a bit of photos of this beautiful bird, in different light settings as well as a couple of beavers swimming in front of me. There is something so serene and peaceful about herons that I just love ! They have a contemplative quality to them, almost like they are meditating, which appeals to me. Here he is (click on the photo to view it bigger).


I almost missed the heron taking flight a few minutes later as I was busy snapping photos of one of the beavers swimming away. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the heron starting to move. So I turned my camera to the heron and although I didn't have time to change the settings on my camera to follow the heron in sharp focus while in flight, I am pretty impressed with this photo nevertheless. Slowly but surely, I am bettering my photographic abilities in regards to birds, which is my goal in photography for this year.


In a totally different world, Rafael lost another tooth this morning ! Here's his smile tonight, just before going to bed. He lost the tooth that was at the left of the two front teeth. I asked him tonight what he had done with his tooth and to my surprise, he had already put his tooth in a plastic container and placed it under his pillow ! He hadn't bothered to do that for the previous lost tooth so I thought that it was over for him, the Tooth Fairy thing ! Apparently not ! LOL I asked him how much he thought the Tooth Fairy gave for 9 year old boy's lost tooth ... he didn't know ! LOL



I'm still really tired, in spite of having napped 3 hours this afternoon so I'm going to bed in a few minutes ! I'm still itching to finish this layout sitting patiently on my scrap table but it will have to wait until tomorrow afternoon, when I am more alert than today. LOL I had much difficulty in staying awake on the way home in the bus this afternoon ! LOL Talk about being tired ! The rainy weather didn't help either as far as feeling lethargic !

Take care !

Nature lover ...

I've always been a nature lover - something about nature draws me very close to it. I feel in tune with nature. One could say that nature calls me. I alsonhave very fond memories of all the camping outings that I did as a child with my family.

Most of this past weekend was spent in nature with my family. On Friday night, we went to Andrew Haydon's Park in Nepean where we saw more sweet babies of Canada geese along with Orioles in flowering trees and some cute squirrels. Saturday morning, we went to Petrie's Island and I was so excited to spot a yellowlegs sandpiper (type of bird). I recognized the bird as a sandpiper because during the years pre-Rafael, I used to spent many many hours rubberstamping and my stamps of sandpiper were some of my favorites ! It's amazing all of the flowers' and animals' names that I learned through my rubberstamps ! I crouched on the side of the road near the sandpiper for quite a bit, taking many photos of it which got the attention of several photographers who stopped their car to come and join me in an impromptu photo session of the sandpiper ! Photography is very addicting !

On Sunday, we went ambling in the Arboretum and admired some little baby ducks and a cute baby squirrel high up in a tree. Photos to come during the next few days of all of those outings. Rafael has started to be interested in photography and was using our compact Canon to shoot his interests ! Fun !

This morning, I had 2 extra free periods as our grade 6 students (to whom I teach English and arts) were writing the provincial testing. So I took this free time to prepare the scrapbook that our school (adults and students) are making for our colleague who is retiring in just about 3 short weeks ! I was happy to have this project underway ! Now it's up to each class to decorate-draw-write a double-page in the album. I'll be putting everything together plus the finishing touches.

Then this afternoon, I had 3 free hours before an appointment on Montréal Road so I decided to spend it in Petrie's Island. It was just beautiful and serene with the sun shining and lots of birds chirping. Many turtles were sunning on a log on the river, some squirrels were running after each other, many red-winged blackbirds were calling to each other, some goldfinches were going from tree to tree and a gorgeous woodpecker was pecking at a tree. Did I mentioned how much I love nature ? Hum, yeah ! :)

I also admired this lovely fiddlehead which had grown amongst ferns ! I've been fond of fiddleheads ever since I ate some delicious cooked fiddleheads picked out by hand by my boyfriend's mother in my early twenties. Yum ! This lovely woman had thought it quite appropriate to have me taste fiddleheads back then since I was studying violin at Ottawa University ! :) To this day, I love to admire fiddleheads' lovely curls because they remind me of the love I had for the lively and fun mother of my first boyfriend. Here's a fiddlehead ...


My son's class started writing the Ontario provincial testing today. Rafael was somewhat anxious about it but all went well and he's looking forward to it tomorrow. Yay for Rafael ! :)

I went back to Petrie's Island tonight and photographed more of lovely nature ! More photos and layouts to come very soon !

This will conclude this post tonight as I'm starting a cold and I'm tired of hearing myself sniffling LOL. So I'm going straight to bed with some cold medicine and most likely, I'll be feeling better in the morning ! Thanks for dropping by and have a good night !

Some sweetness !

Last night, we were driving along Ottawa Parkway (Promenade des Outaouais) when I saw some Canada Goose along with lots of goslings. DH made a right turn in the closest parking lot along the river and off I went to see up close those cuties !

Isn't this gosling absolute sweetness !!! I was sitting inches away from the whole family which consisted of 4 adults and over 50 goslings, clicking away ! I took literally hundreds of photos of them, mostly of the goslings - more than 1000 actually but deleted at least 400 yesterday and more today. I also saw a beaver in the water and a couple of wood ducks - I had never seen those IRL before.

Here's a shot of the 4 adults and their kidlets ! They would take a LOT of place in a restaurant, were they to reserve a table for their whole family !!! LOL

I have a new LO almost completed ! So excited about that ! I would have finished it already were it not for my passion for photography and the lovely weather we're having ! We went out early this morning and got some great photo ops, then went out again tonight after dinner and got more photo ops ! So lots of photos to share in the coming days and weeks !

I can't wait for school to be over so that I can have more, MUCH more time to cycle, scrap and take loads of photos in nature spots !

Time to wrap up the day ! Have a great evening !