Cape Breton Adventure

This past weekend Greg and I packed up our snowshoes and headed out with some friends to spend a few days in Cape Breton - where there is snow!

We stayed just outside of Baddeck in cottages and had a beautiful view of the Bras d'Or Lake.

We had lunch and headed out on Saturday afternoon for a great snowshoe through the trails behind the cottages. There were some hilarious adventures through the woods on no path in particular - thankfully I had my Garmin to track just how far we went (6.07km to be precise!):

Some interesting finds along the trail:

On Sunday we packed up after a lovely evening and lazy morning to head towards Usige Ban Falls. We were treated by an amazing (mostly) frozen waterfall and an excellent trail. It was really perfect for snowshoeing, particularly because of the fresh falling snow.

I tried to set up for a group picture before we took off, but my first attempt wasn't successful:

I took a bit of video one this hike:



This hike was a bit shorter, 5.22km:

Saturday Hike

Before all of the snow melted away (again) a group of us decided to take a walk through the woods:

Our walk just happened to be on mountain bike trails, so it was well decorated:

We found a geocache - despite not geocaching:

And an old truck, complete with bullet holes?

Delightful company:

Beautiful Dresses

Spending some time on Pinterest tonight I spotted a series of beautiful dresses. They are full of frills and layers and comfortable looking material. They are unfortunately on very skinny models:

*all pictures from Style Me Pretty*

Book Find

While putting some books away in an elementary school library last week I came across this book and couldn't help but take a picture of it to share:

The hen was my favourite.

Trip To Wentworth

After a two year break I finally made my way back to a ski hill. The break certainly wasn't intentional, it just seemed that I didn't get out. So yesterday Greg and I went to Wentworth yesterday and spent the day throwing ourselves down the hill and had fun doing it.

The hill was pretty worn in by the time we got there (around 11:30) so there were a number of icy patches and on my first run I learned where a few of those were...the hard way. I slipped on my toe edge and landed on my knees - ouch!

Lots of colours! Thankfully with all of my other falls (there were many) I landed on my bum and just kicked up a lot of snow, got up, dusted myself off and kept on my way down the hill. Greg also had his fair share of wipe outs, but I seemed to take the cake in the bruise department!

Homemade Granola Bars

I like granola bars. Unfortunately they have lots of packaging and many have ingredients that I can't eat (lactose, gluten). To fix this predicament I decided to make my own granola bars.

Here's the recipe that I tried out to make these yummy bars:

I did make some changes to the recipe - I left out the chocolate and didn't use as much cinnamon (we had very little left!), but it turned out really good. I'm wondering if they will freeze since I don't think I can eat this many before they go off.

Next time I'll also make them thinner, these are particularly thick!

The Most Quilting

I decided to up my quilting challenge and made a rather stitch heavy table runner. I made it to be used as a very large pot holder so there is a double layer of batting between the two layers of fabric.

By the end of the process my sewing machine was very, very upset with me. But it worked out and I am really happy with the result:

A closer look at the stitching, the right hand side picture is the backing, despite being one solid piece of fabric the stitch pattern makes it look interesting:

Post Christmas

We de-Christmas'd our house today. We had one very, very dry tree. Here is some of the carnage:

I really had no idea how dry it was until we started taking the ornaments off - I was happy to be wearing glasses since the needles seemed to fly off the branches!

Winter Find

I wonder what else will be revealed when the snow melts?

New Years Eve

After a wonderful evening with friends followed by fireworks I looked like this:

I was also wearing snowpants and monster big boots - I was prepared.

Happy New Year!

PS. None of the fuzz is real fur!

Plant Sitting

Greg and I volunteered to plant sit our neighbour's peace lily while she was out of town over the holidays. Our instructions were: you will know when to water it, it will wilt.

So before heading out for our own Christmas vacation we filled up the plant with water and hoped for the best.

This is what we came home to:

This is most certainly not the plant we left and were hoping that this is just what wilting looks like. Thankfully we were right and after lots of water and less than 12 hours it came back:

A true Christmas miracle!