December, 2015

This morning the weather network says its -12 at our house but in fact it is -23!  Going to be a beautiful sunny day which means we will have bright moonlight tonight for New Year’s Eve.  Darren and khloe are coming to spend the night with us, if it isn’t too cold we will have a bonfire and roast some marshmallows.  

Working in my office today, only +5 so I have my propane heater going and will hang out in the house until it’s closer to +20.  Nice to be working my own hours!  

Happy new year everyone!  May 2016 be everything it wish it to be plus more!  

Stay tuned…

Something I had never done until last week was work at a ski resort.  Hildur has me working mostly weekends bartending but it’s been the holidays so I just came off 4 shifts in a row.  Once the kids are back in school I will go back to weekends only.   Mostly we serve specialty coffees and just a bit of beer, wine and liqueurs.  Yesterday was screaming busy and I ended up selling lift passes for a few hours on my till because the lineup was so long at the main ticket booth.  They hire from around the world so we have a few auzzies, German and Swiss people working with us.  The photo is James, the other bartender, he is from Australia and we work together most of the time as I am only there when it’s busy.   Everyone is super nice and friendly so it’s a really fun atmosphere.  Really enjoying bartending again after being away from it for over 25 yrs!  

This track was right outside my office, they are getting more and more used to us.  It dawned on me the other day that if there is a lot for the predators to eat, they will be less likely to come after our dogs… Hopefully.  Barry saw a wolf on the highway within our property lines the other day so good thing there is a lot of other critters for them to snack on.  It’s also reassuring knowing the forest across the highway is chalked full of critters.  Love seeing that!  It all works in our favor.  We have moose tracks but haven’t seen him yet.  
  

Stay tuned…

Lily has totally healed and is back to her old self.  She loves chasing the ball and wasn’t allowed for about a month so she is so happy to be able to play again.  She was a great patient and only got caught licking her wound once.  If she even sniffed it we would throw the cone on her, she caught on to that pretty fast and left it alone so she was able to go without the cone or a covering which she preferred.  The day she was supposed to go get the stiches out it was freezing rain so we cancelled the appointment and I took the stitches out.  Having a brother who plays hockey gives you experience in taking out stitches.  We cherish our Lily and realized how much we really love her when she was injured.  We are very happy she is all better.  

She had 3 legs shaved from the operation so I gave her a good hair cut to even it out so now she wears Hershey’s old sweater to keep her warm… She loves it!  Fits her perfectly too!  

When we first took her to the vet, Barry was putting her back in the car and a lady recognized her, turned out her father had bred lily and she said she has such a distinct look she knew it was her right away… Small town stuff!  

This year we had Darren with us for Christmas.  I cooked a ham and we had kale salad (new recipe and so yummy), stuffed mushrooms, roasted carrots and mashed potatoes.  I got a kitchenaid mix master so we had to have some eggnog with whip cream… OMG is that good!  And a million calories!  The mix master was the highlight of the year but we got so many nice gifts! 
 Nick and Stacey made these awesome gifts out of antlers.  Nick made Barry the keychain, so cool, looks like a big tooth. And Stacey made my pendent.  She used earrings she’s had for many years for the charm and now we have matching necklaces, such a nice gift from the heart.  They are selling these now and I’m hoping we will be able to carry them at the Frog on the Bog.  

Barry got the first season of Kojak so we started watching that…. Who loves ya baby?  Hahaha, he has some really funny lines… classic!   He also got the first 2 Ian Flemming, James Bond novels from the kids… Casino Royale and Live and Let Die, he’s really excited to get reading them.  If he likes them I’ll slowly buy him the full set, there are 12 all together.  I can’t wait to read them  too!  

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!
   

I haven’t been posting because I’ve been having problems with my app that I use to blog with.  It seems to be working a bit better today so bare with me… 

It looks like we will be having a white Christmas, we weren’t sure for a while there, it wasn’t looking good which is strange since so many ski hills around BC opened early. Troll opens tomorrow and I’m working my first shift at the bar, looking forward to that! Time to pull out the snow shoes as well.  The snow was so deep today that Mini couldn’t follow Barry down the driveway so Lily stayed with her, after all it is her job. Barry shoveled this strip so they had some where to go until he plowed.  
  
   
  

Darren is off work so he will be here on and off for the next few weeks. He will go pick Khloe up on Boxing Day and bring her out so looking forward to having a kid around this year.  

It will be years before we get our gallery rebuilt so we decided to rent out the sign space.  We also got the gig to produce the sign so extra bonus!  We did a bunch for the ski hill as well, I’ll post those once they are installed.  Getting lots of work!  
   
 

Lily is so cuddly, she is our teddy bear… So much love!  
  

Her leg is almost totally healed.  She wears a light sock at night and when we aren’t with her just to keep her from licking otherwise she doesn’t have anything on it.  Only 3 small spots left to heal, she’s almost home free.  

Stay tuned… 

Our large population of rabbits has brought more then Lynx and coyotes.  This little guy is a pine Martin and he is here for the rabbits as well.  He is in the weasel family so a nasty little scrapper.  The dogs treed this little guy in. The trees at the top of the driveway, I was having my morning tea in my chair and I heard a ruckus and then saw this brown critter scoot up the tree.  We got the dogs inside then had a photo shoot.  We got many very good shots of him before we backed off and he scooted off into a thicket that is heavily populated with bunnies.  He was super cute!!  We are saving the best photos for painting.  He was  larger then a ferret but had the long sleek body and big tail.  Later that day an ermin came out from behind the cold storage building and headed to the house… Probably mouse hunting!  Go for it little buddy!    Mini and I both saw him from the front window and off she went.  There was about 3″ of fresh snow and she went back over his trail sticking her nose right down inside every divot he made.   Big excitement, this kept the dogs busy for the next week.  

  
Then the day we were installing the Taco sign, I was walking over to the studio and just past the shop I saw one scoot across the road in front of me (on the old road on our property, not on the highway).  He was long gone by the time I got there so I took a photo of his tracks cause they were so perfect.  

When Cam and Carola visited with us this summer, Carola asked if she could do a load of laundry.  Barry, being the jokester he is dug up this laundry plunger that someone left here.  We didn’t know what it was until Barry saw one at Karen’s and she explained it.  Carola fell for it and actually thought this was how I did the wash… We all had a good laugh then we showed her the washer and dryer.  Recently we had a bit of a cold spell and the water line to the office froze, we hadn’t filled the tank and there wasn’t any snow to melt so I gave it a try and it works amazing!   I was very impressed!  So this post is for Carola!  After all the laughter, it works great.  You do have to ring everything out before putting it in the dryer so more work but a great back up.  

My dad made us 2 bat boxes a few years back and we were having a problem finding the best location for them.  This summer while working in his shop, Barry had a bat flying around and he realized they were living in the rafters.  This is on the south facing wall above the bay door.  It gets full sun all day and they have plenty of room to get in.  I was surprised they were living there, the “rules” say they want to be near water.  The small creeks down there tend to dry up each summer.  We will see if they find it and move in, hope so!