Will You Be Watching?

Today I'm going to add a few pictures I took while I was "at the Royal Wedding"!

Hope you enjoyed the special day.

Congratulations to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge!

Earlier this week I was thinking about the wedding...

The Royal Wedding Program is now available online.
I am looking forward to watching William and Kate as so many of you will be.   A couple of weeks ago I was going through the window seat in my daughter's room and I came across a book of her paper dolls. 
The book included the Royal Wedding clothes and so I decided to dress Charles and Diana in their finery and pair them with something from my childhood.   I still have a bronzed Coronation Coach pulled by eight tiny white horses, given to me by an aunt. 
When Elizabeth was crowned as Queen Elizabeth II, each child in our school was given an evergreen seedling and I can remember planting it in our backyard. We moved from that house a few years later so I don't know how long the seedling survived but perhaps I'll drive by one of these years to see if I can see it above the roof...
Will you be "at the wedding" ?
Cheers to William and Kate and the best of luck to them both!

Our Church

 

I'd like to introduce you to our family's church.  

St Andrew's Cathedral in Victoria BC is a Heritage site. It's where I sat in the third floor choir loft as a toddler while my father sang in the choir. I still remember the size of the pipe organ.  It's where we attended church for the 21 years I lived in Victoria and it's the church 

that my great grandfather was the original contractor for.

AEneas McDonald (spelled differently in these photos of newspaper articles), had an inheritance from France and with that to back him, was awarded the contract to build St Andrew's.  He brought marble columns from Ottawa, Ontario and they were erected at the sides of the church doors but at some point his partner ran away with the rest of their funds and he lost the contract.
My great grandfather, shown here with his youngest daughter and my father, was a skilled carpenter and worked for many years to help complete the cathedral.  My grandmother remembered climbing up seven flights of stairs into the spire to take her father his lunch. My grandmother's aunt was hired as an organist.

In my mosaic below, the top left and bottom right photos were taken by my grandfather. The others are from the BC Archives which is a fascinating place to look for historical pictures of British Columbia.

St Andrew's is a church filled with memories for my family and we are proud to say that our great grandfather had a hand in building such a wonderful cathedral.


All my pictures  and collages can be enlarged by clicking once.

Hope you're enjoying a wonderful Easter weekend! I'd like to thank Olga for teaching me how to dye eggs in a lovely way.  I had been thinking of using onion skins but was so pleased that Olga shared her method of imprinting parsley leaves on her Easter Eggs.  I used celery leaves and I think it would work well with any small leaf or flower.  I only tried a few eggs so I just used the skins from 4 or 5 purple onions.  I had hard boiled my eggs first so the lighter one was just dipped in the onion water for a minute or so.  The darker eggs were boiled in the onion skin water after I had boiled the skins and let the water cool.  Stop by to see Olga at her Home and Garden Blog to read her full instructions if you have time today.  You'll be glad you did!

Melting Moments

The melt has started but things are changing slowly...very slowly. 

We actually had a day early last week where the land was looking almost brown but that was followed by a day of "white precipitation", a sunny day and then a spring storm.  

I needed to get to the city, so because of the forecast, drove in a day early. 

After watching the wet snow come down heavily all day,  my daughter and I enjoyed 

the last opera of the season. 

 The wonderfully strong voices and the beautiful sets of Tosca made it our favorite.
My daughter had already taken me to "La Boheme" in October
and then wrapped the remaining three sets of tickets up for Christmas.
I was so surprised to open her gift and have enjoyed each night at the opera.
It's always fun to go shopping in the city and enjoy a restaurant meal as well.

 
Otherwise, we're still waiting and watching the coming of spring.
We have 60 acres of bush and the canal that goes through it was filled with runoff last week.
The temperature is cold again but hopefully by the end of next week
the weather will be warmer and we'll see more color.

Hope your spring has arrived in your corner of the world!
You might enjoy some visits to the creative bloggers who link to Mary's Little Red House each week.
The mosaics can be enlarged by a click.  Your comments are appreciated.  Sunshine Always!

Spring Fever

I find I'm smiling more often these days.  

One can't help but smile when we've had 10 straight days above freezing.  

The snow melts every day and although we can't predict when it will be all gone, 

it's wonderful to make a little progress every day. 

Our dear cat, Princess, is so happy these days and she seems to be doing 

all kind of crazy things this spring.  

She may have been acting up for my camera but she's usually not like this!

In my Happy Face mug is a mixture of silk mini sunflowers and plastic- 

yes - Plastic Lily of the Valley, which were always in a little vase on our family table.  

I love having something we had when I was 9 or 10!  

Do you still have something from your childhood? 

This was sunset tonight...Spring's coming at long last!
I'm linking to Mary's Signs of Spring tonight.  Keep smiling!

"My Voice"

Every weekday begins the same on the farm.  We always watch Canada AM on CTV.  This morning I was so excited because one of the segments featured a young man, Alex Levy, who in the past two years has researched and designed a Communication Aid,
"My Voice", for mobile technology.

The family of Bill Scott, a stroke victim, had asked Alex if something could be done to help Bill communicate. Alex took up the challenge and two years later there is an App that can be used with Smart Phones, I Phones and I Pads, Tablets and other mobile devices.
Alex says this App can be downloaded for free at http://myvoiceaac.com/

Be sure to listen to the video which is at the top of the page.  I'm hoping one of our relatives can benefit from the use of this technology and I can't wait to tell my deaf friend about this amazing invention.  Technology has certainly changed our world and today I'm hoping this new App will make a great difference for many people who face communication challenges.

Spring Tulips

I'm happy to say the melt has started. It's wonderful to look out and watch the snow shrinking in height. A few more days above zero and we might be looking out at bigger snow free patches of land.

When I was in Holland in 2004 I decided that wooden clogs were too big for my backpack of souvenirs so my daughter and I each picked 3 wooden tulips to bring back.  Yesterday the soil in my front porch pot was still frozen but I managed to poke all 6 in and now we have some spring flowers.

Yesterday we hopped across huge puddles and driveway ruts to go for a walk down the road which is bare.  I took along a plastic bag and grabbers to collect litter. I didn't collect much but as the snow melts it will accumulate. The closest Orange Julius counter is an hour and a half away by car and it amazes me that whoever threw away two paper cups along this stretch of desolate farmland couldn't wait to get home to throw out their garbage.  Our road doesn't lead directly anywhere.   It's 6 or 7 miles to the east before you come to a T junction that leads to more farmland and along this stretch of road there may be 10 or 12 farm houses on roads leading off our road.  These people drive along the road each time they drive to the closest town so will spot their debris as the snow melts.  It's hard to figure out the logic of people who litter.

When I was a child there was a campaign in our city to encourage children in particular to put their garbage in the brightly painted "Garbage Gobblers".  I seem to remember they were green and looked something like monsters.  Our generation seems to have learned not to litter.  It's rare to see older people walk away from their tables in the food court or fast food restaurant without doing their best to clear everything off.  We are the ones who had plastic litter bags given out by the gas stations hanging from a knob on the instrument panel of the car and our children's litter was deposited inside and emptied at home or at the next place we stopped.

When we moved here from BC, our small town had a couple of oak half barrels here and there but they weren't enough.  My daughter was interviewing the mayor as part of a grade 7 school project and she had seen 5 gallon recycled plastic pails attached to telephone poles in another small town.  When the mayor asked if she had any suggestions, she described the idea to him.  Well, before long town council agreed and they ordered blue mesh buckets with liners and a drop bottom and within a short time these were placed n telephone poles along the streets. It made an amazing difference to the litter problem downtown.   Well, I've had my turn on the soapbox today....

I'm looking forward to reading what others are doing as Spring arrives or approaches at
Mary's Little Red House this week.

I love this three fold greeting card by Marjolein Bastin that my sister sent to me years ago.  I frame it every spring just to add a touch of spring in the house.  Hope that your tulips will be blooming soon. Sunshine Always!