A brand new year coming...

I can't believe that New Year's Eve has arrived and that tomorrow will be the start of 2008. And even more than that, I can't believe that we already have our sweet baby boy when I was all prepared to be a January mommy. The last 16 days have been amazing. Hard, no doubt about it, but amazing all the same.

Connor is doing great... a few fussy nights that left me feeling like I was at the end of my rope but, thankfully, Dave is off for a month and takes Connor in the morning for a bottle feeding and I get to sleep for a few hours at the minimum. I can't say enough about how good he's been to me. And my parents were equally fantastic for their week and a half visit. Mom did my laundry and kept my kitchen cleaned, Dad kept the driveway and deck shoveled and both would hold Connor at the drop of a hat. LOL We miss having them here!

One of Connor's favourite things is his swing. A friend of ours gave us the swing and I'm so amazed at how fantastic it is. He naps in it after feeding, allowing me to actually get some stuff done around the house! I do think, however, that as much as he loves his swing, he might be getting a bit tired of my camera!!!

He's so alert and he has those great big eyes. I can't wait to see what colour they end up being but apparently I have to wait for quite a while to find out!

I absolutely love just relaxing with him (even if I do hate how my neck looks in this picture! LOL)

As you can see, when our boy naps, he naps HARD! All limp and out like a light!


So, from our family to yours, Happy New Year everyone!!!

Nursery progress... full steam ahead...

Wow... I'm so behind!! Who knew that a baby could be so time consuming??

LOL Yes, yes, I'm joking.

Okay, so a few pictures. As those of you who have been following my blog know, Dave decided to rip out a wall to find out why the room destined to become the baby's nursery was so cold all the time. A problem that has been nicely rectified.

So now, repair work commences. Obviously we're (and by we, I mean, Dave) not finished but
I thought it would be kind of cool to post an update since there's drywall up, then primer, and now, tonight PAINT!! Woohoo!

So... to start, the picture of the wall all ripped up... This is what I came home to that night!


Next came the insulating and repairs! We'll make that room warm for our baby, dammit!


Dave got the drywall up, slowly but surely since work kept interfering. Curse that need to earn a paycheque!! Of course, progress was stalled when Peanut decided to make an early arrival on December 15th (see below... hehehe) and we had the most beautiful boy in the world, Connor! Suddenly the relatively minor inconvenience of the soon-to-be nursery being ripped up was a BIG inconvenience.

Still, we brought Connor home, my parents came to visit to meet their first grandbaby and to help out and Dave set to work on taping, mudding, then sanding!! And more sanding. More mud... more sanding... Ah well, you get the idea!


With the taping, mudding, and sanding complete, it was time to prime those newly finished walls!

And finally, our neutral colour for the walls. A nice ivory beige. Next up he'll be putting up the wainscoating - which will be getting painted a really nice green - and a chair rail that will be a nice jersey cream. I'll post more pictures as progress continues but we're closer to a finished nursery and less chaos here at the homestead!!


And tomorrow I think I'll give into temptation and post a few more pictures of my boy. Hehehehe... he's my favourite topic these days but don't worry, I'll post other pictures too. Maybe I'll be able to get out of the house to take some other pictures soon!

Under the Blue Lights...

Connor is healthy and beautiful but he was, unfortunately, jaundiced. His levels seemed okay when the skin was tested but the whites of his eyes were very yellow so we went to the lab for blood tests (my baby's poor little heel) and waited for the doctor to call with the results.


When she called, it was to send us into the hospital so he could be treated with phototherapy. He had to sleep in an incubator under a blue LED light (pictured immediately below this paragraph), mostly naked, for two days and nights to clear up the jaundice. It was hard seeing him all tucked up in there, not able to hold him at all. With the mesh and eye/ear pads over his head. I cannot imagine how parents handle it when their child has a serious life threatening disease.

Still, Connor handled it like a trooper and after the two days was up and his billirubin levels had been tested again and were definitely way down, we were sprung from the hospital and happily headed for home!

So... a few pictures of Connor's adventure under the bright blue lights!



And one more, just because I'm a sucker for those big eyes of his!

Life changing events...

On December 15th, we had an unexpected disruption to the everyday routines of our lives. My water broke and our baby decided to join us early!

Connor was born at 10:01 pm on December 15th at a healthy 8 pounds, 1 ounce. And that's three weeks early! I'm actually a bit happy he decided to come early! Any bigger and I might have passed out! As it was, at one point I cried out "I can't do this" as I tried to push the head out. Fortunately Dave was a rock and helped me keep my breathing steady and focus on the "fun" of pushing.

Still, it was all worth it, of course, since the end result was my sweet little son. I can't believe just how much my life changed in that one moment!

Welcome to the world, Connor. Mommy and Daddy are so happy to meet you!

Festive Lights

I went outside a couple weeks ago and wrapped a few strings of lights around the railings to give the house a bit more festive sparkle. They're LED lights and I'm still torn on them. I like the energy savings and all that but a big part of me still prefers the twinkle of traditional lights. They're just brighter and warmer.

I keep hoping that now that they've made a warmer white LED light, they'll be able to make similar adjustments to the other colours.

Still, the fact that they're cool means that the snow that fell yesterday (all day!) piled up on the lights and didn't melt around them, giving me a cool effect for pictures tonight! The first one is probably my favourite, just because of how the snow pile is glowing but I also like the reflections of the colours in the second one!

Cranberries about to be Sauced

So, this week's contest topic was food and I wanted something vibrant. Which brought the cranberries to mind. There's nothing better with turkey for me than homemade cranberry sauce.

I really like the way the stainless steel pot catches the reflections! And I even like those first few wisps of steam!

Penny for your thoughts...

I emptied out my change purse today and was amazed at how many pennies were in there. And, for some reason I just felt inclined to take a picture of them.

What the heck. That's what this challenge is all about, right?

Now I just have to figure out what food to photograph for the challenge! Let's see... I already did pomegranates... Hmmmmmm...

An older pic...

I didn't get any pictures done today. Just one of those days, you know? Tired and not feeling great and trying to get some of the mess cleaned up for the furniture delivery tomorrow.

So I'm pulling out a picture from this summer. It was taken at the Sun Yet-Zsu gardens in Vancouver's Chinatown.

It's a double-sided silk embroidery of peonies and a hundred butterflies done in the mid-1900s... artist unknown.

I was fascinated by the colour. And by the fact that the silk that the peonies and butterflies are embroidered on is so delicate you can barely see it. The whole thing is under glass, of course, and the colours are just beautiful.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll be up to catching something new!

So many choices...

So today I had to pick out the pain for the new walls. Not that we're at the painting stage yet but we had the colours picked for the wainscoating and the chair rail so I had to pick a complimentary colour for the wall itself.

In the process of choosing the colours, I was taken with how cool all the paint samples looked so I couldn't resist taking a picture or two.

Honey, I can explain!

Yesterday, my internet did the big old crash and burn. I went to make a post and, presto, no joy.

Grrr...

But, today, I am back. And the picture has a story behind it.

One that I'm sure I will laugh about in the years to come.

Naw, who am I kidding, I'm laughing now.

So, today I go out to Earl's with some of the girls from work. While we're enjoying our food and chat, I get a call on my cell phone. Hubby's the only one who calls me on the phone so I answered with apologies to my friends.

Now, when I left with the girls to go and have lunch, hubby was working on the baby's room. Putting up wainscoating, which we would then paint and put up a chair rail. That's the plan and he was hoping to have it all done this weekend.

So why the phone call? Well, long story short, he wanted to let me know he had ripped out the one wall in the baby's room so I wouldn't be shocked when I got home.

Yes. You heard me right. No more drywall... just studs. Apparently there was a cold draft coming out of the electrical socket. And we needed to check this. I get that. But ripping out the wall? Save me.

So, tomorrow will be drywall day. The only problem? Errr... another problem... we have these textured walls throughout the house that you can't really paint so eventually he'll want to redo all the walls so the room looks right.

That's right. You guessed it. They're all coming down. He's gutting the whole kit and caboodle.

Save me.

Holy Hitchcock!

Okay, not the prettiest pictures because they were taken around a dumpster by a restaurant but still.

These are ravens. Not crows. No... crows, for all that they're called murders when they're in a group... just aren't as big as these guys. Somehow the word raven just suits them better. I swear, they're more than half the size of my cockapoo. And fear of humans isn't really in their lexicon. Oh, don't get me wrong, they'll fly away if you run at them but when they look at you, you just don't get the feeling they're especially scared of you.

Which is why, every time I see them, I think of Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" and wonder...

Scarves...

I knit a very little bit. Very little bit. One of the things that I've knit have been scarves. Very straightforward because that's really all I know how to do.

So, this picture is of three of my scarves, colourful things that they are. Purple, red, and blue. The wool for them is a "boa" kind of wool and very glossy so they caught the light very well when I took the picture.

Still, it's a nice punch of colour on a cold winter's day!

But baby it's warm inside...

This morning, I started the car and looked up at the house of the neighbour behind us. And was juts tickled, for some strange reason, by the ice around this little chimney vent thingy...

Yes, I know. Terribly technical language. I'll try not to get carried away by it.

Anyway, I figured I'd try to catch a shot of it but, surprise surprise the light was uncooperative today. Alas... bad lighting. Then I moved, looking for a more cooperative angle when I saw the image I captured for the second picture. It was beautiful, so gold and warm. And it's also about the brightest we got all day.

So, timing really is everything, I guess. And I'm going to hope for betting lighting so I can catch a better shot of the ice tomorrow!

Oh Christmas Tree...

I tried to resist... tried to save the Christmas pictures until closer to the actual time. But I couldn't. All I had in my head today was Christmas decorations. Christmas lights. Each time I tried to go out and do some pics, Christmas dominated my mind.

So I gave up and decided that if I was going to play with Christmas pics, I'd at least tinker with some low light level ones and see what happened.

I'm not overjoyed with the results but I do like the colours in the first one. And the second one kind of draws my eye, almost like some kind of abstract art. I'm definitely going to spend more time tinkering with low level light though!

An older pic - splash of colour

This is an older picture, taken in 2003, actually, in my first foray into digital photography. I didn't get a chance to take any pictures today because we're putting up Christmas decorations. I think impending fatherhood has traumatized hubby's brain because he's gotten really into the Christmas decorating this year! Usually he just groans - quietly - and tries to minimize my insanity.

I freely admit I have a bit of an obsession with Christmas lights. Hehehehe...

Anyway, I'll probably take some pictures tonight but just in case, I wanted to post this splash of colour. A selection of sarongs hanging together during a summer street mall in my hometown. It always cheers me up to see all the bright colours and given the theme this week, it was just sitting in my mind!

It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas...

We went out shopping today to buy a new Christmas tree and some more decorations since our last tree was very small. So while I we were shopping, I was thinking about my favourite decorations. And I decided that's what I would post tonight.

So, these are my two favourite Christmas decorations for our tree. The first is a favourite because when I gave it to hubby, he laughed so hard he had tears in his eyes. Now I have one that's the Christmas version of the cup. Hehehe...

The second is one that I got in 2004 and it made me cry when a student gave it to me. I dragged that student, kicking and screaming it seemed, through his Grade 12 courses with me. He came to visit me the following year, in tears, to hug me and tell me he had passed his courses and that he was sure it was because of me.

Zen

I have a little Zen garden. Nothing elaborate, just a small black square container with a little rake, some rocks and a candle.

It came with little white rocks, too big to really be called sand. But I bought it with something else in mind anyway so I got rid of the white rocks and replaced it with a coral pink sand that I got while we were traveling through the States.

While on this trip, we stopped at the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park in Utah. The sand is amazingly smooth, each grain (according to the signs) almost perfectly round and a lovely salmon pink colour. The dunes are surrounded by red cliffs, the source of the sand as they erode down and the sand is blown down to create the dunes themselves. All in all, it is breathtaking and unlike anything other sand I've seen. And I figured, since people were out riding quads in the sand, it was okay for me to take some of it in a jar. So, when we got home, I used some of that sand for my little Zen garden, making a unique little momento of our trip.

So... the first three pictures are of my little Zen garden and the last is a picture of the Sand Dunes taken in July of 2005 during our trip.

Bonsai

Today I was sitting watching TV, just kind of off in space. At some point, one of the dogs jumped up and almost knocked my little bonsai tree off the table. So, as I sat there staring at it, I realized I hadn't taken my picture of the day and that the bonsai tree itself is very interesting.

The bark is extremely cool and the leaves are a nice rich green. It's like a little hint of summer when the rest of the world is all snow covered and monochromatic!

Snowscapes

It was an interesting day for light up in the frozen north and since I had to drive hubby out to work, I took advantage of the day to snag a few pictures of the landscapes.

I don't like the cold but I do find the snow pretty and it lends itself well to pictures. And the lighting is always interesting in the winter.

The first picture just looked kind of desolate to me. Pretty in its own way but very much as though the world is asleep beneath the snow. The second picture was interesting to me because of the smoothness of the mounds and the blue tint of the shadows. And the last, well, I like how the snow sparkles in the sun. Even if that does mean it's really cold out!

Take me on a Buggy Ride!

This was my other thought for the contest. It's an old buggy out at the stables near town. But, in the end, it was no contest. I had to do the pocket watch. Still, I like the old snow covered buggy. It's been out in that field for the two years I've been heading out there to take some pictures. There's a beaver pond at the end of the road that I love photographing.

Something old... Antique watch...

The theme for this week is "something old" and as soon as I read the contest theme, I knew what I was going to photograph. Something old indeed.

This is a pocket watch that hubby received after the death of his father. We're still trying to track down the origins of the watch. It has a fairly detailed inscription in the back but it's still going to take some work.

We're not sure where the hallmark is to be found but the closest match for the watch that we've been able to find out places this watch somewhere around 1919. We're going to see about finding out a more precise date for the watch and try to find out more about the story behind it.

I'd also like to look into getting it professionally cleaned and fixed up if possible but I'm not sure about how it works with antiques. Not that anyone will be selling it or anything but we don't want to mess with it given how long it's already lasted. It's obviously a watch that saw use, not just decorative value.

Now I'll just have to pick which one of the pictures I want to put into the contest!