Jacob Post: tooth

Today, my tooth fell out. It's tiny! It hurts, but now I have a weird red root...

Tiny tooth!

Millie's New Dress

Rose doesn't show a lot of interest in dolls, she plays role play games with other things, plastic fairies, animals from the toy pet shop, tooth brushes, that sort of thing but not really with the three actual dolls that she owns.  Every so often I get fed up of finding them lying about the place with nothing on and make something for them to wear in the hope that she'll take an interest in the them.

Here is last night's effort for Millie.

Look, there's Oddsock

Rose chose the fabrics (from my stash), probably wouldn't have been my choice and Millie will be loved for about half a day before she is consigned to the bottom of a box again.  The poor things live like tragic Dickens characters, basking in the sunshine of her love for 10 minutes then cast into the workhouse, forgotten for years.

Wow - I finished something (sort of)

Two blogs in a row, nearly as astonishing as finishing this quilt top.

Isn't it amazing how I gave it such convincing feet

I'm very excited that I actually finished this, serious followers may recognize the fabric as the bargain bundle I bought in April for $11.98.  Now I really can't wait for my new sewing machine to arrive so I can have a go at quilting it.

Rusty Butt

I'm feeling a little guilty for not posting on this address for so long, Tom says that my public (all 5 of you) will think that I succumbed to the mosquito bites and am now expired.

So here I am with not much to say except to share this picture of Rose all dressed for dinner this evening.

The leotard is accessorized with a necklace, sparkly headband and a pink felt butterfly made with a clothes peg - nice.  Tom says (he has a lot of opinions today, must put a stop to that) that she looks like the lead singer of 'Poison', this image is not helped by her spending much of this evening informing us in injured tones that she 'does not have a rusty butt'.  What a joy it is to have children.

Mosquito Bites

On Thursday I got my first proper mosquito bites of the season, there are only four but I reacted quite nicely to them and one had a swelling about 4 inches wide around it.  On Thursday night they itched  so much I hardly slept and stole all the sheet from Tom trying to wrap my arm up in cool bits of cloth.

My usual 'dowse them in olbas oil' remedy that never fails failed so I looked up some more to try on wikiHow...

• Rubbing on Vicks vapour rub didn't work but I guess it's the same as Olbas oil so no surprise there
• Toothpaste didn't work either and it makes you look an idiot when you forget it's there and remove your sweater in public
• Baking soda mixed with water didn't work and stung slightly but even that was a welcome change to be honest
• Dabbing with white wine vinegar (didn't have any of the apple cider variety) didn't make any difference but made me smell like classy salad dressing

I was thinking I should have just bought some antihistamine in town when I tried this one.  Get a wash cloth/flannel and soak it in the hottest water you can bear, hold it (still wet) on the the mosquito bite until it tingles.  Repeat once or twice.  It worked like a dream, all but one of them has stopped itching completely and the swellings have completely gone down.  Apparently, the heat confuses your nerves and causes all the histamine to be released at once, not sure exactly what that means but as I'm no longer going mad with itchiness I don't care.  Wish I'd know about it when I used to get attacked by harvest mites in Arnside.

Techno Disaster at Pinetree Drive

Oh no, my computer is broken!  You press the 'on' button and nothing happens, I think it may have gone to the laptop playground in the sky.  This is not too bad as I can communicate with the outside world via iPad for words and photos taken in the house but so far I've not worked out how to upload anything from my ancient camera.  How will you cope without endless pictures of the Pinery until I work things out?

Today I am announcing the launch of a new blog.  Does having 2 blogs make me a blogger, and does that make me a geek?  Probably not as I don't know enough about what I'm doing on here.

Anyway, that's by the by, the new blog is called Camp Kirstin and will document my efforts to keep the kids from getting bored and driving me round the bend for the whole of the ridiculously long summer break.  Visit today's blog to view our attempt to build a solar still, very useful when we next get stuck on a dessert island.  Obviously I mean a desert island, getting stuck on a dessert island would be a dream come true, especially if I was on holiday when calories don't count.

Oh Canada!

Today is Canada Day, here is a short history lesson for non-Canadians...

Canada Day is the National Day of Canada, the anniversary of the July 1st, 1867 enactment of the British North America Act (today called the Constitution Act) which united the colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and The Province of Canada (now Ontario and Quebec) into a single country called Canada.  It is a big day over here, people celebrate by having BBQs, drinking beer and saying 'Eh?' A lot at the end of sentences.  Also by having big fireworks displays late at night and getting stuck in traffic on the way into Grand Bend.

We managed 2 of the above celebratory activities, we BBQ'd for dinner and drank a moderate amount of Canadian Beer.  Disappointingly I haven't heard anyone say 'eh!' all day, we didn't go into Grand Bend traffic and I'm ready for bed hours before the fireworks are due to start but 2 out of 5 is better than none.

I thought you might not have seen enough pictures of The Pinery recently so we went in search of Tulip Trees, Tanagers and Towees.  Tanagers and Towees are birds so obviously we made far too much noise to see any of them but you can't miss the Tulip Trees, they are huge! They have really deeply ridged bark and very neat flowers, you can see the bark on this rather poor attempt at an arty photo but the flowers are about 100 foot up so its a bit difficult to photograph them.

They also have funny shaped leaves that look like dinosaurs footprints.

Rose decided on an appropriate woodland walk outfit, I suggested a hoodie as it wasn't particularly warm so she hung a string of beads between her shoulders and said it was a sleeveless sweater.  The sparkly Tinkerbell socks with sandals really pulled together the whole look.

'Anyhoo' Happy Canada Day and this cool weather had better buck up pretty soon.