Little Clothes

Today I cracked, I could not bear all the plastic flesh shown off by Barbie's micro-mini any longer so I made her some warm winter clothes out of Rose's cast offs.

How come she has a chaise and I don't?

You may recognize the leggings, I think they looked better on Rose but it has to be said that Barbie looks less like Rod Stewart.  I was fairly gutted that Rose didn't remember them, she wore them so much they got a hole in the crotch, still, it's probably for the best as there may well have been floods of tears about cutting up her lost, favourite trousers.

While I was sewing all the tiny seems and cursing mildly under my breath I remembered Mum making Sindy clothes for us when we were young, she used to do it in the evening so when we got up in the morning Sindy would be posed somewhere in an entirely new outfit.  There was a knee length full skirt worn with knee boots that I particularly liked.  It was quite magical the way they just appeared, like the elves and the shoemaker or the tooth fairy but probably tired-er.

Big Clothes and Little Shoes

Since we moved to Canada I have not bought many new clothes.  I am not a shopaholic at the best of times but the combination of living quite remotely (by my standards if not Canadian ones) and not having got a handle on where to buy things has brought shopping for clothes pretty much to a complete stand still.  The problem is that there is no Next here (or M&S) where all my wardrobe staples came from or La Redoute/Boden where I could get loads of stuff in the post, try it on and send it all back.  As a result I am reduced to wearing the same 3 long sleeved tops in rotation with the same, rather boring but warm blue fleece on top.

On Sunday I decided that was enough and as the weather was warm and the roads were clear we headed down to Sarnia after curling.  Unfortunately/predictably, I came back with nothing, I really have to sort this shopping thing out.

The children did much better, Jacob spent his poster winnings (and a sub from us) on a new logic puzzle DS game.  Here he is in his slightly sock smelling room with his animals solving mysteries in the dark.

Rose got her first Barbie.  Urgh, I was hoping that I could avoid the whole Barbie thing, she's so girlie and pink and generally impossible (I mean Barbie but realise that describes Rose too) and I have to work really hard to participate in playing dolls.  However, I suppose we have to have someone the right size to live in the Doll house with all the robots and small labradors.  Besides, 'everybody else has one' and Rose is not someone who likes to be different.  So here they are, obviously a celebratory outfit was necessary.

And look at these aspirational shoes, it's no wonder the world is going to the dogs.

Oh No Not More Snow

I'm all written out this week what with sewing machines and spaghetti squashes so here are a few photos just to prove that the storm they forecast hit.  As you can sort of see, we had about 9" of snow.

It was almost up to the top of my snow boots and Rose could hardly walk through it, she played 'page' to Jacob's Wenceslas.

It was not good packing snow so we built a fort by piling snow up against the fence and some trees with shovels.  Rose got bored.

I hope no one was checked into the chalet as nobody came to dig them out.

I decided against a picnic lunch.

Possible Snow, Sewing and More Excitement

Today we are waiting with baited breath for another Alberta Clipper to blow through.  This time though its special as it will be colliding with a wet low pressure system from Texas and apparently this means lots of snow, up to 25 cm overnight.  I bought a snow shovel!

I have been doing quite a bit of sewing this week with a sewing machine I borrowed from Gary.  I have to confess that I was a bit taken aback when I first set eyes on it and wondered if I would be able to get anything done.  Here is Jacob modelling it for me.

Is that an alien growing out of his head? no wonder he's so smart

It is a Singer 185j and was built (proudly in Canada) between 1958 and 1962 and I am enjoying using it immensely.  It is remarkably quiet and sews a very nice straight seam.  Working in the bowels of the basement in a windowless room, close to the furnace is a bit like doing a spot of sewing under Sauron's Tower in Middle Earth.  It's dim with no natural light and periodically the furnace goes on and makes weird roaring, clunking and groaning noises, I keep expecting newly birthed Orcs to come wandering past.  I wonder what part of my brain thinks immediately of Orcs and not Aragorn or Sean Bean and what that says about my state of mind.

Finally, here is Rose this afternoon when I told her I have organized dance classes for her starting this weekend and that her friend Lillian will be there too.

not quite as exciting as ice skates but pretty close

Interesting Vegetables

The 'Interesting' in the title of this blog is slightly misleading so if veg isn't your thing stop reading now.  Grocery shopping is different over here, pretty much all the same stuff is available but at different prices and in different and sometimes odd-seeming packaging.  I can even buy hugely expensive Marmite if I look hard enough.

In the fresh veg section there is a variety of stuff in colours that I've not seen in the UK, runner beans and courgettes regularly come in yellow and tomatoes come in yellow and orange.  In September there was a glut of neat stuff like Corn on the cob in brown and yellow, a vast variety of squashes and pumpkins and boxes of heritage tomatoes some of which were really weird in colour and shape.

Anyhow, last week I bought a spaghetti squash as a carb-free alternative for me on pasta night.  It looks like a honey dew melon on the outside and when you cut it open it seems just like a regular squash.

But turn it upside down on an oiled pan, bake it for 40 minutes, fluff it gently with a fork and some sort of magic happens and it turns into string.

How cool is that! It didn't taste of anything much but I put sauce on it anyway so whatever.  Even if it had been horrible I'd have cooked it again just for the 'Ta dah' moment.

Princess Ice Skates

I wasn't intending to blog today but out of the blue this morning Tom decided to go out and kit himself up for ice skating.  He also got a pair of adjustable Disney princess skates for Rose.  This might seem grossly unfair but Jacob had been offered a pair this week and said he didn't want to try it, obviously he has now changed his mind so we'll be getting some for him next weekend.

I don't think I've seen anyone as excited about anything before in my life, she was hopping about the kitchen shrieking uncontrollably, "are they for me?", "are they Rose's skates?", "can we go skating?", "did you buy an ice rink?", "when are we going?"  So off we all went to the pond near the club house and here she is.

I think it was a bit of a disappointment as she couldn't do it straight away and by the time we left she was never going to skate again.  Oh Dear.  I will look up how to teach your child to skate tips on google and we'll be off out again tomorrow.  Then next week Jacob and I will get skates and either the ice will melt or the injuries will begin!

Happy Groundhog Day

So today is Groundhog Day and despite its German/American origins Canadians have also got 3 weather predicting rodents.  In Nova Scotia there is Shubenacadie (pronounced ['ʃuːbə'nækədiː] hope that helps) Sam, out on the prairies there is Winnipeg Willow and our local groundhog is Wiarton Willie up on Georgian Bay.

Here are today's predictions...
Shubenacadie Sam saw his shadow so winter will continue for a further 6 weeks.
At the 3 day festival in his honour (there's not much to do up there in the winter) Wiarton Willie came out so Spring is on its way, although apparently his record is not good (37 percent correct) so who knows.
Winnipeg Willow went to a Mountain Equipment Corporation to make her prediction, I hope she got free snow boots and a tent for her promotional efforts, and also predicted an early spring.

Reading about Groundhog Day has been disappointing as I can find nothing to suggest that some sort of magic makes the day happen over and over again so I cannot use this as a tool for behaviour manipulation with the children, I would have to watch the film to figure it out and I'm not sure I could bear it.  I did discover that it is Candlemas Day which is the mid point between the shortest day and the Spring Equinox and traditionally considered to be the middle of winter, obviously this explains why you need to turn to 'wiley, furry prognosticators' (todays Globe and Mail) to find out how much more snow is on its way.

Which leads me to how grateful I am that today my vocabulary has been enriched by the word 'prognosticate' which is apparently what groundhogs do.  What a great word, I prognosticate that I shall be finding ways of slipping it into everyday use over the next little while until it drives Tom and the children absolutely bonkers.