Why Drive to Tofino indeed?

Posted in I like, Life, Travel, Winter by

As much as I love where we live, there are times that you just need a change of space and location.  For some reason on the Island that place has always been Tofino.  Maybe it’s the waves and all the dynamic motion but we go there at least once a year and always in the off season.  This year we lucked out and I got a super good deal to 2 nights at Cox Bay Beach Resort through #TravelZoo.  We always stay on Cox Bay.  I guess it’s because it’s wide open to the wild blue yonder.   Thus some pictures of our mini trip (2 nights and really 2 days).  It was SUNNY when we got there and there wasn’t enough wind to fly a kite.  Cooked our own dinner one night and had #Tacofino burritos the other night and had lunch at #WolfInTheFog.  Also drank WAAAAAYYYY too much #TofinoBrewery beer.  Yay for the Kelp Stout!

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Christmas at SouthEnd

Posted in Uncategorized by

Thanks to all who showed up tonight. It was a wonderful evening. Thanks to all our talented artisans and vendors: James Pottery, LB Sweet Goods, Barb Wager Pottery, Il Borgo Balsamico, Discovery Passage Aquarium and all the materials for making wreaths from Rockview Resources. Special thanks to Yellow Dog Trading for the awesome mulling spices. Anyone interested, we still have everything for making wreaths tomorrow. 11-5. Thanks to Carol Perry and James Downie for helping out and organising too! Especially thanks to Tak Ogasawara and Mitzi Ogasawara for really making it all possible by taking care of the kidlets. Happy holidays!

Remembrance Day

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Happy Remembrance Day.  Or am I suppose to say happy… Solemn?

It’s really hard to try and discuss the reason for Remembrance Day to a 5 year old.  I guess it comes from never really having to live with the direct consequences of a war.  Maybe the closest my generation here in North America has ever come to it is what happened after 9/11.  Though even that happened on the other Coast and it wasn’t true hardship like what happened to my parents after WW2.  There are terrible wars happening all over the planet and it’s hard to convey the horror to a 5 year old who really has no concept.

The best I could do is ” We remember all the people who died in all wars, not just the soldiers but all the other people too who lived then died and did what they thought was best for the future, meaning us. And we should be grateful that we are a (mostly) peaceful nation.”

Lest we forget.

Are “real” homes dead?

Posted in rant by

As some of you may know I am a interior design junkie and a blog junkie in general.  Wouldn’t really know it if you came inside my house but I am.  There were 2 posts this week that rather irked me so I thought I’d rant about them here (as I sit and type and hope Ru stays asleep for the rest of the night as she went to sleep at 5….(argh, it’s 9 now….I hope she doesn’t wake up and raring to go just as I am ready for sleep)…. Anyhow, I digress.

I was reading Emily Henderson’s blog Style by Emily Henderson when this post came up about the magic of photo editing.  Now I’m all for a little Photo-Shopping, “Yes, you may get rid of the huge carbuncle growing on the end of my nose”  but good gods, it’s in our home shots now….. They photoshopped out a HEATING GRATE!!!!  WTF?  It was so disruptive?  And they changed the furniture?!  No wonder I can’t find that blah, blah, mid-century modern credenza in light oak stain that I saw in that magazine…. It’s because it doesn’t exist anywhere…. on the planet……

Emily does say that magazine shots are supposed to be aspirational, that a magazine’s job is to inspire us, but personally I think she has gotten aspiration confused with inspiration…. as really they are 2 different things.  Anyhow…. wtf.  I think this is exactly the reason why I got so disgusted with the magazine Dwell that I stopped my subscription (though it is a love/hate relationship, kind of like the one I have with Ikea).

Here are the photos (edited on the left, “reality” on the right….. seriously. )

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via Emily Henderson

Then this post came up on Apartment Therapy and I nearly commented….. but you have to sign up to comment and it was just too much work….”What is it like to be a full time home maker?”  I was rather offended, then I read the post and I was really offended (I actually wanted to send a hate email, though that’s how I roll, reactionary without often thinking about consequences….but I didn’t).  I gather the author just moved to a rural area for her partner’s job and is at, in my opinion loose ends.  I’ve read a few of her other posts in the past and just thought that she was a really unhappy person.  At that point I couldn’t blame her, I’d actually been in the same situation before and was very unhappy but you get through it.

However, the post in question really did feel offensive as if full time home makers were a slave to their partners.  Some of her questions to the blogosphere were (ripped directly from the post):

 

  • Has your partner ever added items to your to-do list? And if you’re the employed partner, have you ever wished/requested that your stay-at-home partner would take care of something they don’t?

  • What do you do if you feel there’s too much on your plate? And what do employed partners do if the basics are consistently being neglected (dishes/laundry not done)? How do you handle such situations? Is there a boss/employee feel to the discussions?

  • Does the employed partner express preferences- “I like my clothes hung like this and the table set like this”- and does the homemaker ignore them, take them as friendly suggestions, or always adhere to them?

  • How do you decide when you’re done working for the day? When your partner is done? When your list of tasks is complete? If your partner has a long, grueling week at work, do you take it upon yourself to complete additional projects, or do you stick to your usual workload?

  • If the stay-at-home partner starts pursuing non-paying interests such as volunteering, training for a triathlon, or learning an instrument, does everyone agree that certain household tasks can be set aside? Or does the employed partner pitch in?

    My thoughts were what does she think stay at home people do?  Apparently lots of cleaning and pandering to the working partner’s needs.  And stay at home people need to have set roles and must ask for exemptions if they start doing things like hobbies.

    Anyhow, this is a rant.  As a stay at home person (not much of a home maker as I more of a home messer) I have other things going on…. like a farm and winery, not to mention being a mom and a daughter.  Our roles aren’t set in stone as to who does what (with the exception of putting one kid to sleep), I don’t need to ask permission to do what I want to do…. what it this the Dark Ages?   Mostly I’m just flabbergasted that a young woman would come up with the post at all.  What I wonder is if reality is leaking into the post and she’s just trying to find her way. In which case I wish her all the luck in the world.

 

Rant over and out.

Holy Harvest Batman!

Posted in Fall, Family, Farm, I like, Life, Quadra Island, vineyard, Winery by

So, the harvest here at the Farm is going well, so well that we have to do some more tomorrow after finally calling it quits after it got too dark to see what we were picking.

Our intrepid band of neighbours/retirees/friends (and one random fellow who came with another friend) gathered at 9 this morning and proceeded to harvest the siegerrebe and then the petit milo.  Just so people know, all our friends volunteer and spend their day picking which is not easy work as there are often sore backs involved at the end of the day.  Last year we even had a detached retina (which granted may or may not have been a direct result of harvesting but it’s fun to add to the list of ailments).

We were fed lunch and dinner graciously prepared by Val, it was amazing.  Childcare was also provided by Val and Rosalind and the TV. Thank you all so much.  We love our family.  My parents, the buggers happened to have appointments in Vancouver and missed the whole thing!  Though they will be here for the rest of the harvests coming from other vineyards.

What we want to really say is thank you to Brian, Mike, Penny, Mia, John, Carol, Jaime, Sarah (and Ezra, what a duo of troopers, Sarah for just have given birth 6.5 weeks ago and Ezra for being a good little baby all day long), Ninja, Laura, Mel, Dave M., Kathy, Leslie, Storm, Ken, Rosalind, Val and Brendon (or possibly Brandon? spelling?).

Troops, we crushed 7458 pounds today, that’s 3.729 tons!  That in itself is a BIG day!  Congratulations to us all!