Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto
Wordless Wednesday
Aw, a family huddle or maybe it’s a cuddle. Hard to tell, but it sure is cute!
We had otters at our cottage. They lived in and swam in the creek beside our cottage. I’d often see one to three swimming around but I never saw them gathered together like this. That would be a sight to see.
If you’ve ever thought of ditching the big city and trying to live a more peaceful life in the country then you must read As The Butter Churns. It’s an entertaining eye opener.
Basically, As the Butter Churns, is the story of a family who moves from Los Angeles to a rural farm in Washington. Big Change!
Reading the Begin at the Beginning page it sounds like Denise and Tom had it made in Los Angeles. She had an idelic job in the advertising field. The philosophy at her last job was:
If you had to work from home because your child was sick or you had to come in late because there was a school assembly then you had to stay home or come in late.
Unfortunately for Denise that company closed. She interviewed for new jobs in the advertising field, but she soon realized that her youngest son would end up in day care and she’d be working long hours. That’s when the idea of becoming a school teacher came to her. Within a week she was enrolled in a course that would allow her to become a teacher in one year.
Denise sounds like the kind of teacher that you remember fondly when you’re an adult. Each year she and her students make historic films. That’s right, the kids get to act in movies! How cool is that?
Parents also loved the idea of what she was doing – with her husbands help. Tom’s an artist and he helps with the costumes and sets. So they decided to create a History Camp for kids called Forte Flashback. From what I gather it’s meant to give kids a taste of colonial times.
Now I haven’t figured out exactly how they came to move to Washington State. Obviously changes were in the work with Denise’s career and the idea of Forte Flashback. It sounds like they were living in a lovely home in L.A.. Like us, they’d done a lot of Do it Yourself reno jobs around the home to make the home their own and it sounds like they had a fabulous garden with over 100 rose bushes and lots of trees. However maintaining that home seems to have gotten expensive. Perhaps all combined caused them to move out of the big city.
Now the family is on a journey. Oh what a journey it is!
The story of a city girl from Los Angeles who quits her job, packs her bags and moves her family to a rural farm in Washington to start Fort Flashback, an American History camp for kids. Things don’t go exactly as planned. Find out if Denise ever gets funding, if she eventually catches the oxen as they run down the road or if ten-year-old Henry forgets to wear his shoes to school – again. Will Grandpa Horn leave everything to play jazz on the streets of Paris? Find out at As The Butter Churns.
Denise was a copywriter in the advertising field, so of course her posts are well written and entertaining.
She talks about day to day life on the farm and what’s happening with her, her husband Tom, their now 10 year old son Henry, her colorful jazz musician father, her sister Lisa, brother-in-law Chris, and their two girls Quinn 11, Phoebe 6, and all of their combined pets and farm animals. After describing the gang Denise says “We’re like the Osmonds, but we drink and we’re Catholic.”
Denise started her blog in June of 2007 when they moved from California to Washington. July finds the family getting settled and contemplating purchasing cows for the farm.
The posts are regular, pretty much daily as far as I can see, and they make for a good read. I think I might add this blog to my daily reading list so I can keep track of what’s happening with this interesting family … oh and their cows like good ‘ol Abe here:
Hopefully Denise doesn’t mind that I’m using one of her photos. Abe is just too cute in this one. Sounds like he’s a character too.
I grew up in a big city, but we had a cottage on our old family farm land that we went most weekends, plus we also had a farm in the middle of the city that I visited regularly just to see the baby cows, so reading this blog takes me back a bit to the things I liked about country life and perhaps what could have been if I didn’t end up moving to an even bigger city.
As I said at the start, if you’ve ever contemplated moving from the city to the country you should read this blog to see what it’s really like!
Well it finally had to happen. Today we are having our first real thunderstorms since we brought Midnight, our black Lab, into our home.
We’ve been curious as to whether she’d be one of those dogs that were afraid of thunder or not. I guess we kind of have an answer now.
Early this morning at maybe 6 a.m. there was a crash of thunder outside. I was up and so was Midnight as she’d begged to be let out of her crate. When the thunder rolled above she just stopped what she was doing, her ears went down and she ran to where she thought the noise had come.
Now all the puppy training books and sites say not to coddle your puppy when they seem frightened of something so I just stood where I was and talked to her about the thunder. Like she understood me. Uh huh.
There wasn’t any more thunder so we just went back to what we were doing, but she seemed a bit subdued.
We had some more thunder at 2:45 pm today too.
It’s a warmish day here in Toronto so I’ve got the windows and doors open. Unfortunately our enclosed back porch has one of those sheet plastic roofs (can you say gaudy?). The nice thing about it is that you can really hear the rain coming down when it falls. Every drop.
Midnight heard her first real rain on that roof earlier today too. I think it frightened her more than this mornings thunder! She was running all over the main floor to figure out what the sound was, barking and looking a little worried.
Again I stood in place and tried to reassure her by acting normal and not looking worried or stressed myself. I shut the back door and that lessened the sound of the rain. After she started calming down we heard thunder again, and again she acted like she was frightened by the big sound.
I decided to give her a cookie hoping that the thunder would sound again as I was feeding her, her favorite food. Apparently giving a puppy something they really like when they are frightened, like a treat, helps calm their fears and makes them associate good things with things that once frightened them.
It seems were only having a one thunder at a time kind of day. The sound makes her nervous, but I think that if I stay calm and work with her when she hears thunder again she won’t end up being a dog that’s terrified of the sound.
I certainly hope she doesn’t end up being afraid of it as we get an awful lot of thunderstorms here during the summer.
Is your dog afraid of thunder?
I’ve always enjoyed cooking, although I don’t take the time to make home cooked meals as often as I probably should these days. Sometimes it’s far to easy to take a pre-cooked meal out of the freezer and heat it up isn’t it?
It’s silly when it really doesn’t take much more time to cook a decent meal. Not to mention that a home cooked meal often tastes a whole lot better than convenience food.
The only thing that I really don’t like about cooking is cleaning up afterwords. Am I right? Is that one of your least favorite tasks as well?
If you enjoy cooking or perhaps sharing some of your delicious recipes with others you might want to take a moment to visit Food Connect. It’s basically a social site for food enthusiasts.
I came across the site a few days ago, and after spending some time perusing the recipes that members of Food Connect had been posting I decide to create my own free profile.
Even as a child I used to love spending time with my mother in the kitchen, helping her bake breads, desserts and learning how to put together a quick dinner. When I moved from my family home I made sure that I’d written down several of my mothers recipes as I wanted to attempt to cook some of those delicious meals on my own.
So believe me when I say I’ve got plenty of recipes that I can share with others on Food Connect!
Speaking of recipes, I think I found a great one for tomorrow nights dinner. As I said in my last post we were hoping to grill chicken breasts on the barbecue this evening, but I put it off until tomorrow. Perhaps that’s a good thing as I found a tasty sounding recipe for Spicy Barbecue Chicken that I’d like to try. The recipe seems easy and it will only take a short time to prepare. Yummy. I haven’t had true barbecued chicken for ages.
Now I haven’t submitted any recipes yet, but as I was looking through the many recipes posted on the site I noticed that to the right of each recipe there is a box that lists nutritional facts about the meal. You can easily find out how many calories or how much fat, sodium, cholesterol or carbohydrates are in a serving. The Food Connect site does an automatic nutritional analysis of all recipes that are submitted. Bonus! I really appreciate that.
The more I look through the site the more it reminds me of many of the social sites I’ve joined as a blogger.
You can of course post recipes, but that’s not all, you can also add a drink recipe, review a wine, add and review a restaurant, invite friends, rate and review recipes, plan a menu using the sites recipes, join discussion groups or recipe networks, post photos of your recipes, contact a recipes poster or any other member of the site, list an event or use the event calendar to create your own schedule and I’m sure there are many other things that members can do that I haven’t discovered yet.
As I delve deeper into the site I just keep discovering more and more things that one can do at Food Connect. It truly is a social site for foodies.
Even if you don’t enjoy cooking as much as I do I’m sure you’ll find some recipes that you and your family would enjoy, or perhaps a local restaurant that you haven’t dined in yet.
If you visit Food Connect my member name is simply Tricia. You can check out the recipes that I hope to add shortly.
Well I was hoping I would have passed out by now considering I’m sick and I’ve been up for at least 36 hours, but I think I need to eat something before my body will finally give up and fight and let me conk out.
I’m starving!
I thawed some chicken breasts earlier today as Chris and I were talking about having a barbecue, but considering I’m half brain dead I think we’ll save the chicken for tomorrow dinner and have something a little easier for dinner.
We have Presidents Choice Sheppard’s Pie in the freezer. I don’t know why but I’ve had a craving for that lately. My mom used to make it at least two or three times a month when I was a kid and since I didn’t really like hamburger it wasn’t one of my favorite meals, but these days it’s appealing for some reason.
We don’t eat much meat, particularly red meat, even though with my Crohn’s I probably should eat it more often as it’s a good source of iron and folic acid. Nutrients that I’m low on.
Hey maybe that’s why I’m craving Sheppard’s pie? Ah … it’s starting to make sense now.
So what did you have for dinner? A home cooked meal, barbecue or perhaps dinner in a restaurant?