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!
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.
Spring is a wonderful time to take a vacation isn’t it? I’ve been enjoying spring here in my own city, but I can’t help remembering some of the great spring vacations I’ve taken in the past. Actually now that I think of it, I think I’ve been to Florida in the spring more often than any other place in the world that I’ve vacationed.
The last time I went to Florida for spring vacation was several years ago. It was beautiful. The temperatures were in the 70’s to low 80’s so it was extremely comfortable.
I stayed with some friends in the Tampa and Orlando area. We visited both Tampa, Orlando and several other cities across the State. You see one of my nurse friends had traveled with me to Florida but she was staying in Boca Raton so we went there to spend a day with her and even drove down to Miami and visited the Miami Seaquarium. I guess we spent a lot of time traveling by car, but it was well worth it.
If you’re planning a spring vacation you should visit Trusted Tours & Attractions. They offer discounted tickets to the very best sightseeing tours. You’ll find discounted sight seeing tour tickets as well as some great information for 23 cities across America.
I actually wish I’d known about this companies website when I was looking for things to do in Orlando and other Florida cities. I could have even picked up some discount tickets for not only sight seeing tours but local attractions and I believe hotel rates as well.
If you expect to be going on vacation this spring or perhaps later in the year you might want to sign up for their newsletter. When you sign up for their newsletter before the end of April you’ll be entered in a contest where you could win a hand held system. Isn’t that great?
The newsletter is full of travel tips, interesting stories and links to travel blogs. I’m sure you’ll find it interesting and informative.
Visit the website, I’m sure you’ll find some great travel ideas!
