Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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How do you cope with your dogs shedding?

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Fellow dog owners I need your help. Midnight’s been shedding like crazy for the last month and there’s no sign of it stopping soon.

We’ve had her since November and she only shed twice prior to this, perhaps for a month at a time. The first two sheds were easier to deal with. Perhaps because she was smaller and maybe because it was puppy fur, but now she’s got her real fur and she’s really shedding heavily.

We have hardwood floors throughout the house and I sweep once a day. We have a vacuum (no closets so it’s in the basement) and I hate pulling it out because it’s big and clunky. Plus Midnight thinks it’s her special toy when I do bring it out.

I’ve been thinking of getting another vacuum – one that’s a little smaller, lighter and easier to handle. It’s got to be a good one though. I thought about getting one of those Sebo vacuums since they are good for people with allergies. Chris and I are both allergic to dust mites and uh … dogs. So it might be a good idea to get one.

I’ve been grooming Midnight every two days. I go over her coat with the ezgroom brush and then the furminator. The Furminator takes out hair from the undercoat and it’s supposed to really help with shedding. Then I go over her coat again with the ezgroom brush. It helps, but not enough. Maybe it’s just the heat causing her to shed continuously. At this rate she’ll be bald by August!

Anyone have any tips for me other than what I’m already doing? Sweeping and vacuuming the floors and then grooming the dog regularly. What else can I do?





A gift out of the blue

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My brother called me on Thursday to ask if Chris might want a free pass to the PGA Golf tour at Glen Abbey at the end of July. Wasn’t that nice of him to offer?

My brother works for a company that is sponsoring the event so he might be able to get some free passes. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t including me in the pass offer and that’s fine because I’m not really a big fan of Golf anyway. Chris isn’t the biggest fan either but he thought it might be kind of cool to go. Heck, it’s potential material for a blog post on his blog at least.

I hadn’t talked to my brother for a while so while I had him on the phone I asked him about his new (and only) grand daughter. My niece had a baby girl back in February. The baby is doing really well, starting to roll over from her back to her stomach and already has a few favorite toys that she can’t live without.

Actually my brother sent a photo of her earlier in the week. She’s adorable. The baby looks quite a bit like my niece did as a baby. My niece BTW is the oldest of my nephews and nieces – she was born when I was just 11 years old! So she’s never really felt like a niece to me and I guess it seems kind of weird to me that she already has a child.

Anyway, I guess we’ll know sometime early next week if Chris will be getting a pass for the PGA Tour. I still think it was really nice of my brother to offer to give one to Chris whether he’s able to get the pass or not.

If Chris does get the pass he’s doing good this week. He already got free tickets to the Amos Lee concert that we went to on Wednesday night at the Danforth Music Hall. Great show BTW, I highly recommend that you try to see Amos Lee play if you can, especially if you like music that’s a mix of Blues/ Folk / Jazz – heavier on the blues than anything.

Trying to decide what to do this weekend

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At this moment I’m busy trying to decide what to do this weekend. Chris and I have lots of options – some better than others. Help me decide?

My nephew has a photographic display at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition this weekend. I really should go to that to see his work and to check out the other artists. I just love pottery and sculptures and if the artwork is anything like last years I’ll be buying some items this time around.

The only problem is that tomorrow is going to be HOT. Really hot. So … do we go to the art show tomorrow or Sunday when it’s going to be a bit cooler?

We have gardening that still needs to be done as well. We started mulching the backyard garden last week, but about 1/3 of the back garden beds aren’t finished yet because we ran out of mulch! We bought more but haven’t had time to add it yet. Certainly if it’s going to feel like 40 Celsius (104 F) tomorrow I don’t think I want to be working in the hot sunny garden. Of course I could just stay inside where it will be nice and cool, work on the computer or be lazy and curl up and read A New Earth, Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. Yeah it’s a self help type book. It was a gift from Chris’ aunt. I should read it at some point.

The other thing that Chris and I would both like to do, but don’t have to do, is to perhaps go back to Cherry Beach this weekend with our dog Midnight. We took her there last Sunday and she had a ball playing in the water. We’d taken her to the lake before, but she’d never done more than splashed in the water. This time Chris was throwing toys into the deeper water for her to fetch and we got to see her swim for the first time. She took to it well and other dog owners said she was a great swimmer. They couldn’t believe it was her first time.

We all had fun at the beach so I think that’s a must do.

Of course this is summer in Toronto and there’s always all kinds of festivals, events and things to do on the weekends. I guess I should check what’s going on so that we don’t miss out on something good.

At this point I’m thinking we should go to the beach tomorrow – the hot day. It’s cooler by the water and if we get hot we can always get in the water. Certainly with all the wet dogs running by we will get a bit wet. Then on Sunday we could go to the Art Exhibit and then finish our gardening when we come back. If there’s any other good things going on in Toronto we’ll I guess we can try to go to one of them on Saturday evening.

Looks like we’re going to have another busy weekend. What are your plans for the weekend?

I take too many photos

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I have a problem. I’m a photoholic. Well … when I have a camera in my hand and great subjects to take photos of I am.

I don’t really like taking pictures of people. Perhaps those of you who frequent my blogs have noticed that there aren’t very many people photos in my posts. However, there are lots of photos of gardens, flowers, plants, nature/ landscape, and city scenes. Oh and I guess photos of my puppy are starting to build up as well.

Whenever I’m out with my camera at a photo worthy event -say Woofstock in early June, or our walking tour and hike at The Brickworks last Saturday or perhaps even our trip to Cherry Beach last Sunday with our dog (who swam for the first time ever!) I just start clicking away and the next thing I know I’ve got two or three hundred photos stored on my cameras memory card!

The amount of pictures I take isn’t a problem as far as my camera’s memory card capacity, it’s dealing with those photos once I’ve taken them that’s the problem.

Storage of the photos is becoming a problem. My laptop was slowing down quite a bit a month ago and I realized that for the last year I’d uploaded almost all of my photos (3 to 5 mb each = 30 to 40 gig of photos!) to the laptop and that the hard drive was quickly filling up. I literally spent a few days transferring the photos to my desktop computer and deleting them from the laptop and that seemed to have helped my laptop performance somewhat. However I think I’m going to have to find a better storage solution.

If you take a lot of photos I’d love to hear what you do for storage. If you use an online storage system or a portable drive or if you transfer the photos to CD’s or if you have some other solution.

My other problem is lack of time. I have several blogs and I also have health issues so I work on my blogs when I’m feeling well enough to write. Working on the blogs takes a lot of my time. Barely leaves me enough time to network with other bloggers let alone transfer photos from the camera to the computer, edit them and perhaps upload them to Flickr. Going over 200 photos takes about two hours or more as I crop them, adjust their size and occasionally adjust the color balance or other levels.

Now if I only took a few photos at a time this wouldn’t be a problem, but since I take like 200 at a time I feel compelled to deal with each and every new photo that I’ve taken before I upload the good ones to Flickr (my main online storage system at this time).

This means that sometimes my photos are a week or more old before they make it into one of my posts.

So are you a Photoholic too? How do you deal with it?

Natural Bath and Beauty products at the Best Bath Store

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rose soap I love bath and beauty products, but often I have a problem using them as I’m allergic to the chemicals and artificial scents used in these products and other products for the home such as scented candles and air fresheners and even perfumes and colognes. So I’m always on the look out for companies that use natural ingredients in their products.

If you also appreciate using products that are made with natural ingredients then you’ll love the items at the Best Bath Store. As far as I can tell all of their bath and beauty products are made from natural ingredients like essential oils, extracts and dried natural ingredients.

I love their selection of natural soap. The one that I used in the photo above is their Rose Geranium body bar. It’s textured with rose petals and made with natural essential oils. Everyone that reads this blogs knows how much I like my roses so the idea of having a rose scented bath sounds delicious to me. They have several other natural bath soaps ranging from dead sea salts to cacao butter, orange, lavender and many more. There are even special acne facial bars.

lavender_lotion200.jpg Along with their range of natural soaps you’ll find bath accessories, bath bombs, bath salts, dead sea products, lotions, skin and hair care products, products specifically for men as well as gift baskets and other gift ideas.

One other thing that I like about the Best Bath Store is that they offer free product samples. you can visit their sample product page and request free items to try.

I liked the idea of being able to try their products before I made a purchase that I contacted them last week to request free samples. Unfortunately I haven’t heard back from the company yet (perhaps the holiday caused a slow down) so I’m not sure if they’ve sent me my free samples yet or not. Also I’m in Canada so it might take a bit longer than if I were in the US. If I do get my samples I’ll update this post and tell you what I got and what I thought of their bath and beauty products.

The Best Bath Store also has a point system. When you make a purchase you get points, rack up enough points and you can cash them in for a store credit. Now that’s a bonus for regular customers. Oh and they offer free USPS priority shipping on orders over $25!

If you enjoy quality bath products made with organic ingredients – items which are not tested on animals I should also say – then check out the Best Bath Store.

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