Oh What Tangled Webs We Weave!

Happy Halloween from the Lake

The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.

~Alexander Pope

Moonrise

One of our final nights of the season.
The leaves are gone and the nights are frosty.

Shadows and the Boat

Shades of Blue and Tiny Ripples

Sundial in Fall

We have a cute little sundial in the front yard of the cottage. It kind of blends into the rock and I hardly ever notice it. I really should line it up properly and use it to tell time.

In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary.
~Aaron Rose

The Corner of the Kitchen

My kitchen at the lake is full of my little treasures. I kind of have a thing for dishes and ceramics and here we have a mix of all sorts of things to make me happy.

I should start with the fact that 20 years ago Bob designed and built these great dark blue shelves. We started out looking at cupboards but decided the open look was best and Bob created the supports and worked hard rounding out the shelves. It was an early woodworking project for him and he learned a lot doing it. I still love them.

• The top shelf has an old brown coffee/cocoa set that was left at the cottage by the former owners. We mainly use it in the spring and fall when nothing quite warms you like hot cocoa by the fireplace. Next is a collection of wineglasses- some 50 years old from my parents house and some brand new. The great blue canisters are only a few years old and hold our sugar, brown sugar, tea, coffee and spaghetti. Below that is a cheap but pretty tin plate that is just perfect for butter tarts! That dark blue tea pot and mugs got a lot of use this year because I like multiple cups of tea in the morning while Bob nurses along his mug of coffee. The cow creamer was my grandma's.

• The green ceramic canister is my Mother's mother's "Cookie Bucket". It is peeked into a lot by people with very hopeful expressions. The tan container I have cooking utensils in was my mom's crock for making pickles. The bean pot ... is full of cookie cutters at the moment.

• More stuff I love on the adjoining wall. Old canisters, baskets, Italian ceramic pots, lots of Onion soup bowls. The wall displays a couple of other strange things; signs from dollarama last year, a copper rubbing I made when I was about 6 years old, a reindeer bell, and cookie cutters I really like.

Black Eyed Susan

Earth laughs in flowers.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Troll in our Kitchen

Elizabeth brought back a surprise to keep at the cottage. This handsome little troll is an oven mitt that she picked up in Norway on her last big trip. I pulled it over a canister that was just the right size and put in on a higher shelf so he can keep an eye on us when we are cooking.

Haze on the Shore

A Line of Haze by the Shore

Alicia captured these lovely images on an early Fall day, just as dusk was approaching and the temperature started to fall. She was standing on our island dock looking toward the mainland.

Alicia's Strawberry Salad

Wild Strawberry Plant

Alicia's Summer Strawberry Salad

1 head of Romaine Lettuce
5 large Button Mushrooms
1/4 Green Pepper
7 Strawberries

Clean, trim and chop the vegetables and toss together.

Strawberry Dressing

1 tb vinegar
1 tb honey
2 crushed normal sized strawberries
combine the above 3 ingredients thoroughly

mix in
1 1/2 tb of canola oil


This was an end of the summer treat for us. Alicia was in charge of the veggies for dinner and surprised us with this lovely fresh tasting salad She made it using what she found leftover in the cooler. It was perfect for one of our last dinners out on the porch for this season. We ate is so quickly I didn't even think of taking a picture. I do have a picture of a wild strawberry that was growing in our cottage yard taken by our son, Bob in July. Wild strawberries are tiny tiny things but they have as much flavor in the one tiny morsel as supermarket strawberries have in a giant overgrown berry.

Planting Joy

Planting Joy on the front porch

I have been to several sessions by a fun Life Coach named Deb Dunn at a local fitness center. I got a lot out of her sessions and had fun at the same time.

Deb had a great idea ..

By focusing on the people, places and activities that bring you joy, you will create a lighter and more joyful attitude, family, community and life!

She provided this cute flower and you are supposed to take pictures of it bringing joy.

Our cottage is somewhere that I feel relaxed and creative and happy and plain old joyful so that had to be the first place I took it for a picture!

Alicia got in on the "Joy" too.

Please visit Deb's website to learn more. Get it Dunn

My Lake Bedroom

My bed pillow out on the porch

Last year we decided it was time to brighten up our bedroom at the cottage. The walls were old and yucky - brown fake woodgrain 70's style press board paneling. A paint job did wonders. It is so much brighter and happier a place now and I even find it a more relaxing place to be. We bought a new quilt set in fresh colors, and I sewed window drapes and a fabric cover for the closet opening out of a nice sage green color.

The old dresser and a few special things

Bob's parents old anniversary clock, glass candlesticks I got as a present years ago, and a picture of trolls my daughter brought back to us from Norway this year.

Sea glass glows in the light

I have sea glass in an old rose bowl on our window sill behind the bed.
We actually have a tea light in the middle of it and it gives off such a great glow at night.

Bob's side of the bed

Yes, really, I can't sleep if we change sides.

We have just put new pictures on the wall with photos of our family at the cottage. It was hard to decide on only a few favorites to frame.

Linda's side of the bed

We are trying out 3 larger frames on the wall and soon we are going to pick out some large pictures of berries found growing on the island. We are going to get rid of the existing matting and cut a matt with only one picture per frame. How to pick just three photos? Decisions, decisions.

Wood Working Project

Long ago, maybe even a decade ago, Bob made a couple of wooden holders for the entrance hall of the cottage. One is for our paddles and one for fishing gear. He did a great job but he wanted them to be even more special so he did not do any finishing coats on the projects.

He had a drawing for the longest time that he thought would look great wood burned on the paddle one. It took a little while but the holder is now beautiful and and very detailed. He has a talent for wood burning! Here he is putting a stain and seal in a rich color called "Olde Maple" over the wood burned project. I kind of don't want to put the paddles back on and block the view of the wood-burning.

The next project will be to finish off the fishing rod holder.

The paddle holder is back on the wall and doing it's job.




Great details in the wood-burning!

Trimming Branches

We have been cleaning up the yard and we have needed to trim a bunch of branches off trees and clean up some dead-fall. It has been accumulating in a couple of different piles around the property. I took a couple of days to trim up lots of branches into smaller pieces to use in our fireplace and the junkiest bits will be used for a bonfire sometime soon. As fall is approaching we are already seeing the nights turning cooler. It is always amazing to me that so much work, collecting up wood and trimming it, can burn so quickly in our fireplace!

This job is satisfying to me, but not easy. I find it hard to be bending down over and over to pick up the branches and kindling and it makes me quite dizzy. I can only carry a little bit at a time, so there are a whole lot of trips carrying branches and twigs to make piles and sort them out. My physiotherapist calls it "functional exercise". At any rate I was pretty stiff the next day.

I was also collecting pine cones to use in a craft for this Christmas. I was going to leave them out on the porch, but Bob pointed out that they won't be there when we came back next time. The little squirrel that lives in the pine tree will think I made life very convenient for him.

Apples

Apples on the Porch



A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible. ~Welsh Proverb

Wildflowers in a Mug

Wildflowers on my Windowsill

Guess What This Is?

I was impressed with this find at the cottage.

Can you identify what you see in the pictures?

*
*
*
*
*
*

*
*
*
*
*
*

*
*
*
*
*
*

It is a whole miniature little world in a tub!

We use this container of sand each fall when we celebrate a couple of birthdays and the long weekend with a little fireworks show. We just left the tub outside, behind our porch, last year after our celebrations. I didn't give it another thought until this summer.
When I looked in the tub this year I was amazed at the beauty of this tiny world.
We thought the pencil would help give you an idea of the true scale of my lilliputian moss world.

Dragonfly

Deep in the sun-searched growths, the dragonfly hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky.

~Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Silent Noon

Cool Shades Bob!

Bob jumped into the boat so hard that his sunglasses bounced right off his head and into the reeds where we dock our boat. We drove out to our island and Bob changed into a bathing suit and wading gear. We went back to our dock and I sat on the shore with the camera and Bob went "fishing" for his sunglasses. It took a while with him wading and feeling around, encounters with blood sucking leaches and a fair bit of frustration but eventually he found them suspended above the bottom caught in some reeds. I got a picture of the triumphant Bob with his big catch of the day.

The Flag

We now have a flag pole.

A pole was kicking around the cottage from before we owned the place and we decided it was time to get rid of it. We hauled it down to the dock and seeing it there Bob realized it would fit nicely into one of the support poles of our dock. Next thing I knew Bob was telling me to look out front and see what was different.

Yup, a big flag pole and a flag too.

The Chair Part 2

The chair we found a few weeks ago is all ours and fixed up now. We are fondly calling it our "drift wood chair" because we believe it was drifting in the water and someone fishing nearby got it out of the water and threw in on the dock to get it out of the way of the boats.

Bob worked hard at sanding down the roughest, most beat up spots but it really could not just be stained so it we were going to paint it we went all out with a vibrant blue. I love it! I keep finding myself plopping down on the chair in the backyard of the cottage. It seems that I always really wanted a comfy chair back there and never even knew it.

"Nature is by and large to be found out of doors, a location where, it cannot be argued, there are never enough comfortable chairs".
~Fran Lebowitz