Better late than never.....

Well, I've finally dragged myself away from the TV screen and Netflix (blimey, there's soooo much to watch!) and I'm here to bore you to death with a small selection of Canada photos.  Hoorah! 

Afterall, our trip was over a whole two months ago now......

We stayed near the shores of Lake Ontario.  Doesn't it look idyllic?

And we stayed here:



Fortunately, we didn't see this bear or any bears.

We also stayed here:

I know! 

This was their laundry room.  Blimey, we only wanted to wash our smalls......



Mr and Little Miss were not happy bunnies at this campsite.  Not surprising as 2 months of torrential rain fell in two days while we camped here (Awenda Provincial Park Ontario in case you want to know).  It had actually stopped raining in this photo.....for about a minute.

Here's Mr J and P looking a lot happier at the Montreal Gay Pride Parade.  And the sun came out.  Yahoo!



 

Such fun, dear readers.

 

Ermmmmm nice:

 

And we actually saw someone we recognised:

 

Peter Tatchell

 

Squeeeeeeeal!  We saw a moose:

 



The distances on these signs are mind boggling aren't they?

And we just liked the sentiments of this Equestrian Therapeutic Centre that we drove past:

 

 

I'll just prance off now, dear readers.  Have a great weekend. xx













In which I make a skirt and three bags

Here at J and P towers, I've been sewing like ermmm.... a mad sewing thing.   

I've made a skirt.

Did you notice the nonchalant way I said that?   As if making a skirt is no big deal for me.  Well, let me tell you, dear readers, that it IS a very BIG deal indeed.



Front

I wanted to make a skirt without a zip (I'm a bit scared of zips) and my colleague, who makes clothes, recommended the Miette wraparound skirt from the  Tilly and the Buttons blog.  Yes, Tilly from the first series of the Great British Sewing Bee.  My colleague said that the pattern was so easy that even a fool could do it.  Well, I have to say that she was damn right.



Back

I used a vintage sheet.  Not my favourite vintage sheet.  I was going to go for yellow but I was worried that I might cock-up on my first foray into skirt making and ruin a perfectly acceptable yellow sheet.  So I went for the green so I wouldn't have been too disappointed if I'd made a mess of it.

Mad twirling action

It took me a while to do but only because I lost pieces half way through (clearing up before and after builders *heavy sigh*).

 

Close up

It's two sizes too big (don't ask.....) but fortunately, because it's a wraparound, it hides that fact quite well. 

And I'm wearing it back to front (I know, what am I like?) but I prefer it that way.

Buoyed up by my skirt success, I've also made three drawstring bags.

And they double-up as perfect pillowcases for camping purposes.

Yes, you read that correctly.  A bag- come-pillowcase.  Who knew there was such a thing?  Well, there isn't.  Until now that is.  I've actually just invented it.

Take an ugly blow up camping pillow.  A quid from the pound shop.  Too small for a normal pillowcase.

Take one drawstring bag and place the ugly pillow inside:

See what I mean?  Perfect for when we go to Canada for our hols.

Note the casual way I said that.

Canada.  For.  Our.  Hols.

Toronto.  Followed by camping out in the wilds of Ontario.  We're taking our three-man tent, sleeping bags, camping mats and our ugly blow-up pillows encased in their beautiful pillow slips come drawstring bags of course.

Here's hoping we don't meet any black bears *gulp* (grizzlies are further north I think). 

Source

See you on the other side...xx

What we did last summer

Blimey, it's been so long since I last posted anything, I literally could not remember how to create a new post in Blogger. How mad is that!

So, we went on holiday to Holland for a week, came back for a few days then onto Portugal for a week, came back and then onto the Lake District for another week.  I'm not complaining but all that packing and unpacking was a little, how can I put it, boring.  The holidays were great though.

Before we went on holiday we ate Ramadam bread:

Yes, that's two loaves of delicious Turkish Ramadam bread

In Holland:  we snickered foolishly at "bastard" sugar:

Drooled over these beach cabins:

Marvelled at this shop which sold only sheep pillows:

Snuggled with an actual real live sheep:

Put on too much sun cream *raises eyes to heaven*:

In Portugal, we admired its many cute pastry shops:

Errrr.  Not so cute.  Yes, they really are meringue penises and boobies.  Gawd help us....

Windsurfed:

Took, what I thought were, arty schm-arty photos:

In the Lake District, some of our party climbed Scafell Pike - the highest mountain in England:

Grandpappy and Little Miss at the top

Grandpappy looking rather fetching in his knotted hanky.

Good old Grandpappy:  he's a mere 86 you know!  And need you ask where I was?  Charity shopping.  Of course I was!

Cumberland wrestling was the best ever this year with contingents from Brittany, Scotland and Iceland:

Kilt action

We found ourselves driving behind the Boogie Bus:

Blimey.  Perhaps we could get our car kitted out this way.....

Fun times

Our trip to the Isle of Wight was luvverly. 

There was a lot of body boarding to be done.

But not by me. I sat on the beach doing a big round zero apart from reading and chatting and gazing into the middle distance.  Bliss. 

We encountered a field of frisky bulls.  Scarey.  One minute we had the whole field to ourselves and the next, hundreds of the creatures surrounded Little Miss J and P and myself.  Mr J and P, who was ahead of us and safely in a bull-free field, was calling out "keep calm" safe in the knowledge that nothing would happen to him.  I really wanted to leggit but had to appear "calm" in front of a scared Little Miss J and P.

Anyway, we made it to safety: 

See, I told you they were frisky:

We also met killer sheep.  I kid you not.  When Mr J and P announced that there were some sheep ahead in another field, I thought nothing of it.  Sheep.  Pah!  How wrong was I?  One of the sheep (might have been a ram - not sure) took a dislike to me and kept trying to head butt me.  No pics of that little encounter thankfully.  Mr and Little Miss were laughing far too much to take photos.  I was genuinely scared.  Again!

Then there was the killer goat...  Actually, the goat was completely docile and totally ignored us but just take a look at the horns on that!

Thankfully, we didn't meet this pony...

When we got back from the Isle of Wight, it was my birthday.  Yay!  I got this lovely flap clock from Mr J and P:

and lots of music.  Some old timer music:

and some new:

Yes.  Disclosure (read about them here:).   Notice the difference?  Mr J and P didn't.  The one on the right is Disclosure's cd "Settle", the one on the left is a cd called "Disclosure" by a Dutch band called The Gathering.  I asked for the former and Mr J and P got me the latter by mistake.  The Gathering are described on Amazon as "fusing heavy rock with prog, folk and the ethereal sounds of 1980s".  Quite frankly, it's not for me.  Our Dutch friend described them as "truly awful" and he may well have a point.  Some people just shouldn't be let loose on the internet.  Yes, I mean you, Mr J and P.

I'm very excited because this weekend I'm off to climb this:

Yes, it's the O2 Arena in London.  Who knew you could climb it?  Well, you can and I will.

You climb up on a suspended walkway which is 20 metres above the dome itself.  Gawd help me, I do hope that I won't make a complete and utter fool of myself....

And afterwards - cue mass hysteria - I'm off to see:

Siouxsie Soux.  You really can't get more exciting than that.  Meanwhile, Mr J and P is accompanying our darling daughter to the Rhianna concert in London.  I'll leave you with the thought of Mr J and P at a Rhianna concert.  His work colleagues have apparently crowned him "the coolest dad" but he fears he will be spending Father's Day (the day after) as a mental and emotional wreck.  Bless....