Happy Autumn!

Boy, it's been a while since I last posted.  I apologize for my lack of verbosity, and will attempt to make amends by filling this sentence with pedantic-sounding words.

Now that I've done that, here's a little catch-up.

We celebrated the beginning of fall in Edmonton this year, where the days were warm and the nights were cool.  Autumn was definitely in the air!  I think it's my favourite time of year -- or rather, that it would be, if it weren't for how soggy it is here on the West Coast.  I have dreams of experiencing an autumn that looks something like this

instead of something like this

I'm sure you can all see the appeal in the first picture.

However, regardless of the weather, fall does bring with it increased opportunities to bake.  This fall my goal is to find a bread recipe that The Man will actually eat and enjoy.  I grew up eating homemade bread, and one of my favourite smells is the smell of freshly-baked (or freshly baking) bread.  In fact, the fresh-baked bread smell is what my mum swears sold one of her homes, so I must not be alone in this.  I'll keep you all posted on my progress, anyway, as I go through what I'm sure will be hundreds of recipes, one at a time.

Fall also means non-baking comfort food.  I think that pretty well anything that comes out of the oven qualifies as comfort food, but I especially look forward to soups, stews, and casseroles.  Besides not eating much bread, The Man also doesn't eat much soup, so I hope to find some recipes that he can -- or rather, will -- eat enthusiastically.

Food posts also means that I will delve into food photography this year.  Yikes!  Photography has never been one of my skills, so bear with me.

I think that pretty well catches up on the important things.  The next post will, I promise, be much closer to this post than this post was to the last.

All Quiet on the Home Front

Well, not exactly quiet.  August has kept us hopping, with a trip to the Cariboo, lots of camps, one last trip to the Okanagan, and now getting ready for school.  We've also made dill pickles and canned and frozen peaches, with enough, I hope, to keep us supplied through next year.  Now things are settling back down, ready for the start of school on Tuesday and a return to normalcy.  Routine, at least.

As I sit on my comfy bed and write this, I can hear the thunk-thunk of wood being tossed into a wheelbarrow, ready to be carted around back and stored until burning season next year.  Our woodshed is blessedly full, waiting to be slowly emptied as we stuff the wood stove full and enjoy the crackle and pop of a roaring fire.  I only wish the stove were upstairs, not down.

There are a myriad of things on tap for us come September.  School, an out-of-town wedding, drying apples, cleaning house.  One of my goals this fall is to get my house in order.  (Isn't that always one of my goals?)  It seems that no matter how hard I try, life keeps getting in the way and the disorder gets out of hand.  But let this be my promise, friends!  Before fall fades into winter, I will have a home that has less clutter and more peace.  But, more on that at a later date.  No before pictures.  I'm too embarrassed.

On that note, I sign off on this little update.  Cheers to you, and may the autumn see you well and happy.

Things that Make Me Smile: Laugh Out Loud Edition

Did you know that babies laugh roughly 300-400 times a day, while the average adult may only laugh 20 times a day?  It's time to inject some laughter into our lives.  Here are some videos, images, and links that may hopefully do just that.

This is long, but it's worth watching the whole way through:

 Not quite so long, and funny in a schadenfreude kind of way:

 

One view of the effects of social media from www.xkcd.com:

More from XKCD:

Items Lovely and Otherwise

Someone suggested that I borrow post ideas from other blogs, and one type of post I've seen repeated is of lovely things that can be bought in various places.  Now, I love lovely things, so without further ado, a list of items that I find lovely, inspiring, or otherwise delightful.

This fabulous stationery from C. R. Gibson.

This pretty birdie from an Etsy shop.  I wish I could draw like that.  (And no, it's not just practice.  Trust me; I've tried.)

Pyrex.  Anything Pyrex.  I don't think I've mentioned how much I love Pyrex.

This baking powder canister.  Why a baking powder canister?  That's a really good question.

This is actually more difficult than I thought, and I even had a stock of lovely and inspiring photos to choose from.  Where do you find your inspiration?

Things that Make Me Smile

I love posting things that make me smile.  We all need to smile more!  I hope these bring some cheer to you as you prepare for the new week ahead.

Coffee-it-Forward

On the Bookshelf: Bleak House

The book currently in the spotlight, and actually off the shelf (on a chair beside it, to be precise) is Bleak House by Charles Dickens.  It's the very first Dickens book I've ever read, and while I was warned that Dickens is rather, well, bleak, I'm enjoying it mightily.  It's a novel about a will dispute and the lives of the people involved, and includes love, murder, friendship, and intrigue.  It also contains a lot of ridiculousness, which lightens it up immensely.  In fact, there have been several parts that made me laugh out loud.

I find the characters delightfully well-developed, including the more minor characters, and the plot moves along nicely, albeit slowly.  The story itself changes point of view frequently, but each view is easy to differentiate and the changes are easy to follow.

I can't say how it's going to end, not being there yet, and I wouldn't anyway.  However, if you're into Dickens and long books (my edition is just shy of 900 pages), I highly recommend picking it up and giving it a try.

Camping in the Cariboo

If you check in here regularly, you may have noticed that the last several days have been pretty quiet.  That's because this August long weekend, The Man and I took the family camping in the Cariboo for the first time.  We packed everyone and the family dog into our 25-year-old 12-passenger van and hit the road early on Friday, and arrived at Green Lake just before dinner time.  It's a beautiful, and, surprising to us, rather large lake nestled in the beautiful south Cariboo, just outside of 70 Mile House and about a 7 hour drive from our home near Vancouver.

 Like I said, everyone and the family dog.

We got rained on the first two days we were there.  The sky would start out blue in the morning, and by mid-afternoon would look something like this:

Half blue, and half stormy.  It started raining shortly after I took this picture.

Now, this picture doesn't give a very good idea of how very black that storm cloud was, but I assure you, it was black indeed.  It also had a lot of rain in it.  A lot of rain.  Fortunately, and thanks to The Man, our campsite looked like this:

We spent lots of time at the beach, made some friends (for the dog, too), and the boys and I even got treated to a quick spin along the lake in a boat the day that we left.  The water was Caribbean blue and so clear that I could see the thirty feet down to the sandy bottom from where we were.  It wasn't quite Caribbean warm, but it also wasn't as chilly as many other lakes in the north, and the cold water was very refreshing during the hot parts of the day.

Camping marked the middle point of the summer and now we're on the downhill slope, headed for September and a return to school.  There are still a few more adventures left for this summer, though.  I hope you enjoy whatever adventures remain for you!