BC DAY

I celebrated BC Day by spending the day quilting and enjoying green tea frappacinos from Starbucks. Of course I did a few other things like clean up my sewing room and another room in the house where things had gotten very messy and needed some sorting out.

Of course some one left his drink on the edge of his desk and Hoshi decided that she would take his straw and run around the house with the drink cup and the straw.  It was an interesting half hour, a battle of wills ensued to see who would win out.

Verrisimo

My lovely husband, knowing that I was so far from a Starbucks got me a coffee maker for Christmas. Wasn't that sweet.

Verrisimo side view

After a bit of a delay and waiting for a place to put it, I finally have it set up and have had 2 cups of my fav latte.  Ah. ( Three hours later my belly hurts. LOL.  Maybe I should stick to one cup only.)

Unfortunately, my barracks room is dusty.  Yeah I dust and clean every week but still the dust comes.  So I made a cover for my Verrisimo.  While it does not match the cover on the sewing machine or the TV, its in another corner so I am not too worried that it doesn't match. I ordered before Christmas this rigging material by Michael Miller from Hawthorne Threads.  While living in Ontario, I find this company is quite close to get things in a timely fashion and their prices are good too.  I particularly love their scrap packs.  Such neat fabrics that I normally wouldn't get due to my taste and location from suppliers.

While you can't see it, I have used navy cording that wraps on the side and around the top of the cover and finishes it off nicely. It is lined with plain white cotton that I found in the drapery dept of all places.

Travel Day Three

Day Three I found to be a very hard driving day.  We drove across Montana which seemed to take forever to get across.  Its amazing how little you can cover driving at 120 km speed limit. Okay maybe you cover more distance than expected but it sure took a long time to get to Billings.

And we did take a bit longer to leave Missoula than planned cause I wanted the opportunity to pick up a few things at Target and other stores that I could not get in Canada. I can finally understand the appeal of Target that my US friends talk about in their blog. They had some really great items that were helpful for traveling and some nice things that will work wonderfully for my barrack room. 

Did I mention that I am living in barracks when I got to ON?  Yup.  They are pretty spartan let me tell you.  Needless to say I wanted a few things to make settling in a bit easier. I regret that I passed over a few things now that I have gotten into my room and realize that a little bit or piece would have been perfect.  Oh well.  Improvise right? 

I am not sure if I mentioned that I planned our route based on two things.  Hotels and Starbucks locations. If a hotel had a Starbucks close or even in the hotel, then we were staying there.  Unfortunately there is no Starbucks in Petawawa.  You can see the culture change as you go across the country be it US or Canada.  Ontario has more Tim Horton's and other coffee chains while the West Coast has much more Starbucks per city than Tim's.  Sadly I am missing Starbucks.  Next time I visit Ottawa I have to buy some bottles of syrup and make my own Cinnamon Dolce Latte at home.  It won't be the same but it will be close enough to take the craving away....

Return from Penticton

I have just spent the last four days away in Penticton, a lovely community nestled in the Okanogan of British Columbia, joining with other clergy and laity from my denomination in a provincial meeting called Conference.  While I didn't relish being away from my lovely bed, that I can set to what ever firmness I desire that day, the setting and the experience were wonderful, and restful despite the fact I went to bed much later than I normally do at home.  It was great to be immersed in familiar language of the church, music that is lively and written within the last 10 years and talk about social justice issues to focus on in the year ahead. (Okay spending an hour and a half talking about ethically raised meat was a bit much!)  The only thing I regret was that there wasn't a bit more time to drive up the highway and go to one of the many vineyards in the area.  While I am not a huge wine drinker, sometimes just an experience is a wonderful and fascinating thing to do.  I wonder if I can convince the husband that he wants to take some of my leave period and do a little road trip.  Its 6 hours plus a ferry trip, but could be done in a long weekend.  While there wasn't a lot of free time, with what I had, I made sure I went outside, sat on the beach, lingered at Starbucks and stopped at the local quilt store called Poppins.  I wish I would have brought my camera, but alas I was trying to travel light.  Who wouldn't want to visit a town nestled between two lakes, with a semi arid climate?