Long Weekend Photo Round Up

It's a holiday Monday here in Ontario and I've been having a great weekend! Lots of friends, food, fun, and activities - it is what summer is made for.

The weather has been fabulous - really hot and sunny. I started the weekend catching up with my favourite Wizard Detective, Harry Dresden. I'm about half way through and enjoying it so far.

On breaks from reading on Saturday I baked some gingerbread cookies. Always nice to have treats around on a long weekend.

Yesterday my parents came up and we went on a short visit to the beach and walked around the Elmvale Sales Barn looking for deals.

We picked up lunch at Perky's Fish and Fries, which never disappoints. I got the haddock and chips, Mom got a burger and onion rings. MMMMmmmmm....

After Mom and Dad left, my sisters in law came over on their way to the beach, dropping off garden beans and romaine. The. Best.

Adding to our fun filled day, we hosted gaming night and played a little HarnMaster style RPG and enjoyed some treats.

I made caramel corn which was a big hit.

Our friend Bryan brought some treats to share that he brought back from a trip to Ohio. I don't think you can get this stuff here, so it was neat to try.

The remainder of the weekend will be spent reading and relaxing and probably eating a lot of garden beans. Perfect!

Applebee's With Mom #FoodPicFriday

I had a nice visit with Mom last week and we went to Applebee's for lunch. We got the Two for $25 deal, which included an appetizer and two entrées. We started with the spinach and artichoke dip, which was hot and yummy. The chips were so crispy and even the salsa that came with it was fresh and full of flavour. We could have snacked on this all day!

I got the chicken fingers as my main meal and could only eat one, as I was completely full of chips and dip. The one finger I ate was good and the rest came home with me and were enjoyed by John.

Bean Harvest 2014

Our beans have started producing!

From little spouts in early June...

That started taking root by June 20th...

 And now they are fully grown and offering up tasty beans to eat! Yum!

It's the time of year for them, as my sisters-in-law brought over some yellow beans from their garden, which I promptly ate with some leftover pizza.

I love green and yellow beans from the garden!

Garden 2014 Updates
2014 Beans and Tomato Garden
2014 Garden Planted
2014 Garden Taking Root

Everything is a Photo Opportunity #31

We attended a wedding in Toronto last weekend that was held on Ward's Island (Toronto Islands). It is a beautiful location that allows visitors to have the feeling of cottage life in (or near) the city.

Here is the Toronto skyline captured from the return ferry on Saturday evening.

Surprise Cat Adoption

John's great Aunt recently had to go into a nursing home and was unable to take her ten year old cat with her. Aunt Jean is devastated to have to leave Trudy behind, but is finding some comfort in knowing that family will be caring for her.

Here is a photo of our new friend Trudy, the newest member of our household.

She has been living with us for a week and is adjusting to her new home as well as can be expected. She is going through a really hard change - the loss of all things familiar to her. We brought over a pillow from Jean's house and we keep the radio on for her so it sounds like home, but everything is new. New sounds, new smells, new people, and other cats. Trudy is getting loads of care and attention from us, but loss and change are hard things to deal with, even for cats.

We are slowly introducing her to her new home and the other cats. We started Trudy off in a room by herself and let her adjust to it and feel safe there. The other cats smelled her through the closed door, and she smelled them. Yesterday we moved her to a different room and let the other cats explore the room she vacated. Trudy transitioned really well into the new room, and our resident cats seem to be accepting of the new smell in the house. A few more days and we are going to try a visual introduction.

The slow introduction process seems to be going really well and I hope it results in positive relationships between the cats.