A is for Apple!!

Being that apple harvesting is well underway in our neck of the woods there has been a hive of activity all around us with plenty of pickers scattered amongst the trees, picking all the different varieties of apples. We wake up to the thudding noise as each apple hits the collecting bin before being tipped once full into a wooden crate. These will be the apples for juicing as the eating apples get collected very carefully in special picker bags worn like a baby carrying sling. There are so many varieties again this year;

Royal Gala, Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, Gravenstein, McIntosh, Jonagold, Cortland, Ida Red, Cox's Orange and Amber's favourite, Honeycrisp. To give you an idea of the size of the Honeycrisp apples we pick, here is a photo of one taken beside what I would consider an average sized Golden delicious.

Crisp, juicy and very sweet. This year it has some fierce competition though in the form of a new variety from the US called SweeTango .

Because there have been so many apples available I have been baking a few batches of apple muffins, which seem to disappear almost as fast as I can bake them! On the topic of food, we went out for a family celebratory lunch last Saturday, which just happened to coincide with Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. Jemma heard a couple of days previously that she had been awarded a substantial scholarship. It will help her so much in repaying the student loan she has taken out for her first year at SMU.

We visited a very posh restaurant at the Grand Pre Winery, the food was delicious and the girls both had fancy deserts that we just had to take photos of :)

A little after lunch look around the winery shop to view the various wines for sale, well there's no harm in looking!

Monday brought some more good news, this time for Amber. She has been chosen to play the lead part of Alice in the school production of Alice in Wonderland!

She is so excited and just a bit nervous at the prospect of learning over 300 lines off by heart over the next few weeks!! I expect that once she gets into the swing of reading the script along with her fellow drama students, she will feel more confident.

On the decorating front, after finishing the laundry room we moved into the adjoining mud room, otherwise known as Archie's room. Previously painted a moss green colour. It's the little room he sleeps in at night and watches the nocturnal goings on outside from his vantage point beside the window. No prizes for guessing my chosen colour scheme :) Craig and I worked as a team to finish off this little room last Sunday, I am still working on sewing the curtains.

Ahem! some of us take our painting quite seriously!!

Well, that's an update for this week. I can report that it is getting decidedly chilly outside though. There was even a threat of snow earlier in the week. Shock, horror and it's only mid October!! It wasn't so bad, more of a frost really, but it is coming soon I can tell.

Hazel x

November comes to an end!

Well, the trip to Boston certainly threw me off course a bit and I have been trying to keep my head above water since our return. I left with 4 orders pending and arrived to find more orders waiting for me. I am not complaining at all, but keeping up with the sewing this month as well as juggling other things in my life has been pretty tricky! November has been my best month of sales so far since starting this little business, with over 100 tiny animals sewn and posted off to various parts of the world .

Tomorrow is officially Amber's 14th birthday. However, this year she has decided 'not' to celebrate on December 1st, instead she wants her presents and a party in the middle of next year. June 1st will be her 14 and a half day!! Every year she feels that everyone is caught up in the Christmas excitement by December, herself included, and she sometimes feels that her birthday is a little insignificant :( With Jemma's birthday being in the summer as well as our next door neighbours children also having birthdays in July and early August, she wanted to be a part of that and have something to look forward to along with them. We will give it a try and see :) I am sure that tomorrow will bring a few cards and a cake of course.

If I thought that the girls would be fed up with shopping after visiting Boston, I was wrong. Last weekend they asked to be dropped off at the New Minas mall while I had my winter highlights done. They had fun browsing and taking a few photos too!

A rather stylish Amber

Jemma heading for the changing rooms?

I finally managed to write and send off all my Christmas cards, I always forget how early they need to be posted to go to places as far away as S. Africa, Australia and New Zealand. I am usually very organised with hand written letters and photos in each and every one, but this year with my blog posts and facebook activity it seemed a little uneccesary and I didn't want to repeat myself with old news.

In the past we have always waited until a week after Amber's birthday to decorate our Christmas tree. This year we plan to do it on Sunday, which will be nice and early for us. The Canadians are into decorations in a big way with lots of lights, especially in their gardens, on bushes, trees as well as animated reindeer etc. Being quite a minimalistic person our tree has a Scandinavian theme with hearts, wooden figures, embroidered mini pillows etc. Every year the girls and I make a couple of new decorations and remember how young they were as we pull out the old ones from the boxes where they are carefully wrapped in tissue paper. They all seem pretty much intact apart from the occasional 'salt dough' figure which may have gotten a little damp and had to be bid farewell.

Decorating our tree on Sunday will be a time for reminiscing, laughing and donning our red Santa hats of course!

Decorating the tree in New Zealand a few years ago.
No doubt the camera will capture the moment once again :)

Hazel x