Monthly Archives: September 2014

A Fruitful and Musical Day

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….ran 4.4k, walked over 11,000 step, and enjoyed the Junction Market and Music Festival

I started my day with a trip to my daughter’s house and we both walked to the Railpath and started to run for 45 minutes. Next week we’re both doing the Railpath Fun Run. I was hoping to run at least 5k in 45 minutes but I only managed 4.4k. For those of you living in Toronto there’s still time to register.

All proceeds from this race will benefit The Stop Community Food Centre.

After our run we got in the car and drove over to the Junction to meet up with K who rode there on his bike. I actually didn’t even know that the music festival was on. Nice surprise but it did make it more difficult to find a place to park. We luckily found a spot on a side street and we walked over to the Farmers’ Market.

It was a gorgeous day but for some reason the wasps were everywhere, especially around vendors with food. I’ve never seen it quite so bad. We sat in a cafe by the window and the wasps came right into the coffee shop. We decided to ignore them and luckily none of us got stung.

The market was very busy and we bought some beautiful kale and green and purple peppers from Wheel Barrow Farms. One of the unique things that we saw on Saturday was a mobile cafe. I wonder how much one of those cost? I should check out the website on the side of the truck.

A few musical acts were set up on the side streets but the big show didn’t take place until later in the day. All in all it was a great day.

Cee’s Odd Ball Challenge – Week 30

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….Cee always inspires me to look for the unusual when I shoot photos

Join in on the fun and post your favourite odd ball photo and let Cee know you want to share your photo(s).

Today we cleaned up the garden and instead of throwing  away the small and misshaped carrots I created art with some of them (here). The best part is when you’re done you get to eat it. I wouldn’t let my husband nibble on some of them because I may come back later today and create some more art but in the meantime I took photos of some of the misshapen little gems.

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Held Hostage by the Cloud

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….all my gadgets stopped working 2 weeks ago

I’m not much for electronics but I do love my iPhone and I use the camera all the time. For my birthday this year my children bought me the Jawbone Up which tracks my steps and sleep patterns and I’ve become addicted to it. Everything was working well until two weekends ago when we went to the AGO with friends to see the Alex Colville show. As you know I take a lot of photos and I was devastated when the camera on my iPhone wouldn’t work. The message that came through said that I didn’t have enough storage.

I tried to delete some photos but it didn’t seem to help. Now almost all of the photos on my phone have been backed up to my computer on IPhoto so I decided to delete them all from the camera. Success. Well for a few minutes and then all of a sudden all the photos reappeared on the phone. I did manage to take a few photos at the gallery but I knew that this problem would reappear.

Later that day I discovered that my Up bracelet wasn’t working as well. It is also hooked up to my iPhone. Again the message was that I didn’t have enough storage.

On Monday, the following day, I made a trip to my local Apple store but they were so busy that I couldn’t get an appointment for at least 5 days. I pleaded with one of the staff to give me some clues as to what I could do. She suggested that I back up my photos onto iTunes.

The next day I took my computer to school and my friend L and I played around with the settings on iTunes. It took a while but we finally figured out that the storage problem was on the iCloud. I had two options. One was to buy more storage and the second was to back up all my photos onto iTunes, even though all my photos were already on iPhoto.

Later that night I clicked the button that said back up to the computer and the ICloud option shut down. I’m not sure that I want anything on iCloud for now but maybe down the road I’ll pay the extra money. I guess the one advantage is that I can access my photos from anywhere if they’re stored in the cloud.

The bottom line is that I can use my camera again and my Up is working the way it should.

Kindergarten Art – A Joy to Teach

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….so far the biggest surprise at school has been how much I enjoy teaching the little ones art

I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical about teaching art to Kindergarten children but it has been very rewarding and so far it’s gone pretty smoothly. It really helps having the ECE teacher with me. There are 29 JK and SK students in that class and without her help I think it would be next to impossible to run the class without chaos.

Our first class involved making ‘dots’ or circles for International Dot Day and we learned a little bit about Wassily Kandinsky and how to use watercolours and oil pastels. In our second class we discussed the different types of lines that artists can use and I introduced Primary Colours. On a large piece of paper the children drew 4 or 5 different lines with black pastels and then using only primary colours painted in the spaces created by the lines.

Their teachers and I think they did a fantastic job. I’m also grateful that the two kindergarten teachers have hung the work for all to enjoy.