Today’s number pulled up photos from my past as a little girl, my granddaughters, flowers, views from High Park, art, my husband after a bike mishap and my son’s balcony garden in London.
What is it about feeding people that gives us so much joy? Food in our family is a way of caring for the well being of our loved ones and expressing love. My husband loves to cook. It gives him a great deal of satisfaction and enjoyment. We are so lucky to be able to feed ourselves and family every day and not worry about where are next meal comes from. Yes we complain about the price of food these days but for most of us we are still able to put food on the table. Sometimes we have to get creative to stretch the dollar but I still fondly remember some of the comfort food we prepared at university. Chicken livers and peppers over rice was a staple along side macaroni and cheese, spaghetti and meat sauce (from a jar), grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup, homemade chilli and eggs and toast.
This week’s number brings back memories of a visit to the High Park Zoo, an art exhibit at the ROM, a day at the opera with my good friend, LInda, several of my art projects from years ago, friends and family, photos from my retirement party and pictures from the cottage.
The clutter on my work table in my studio will give you an idea of how hectic the last 10 days have been.
Apart from the normal craziness of getting ready for Christmas I decided at the last possible moment to take a table at the Holiday Market at the Inn. Initially I was just going to sell our art and photo cards and display some of my smaller pieces of art but then I got it in my head to make a few of my sock gnomes. A few turned into 28 and 9 gnome ornaments.
Sadly on the day of the market a snow storm descended on the city and the turnout was definitely affected. Many people chose to stay home and a few of the vendors were no shows as well.
Since that day I made a few more sales at my hair salon and through friends. Most of the gnomes are now gone and 25 more cards have sold.
On the home front we’ve been busy putting our Rumtopf into jars and labelling them to get them ready to give away. I made up 9 bags of gifts for the volunteers that I’ve worked with most closely this past year at Montgomery’s Inn.
Last Wednesday we had our last bake for the year and will be on a break for about 6 weeks. The staff at the Inn hosted a lovely luncheon for the volunteers as a thank you for all their hard work and dedication to making bread every week to sell at the Farmers’ Market.
So this part of the reason why I haven’t posted as regularly as I normally do. I’ll bring you up to date with what else we’ve been up to in my next post.
Some people can never have enough candy or sweets but when you see it displayed row upon row and in giant pastry cases you have to wonder if are obsession with sugar isn’t somewhat excessive. On the flip side, though, I find it overly frugal when individuals can make a chocolate bar last an entire week or take their Hallowe’en stash and spread it out over months.
My answer is simply, ‘yes’. I do enjoy travelling. I’m not a hugh fan of flying but since two of my three children and my two grandchildren live 1000s of kilometres away, flying is the fastest and most convenient mode of transportation. Closer to home I enjoy travelling by train and car and even in London I prefer the overground rail system.