Resting

Happy Boxing Day!  

It's been a pretty intense few months here at the Scally house, but today we are resting.  Tea, knitting, movies, books, blankets, footstools, comfy pillows - all of these things are featuring heavily in our day today.

So, in lieu of all the posts I haven't written over the last 3 months, here's a quick photo tour of life at our house...

We've had yummy autumnal dinners.

We've made beautiful cupcakes that look like adorable shoes!

Caity made most of them, but this super-sparkly pair were made by Becca! 

Caity made a cute gingerbread village for Hallowe'en.

We celebrated Thanksgiving!

We made felted slippers.

and snuggly warm socks.

and beautiful squishy wraps. 

The fuschias in the window box woke up early for spring!

We festooned the inside of the house with fairy lights. 

We made a tower out of Christmas Crackers. 

We dragged a tree into the house and made it look beautiful!

We were spoiled rotten by lovely friends! 

We made Ninjabread cookies - the girls decorated them so well, they're hilarious, and they taste great, too!

Here's a ninja cowboy! 

Santa came and filled the girls Christmas sacks with fun gifts. 

Caity got a GIANT teddy bear!

Snowglobes and nutcrackers arrived, just like every year. 

and the table looked beautiful for Christmas dinner. 

There's been a lot happening, and there's a lot more where that came from - hopefully it won't be three months before you hear about it all! 

In Which Connie Is Very Busy.

Summer is beginning to wane here at Scallyville, mornings are a little foggy, night-time is a little chill.  Usually this makes me sad, because I love to be warm, I love the sun, and the endless grey chilly days are difficult. 

I've been enjoying the long summer, working on projects like this beauty -

 it's a shawl, named Bivalve, in a yarn colorway named Atlantic, and I love it!  

this is what makes summer fantastic - look how the light travels through the fabric - gorgeous!!!!

 And so it's a little sad when those fabulous slow days are over and the routine of school starts up again. 

But this year I have Connie, my faithful Aga. 

She's been busy the last 24 hours.  Monday she made plum chutney with the beautiful little sugar plums from our tree.  We had so many we weren't going to be able to eat them all before they went soft, so I preserved about half of them. 

Yesterday she slowly braised chicken in red wine, and last night I threw a tray of slightly sour table grapes into the warming oven. 

This morning when I woke up, I had raisins! 

 Yummy!  Raisins are pretty expensive around here, grapes are a dollar - seems silly not to make my own raisins since I have the tools for the job! 

Right now there's basil drying, and thyme, in the warming oven, and the smell is wonderful! 

 
On the cooktop I have cranberry sauce simmering (I love the sound of popping cranberries!)

 
and there's another tray of grapes washed and ready to be raisined overnight tonight.  Maybe fall is not so bad after all. 

Sort Of Like A Museum Of Crap...

So I was chatting with a friend about our little cottage and all the quirky contents, and she said 'Despite the clutter the cottage sounds fun.  Sort of like a museum of crap!'  which got me thinking, and today we've taken some pictures to show you what we've been sharing the last 2 weeks with. 

There are some fun things, like this hollowed out section of tree outside, where people have collected their favourite treasures from the beach. 

There are some quirky friends, like these 8" high penguins on the mantle shelf.

Then there's the video collection, of which this is just one shelf.  2 copies of Fargo??? 

"We have left some shelves and cabinets free for you to put your own things..."

Really? 

Where exactly?

We kept most of our clothes in the suitcases, and our food on the kitchen counter, there was no cabinet space to put anything. 

This is Brian's favourite drawer, he found all sorts of useful man-things in here! 

Did you forget your glasses?  There are 6 pairs in here, maybe one of them will work for you...

That deck of cards was one of many, at least 15, all wrapped in elastic bands. 

Then there are a few things that are just a bit strange....

anatomy of a hand? 

Boxing Gloves? 

A 'loft'?  I think this was rather extravagantly advertised - it's barely 15 inches high, not long enough for a teenager, and rather claustrophobic!  The ladder to reach it has to be propped against the bed that it shares the room with and is a bit of a precarious climb.  I'm not sure it should have been advertised as 'a bed', really, but it gave us somewhere to store the excess cushions from the beds and couches!!! 

not sure if the 'plant' is real or fake, but the apple is definitely not the real thing - what use one might have for a silver apple, I am not sure...

At first glance, the top of the bookcase seems to just have more clutter, of a boating variety, but a closer look revealed this...

The boat is balanced on the stand, with a weight, so it actually rows - super cool! 

Windows are a good place to put things, too, apparently - although we felt they obscured both the light and the view! 

 There are lots and lots of pictures on the walls, and some under Caity's bed, too, just in case they should find themselves running low! 

A seagull with her baby - just like the 'fuzzy rocks' that hatch outside Brian's office. 

 There are curiosities like this lamp...

Do you think she knows she has a table lamp growing out of her head? 

 and these felted rocks.  They're heavy, they actually DO have rocks inside - now I love yarn, and felting, but I love rocks too, and I'm not sure that their natural beauty is enhanced when they are wearing 'rock cosies'. 

Fuzzy rocks!!!!!  And a felted bird!  My yarny home!!!

It's been an adventure, that's for sure.  I have more pictures to share, of the outside, it's been quite a day for weather!  But for now, I'm off to make a cup of tea and enjoy our last evening. 

Flying by...

A whole week has gone by, so fast!  Last Saturday I went back home, and spent the weekend with the pets and Netflix and the spinning wheel, which was great.  I caught up the laundry, watered the plants, enjoyed the quiet.  On Monday I came back up here to Camano and spent the day with the family.  Bri and Caity went swimming,

and we went for a walk along the beach, and took a picnic, which we ate sitting on a long in a sunny spot

Look at the camera everyone...

or not!

okay, whatever, I'm just going to take pictures anyway! 

- this turned out to have not been quite as well planned as I thought because Bri had his tides backwards, so the tide was heading IN, not OUT, and we came back OVER all the fallen trees and driftwood, which Becca absolutely loved! 

Caity had some fun with a deck of cards...

We could tell that Daddy was here because the house was suddenly more techy than it had been before!

On Thursday night we had a really big thunderstorm, lightning went on for hours and hours, and it was still raining when I woke at about 7 on Friday morning.  I wasn't too pleased to be awake that early, since I'd only had a couple of hours sleep, but it was worth the early awakening to find this friend outside...

It's grey and chilly, I sent the girls back to bed to sleep some more now that it's quiet, I wonder what today will bring...

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday

Tuesday

Today my body has figured out that it's on vacation, and I am TIRED!

This is like the first few days after Becca finished finals - she was fine for a while and then she crashed, exhausted and spent.  It's been a lovely day but both girls have been mothering me this evening, so I'm assuming I look pretty bad right now and I'm tucked up in bed with laptop, book, and knitting.  The girls have gone off upstairs to play cards, listen to music, and giggle quietly! 

We took a longer walk on the beach today, after a slow morning in which I spun some yarn, and Becca made pancakes.  We took off a little before 3, thinking that we had about 90 minutes to walk, and then 90 to get back before the tide started to rise significantly and we ran the risk of being cut off from the path home.  In the end, we didn't get nearly as far as we planned, because we stopped to chat to Ladybug the sausage dog and her owners, and then we stopped so the girls could climb on a fallen tree and admire the view from 8ft up in the air. 

Then we stopped so that Becca could go exploring in a quiet little hideaway under a fallen tree that is still in full leaf.  And when our 90 minutes were up and we turned to come home, we discovered that the return journey took a mere 30 minutes!  It was still lovely, and we found some excellent sea life under the seaweedy rocks. 

Becca found mussels growing all over the place, tucked in tree trunks, against rocks, there were thousands of them. 

This made us look a little closer, and we found limpets, teeny tiny black whelks, and soft crabs lurking underneath the rocks. 

Wednesday

Today was a quiet, at-home sort of a day.  We read a lot, played cards a lot, ate a lot, and I did a fair bit of spinning.  The girls spent a couple of hours on the beach in the late afternoon sun, reading and chatting and trying to find some stone skipping skills to show off to their Dad when he arrives for the weekend!  It's a very different experience being on vacation with the girls, compared to being at home with them.  For some reason the change of venue has chilled us all down a lot and we're happy just hanging out and being together. 

Thursday. 

Today was a big trip out day, we drove up to Fairhaven and then on to Bellingham.  There was lots of fun to be had in Fairhaven, it's a beautiful little town with a pottery, a glassworks, and a woodshop to visit, where local artisans have space to display and offer for sale their work.  It's lovely to see all the different styles of work and we were lucky to have time to wander around and appreciate all of the pretty things.  We had lunch in a London Double Decker Bus, which was a rare treat - fish and chips, at that!  Bellinghan was reaching the end of its day by the time we got there, but we enjoyed the waterfront - Bellingham Bay is beautiful, especially when the sun is out...

I tried to see if Johnny Depp was in this great pirate-ish looking rigger, but he must have been sleeping off the rum below decks! 

There was some sort of race going on here but we couldn't make out who was winning! 

and the chocolate shop, and then drove the scenic route home, down Chuckanut Drive. 

Friday.

Today was a very very strange day.  I was woken at about 8 by a HUGE clap of thunder, and cleared space in my bed for the daughter I knew would be along shortly.  Both of them arrived a few minutes later, and since we were all awake we had some breakfast and pulled all the chairs up to the windows so that we could watch the show - it was quite spectacular. 

This part of the world does not often get thunderstorms, and so when they do happen, they are big news.  Today was no exception, everyone was talking about it, and everyone was watching.  We even had rain for a while - first day this vacation that it hasn't been bright and sunny all day long. 

We did a little housetidying, played a LOT of cards, and ate a yummy salad for lunch, and then we put ribs in the oven to cook long and slow, and we played more cards as we waited for Dad to arrive.  His journey was long, the weather and the Friday afternoon traffic conspired to add an hour to his journey, but he was here in time for dinner, and got a walk along the beach after dinner with the girls.  They took some video of the lightning, which is still decorating the sky to the north of us, 15 hours after it started! 

I'm heading home tomorrow, to feed the pets, do some laundry, water the plants (all the veggies and container plants are needing daily watering in the heat that home is experiencing since we left), and I'm hoping to get in some quiet spinning and knitting time, too.  I'll be back on Sunday evening/Monday morning to spend next week with the girls while Dad goes back to work.  we had initially planned to bring the pets here for Dads long weekend but the cottage is so small that we don't know where we could put them and not be tripping over them, so they've stayed home in the air conditioning, which is probably better than being here in the storms anyway!