Finally, A Beach!

After craving the beach for SO LONG, Bertha and I finally made it a couple of weeks ago to a beach near Dunnville. It felt soooooo good to finally get in the water, although it was a bit too chilly for real swimming.

But holy smokes did Bertha ever have a good time, and even taught herself to swim for the first time! (I didn't get any swimming pictures because I was sure I'd drop the camera in the water.)

This is Bertha taking a little break - and discovering how good it feels to roll around in the sand - she was completely covered - I'm still finding sand in her hair and in my car!

Really, could this girl be any happier?? Look at that smile on her face!

We're going to have to try to make it back here, maybe even this weekend, as it's supposed to be beautiful, hot weather.

Which reminds me, please note that Relish will be closed on Sunday July 1st to celebrate Canada Day. Enjoy the fireworks, everyone!

Visiting

Bertha and I had a chance to sneak home this past weekend, which is always fun. Not only do Bertha and I get to visit with my family, but Bertha gets to hang out with my mom and sister's dogs. It's a bit of total dog chaos, but man do they ever have fun running through the fields like crazy animals!

Bertha supervising the yard from my mom's bed

Bertha on her best behaviour with Rhoda, my mom's cute old lab mix

my sister's handsome dog Shiloh - Bertha has a bit of a crush!

Bertha helping my nana with party prep. And I have to say Nana was very fair with the crackers - one for the platter, one for Bertha.... 

Bertha is SO bored with the 5-hour car ride back to Hamilton!

Basically, it's a huge sleepover party for her. So if any of you are in the shop today, now you know why she's totally passed out asleep - she's exhausted!

Busy Weekend...

Such a great and busy weekend - Art Crawl and Open Streets all in one!

Art Crawl was a great night, and the weather even co-operated!

And Bertha spend Saturday hanging out with the neighbour's kitten....

And me and Ilya and Bertha worked very hard all day (enjoying the sunshine and festivities) at Open Streets on Sunday. Phew!

So Productive!

With such lovely weather yesterday we were able to get a jump on all that spring garden-prepping that usually gets put off indefinately - we were so productive yeseterday! While today's post isn't too colourful (since no plants have any strong signs of life yet) it show you all the work we did yesterday. It totally wiped us out!

Ilya hard at work trimming our overgrown hedges WAY back so they are sort of under control.

Bertha hard at work chewing up all the wisteria branches I throw down to her from the ladder. She was very tired after all this work!

I guess you can't actually tell in this picture, but this really old and beautiful wisteria vine grows like a maniac all summer - there are branches climbing the wires, into the eaves, even into the huge tree in our yard!

Now the wisteria is all trimmed up and compact - it's going to be covered in gorgeous flowers this spring (I hope), which I'll post photos of as soon as they appear.

More colour tomorrow, I promise!

Pets & Art & Music

I'm working away today, so no design project to report on until tomorrow. This means my dog Bertha is bored because I'm sitting at the computer all day. This is what happens when she's bored...

She sits as close as she can to Atticus (notice he's sitting right on top of the heating vent? genius!), and then starts nibbling his toes and licking his head until he can't take it any more and runs away. Poor guy! But damn is it funny!

So despite the weather, we had quite an eventful weekend! My cousin Christina was participating in an artist talk at the ROM in Toronto, as her photographs are part of an exhibit that has been there since October. (If you get a chance, you've GOT to go see this - it's incredible!) The exhibit is called Position as Desired - cureated by Wedge Curatorial Proects - you can check out a press release from the ROM about it here.

So later that evening we went to Joe Mamma's on King St. Not a bad spot, and had room for the huge party of people we arrived with. And then the music started. Holy moly it was awesome!!! Not sure what the name of the house band was, but they were seriously great! What a great dose of live music!

Project #2 Finished!

My second project from last week is now finally done! Here are a few pics of the whole work in progress...

Stage #1 - Had to recruit my boyfriend to help me get the table into the house - it weighs a ton! And notice the gross maple-coloured stain on the tabletop? It's gotta go.

Stage #2 - Sand down the whole thing (except the pedestal base, which was still in good condition). This is harder than it sounds, as I haven't splurged on an electric sander so I'm still doing this all by hand. My forearms are still aching.

Stage #3 - Start staining the tabletop.

Stage #4 - Finish off with a coat of urethane. (I'm saving the pain of illustrating the fact that I had to sand down the whole tabletop AGAIN after staining it. Ugh!)

A lovely closeup of the yummy wood grain NOT in a gross maple-coloured stain. Yes!

And a shot of Bertha posing with the table.

Family Day!

Happy Family Day to everyone! I hope you all slept in late and are doing a whole lot of nothing today.

We slept in really late and then ate a big breakfast. My boyfriend Ilya, our dog Bertha and our cat Atticus are being entertained by video games right now. I'm stealing a couple of hours to do some work on a table, and then we're looking forward to a whole bunch of movies and eating dinner in front of the TV. I love it when we both have a day off!

Bread?

I was feeling ambitious today and decided to make a loaf of sunflower flaxseed homemade bread. Everything was going well, the dough smelled really good, and then I went out for lunch with my boyfriend's mom while the dough was rising. I also left my dog at home. Terrible oversight.

I think you can guess where this is going. Bertha (my pooch) ate the whole bowl of dough! Of course my first thought was that she was going to explode, but I've been assured by the vet that she'll be fine. And at least I discovered that she only ate 1/2 of the dough - the other half she tried to hide by somehow wrapping it up in her dog blanket and leaving it on my bed. Awesome. Good thing she's so damn cute!