Wednesday Hodgepodge (On A Friday)

Even though I'm on vacation in Saskatchewan, at my parents' house, my mom asks every morning why there's no new blog post! I guess I'm too busy relaxing! Hahaha! So I'm linking up, a few days late, with Joyce at From This Side Of the Pond for the Weekly Hodgepodge. Find Joyce here.

 

image from here 

1. Do your goals and dreams energize or exhaust you? Elaborate.

Honestly, sometimes it's both. I get excited about dreaming about vacations and places I want to travel. Travel planning almost always energizes me!

However, some of the goals I have for our house exhaust me sometimes. For instance, this summer I'm trying to unpack and clean some of the areas affected by our renovation, and our yard needs a lot of attention, and I find those things tiring. Once they're done, I'll be really happy about it but the thought of having to do the work is what gets me down. I do find that once I start a project, I have new energy for it, which helps me finish it, so that's good!

2. July 23rd is national lemon day. Are you a fan of this flavour? What's a favourite dish or beverage you enjoy that calls for lemons?

I love lemons. I love all citrus flavours but lemon is up there as one of my favourites. I really love lemonade and I love lemon on fish.

3. "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade"...is this something you're pretty good at managing? Have you had to do this recently? If so, tell us about it.

I'm not great at making lemonade out of lemons. I'm trying to get better at it but I don't adjust well when my plans get thrown off. This is maybe reaching a little but one thing you should know about me is that I dislike being in the car and we've had to do a few longer drives recently. I discovered a fascinating podcast about the story behind businesses so on these drives we've listened to Starbucks and IKEA. We've got a few more long drives this summer and we're planning on listening to the Costco episode next. The podcast is called Acquired and Dave, Rachel, and I have all been enjoying it. This is one small way I've made lemonade out of lemons this summer.

4. Something you love that is lemon yellow in colour?

Since we've been at my parents' house, I've been enjoying watching the goldfinches feeding at their feeder off the deck. They might be hard to see in these pictures but I've been loving them! I also love that we've hit Saskatchewan while the canola is in bloom. This is one of my favourite times to be in Saskatchewan!!!

Do you see the finch on top of the metal hanger as well as the two on the feeder?  

I haven't gotten any canola pictures yet this year so these are from when we visited during canola season in 2023.

5. How would you describe your attention to detail?

I used to have amazing attention to detail. I think menopause messed with some of that and I'm not as good at it as I used to be. I still find random typos in books all the time though, which I find really irritating. When it comes to words, I will almost always find the mistakes :) Not so much when it comes to crafts though. 

6. Insert your own random thought here.

Our summer vacation this year is visiting my parents in Saskatchewan. I've been loving it and we've already enjoyed so many Saskatchewan things, with more to come!

 

Left: flying into Saskatoon with the fields spread out like a patchwork quilt below us; right: the official Prosecco celebration of being all together again! Note: Sam came home from camp with a new haircut! Hahaha!

  

Left: picking Saskatoon berries; right: inventing new drinks; this one is called Moon Lake Madness and has Saskatoon berries in it, of course!!! My parents live near Moon Lake, and we picked the Saskatoons near that lake, so the name is appropriate :)

  

Left: actual buffalo in a field near my parents' house; right: a  metal sculpture of a buffalo at Wanuskewin, an archaeological site and cultural and historical centre of the First Nations, just outside of Saskatoon

I love visiting Saskatchewan at any time of year but there's something extra special about being here in the summer!

I'm off to enjoy relaxing for the rest of this Friday as we've got a full weekend ahead of us so I need to rest up! Thanks for reading my blog today :) I'm hoping that early next week, I'll have a combination "life lately/summer report" post to share with you. Our summer is in three distinct parts this year and I want to document Part 1.

Share Our Lives: Favourite Room In Our House

It's been awhile since I've linked up with the Share Our Lives bloggers. However, this month's topic is "favourite room in our house" and I thought I would use this as an opportunity to share some post-renovation pictures. The Share Our Lives bloggers are Dara, Joanne, Adrienne, and Jen. (Click on each name to go their blogs.)

I'm cheating a bit here because honestly, right now, my "favourite room" is our deck! Can a "deck" be a "room"?!?!? It's where I spend the bulk of my time when I'm at home these days, moving my chairs around to stay in the shade. In fact, I'm writing this post on the deck, after we ate supper on the deck!

 

  

Just a few photos of "deck life." 

My second favourite room, and it's an actual room this time, is our kitchen. I fell in love with the variety of tile in Portugal when we visited there last summer, and it inspired this room for sure!

The window in the middle of this picture is where the stove used to sit. I love having it fully uncovered!

We went with two different coloured cabinets, which I love, and then our back splash is a little wild, just like the tiles in Portugal. The countertops are white with some light flecks in them.

This is my favourite corner in our kitchen with my mug cupboard, the glass doors so you can see my Fiestaware, and our new coffeemaker.

A closer up view of our glass cupboards and the back splash.

A closeup view of the two windows. My dad made all the stained glass and I love it.

 

I also wanted to give a shout out to our powder room. It is a little narrow space, but I absolutely love it.

My mom and dad put the cabinet together when they were here in June and hung the artwork above the toilet. The mirror is one we bought for Rachel at Target and she didn't want it in her new room. I thought it added a touch of whimsy to this bathroom.

Again, the flooring was inspired by the tiles in Portugal and the bathroom colour was picked to match the blue in the tiles. This room is a little wild but I really love it! 

So those are some of my favourite spaces in our house, thus far. I haven't figured out my favourite winter space yet, but I'm sure I'll discover that in the coming months! I'm guessing it won't be the deck! Hahaha!What's your favourite room in your house?

Hello Monday! 10 On The 10th: July 2026

Since Friday was July 10th, I tried to take 10 pictures but it was a very boring day. Instead I am sharing ten pictures from our weekend and linking up with Holly and Sarah for Hello Monday! Holly blogs at Pink Lady and you can find her here, and Sarah blogs at Sunshine And Books, and you can find her here.

Rachel was volunteering at VBS last week and the church it was held at was about a half hour walk from our house. So almost every day I walked her there and back and came home in between. I got a lot of walking in last week and spent a lot of time on my favourite path!

I've spent so much time on the deck this summer. I love it when the laundry is hung and I can relax with a cup of coffee-hot chocolate and some water and just enjoy! The main reason I stopped taking pictures on Friday is that I sat out all Friday afternoon and read an entire book. And then Rachel and I watched Legally Blonde (which I'd never seen) and Legally Blonde Part 2.

I needed a plan to tackle the last of the boxes from the renovation so Dave worked at the office this past week and I took over his home office and unpacked (and sorted) boxes. On Friday, I unpacked the boxes with our games. I've made good progress on the boxes but there is still more to do. I will be so glad when this part of the renovation is over!!!

On Saturday, I ran some errands with Rachel and baked an Earl Grey Tea Cake with Blueberry Cream Cheese frosting for an event. Rachel and I went to a "cake picnic" at one of the cafes in our downtown. There were about twenty different kinds of cakes and it was so much fun!!! Rachel and I definitely got our fair share of cake! And while we didn't win anything, we did receive a few votes for "most creative flavour" and "best overall cake" so I was pretty happy.

Yesterday we drove to a beach not too far from us on Lake Erie. Recently, I've started listening to a few episodes of the Acquired podcast. I started with the Coke one last week and it got me through a lot of laundry folding and box unpacking. So I suggested we start listening to the Starbucks episode. When we saw a sign for Starbucks, we had to stop! Rachel is holding a bag of their coffee because, did you know that for the first 10 or so years, Starbucks didn't actually sell brewed coffee. They just sold small packages of beans. We're not done the episode yet but it's given all of us so much to talk about. It's seriously fascinating!!!

We went to a beach which imports palm trees from Florida each year! It's kind of their thing and something this beach is famous for!

We had lunch on the patio and enjoyed the view before plunking ourselves down on the beach, and in the water, for a few hours. 

I'm finishing the weekend off with eating a piece of leftover cake and blogging under the solar lights on the deck. I just love summer weekends! I hope you all had good weekends too.

Wednesday Hodgepodge 661

I'm linking up, once again, with Joyce at From This Side Of the Pond for the Weekly Hodepodge. Find Joyce here. You'll see more about this below, but I'm looking for blogging topics and Joyce asks interesting questions.

1. What's something you enjoy now that your younger self would never have appreciated?

Being outside. When I was a kid I would do anything to be able to stay inside. I much preferred reading and doing all my family's laundry, rather than doing outside chores like working in the garden. My mom would take the day of her birthday off work to stay home and garden and I never understood that.

 

Now I do. It's Sunday afternoon as I write the bulk of this post and I've been outside for most of today. I tended to my day lilies (and counted the ones in bloom today (over a hundred!!!)!), I've hung laundry, I've read some of my book, and I've planted some more grass. Now I'm blogging outside and later this afternoon I'll go over to have a visit on the porch with my friend and drink some tea.

WHO AM I EVEN!?!??! 

2. What was peaceful about today?

My entire morning was peaceful -- drinking coffee-hot chocolate outside, hanging laundry, deadheading my day lilies, and reading my book. The birds were singing and I had nowhere to be. It was glorious. 

3. It's National Blueberry Day (July 8). Will you celebrate?  You can have one of the following right now-a slice of blueberry pie, a warm blueberry muffin, or a stack of blueberry pancakes...which do you choose?

This or that-blueberries or raspberries? blueberries or strawberries?

I did not grow up with blueberries. I mean, I'm sure they existed at the grocery store but Saskatchewan had Saskatoon berries, which I still think are way tastier than blueberries. My favourite is Saskatoon berry pie. Our house has a Saskatoon berry tree in the front and we pick the berries right off the tree. We took care of our friends' house while they were away for a few days and my friend made us Saskatoon berry muffins as a thank you. I've been eating them for breakfast and they are soooo good!

If I'm doing this or that with blueberries I'll pick raspberries and strawberries over blueberries. I don't dislike them, I just think other berries are better! 

4. Do you need a break? From what?

I needed a break from work, and I'm definitely getting that! I've been on summer break for about a week and a half now and it's been glorious! I also needed a break from our heat last week and this week has been so much better. So no, I don't really need a break right now, but that's because I'm getting one.

5. What has surprised you most about getting older?

How hard it is to sleep! I used to take sleep for granted and now I don't. I've hit the stage of life where I rarely sleep through the night anymore and it's so irritating. Gah.

6. Insert your own random thought here.

As I said above, I'm glad Joyce has these weekly questions for us. As the kids are getting older I'm looking for topics to blog about which don't include them as much. As Sam goes into Grade 12 in September, and Rachel enters Grade 10, I'm also starting to think more about what life will look like as they're around less. Many of my friends are empty nesters and I see those years coming for Dave and I too.

My second random thought has to do with blogging -- I like to try and read, and comment on, every post in link ups I join. However, more and more blogs require a WordPress account and my WordPress account has not been playing nice lately. I have to reset my password every time I want to post a comment and I feel like my comments still disappear. So, if you have a blog which requires WordPress, please know that I'm trying to comment on it -- I'm just not very successful lately.

So those are my answers to the Hodgepodge this week. I'm having tea with another friend this morning and then I'm planning on going to the library to do some blogging so, hopefully, I'll be able to read some of the other posts soon. Happy Wednesday.

Currently: July 2026

Well, I've been on summer break for just under three days and I still can't manage to write a blog post in a timely fashion. Maybe next time... :) However, even though I missed linking up with Amy at Coffee and Cocktails at the Casa yesterday, I still wanted to write a "Currently" post. You can find Amy here and read other posts in this link up.

 [Sparkling]

Anticipating my upcoming summer break, last weekend I had Dave buy a selection of "sparkling" Fever Tree beverages for mixing drinks. I'm excited to figure out something fun to do with the grapefruit juice. I've tried mixing it with vodka but it needs something a little sweet to perk it up. I've also got a huge basil plant on the table on our deck so I'm trying to figure out if I can do something with basil in a drink too. (I know -- I could just Google something but it's so much more fun to experiment!!!)

[Grilling/Cooking]

We're "grilling/cooking" everything we can these days. Our CSA (community shared agriculture) started a few weeks ago and there's so many good veggies. We had my favourite grilled romaine last week and we've discovered salmon burgers this summer, which are a nice protein switch for me. Mom and Dad also brought a few packages of farmer's sausage when they came so we've had that as a treat as well.

 

[Heating up]

Our summer weather has been "heating up" this week, which is not my favourite. Yesterday it was 44C (111F) with the humidex, which measures the temperature with the humidity in the air. Without humidex it was 34C (low 90s). Anyways, this is way too hot for me. I get an instant headache from the humidity whenever I step outside. I was thankful our baseball game earlier this week was an evening game, and that we had seats in the shade. Phew, it's been hot. And we still have a few days of this heat left to go...

 

[Using]

I've been "using" my little vases to make mini bouquets. I'm also "using" random flowers in my yard to make the bouquets. It's been a lot of fun! My bouquets are nowhere near as artistic as what my mom makes, but I'm trying...

 

[Celebrating]

Yesterday, we celebrated Canada Day. We watched the Blue Jays game (and what a game it was!!!) and ate poutine for supper. We've also been "celebrating" how well Canada has been doing in the World Cup. We're so ready to cheer them on in the Round of 16 on Saturday!!! Canada's previous best World Cup showing was ... scoring a goal... so this run has been incredibly exciting!!!

 

So that is what's up with us "Currently." We're easing into summer break here, and once the heat breaks, we'll be getting a few things done. Until then, you can find us hunkered down, probably watching sports!