Photo(s) of the Day April 18th

Sophie's thrilled with our first Artists Studio stop: Shirley Clement's beautiful home full of hand-woven textiles

0

At printmaker Jessica Desparois' studio, Sophie gets the chance to help ink a print-in-progress

0

Some of the wonderful, whimsical art at Acme Animals' studio

0

Our first look inside the London Clay Arts Centre, where potter Chris Snedden hosted a tour

0

The London Artists Studio Tour was this weekend, and while poor Chris was working the entire time Sophie and I took advantage of the opportunity to check out the studios of several local artisans. She and I sat down with the tour brochure and I asked her to pick out a couple of places that she'd like to go - I must say I was very pleased with her choices. She wanted to see a textile artist named Shirley Clement who makes spectacular woven pillows and other art pieces, and I was excited to see that her home and studio was in a house that I'd been admiring along the Thames River for years - it was exciting to have the opportunity to go inside! We also visited the home of an amazing mixed media artist named Cliff Kearns, whose deeply textured and often witty work just jumped off the walls, and the one of the studios of the artists collective known as Acme Animal, who make whimsical and wonderful metal sculptures, clocks, candleholders and more. Add to that trips to see printmakers and potters, watercolour painters and metal sculptors - we got to peek into the workshops of an amazingly diverse group of talented folks today.

0

Photo of the Day April 17th

My weekly trip to the Western Fair Farmer's Market went a bit differently today, as we got a note with our veggies last week stating that the market will be closed for about a week and a half after today. We'd just gotten into the habit of their new hours, which include being open on Thursdays... now we're going to have to do without the market for Thursday - Saturday - Thursday. What ever will we do? I'll tell you what we'll do - we'll stock up on anything that will freeze well, that's what. I bought forty flour tortillas, two full pounds of bacon, and enough veggies to get us through at least the rest of this week... that will have to do for now. I'm sure the one thing I'll run out of before the market opens again is garlic - I have a real problem buying supermarket garlic because it's almost exclusively shipped in from China, and when we grow garlic right here in Ontario (and there are some amazing garlic growers in Quebec as well) I just don't think I should have to buy it from the other side of the world. But can you find Canadian garlic in the grocery store? Nope - I can't anyway... at the market I have my choice of Ontario or Quebec grown, organic or non, elephant style or petite. In retrospect I should have bought three heads instead of two, especially since we're having hummus and pita, Greek salad and stuffed pork chops for dinner... I already know I'm going to go through some of it this evening. You can bet that when I show up at the Market when they reopen on Saturday May 1st I'm going to have extra bags with me!

0

Photo of the Day April 16th

I had a very interesting experience today... last year I accepted a Directors position on the South Collegiate Alumni Association, a role that allows me to help support my old high school with an assortment of fund-raising and communication efforts. Over the past couple of years there's been a push all over London for the "greening" of school yards, and South Collegiate has been considering ways that they can update the school grounds to not only add some additional green spaces and trees for shade, but also to update the look of the school and make it's yard space more functional. To that end, they've partnered with Fanshawe College's Landscape and Design department to come up with possible plans for the space, and today executives on the Alumni Association were invited to review some of the 50 plans that were created. Fanshawe students gathered in the South cafeteria with their plans laid out and we were invited to walk around and look at the designs, making notes about which ones we liked the best, what features stood out, and what did or did not make sense to us. It was fascinating to see the differences in design from student to student - some were very old-school academic, reminding me of Ivy-league college campuses in the States and others were modern and playful (including features like shade flags and giant chess sets.) It will be interesting to see which designs, or at least design elements, come out on top after Teachers, student representatives, community members, alumni, and the school board have a chance to give their input... I'm excited to see what the future holds for the beautification of South Collegiate!

0

Many thanks to Principal Larry Schneider for the patriotic photo of South Collegiate's new sign, used as today's photo-of-the-day.

0

Photo of the Day April 15th

Oh, sunshine... how I've missed you. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but this winter has felt brutal to me. I've felt the cold more than ever, and have missed the sun in a way I've never missed it before. For heaven's sake, I even started using a tanning booth - in part because I really didn't want to fry to a crisp when I went on our vacation (as I am partial to burning instead of tanning) but also because it gave me the opportunity to feel warm. The feeling of the heat from the tanning lamps sinking through my skin and into my cold, frosty bones once a week was so wonderful that it could almost make me weep... and now, finally, the real sun is starting to arrive to do the same thing. So, I've cancelled my tanning membership and have taken to sitting on the front porch instead. I get the pleasure of the warmth without the harmful UV rays (or at least, not such concentrated ones) and can say hello to neighbours, wave to people walking their dogs, and hang out with Sophie at the same time. I have the feeling I'll be complaining when the humidity is at 100% and it's 45 degrees Celsius in the shade this summer, but for now I am enjoying every warm minute of the arrival of spring.

0

Photo of the Day April 14th

With Teacher Appreciation week going on at Tecumseh, I thought it might be nice for our family to do a little something for the Teachers and Staff... the Home & School group had organized an awesome Mexican themed lunch on Tuesday, so today we prepared a slightly different kind of treat. Sophie and Chris collected and washed up a whole bunch of rocks from around our yard, and then the three of us sat down with acrylic paints and made them look bright and colourful. I painted on some smiles, then took them outside and varnished them... once they were dry Sophie glued googly eyes on them all, and we attached them to little cards that said "You ROCK! Thank you for all you do for Tecumseh!" I thought they were cute, and they reminded me a bit of the Pet Rocks back in the 60's and 70's. We labelled each one with a Teacher or Staff member's name, and Sophie is very excited to help me put them all in the Teacher's mailboxes in the morning. It's a little thing, but I always think a hand crafted gift speaks volumes since it's far easier to buy something than make something. I hope that the school's staff recognize that the effort we put into creating their little pet rock represents just a little of the love and appreciation we feel for their hard work.

0

Photo of the Day April 13th

There was a Teacher Appreciation lunch at the school today that I wanted to lend support to, but due to previous commitments I wasn't able to actually be on hand to serve food... so I volunteered to help during the planning stages with things like food prep and decorations. Over the past few days I brought little things over to the school that might help support the lunch's theme (Mexican Fiesta!), helped make posters and invitations for the Teachers, washed and chopped a whole lot of lettuce and made corn tortillas (or pupusas, since they were thicker) from scratch using the Tortilla press my dad brought me from Mexico. It was so much fun donning my apron from The Little Mexican Cooking School and getting ready to play with my brand new toy... Sophie got in on the action and was actually responsible for making most of the pupusas herself - we even recorded a video of the whole thing for my Dad so he could see how quickly she was able to master the tortilla press. If I'm able to compress the video enough to upload to the blog I will, but thus far the file size is too big - if only compressing a video could be done in that handy tortilla press we'd be up and running!

0

Photo of the Day April 12th

Between "school work" (ie: work voluntarily done for Sophie's school, as opposed to work I need to do for any kind of schooling of my own) and a coffee date with some of the members of my Book Club this evening, Sophie and I had a rousing game of Diggity Dog. It's fun - participants move their little dog around a track picking up magnetic bones... any bones that match the colour of their dog they get to keep, and the first person to collect all three bones and make it back to their dog house wins the game. Somehow this game always goes off the rails for Sophie, because she's got such a big imagination that the simple act of moving the dogs around the board isn't enough for her... there needs to be more drama. The dogs must talk to one another, sometimes there's a conflict between the red dog and the blue one that needs to be resolved, and often one of them gets "lost" or in some sort of other trouble so another one can help it. Today, all four of the Diggity Dogs found themselves on rafts made from their bones, floating down a river towards a waterfall. What will happen next?!?! If you guessed I was roped into a rescue mission to save the dogs from their perilous situation you're right on. I'm keeping my eyes on game and toy websites to find some sort of role playing game that's fit for a four-year-old, since all her other games somehow end up in acting scenarios anyway. I can only imagine what she'll come up with if given the proper tools!

0