Exploring the Golden Ears

God was smiling on British Columbia this past weekend; the beauty outside was absolutely spectacular. Waking up to see blue skies and sunshine, Jared and I both knew we just had to get outside, but weren't quite sure where to go. After a bit of research, we'd picked a hike and decided to explore Golden Ears Provincial Park. The park is about a 45 minute drive from our house, and offers camping, beach time and quite a few trails.

The trail we took was called Golden River Falls--it was an easy hike along a river that ended at a beautiful waterfall. Here are some of the camera-phone photos that I took along the way. 

 

 Have I ever mentioned that the woods here are spectacular? They are squishy and wet, full of ferns and boulders and huge trees. And everything, everything is covered with moss. Some of the trees are just dripping with it. I absolutely love the trees!

 

 Most of the trail we were on just offered some glimpses of the rushing river through the thick trees, but we poked into the forest to explore a bit ourselves.

  

And as always when we're near a river like this, Jared wastes no time picking and climbing his way over the rocks.

 

Around each  bend was an awesome new view of the mountains. It was a beautiful day!

We weren't far enough into the mountains for it to be snowy, but the temps have been pretty low recently. Here, they were low enough to have left evidence of freezing. As you looked up into the hills, all the pine trees slowly got whiter and whiter, looking like they'd been dipped in powdered sugar. And as we picked our way across rocks near the river, we noticed that some puddles showed evidence of freezing too. The water had  frozen into awesome swirls that my camera did obviously not capture very well.

 And right next to it, the ice had been broken into sharp splinters. It was so cool to see the difference between the two, one was all curves, the other straight, wicked looking lines.

Scattered throughout the woods were these giant stumps. Having been to the Redwoods and Sequoias in northern California, I can imagine what these monsters must have looked like when they were still alive. But now, they're just serving as nutrients for other trees. This particular stump reminds me of a three generation family shot--what you can't tell from this picture unfortunately is that this old stump is actually "holding" a baby tree--the little guy is growing right out of the top of it.

Jared got much further out into the river than me--the rocks were pretty slippery from all the moss and moisture. Needless to say, I stuck closer to shore. 

 

This was the end point, the Golden Falls. It was quite beautiful. As you got closer to the falls, the air was just full of mist. At the look out point, we noticed that the mist had frozen, and the ground was just covered in tiny little ice pebbles. 

We poked around the base of the falls as well, and saw that there the water and mist had frozen and glazed each rock and fallen log it touched. It was slick, but once we found a dry, sunny rock, it was the perfect place to grab a snack.

After our hike, we headed home to cook up one of our new favorite dishes, chicken curry. All in all, it was pretty much a perfect Saturday.

Valentine's Day our own way

It's always fun to log onto Facebook and Blogger on Valentine's day, and see all the individual ways each couple celebrates that holiday dedicated to love. Some people utterly disdain the holiday, claiming it is simply an excuse to spend money and sell cards. Others are seemingly obsessed with it, spending oodles of money on lavish gifts and weekend getaways. I think I fall somewhere in the middle. I'll be the first to admit, I absolutely love Valentine's Day. I always have, even those days in high school when I fell into deep bouts of sadness after discovering that no secret boyfriend had left a bouquet of flowers in my locker. But I've always loved it in a more homemade way.

From my infancy, my family has always made Valentine's Day a special day. Each year, us girls would make a mess of the kitchen table, strewing it with doilies, stickers, red and pink construction paper, and flowers cut out from gardening magazines. We'd spend the whole afternoon making special cards for each other. Then, on Valentine's morning, we'd wake up to find three vases of roses waiting on the kitchen table, one rose for each daughter. We'd quickly hand out our own Valentines to eachother, and the rest of the day we'd go about our regular business accompanied by that love you can always count on, the love of family. And even in high school, stung from never receiving that spontaneous declaration of love from a stranger, my broken heart mended quickly,  because each and every year I knew that I would always have the love of a special man, tangible in the rose waiting for me at the breakfast table every year from my pappy. And this year, all the way in Langley BC was no exception--I have a special vase of roses on my table from my pappy.

When I reached college and met a certain red haired man, Valentine's day grew even more special. During my freshman year, I awoke on Valentine's day morning to this note on the desk in my dorm room, asking "Will you go out to dinner with me? Check yes or no, either way be ready at 6." Naturally, I said yes. And at 6 pm sharp he met me at the door bearing a bouquet of yellow roses and my favorite Hershey Hugs. And the rest is history :) I've always been amazed by his actions that day, wondering if he knew that in that note and bouquet of roses he was not only making me fall in love with him, but also fulfilling 19 years of Valentine's Day fantasies. From then on, we counted February 14 as our anniversary, and the holiday grew from just dreams and family to include a celebration of love for the man I'll spend my life with. We've always tried to make it a special holiday for the two of us, and had to find a way to make it a holiday to say I love Us (yes, I'm borrowing that from a Hallmark commercial, but it's really a lovely commercial :) makes me cry every time).

This year, we celebrated with a special meal--he was in charge of dinner, I was in charge of dessert. For my dessert, I tried my hand at an American classic:

Pineapple upside down cake! According to Julia Child, this cake takes courage, as you never know if it'll come out of the pan when it's finished. As you can see, mine slid right out so fast I didn't even have time to center it on the plate correctly! So bravo to me :)
 Jared treated me with an experimental Italian concoction including spinach, cheese and lasagna noodles. It wasn't quite pretty, but it was delicious, and that's what really matters. Hope everyone's Valentine's day was magical!

The big city

The weather here seems to be drifting into that inevitable pattern we all know so well--blue skies and sunshine Monday thru Thursday, clouds and rain Friday through Sunday. If we still lived in Michigan, this probably would have been a sit at home with a book weekend, but if we had those days every time it rains here we'd be doing a whole lot of sitting at home. So this weekend...we explored. 

This week marks the one year anniversary of the 2010 Winter Olympics, which were hosted right here in Beautiful British Columbia. The whole country seems to spark with excitement all over again. On TV every station is playing highlight reels and holding interviews with Olympic stars, everyone is nostalgically recalling Canada's last stand in the Hockey event, and in the big city (Vancouver), streets are being closed and events are held to relive the magic. Everyone is so eager to re-ignite that Canadian pride that they felt here a year ago. I couldn't feel more out of place. But the fact that Jared and I are not Canadian didn't hold us back from hopping in the car this Saturday and heading into the big city to attend Illuminate Yaletown, a "free winter party in Yaletown featuring contemporary light art installations", as is printed on the promotional pamphlet. 

Jared had discovered this event online somewhere around Monday, so all week we set our little hearts on going on Saturday. And naturally, when we awoke on Saturday morning, the skies were gray and the rain was falling in earnest. And it didn't let up as the day went on, but we threw on our boots and raincoats, packed dinner in our thermos as planned and headed into town anyway (though we were a little reluctant, to be honest). And miracle of miracles, as we headed closer to the coast we saw this:

This is some sort of technology / science / machinery museum? Perhaps that will be another grand adventure (maybe there's a coupon for it in our entertainment book!)

Blue skies! We arrived just in time for the clouds to roll back enough to give us a spectacular sunset over the city. Our raincoats, to our amazement, were completely unnecessary. In fact, as the night progressed, we actually saw the moon and the stars.  So we spent the rest of the evening poking around the city. 

At the crack of 6:00 when the event started, we were in line with the rest of the city, waiting patiently to enter the Roundhouse Community Center. At the first stop, we helped transform an old train engine into a "constellation of thousands of tiny lights!" (also a direct quote from the pamphlet..it's just so concise, you know?) Basically each participant made a little light out of a battery, some sort of LED and (apparently) a tiny magnet. Then, once it was finished, you could just throw your little light at the train and it would stick right to it. Unfortunately our craft station, as we later discovered, was not equipped with the tiny magnant, so when we threw our little lights at the train they just plunked right off. So we lovingly tapped them to the train instead. My little phone camera doesn't really do dark photos..but I gave it my best shot. 

Here is the train:

We were kind of at the beginning of the group, so it wasn't all that cool :) 

But these balloons were:

They were controlled by some sort of motion sensor technology--"become the avatar and create your own experience!" We didn't wait in line to do that, but the balloons still looked pretty.

And so were these lantern things:

I kind of wish I'd had both of those at my wedding :) 

These rock like structures lit up in synchronization with background music. They were pretty neat. 

So all in all, the actual event was kind of a let down, but it was a good excuse to get into the city and explore a bit. And there were a lot of people walking around in their Olympic pride gear, boasting their Maple Leaf mittens and holding little Canadian flags, which was kind of fun to see. For me, it was just a fun chance to spend some time with my husband, and that's always worth it :)

Crafting

It's amazing how much time there is in a day when you're only working part time from home. I am on the search for a job, and though I've had a couple of bites, nothing has turned up so far. So my day to day life has consisted of pretty much the same routine: search for a job in the morning when I'm feeling fresh and inspired, write a couple life stories, then spend my afternoon crafting crafting crafting. And fortunately, I now have a sweet little room to do my crafting in. It's a simple space, but it has a window where I can see the sun and a door so I can close out the mess of a project half finished when I'm done for the day. Here's some photos of my space:

This first one doesn't look like much, but it's actually spectacular. When we first moved in, the owners of the suite left a couple of pieces of furniture there--the beloved futon, a little stand for our monster tv, and a wardrobe. Yup, a wardrobe. When we first moved in and I saw it standing there proudly (yet largely) in our second bedroom, my first thought was hmmm.....can we get rid of this somehow? But then Jared did something spectacular--he put my scrapbook box in there and said, "Do you want to make this your craft closet?" And I said, "Yes please." And it is now one of my favorite features of our apartment, one that I will probably mourn leaving behind someday. It has little pull out shelves, so I have special spaces for my fabric, my paper, my paint and glues. Before, I was proud of my little blue plastic craft box, that each time I needed something I would dig through and mess up so that when I put it away the lid wouldn't quite close. But now, everything is handy and organized, and I can actually locate stuff quickly right when I want it. You know, the praise for this little unit wasn't supposed to be this lengthy...but I love it :)

We brought a drafting table with us from Kalamazoo, and it is awesome as a sewing table. For some reason, I like to be up high when I sew, and I like to stand when I cut things. The table can be lowered or raised, so it works perfect. And in the background of this picture, you can see my awesome black board. We bought some blackboard paint a while back, and I used it to convert the back of a white board into my own personal crafting plan area. So Jared uses the front for YL Club planning, I use the back for planning out pillows and valentines and other goodies :)

 

And this little beauty is my button box, a gift from my grandmother. It may not look that useful at first, but this little guy is just bursting with potential and creative inspiration. Every girl should own a button box. I think I'll make a point of collecting buttons from antique stores so that my nieces and someday daughters and granddaughters can have their own collection of cool buttons.

So that's my work space! And now I'll show you what I've actually been working on. 

In this first one, I'm proud to display the "fruits" of my labor. hehehehe. But really....

 

I found a pattern for these felt fruits at Bugga Bugs heart-felt fun shop on Etsy, and worked on making two sets of fruits for my nieces' Christmas gifts. It took me from October to December, but it was a really fun project, perfect for taking my mind off moving!  

The pattern is really cool, the apples and oranges both open up and have removable slices. 

 And for the basket, I scoured the $1 area at Target and found some cardboard Christmas baskets. After that I just used some glue and felt and ended up with a little fruit basket. Done!

This past week, I've been doing some home decorating, and sewed up some throw pillows for our living room. I wanted it to have a sort of pinwheel look, and but also be kind of free, so it took a bit of planning. Fortunately squares are easy to work with.

It took one night to come up with this pattern design

And another night to cut out all the little pieces. I hate cutting out fabric, it is by far my least favorite part of sewing, but fortunately I did all this cutting out on a Monday night when some of my favorite shows were on. It was still tedious, but at least I was well entertained.

 

And these are the final products!  

And Jared and I finally got around to printing out pictures for our living room walls. We painted up the frames and now they are up and finished.

And finally, possibly my favorite part of the week was Valentines making on Sunday!

While most of the world spent their Sunday evening watching the Superbowl, I spent mine surrounded by colorful paper, glue and doilies. It is a Scramlin Family tradition to make homemade Valentines every year, and this year was no exception for me.
Happy February everyone!