52:46

Newfoundland is

unexpected play rooms.

She is obsessed with the shower lately. In and out, in and out. We're hanging out in the bathroom quite a bit.

52:45

Newfoundland is

no time for writer's block when you have less than an hour of child-free writing time.

Gardening in Newfoundland

Published in The Packet

Gardening in Newfoundland has me completely stumped.

I’ve admitted in past columns to making decisions for our yard based on whatever our next-door neighbours are doing to theirs. If they rake their lawn, we know we probably should go buy a rake. It’s not the most scientific method of lawn care, but it seems to work.

I’m most confused by when to plant things. Everyone I talk to tells me not to plant anything until after Father’s Day, because that’s when you know we’re safe from sudden frosts.

Last year, I heeded this advice and waited until the Monday after Father’s Day to do my gardening, only to discover that all the plants in Clarenville had been picked over. I brought some scraggly looking Petunias home with me from Walmart, and hoped they’d perk up with time and water. They didn’t.

I had this ridiculous paranoia that everyone told me to wait to buy my flowers, so they could get to the good flowers first, and that gardening was a more cutthroat affair than I had realized. 

Then I realized I was being melodramatic and egotistical (as usual) and surely the entire town hadn’t banded together with the shared goal of making my garden looked terrible. That would be crazy! Right? Right??

I am new to gardening. My parents like to garden, but they live in warm, wet Florida. Almost any plant down there can grow almost anywhere. I’m serious. My husband once had mushrooms grow through his bathroom tiles. I attribute my parents’ success with plants to a lucky climate, and can’t rely on them for Newfoundland gardening advice.

I have to rely on books, the Internet, and chats with locals in the Sobey’s checkout line to answer my questions.

When do I plant perennials? What about vegetables? What’s the deal with all this grass liming?

The thing is, there really isn’t that much information out there. Maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places. I find that I frequently miss out on troves of valuable information, because I’m not sure where to find it. People in Clarenville know what is going on based on word of mouth, but not much else.

This makes it very hard for anyone who isn’t a local to feel included. For example, I am “friends” with the Town of Clarenville on Facebook. Clearly we’re not besties, because despite searching their page from top to bottom, last year, I couldn’t figure out where to go to celebrate Clarenville Day and what time the event started.

I wanted to celebrate you, Clarenville, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that!

Let me get back to gardening. I recently asked my neighbour to give a gardening seminar to me and other newcomers to the island, who are trying to figure out when to put on out gardening gloves. I think she thought I was kidding.

I wish I could rely on the gardening inventory at local stores. It’s like Kent, Walmart and Canadian Tire are giving me permission to fill my window boxes and back yard with the colorful blooms I’ve been craving for months. Every time I go out, I feel the urge to fill my trunk with the beautiful plants in stores right now.

Maybe I’ll buy all the best trays of flowers, and keep them indoors until it’s safe for them outside at night. I picture myself laughing maniacally, surrounded by my bounty of peonies, and screeching, “NOW WHOSE GARDEN IS THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL?” as lightning flashes and thunder roars.

Or maybe I’ll just wait until Father’s Day.

(#14) Jayme Learns to Sew a Quilt

Sorry about the long wait for a Jayme Learns post.

I got bitten by the quilting bug. It has become a bit of an obsession and all I want to do is cut and arrange squares into pretty patterns.

The sewing part I still hate though. I'm still struggling with getting the tension right, so I'm constantly detangling my bobbins. I'm also really impatient so I tend to not iron things as flat as they should be, or sew things as straight as I should.

So  here is my finished first quilt:

You guys can see that its a boat on the sea at sunset, right?

I'm asking because my mom and my best friend looked at it through facetime and couldn't figure it out, leaving me to feel like a five year old who is confident his drawing looks like a cat when it really looks like a bunch of squiggles.

My quilt is very imperfect, but I've never loved anything I've made more in my life.

It is not quite a twin sized quilt but it is perfect for sharing on the couch and when we eventually convert Ellie's crib into a bed, it will be her bedspread.

I love that there are a few squares from her ducky onesie and a sparkly blue giraffe shirt she wore when she was three months old, and some squares from shirts that I wore shortly after she was born. I think they make me nostalgic in the future.

I still have a bunch of onesies saved for another quilt one day, that I'm hoping to assemble with bits of clothing from Ellie and any other children I have. I'd like to make something resembling this quilt from A Happy Stitch blog. I love the wee little sock sewn onto a square.

But back to this quilt. Ellie and Kirby love it. I spread it on the floor to take pictures of and I had to chase both of them off of it.

Up in the corner, I had a Victor Hugo quote monogrammed on to it.

I wanted to give the little whimsical quilt some gravitas, though my husband thinks I ruined it a bit by adding words. All words on things other than books are cheesy to him.

It's why I haven't been able to buy these forks.

If you are starting to quilt for the first time here are the best resources I found that helped me get started.

This Instructables article called How to Sew a Quilt (Quilting 101) was the best tutorial I could find for someone starting to sew from scratch.

I also depended on this youtube video to help me figure out how to fold the binding into a mitered corner. I still don't think I got this quite right, but I'm kind of a dunce with this stuff.





I'm planning on trying to make a King Size Quilt in the future for my bed. Only with way less tiny squares so that it doesn't take me years to put together. :)

What projects have you been working on lately?

52:44

Newfoundland is 

little messes everywhere.

52:43

Newfoundland is

three day weekends with Daddy.

The Biggest Loser

Published in The Packet

Last week, I was one of the 126 people who signed up for Clarenville’s Biggest Loser Challenge. I arrived with my team at the CEC Theater Lobby, paid my $25 entry fee, and stood in a long line to be weighed.

I lack the intrinsic motivation to become a healthier on my own. I love watching episodes of The Biggest Loser on TV. I’m pretty sure the only things capable of changing my sedentary ways are the peer pressure, public weight shaming, bossy personal trainer and viewing audience of millions the show provides. Still, I’m happy to try our town’s version.

I anticipated walking into the dark theater, being attired in an ill fitting spandex suit to wear, and told to stand on a giant scale in front of the whole town. Luckily, the event organizers are kinder and less dramatic than I am. Instead of publicly humiliating all participants, the town has taken extra steps to ensure each participant’s privacy.  

Each person is weighed in a private booth. The competition is comprised of teams of six, with both team and individuals eligible to earn weekly prizes and overall prizes. However, even your team members are unaware of your start or end weight. Prizes are based on percentage of body weight lost, with first prize being $1000, second $300, and third $200. I already feel like a winner because the scale
I stood on at registration weighed me seven pounds less than my scale at home. Yippee!

           
The Town of Clarenville was inspired to do the Biggest Loser Challenge after seeing the success Portugal Cove had in their town. They were confident it would be popular here, but the enormous crowd that signed up last week Tuesday still surprised them.  

 In the coming weeks, participants will weigh in on Tuesdays. We will hear presentations on healthy eating and exercise tips from personal trainers and nutritionists, and will have the opportunity to sign up for athletic activities like group hikes. Trainers in the area are offering free classes for participants.

           
The excitement of participants was palpable when leaving the first official weigh-in. One team was already walking laps around the CEC parking lot.

There is excitement in my own household as well. My husband (and teammate) has started getting up at 5 am to run with our dog. It takes some convincing to get that pup out of our bed so early, and he gives me a doleful look when he hears my husband getting the leash from the closet, but they both come home invigorated from the exercise and the cold air.

I’ve tried taking steps to improve our diet, by replacing snacks like crackers with hard-boiled eggs and reducing our portion sizes. We are incredibly motivated to succeed in week one. The trick will be to stay motivated for the next ten weeks until the final weigh-in on July 9^th. Then the Biggest Loser title will be announced on Clarenville Day. Of course, all participants working hard to pursue healthier lifestyle choices can be crowned winners.

52:42

Newfoundland is

an unintentional fairy tale.

Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel took a nature walk on Wednesday. Even though we were with a mob of preschoolers, there was still something serene about being in the woods.

Getting Mom in Front of the Camera

Published in The Packet

In January, I had all the digital photos we took over the course of 2012 printed into a coffee table book I dubbed the family yearbook.

It was a hefty tome. Five percent of it was scenery shots of our Golden Retriever frolicking about North Atlantic Canada, five percent were family pictures from around the holidays, and ninety percent were pictures of our baby.

I really wanted the book to tell the story of our lives through pictures. However, as I flipped through the book, I realized the story my yearbook was telling and the story of our actual day-to-day life were quite different.

One of the sadder aspects of my husband’s job is that during the week he gets about an hour and a half of quality time with our baby before we tuck her in for bed. I do most of the childcare around here. According to our yearbook, dad is the primary caregiver.

In the pictures, my daughter had a mother who disappeared shortly after her birth. We have a triumphant picture of me holding her in the hospital. Then I vanish, and the book documents quality time with dad. There are pictures of dad and baby reading together, dad and baby at a pumpkin patch, dad showing the baby puffins, dad and baby looking at planes at the airport, and a hundred more dad and baby variations.

I took these pictures. I love these pictures. But my daughter doesn’t exist within a Disney cartoon. Unlike Princess Jasmine or Ariel or Belle, my daughter has a doting mom. Her mom is just too busy behind the camera to get in front of it.

“What if I die suddenly? How will my baby know she was cuddled by me, bathed by me, kissed and soothed by me?” I complained to my husband.

“Stop saying you’re too fat to be in pictures and then I’ll take some,” my husband replied.

“Stop taking pictures where I look so fat,” I shot back.

Of course, he was right. Like most other moms, I avoid the camera because I don’t want to remember the extra weight, the dark under eye circles, and the frizzed out hair that have become my reality. I keep thinking that when I fix these things about myself, I’ll beg my husband to fill our camera with pictures of the baby and me.

Then I came across a Huffington Post article published in October of last year by Allison Tate, called “The Mom Stays in the Picture.” She described her resolution to get in pictures with her children despite her self-perceived physical shortcomings because she knows both she and her children will cherish these pictures later on. The article received tremendous response from women who identified with the Tate’s story, and the Huffington Post challenged women to submit photos of themselves with their kids. They received over 2,000 pictures with moving descriptions of how treasured these photographs were after time passed and kids got older, or after a divorce when family pictures were scarce, or especially after tragedy intervened.

Now I was even more desperate for pictures with my baby.

“Take pictures of us building with the blocks!” I asked my husband over the weekend. I asked for him to take more photos during story time, and when I was pushing her in her little car around the backyard.

In all of them my eyes were closed, or open way too open, or I looked like I was grimacing, or that I had four chins. I knew I shouldn’t care, but they were truly horrible.

“Do I really look like this?” I asked my husband.

“No,” he replied. “You are beautiful. Just prodigiously un-photogenic.”

I deleted all the pictures and went to bed.

Early the next morning, I found this picture on my camera and for once I don’t mind that he took it when my eyes were closed.