Day Tripping .....

I’ve enjoyed a few day trips out and about this summer.  I am fortunate to have an Attractions Ontario card (available from my place of employment) so receive good discounts or free admission to many of the province’s tourist attractions.

One of my days out was a lovely trip to Toronto, including a visit to the Toronto Islands with my DD, DSiL and 3 of my DG’s.   The ferry ride to the islands was aboard the ‘Sam McBride’.  Interestingly it was put into service back in 1939 so the first time I rode it, at the age of 5, it had only been in operation for 15 years.  Now, nearly 60 years later, it is still making several crossings each day, carrying visitors (and residents) to and from the island ferry docks.

 

It was a nice day (sunny but not too hot) to visit the Centreville Amusement Park where I had a couple of rides on the lovely antique carousel there and had a good time watching the little ones have a turn on the fun rides and amusements.

 

 

                                                   

                                                      The lovely old carousel.

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Then I enjoyed a nice walk along the lake shore to the Gibraltar Point lighthouse.  It’s the oldest of its kind on the Great Lakes …. about 205 years old, I believe.  Sadly, the interior is not open to the public but the outside has been kept in good repair.  Its location looks a bit odd for a lighthouse; instead of standing proudly on the edge of the lake as it did in its prime, it now stands inland and is surrounded by trees instead of water.  This is due to the build up of so much sand over the years that the beach is now actually quite a distance away from the lighthouse.  The light keeper’s house is long gone but there is a rather interesting story about an early lighthouse keeper who went missing and the area around the lighthouse is reputed to be haunted. 

 

            Gibraltar Point Lighthouse .... still standing tall after more than 200 years.

 

Hope everyone else is enjoying some great summer-time adventures!

Bye for now …. Nan

Home Grown .....

Well, it has been a bit on the cool side here for a couple of days; still nice and sunny but not hot, the way I like summer weather!

I was out of town last weekend for a nice visit with an old friend and her hubby.  They lived in a rural environment for several years but last summer they moved into the city.  They now live in a fourth floor condo but that hasn’t stopped them from growing lots of lovely fresh salad fixings right on their balcony.

 

 

 

Doesn't it look yummy?

 

 

The results are really quite impressive and we enjoyed a very tasty mixed salad, with the ingredients all freshly picked from their ‘container garden’.   It’s quite amazing what you can do with just a few containers, a handful of seeds and a bit of effort.

 

Bye for now, Nan

 

 

Purging ….

Well, here I am again.  It was very exciting to find that I had a visitor to my very first blog posting and was delighted to find that a comment was waiting for me when I signed on today. Welcome to my first follower!. 

 

It was rather dull and grey outside this morning so I thought it would be a good time to do some purging.  I’ve sorted through some more books and have two bags filled ready to be passed along to a couple of friends and have taken a bag full over to my local Seniors’ Club to share on the free library shelves there.  I have always had a very difficult time parting with books but I am getting better lately, largely due to a lack of storage space for them.  This is likely to continue to be an on-going issue though (insert big sigh here) as I keep acquiring more books.  They seem to be somehow determined to throw themselves (quite uninvited, I might add) into my shopping basket when I am near any bookshelves in the shops and the lonely, soon-to-be-homeless books piled willy-nilly in boxes at yard sales leap out in glee when they see me coming and contentedly follow me home.  Well, that’s my story anyway …. and I’m sticking to it!  

I have enjoyed having a bit of free time this week to indulge in a couple of good reads.  I finished reading Philippa Gregory’s ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’ which I had been meaning to read for such a very long time and then moved on to ‘Chocolat’ which I thoroughly enjoyed (so now I guess I need to see the movie!).  I am now settled happily into ‘The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society’.  Last week I read Rosemary Sutcliffe’s ‘The Lantern Bearers’, a very good story set at the end of the Roman occupation of Britain.  I found it equally as captivating as her ‘Eagle of the Ninth’ which I read many years ago.  I want to read the third book in Alan Bradley’s ‘Flavia de Luce’ series soon, as I liked the first two so much although I must admit that I did prefer the first book in the series (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie) to the one that followed it.  Perhaps I just hadn’t been prepared for the sort of odd twist at the end of ‘The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag’.  Still, I do want to read my way through the series as I quite like the characters the author has created. 

Off now to have a cup of tea and a toasted tomato sandwich with some salad (yum) and then I have a couple of birthday gifts to wrap for a little party I am attending this coming weekend.  In the next day or so, I will try and upload a photo or two and see how I get along trying to figure that out.    

Bye for now, Nan

 

Hello Everyone!

 

Well … here goes!  My first foray into Blogland!  Not sure how this will turn out but after much contemplation, have decided to just ‘give it a go’ and see what happens.  As an opening post, I thought I’d just explain a bit about me.
 
I’m a widow, in my 60’s, and am a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.  I like to spend what free time I have doing Genealogical research (mostly England and Scotland) and trying to piece together the story of my ancestry.  
 
Home to me now is a small town in Ontario, Canada (recently moved from a busy city) and I’m sort of semi-retired .… meaning I do work but only my part-time job is out in the ‘real world’.  My full-time job is mostly done from home which suits me just fine.
 
I do a bit of  scrapbooking (should do a lot more, considering the number of boxes of photos I have collected over the years!) and I enjoy making and collecting 1:12 scale dollhouse miniatures, when time and resources allow.

I love books (worked in a bookstore for 8 years and loved every minute of it) and read whenever I get a spare minute or two but really enjoy ending the day with a lovely long read before going to sleep.

 
Bargain hunting (love rummaging through thrift/charity shops) and yard-sale shopping are enjoyable pursuits of mine and even though I worked in retail for many years, am not one to pay full price for anything, preferring to buy second-hand or if that’s not an option, then buying new at bargain basement prices only.

 Well, that’s me in a nutshell.

Now I wonder where this blogging journey will take me.
Tune in tomorrow and see!

 Bye for now …. Nan