our dearest internet friend received our house warming gift ... and some other stuff!

most of you who read our blog also read Sweet Sandy's blog over at Oklahoma Transient. we have been friends with Sweet Sandy and her family for years! recently they purchased a new home on some acreage in a nice rural area. read back through her last few posts and you will see what a wonderful new place they have.

because i know it's a dream come true for her, i wanted to send her a proper housewarming gift. something beautiful, something with very little practical value other than looking at a pretty something to give your heart a lift. something i hoped that she would love.

your remember the poppy stakes that i got as a gift for myself? i just love seeing them sway in the wind, or collect water and see little pollinators and birds bathing and getting a drink for themselves. sooo pretty!



so i sent some to Sweet Sandy as a housewarming gift. and me and jambaloney laughed our fool heads off when she sent us this pic of where she planted the poppies:



all around her tornado shelter - bahahhahahahahah! always the prepper that Sweet Sandy!! !!

today is a little foggy and misty and rainy:

that's ok becuz yesterday was gorgeous and sunny! we could only get in the hottub once and that was early morn.



foggy, misty days make for great hottub dips and is soo very good for the garden. although still suffering with black fly fever, we've been sure to eat good food. here's some steak, grilled asparagus and a grilled tomatoe stuffed with rice, olives, spinach and feta.

if anyone is curious what a deer fly bite looks like - here ya go:

they are nasty and they love jambaloney. i haven't gotten a single deer fly bite yet (*knocks on wood* *knocks on head*) but the black flies are still eating me alive - deet or no deet!

this is one of the reasons why we have to check our cats almost hourly for their heart rate.

almost all of the time they sprawl in such a manner that we think they might be dead.

a nice stirfry with a bunch of seasonal veg and fruit always helps in the afternoon.

and here's The Rat in all of his Rat glory - sleeping on the dishwashing machine while it runs. he loves to be on it when it is running!

kids - every now and again we make a proper decadent meal. proper in the way that we feel like a king and a queen being served by serfs at a majestic, medieval castle - but in real life we dirty 10 million pots and dishes, end up serving ourselves...and then moan and groan throughout the meal. and can\t move for an hour. i present such a dish to you:

yes, poached eggs, steamed asparagus, local strawberries and fresh caught lobster all smothered in homemade hollandaise sauce. we felt like a king and a queen right up to the point where we had 10 million dishes and pots to take care of and horribly extended bellies. oh and fyi - we shared that plate.

while i was still feeling queen-like i folded a bunch of jambaloney's banadanas.

the normal coloured ones are for work whereas the crazy coloured ones are for around the Manor. right now he is wearing the brightest yellow bandana you have ever seen!

between his contract work and the new greenhouse - he's keeping himself pretty busy.

i just keep dirtying dishes, yelling at him to drink his water and keeping him fed.it's been another pretty awesome day at the Manor. we hope that your day is awesome too! xox

squrwemells.....oh jeesh!

a beautiful day for sure!

but a fricken squermell came on the porch through a catdoor, ate the whole bowl of snackedy-moes at the crack of dawn and then couldn't figure out how to get out so screeched his face off. ugh. 2 of the catdoors don't even have doors on them - and then there is all of the open space at the top of the porch to get out. but no, this guy just sat and screeched! at 4:30am!!! so we got up - even though last night we talked about sleeping in together until 9am!!! didn't happen kids. we had to get up and then there's feeding these 4 cats who have really gotten used to be "mcsauged" and fed whenever they feel like it. oh ya  i forgot to mention Moey-Shambie getting into bed with us in the middle of the night and grooming himself for 2 straight hours. and he makes the loudest licking noises!

wasn't a bad day tho kids! jambaloney brought home crab yesterday that had been caught that very day!

of course we made proper california rolls and dipping sauce.

need a treat after breakfast but you still have garden jobs and it's not dinner-time yet? yo dudes - plate a fruit?

strawberries from the mainland are in their peak this time of year! strawberry, spinach, fresh roasted almonds and feta anyone? how about a "to-die-for" dressing of black currant vinegar and hemp oil?

with lots of pepper of course!

mid-afternoon break was some leftover sushi rice and bean sprouts.

supper will be steak and grilled veggies - yummeh! but supper ain't happening until we get a nap! we're wore out kids! and the deer flies are now out. jambaloney is covered in deer fly bites! they love him more than me - thank goodness because the black flies love me!!!!

another horribly wonderful day at the Manor. bed is calling and when bed calls - you don't answer back. you just follow bed's instructions.

sending love to all of you, expesiously (spelled like that on purpose!)

nostalgia,eh?

i was looking through some pics and felt some nostalgia about finding Framboise Manor, buying Framboise Manor and moving to Framboise Manor. come along with me on my nostalgic walk through memory lane!

we found Framboise Manor online in june of 2009 - we bought it - site unseen in august of 2009. the real estate agent went to the Manor and took us some very detailed pictures of what we were buying and it wasn't pretty - you can see the detailed pics in this post. really - go see the pics if you want a really good laugh! we bought it anyway.

and then we took a four day trip, 1,600 kms away to see our Manor for real. first we stopped at the beach in my hometown, the beach i always swam at. my hometown is jambaloney's father's hometown as well. interesting, eh?

here he is on the reef. gorgeous!

and here's me...a little chunkier then.



we stayed in the city for a day and a half to fill out all of the paperwork and then drove an hour and a half to finally see the Manor with our own eyes.



woohoo! the Framboise Community Centre where we attend most of our functions now.



we noticed that the local Masonic Supper was being held that evening. of course we went!

as we had already been told about the horrific driveway, we left the car parked at the bottom of it. i think you can understand why!

and there it was in all of it's glory!!!! FRAMBOISE MANOR!




oh dear. really if you want to see just how awful the place looked - go and read this post of pics that the real estate agent sent us. 

but we had a beautiful beach!

my man was loving it!

we really love our beach!

i eventually fulfilled my dream of being a mermaid at that beach!

we both love swimming in the ocean!

this was our very first visitor at the Manor.

although we were only at the beach for 2 days, we met incredible friends - and one of them just happened to be a heavy equipment operator. we showed him the overgrown Manor and no way to get to the river and he said "no problem" - he'd take care of it!



and built us a road to the river!

we put up our old house for sale in october 2010 and the first people through the door wanted it, at full asking price but they wanted it by december 2. 

we didn't want to fly with our rescue cats so jambaloney bought us a 1980 chevy vandura. it's why we put the name ending "dura" on all of our vehicles. check out this baby. 

and if you want to see the inside of that gorgeous girl - go here. yep, we piled some of our belongings in vandura, 2 cats, a compost toilet and started driving at 6pm in the dark and it had just started snowing. we stopped in quebec to get some sleep but jambaloney had somehow broken the newly-installed thermostat so instead of sleeping we just piled the cats on the fold out horrible bed with a ton of blankets and shivered until we couldn't stand it and then started driving again - to get the heat!

as we were nearing cape breton island, the ghost snow started. sheets of snow that looked like ghosts. it was awful and the wind was blowing like mad. and poor jambaloney with 2 months driving experience. he white-knuckled it the whole way but there were 30 other cars behind us for most of the way and they were thankful for our beast of a truck taking most of the beating off of them!

and the Manor looked like this when we got here.

yep - and a 275 foot driveway that needed to be shoveled! jambaloney went into our favourite town of port hawkesbury and got us truckdura. truckdura did us good.

truckdura has a new job now - helping haul gas down at the fourchu wharf.

nostalgia, eh? we have been here since december 2010 and although we have to put up with a lot of crappy stuff, don't even get jambaloney started on the wiring and plumbing in this house that he has had to fix, did i mention black flies from june to end-august, deer flies and horse flies from july to end-august, most of the floors had to be re-enforced, walls that were never properly insulated and a whole pile of other stuff?!?!?!?

but we wouldn't trade the Manor for anything! well, my buddy Ed made us an offer on a swap which we might take him up on when he gets the kitchen remodeled - bahahahahah! naw we wouldn't trade this for the world!

i'm going to have to learn how to record with my phone. one of the things that both of us stop and say to each other several times a day is that we can't believe how quiet it is here. it's so quiet. except for tons of birds chirping and cheeping, bluejays sqwaking "chipmunk-chipmunk" (i swear that's what they say!), squirrels screeching and stealing all of the bird food, the breezy sound of the wind in the trees, and on the best days we can hear the ocean roar.

this nostalgic post is for anyone who wants to leave the city, the noise, the traffic, the pollution - the everything that can keep you stressed 24/7. if you have a dream of getting away from it all - do it. find a way to do it. 

and don't set your sights on 100 acres of pristine land with orchards and gardens already in place. look for a bit of land with a bit of a fixer-upper and do it. who knows what you will be able to find...and yes, i am talking to all of you, but mostly to Rain and Sol.

and really if you need a good belly laugh - go and look at the pics of what the Manor was when we bought it - you'll thank me for such a good laugh!

black fly fever week!

it happens every june...we start getting closer to summer and less like spring.

and like idiots we strip down to nothing and go running around the yard.

 we do our chores, water the greenhouse, water the garden and for the first 3 days we don't even really notice the black fly bites. and we think - hey maybe this year we'll become immune to them!

and then i run around and take pictures and stuff. this is the first year that the red finches haven't eaten all of our apple blossoms - they only ate the back half of the tree.

who knows? this year we might get an apple.

anyway, then we sit out in our loungers buck naked, look at the back of our crazy little manor and get sunstroked by day number 4.

we go in and have a nap and then wake up with the black fly fever! ugh! it's awful!

so the next day we put on DEET which we hate! we hate putting that stuff on! jambaloney is ok in his bug suit but i get claustrophobic in those things! because we hate the deet, we never put enough on. and then we still get bit!

jambaloney has been working on his contract daily, his normal chores and building the 2nd greenhouse. i have been doing more planting and have actually planted some flowers - woohoo! and we get bit. and bit. and bit. and bit.

and then the fever really hits! it gets in your muscles, your joints, your bones, your fingernails and even your hair hurts! we have been taking it easy this past few days, eating good food and sitting in our comfy chairs talking about how next year we aren't going to let ourselves get sick from bug bites next year. ya, right!

but we are least smart enough to know that when you are sick like that - you need really good food!

that's a portabello mushroom stuffed with lobster, old cheddar and a sprinkle of parmesan grilled on the bbq, with grilled asparagus and grilled sweet potato. and some deeelishous watermelon!

this is my version of korean japchae - potatoe starch noodles, cabbage, brussel sprouts, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, carrot and pak choi.

i make a killer sauce for the japchae - soy, sesame oil, a ton of garlic, a ton of ginger, turmeric, cumin and cayenne. japchae is delicious eaten hot or cold. we love it!

and some shrimp pasanda with jambaloney's jasmine rice.



i make a pretty spicy pasanda sauce and jambaloney has been known to lick his plate clean!

and for some humour - Little Frankie Blue Eyes (aka Munky Monoonch) can smell a box from 15 miles away.

and when he smells a new box coming into the house he comes charging out of the woods and is on that box faster than you can blink!

a little more on black fly fever - i have made more concoctions using essential oils - didn't work! i steeped about a hundred garlic cloves in oil for 4 days - when we took the lid off - we could barely breathe but we rubbed it all over ourselves - didn't work! we tried rubbing slices of raw onion all over ourselves - stank to high-heaven and cried the entire day - didn't work! we have tried every expensive, organic thing out there and none of that worked either! we also tried rubbing soap all over our bodies and guess what? didn't work!

the only thing that keeps these things away is DEET! and you have to re-apply several times a day. bug suits work but often times the little buggers will find a way to get into your suit and get a good 3 or 4 bites before you finally find him.

also, staying in the house or greenhouse or basement and working on inside jobs during the hottest parts of the day (10am to about 4pm) works. and getting to outside jobs on grayer, rainy or foggy days help.

well - it isn't all bad. jambaloney was in to town last week and got me these beautiful faeries.

sorry that the pic is so dark. i will take better pics when i get them set up in the yard. i loooove faeries!

come and watch a thunder and rainstorm with us!

what gorgeous and majestic skies greeted us this morning!

we heard the loud clap of thunder.

we jumped into the hottub and waited for the rain. look how small the greenhouse looks in comparison to the sky!

try to ignore my finger in the above picture. any time it rains, kids, we run around the whole house nekkid, being rained on before getting back in the hottub.

jambaloney thinks i'm crazy but this is a ritual that i have been making us do for over 15 years. i think when it rains, but especially during a thunderstorm - you must acknowledge the universe's gift to you. we were in the hottub for an hour watching this beauty roll in.

it is always amazing when you can see the actual line of the thunderstorm. it rained on us only a few times. but it thundered like mad!

then we saw a tiny break in the sky and knew that it had passed us.

it only rained and thundered a few more times.

so very amazing to be a part of it!

and here is out front during one of our nekkid runs around the yard, in the rain then back to the hottub!

these skies are amazing!

and then the sky broke open right above us...to let us know to never forget to read the skies.

the lobster and crab fishermen here know all about how to read the skies...and jambaloney has learned to read the skies too. he knows exactly when to hit the river or strachan's brook in order to keep us filled with the best fish known to man.

river/brook trout! those type of trout are the first of any fish to die off if your water is polluted in any manner. not ours! sorry...but we got some of the bestest, freshest, healthiest water in the world. those trout were deeeeeelishous for breakfast! that man can feed us for the rest of our lives just off of trout - you want to feel food security? i feel it. i really feel it. and it makes for peaceful dreams at night.

and like i always say - we love our stir-fried veg!

the day ended kinda' hazy and alot buggy - those black flies are my nemesi!

all in all - another wonderful day! jambaloney got a bunch of stuff out of the basement and into our one shed, and some stuff out of another shed, then he'll start laying out all of the windows he got in the garbage to make our second greenhouse - BIG SHOUT-OUT to our big bro G and big sis C for a ginormic window and a glass door and a bunch of wood that jambaloney will go and get tomorrow. we already have the window but jam has to go and get the rest of the stuff. we'll have greenhouse #2 in no time. actually just in time. cuz i have corn coming up!

wahoohey! what a great day! sending love to you all - xoxoxo!