Happy Friday everyone!!!

Well I'm happy and very proud to announce that after months and months of waiting and planning, our house building has begun!!! 

You hear about those horror stories where people have to fight with the town council... well yup that happened to me. After a month and a half of 'reasoning' with the town council we finally were able to get them on our side. That's a month and a half of building lost and agonizing over whether or not we'd have to change the plans of our house. BUT as the saying goes, if it ain't worth waiting for...

So the boyfriend and I and of course half the family (gotta love them right!) started in on the house a couple of weeks ago and I finally have some update pictures I can share with you. This past weekend was probably the hardest work yet. We were putting up walls on the first floor of house, this in fact is not the hard part... it was the mid 30 degree temps we were fighting with that made it so difficult. I had learned my lesson about wearing sun screen a couple of weeks ago after getting burnt to a crisp my first day on the job... but the brothers, the cousin, and the uncle didn't fair so well this time round with scorching sun. 

Footings down and ready for some walls!

First floor ready for some walls!!! What you see here is the product of
our Canada Day long weekend :)

The fam-jam doing their thing!!! PS: That wall was HEAVY!!! Felt like my
back was going to crack in half!

The bones of my dining room.

Father and Son and Son-in-Law bonding time???

First floor is up yeyeyeyeyeyey. Now for the second :)

Strangest thing about this all is that I'm actually having fun building my house. I remember building my brother's house a couple years ago was certainly not as entertaining to say the least. But then again, I'm not the one responsible for planning everything and making sure everything goes up right - that's my Dad's job and he's VERY good at it haha, no doubt that part of house building can be very stressful.  He's definitely the boss on site that's for sure. I would say I'm the catch all on site with people yelling commands at me like "Melissa, come hold this for me", "Melissa, go cut that piece of wood", "Melissa, I need more nails"... on and on and on it goes like this. But I'm happy with that because I think I'd be like a chicken with my head cut off if it weren't for the direction given to me from da boss. 

All in all so far so good - I'll be sure to update you as we make more progress :)

While I'm here I should mention that I actually have been stitching... albeit whilst half asleep at the end of construction days. I'm NEARLY done Nantucket but for one problem... I ran out of some of the hand dyed thread I was using... which means Nan is just going to have to stay unfinished for just a while longer while Mr.Mailman brings me more :)

Have a great weekend!!!!

Melissa

Happy Monday!

Welcome to my last post on my trip to the Bonavista Peninsula! HURRAY. It was never my intent to have 3 whole posts dedicated to this trip but what could I do?!?! There was so much to share that I felt all the little places I visited deserved their own post :) The scary part is that hopefully we'll be going back their before the end of the summer to see Trinity and the Trinity Pageant... one thing that was on our wishlist that we just did not get around to seeing.

On our final day, the boyfriend and I spent a good bit of the morning taking down the tent. By the time we were finished I was toast... luckily I was thinking that morning and had planned to take a shower AFTER all the hard work was done.

Our campsite was so beautiful, I was actually so sad to leave. But I'm committed to going back there at some point VERY soon. 

By mid morning we were all packed up and on our way to our last stop - Elliston. The road to Elliston, while beautiful... was barely that... a road. I felt like our car was in a slalom race as we swerved about the road to miss potholes and gaps in the road that I am sure could have swallowed our car whole. This is one of the pitfalls of having such a dispersed population, there are little tiny communities of just a couple hundred people scattered all along the coastline. Some communities have disappeared overtime, but plenty (some say more than 1000) little nooks and crannies still exist today and naturally all the roads are inland. This means tons of access roads stretching kilometres all to reach just a 100 people or so in most cases... needless to say the economics of patch and repair are severely challenged. So the road to Elliston remains as rough and rugged as the land of our province.

But in the end it was all worth it - as I truly feel I had probably the best experience of the whole trip. 

Elliston is known as the root cellar capital of the world. Settled in the early 1800's, it likely resembled the small fishing community that you saw in my last post about Cape Random. Today the town is littered with what is know as the Salt Box house, which was the typical house you can still see throughout Newfoundland today. 

Not quite a Salt Box house but still pretty typical of NL.

As I previously mentioned, Elliston is known as the root cellar capital of world! Now I realize you might not know what a root cellar is, although I'm sure some British readers or history buffs might know :) Root cellars are basically semi submerged ground cellars where food was stored. In the winter it would keep your roots (aka: veggies!) from freezing and spoiling and would keep the food cool in the summer time. While root cellars were used throughout Newfoundland for food preservation (I can still remember my Nan talking about her cellar), many of them have disappeared over time, replaced by the new-fangled contraption the Refrigerator  It just so happens that Elliston is like the root cellar graveyard. Well actually some are still in use today like the ones below! 



Le Boyfriend :)



Moi!

Looks can be deceiving can't they. Some are very small and others a little bigger. But they all look like they would be dirty holes in the ground. NOT SO! Inside the walls and ceiling are all rocked in and the ground has been walked on so many times that is now hard packed. Looking at these pictures does however make me wonder how and where they got all those huge rocks!!!

The other thing Elliston is famous for is their Puffin Colony. Now if you know anything about Newfoundland you know we love our provincial symbols. We have the Newfoundland Dog as our Provincial Dog, we have the Pitcher Plant as our Provincial Plant and we have the Puffin as our Provincial Bird. Puffins are sea birds and for the longest time I thought they were what you'd call a bigger bird... partly because our hockey team's mascot was Buddy the Puffin and in my eyes he was HUGE... ahhh thank you childhood for the misconception. In fact Puffins are the sweetest, cutest, tiniest little bird ever. The white of their breast looks like it's made of marshmallows and their beaks look as if they must be a relative if Toucan Sam except on an idity-biddy scale. 

The boyfriend and I sat and watched these birds for probably an hour... and a few of them were even brave enough to get within 10ft of us!!! Life long dream REALIZED!

Mom or Dad Puffin watching his nest (hole under the tree root to the left
 of the picture).



Puffins!



Cute attack!



A Puffin Par-tay!



Mr. Puffin with the head of dandelion seed!!!

Well I think I'll leave it at that folks!

I hope you've all enjoyed my last few posts!!!!

Melissa

Happy Friday Everyone!

I'm so excited to continue with the story of my weekend adventure to the Bonavista Peninsula lovingly known as the Discovery Trail.

After having poked around Bonavista, myself, the boyfriend and the parents (who stayed in the hotel the evening while Phil and I battled the moths and flies out camping... lucky ducks) decided it was time to broaden our horizons a bit. LOTS TO SEE!

One of our first stops on Sunday was 'Cape Random'. A number of years back a TV mini series called Random Passage was filmed just on the outskirts of New Bonaventure (and by outskirts I mean a 10 minute walk through the woods). The series was based off a fairly famous Newfoundland book which took on the task of describing the day to day life and hardships of a particularly courageous set of people living in Newfoundland back in the 1800s.

While the location is not actually called 'Cape Random', it was the site of an old fishing outpost. The buildings you see below represent perfectly the types of buildings people lived in 200 years back on this fair island of mine. Which is really what makes this site gem for me. It's not that a national TV series was filmed here... its that this preserves a history not many get to see anymore.

As a child every Newfoundlander learns about the fisherman's life past and present, we learn about the seal hunt and how many Newfoundland women were left widows when their men simply did not come back from fishing/hunting on the Atlantic ocean. But the people who actually did the hard labour, well their buildings, their lives were never quite preserved. Sure their are traditions that still exist because of their way of life, but I've never been able to really get a feel for how these people lived and survived here. Newfoundland was not the most hospitable climate 200 years ago... and in some cases still isn't hospitable now when the snow starts falling. So when you're looking at the pictures below... think living there in the dead of winter, with snow piled up as far up the walls of the houses just to keep the wind coming through the cracks in the 'walls'. Imagine that... piling snow up the side of your house to keep the warm in... WHO KNEW?!?

View of the Village

The house in the background is the 'rich' house.

Apparently these houses wouldn't have actually had glass
windows... just shutters. 

A poorer house. The floor would have been covered
with straw to keep the dirt down.

Up to 17 people could have stayed in this 6 bed shack. Lets
just say lots of bunk buddies for body warmth on those
chilly nights.

The crevices between the logs that make up these houses would
often be stuffed with moss... which continuously needed
 replacement.

A small school house built on the side of a home. The numbers and
 letters you see are actually written on birch bark. They also would use
 individual slate pieces to practice their writing and math. My lovely
boyfriend - a teacher - loved this clearly :)

A view of the fishing wharf and traditional fish flake. Salt cod was the bread
and butter and was essentially currency 200 years ago. Everyone in
the community would have been part of the fishing/fish processing, right
from the oldest adult to the youngest child. Another interesting factoid is
that they would use evergreen bows as a layer between the filleted cod and
the wooden boards of the fish flake to allow air circulation and promote the
curing process.

The fishing wharf... also the wharf of death... soooo rickety!!! 

Our lovable true blue Newfoundlander tour guide showing us how
  the cod was processed.

See what I mean by rickety!?! These logs were more like sticks and
only 3 to 4 inchs on the round. That's the ocean and rock you see in the cracks!!!

This was a calm day in the bay... just imagine what it must have been like
 working  in that building when the seas were rough...
which they typically are.

Not much to say here... just LOVE this picture. 

 Well folks look like this is leading in a Part 3. Wayyyyy too much to share :)

I hope you've enjoyed your little virtual travel experience to Cape Random, Newfoundland!

Have a great weekend,

Melissa

Happy Thursday everyone!!!

This past weekend the boyfriend and I did some at home tourism. By at home I mean 3 hours drive one way and camping for the (long) weekend at one of Newfoundland's beautiful provincial parks. The beauty of it all was that it was so spontaneous. I was simply driving to work thinking 'what on earth am I going to do this weekend'... things have been kinda stalled on the home construction front and the weather man was calling for our best weekend of weather yet! Long weekend + beautiful weather + nothing to do = CAMPING of course. So that's where it all started.

Now I should tell you I have probably only been camping in my adult life just a handful of times. I'm not a fan of anything that buzzes, creeps or crawls in the woods so I usually just try and stay away from it all. BUT as my camping epiphany hit me all that went out the door. I was going to go camping and that was it! But where. There are about dozen or so official camp grounds about the province and I kinda wanted to branch out of the 'go-to' places that I visited most as a child (Terra Nova and Butterpot parks- don't you just love those names!!!!). After a quick conversation with a coworker and the desire not to drive too much Lockston Path Provincial Park on the Discovery Trial (aka highway) became the destination for the weekend.

Cape Bonavista Coast Line

Now, I won't bore you with too much history BUT the Discovery Trial lies on a particularly historically important peninsula in Newfoundland. The Bonavista Peninsula and the town of Bonavista marks the very discovery of the isle of Newfoundland by the British sponsored and Italian explorer Giovanni Caboto (or John Cabot as he is known here). It is said that upon arrival the ocean was simply teeming with cod, which eventually became a huge trade industry for the Brits as they colonized - somewhat unwillingly - the Island of Newfoundland. The Bonavista Peninsula was also a huge epicenter of fishery as well, evidence of which remains to this day. I hadn't been to this area since I was 10-12 years old so it was great to re-discover all the sights.

First up was Bonavista with it's picturesque fishing town vibe, the Ryan Premises and their iconic lighthouse. The wonderful thing about Bonavista is that they have really committed themselves to preserving history through their historical sites. The Ryan Premises is a perfect example of this. Mr. Ryan was (some 200 years ago) a very powerful and wealthy fishing merchant. So now the federal government has turned all the buildings he owned including his house into a story of the rise and fall of the cod fishery in Newfoundland. 

Bonavista

View from the Ryan Premises

Out-building of the Ryan Premises

The Boyfriend and I at the Bonavista Lighthouse

Bonavista Lighthouse

I should also mention that before heading back to the campsite for the night we made sure to stuff ourselves FULL with the freshest and most delicious fish and chips that this planet has to offer :) and I don't even really like fish and chips hahaha

Well folks I think that's about it for Part 1!

Lots more to tell so I think that will have to wait for my next blog post!

Until next time :)

Melissa

Happy Saturday Everyone! 

I cannot believe it is June already?!?! Time has just flown. The worse thing is I'm wishing another week away and praying that June 3 will hurry up and get here already! Why? WEEEEELLLLLLL I have some good news. After being on the job hunt for close to 6 months (and 2 months of being unemployed being in there) I've had a job offer! YEYEYEYEYEY. 

Monday morning I went for a 2nd interview at a local Women's Entrepreneurship Organization. So when I got home I was crossing my fingers which the knowledge that I likely would know within the next couple of days if I got the job. I left both my first and second interviews feeling fabulous and super excited about what the job entailed. No more than an hour after I got home my cell phone rings... Now you have to understand something, I NEVER get calls on my cell phone. Which kind of defeats the purpose of having a cell doesn't! ANYWAY, I hear my cell ringing and my heart instantly feels like it's in my throat. I pick it up and lo and behold it was who I was hoping it was going to be offering me a job! When I got off the phone I'm pretty sure I ran the gamit of emotion in about 5 seconds, overjoyed to disbelief to totally relieved. I really want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported me here in blogland. Your kind words of encouragement have certainly made me more confident and helped to break the funk I had been in for a few weeks :)

So my first day is Monday! Every exciting and I simply cannot wait to dive head first into this new position.

Unfortunately I don't have a stitching update for you today - my mojo is still on the fritz. BUTTTT I have been in the kitchen. Having lived in Italy I often have moments where I just want to transport myself back there for a little while and I do that by (attempting) to create the foods I experienced there. So I whipped out the pasta maker and my newly discovered semolina flour (which is great for pasta's I just never knew I could get it here until last week).

Some mixing, kneading, resting, chopping and machining later came out with one of my most favourite pasta's ever! Cappellacci di Zucca is a traditional pasta of Ferrara and is stuffed with the heavenly goodness that is roasted butternut squash, parmigiano reggiano and a hint of nutmeg. Don't ask me exactly how I made the stuffing because I just eyeballed it (my usual way of cooking). But if you're interested in trying it out here's a good recipe to start with: http://honestcooking.com/cappellacci-di-zucca-pumpkin-ravioli-from-ferrara-italy/ . I also pumped out some tagliatelle noodles with some of the left over pasta dough - NO NEED FOR WASTE :)

Mmmm just looking at that finished product makes me drool haha. I finished off the pasta with one the most simple and likely most fattening sauces - Crispy Sage Butter Sauce. Absolutely delicious and not so heavy that you can't really get the taste of the sweet butternut squash centre.

Pasta making is truly a labour of love and if you're not one for the kitchen I wouldn't recommend making your own pasta. Me on the other hand - if I spend hours in the kitchen just fooling around with different recipes I'm in heaven :)

Have a great weekend!!!

xoxo

Melissa