Hah!  Remember when I used to make posts about money and the state of my financial affairs?  I kind of fell off the personal finance blog-wagon.  It's been a long time friends.

Well, I have some confessions to make.

In the past year our debt has not gone down.

In the past year our debt has not remained the same.

In fact, our debt has grown.  Our credit cards carry balances, our LOC balance has increased.  Some examples?  The Yurt we rented went on CC, big dinners out with visiting friends went on the CC, the passport application fees went on our CC. 

I know what Gail would say.  I can hear her voice right now, "you can't spend more then you make" &; "you can't afford that" &; "you have to learn how to live on a budget" and so on.  I can even SEE her cringing.  But, we just can't stop spending.

We have our big trip to the UK coming up quick and while the flights are completely paid for and we have about 1K for spending money.  I have a very good feeling that some of the expenses will be going on a CC.

It's hard to get out of and yet so easy to get into.  I'm working on a plan that we can actually follow through with and succeed at.  No get out of debt quick schemes for us.  Slow and steady are going to win the race.

Since I posted about our recent Yurting trip many people have asked what exactly a Yurt is.  I'm here to give everyone the skinny, the downlow on Yurts and how wonderful they are.

& heck, I don't feel like thinking up a fancy new way of describing what a Yurt is, so I'll just let Wikipedia do the talking for me...

A yurt is a portable, felt-covered, wood lattice-framed dwelling structure traditionally used by nomads in the steppes of Central Asia. A yurt is more home-like in shape and build, with thicker walls than that of a tent.

Traditional yurts consist of a circular wooden frame carrying a felt cover. The felt is made from the wool of the flocks of sheep that accompany the pastoralists. The timber to make the external structure is not to be found on the treeless steppes, and must be obtained by trade in the valleys below.

Enthusiasts in other countries have taken the visual idea of the yurt—a round, semi-permanent tent—and have adapted it to their cultural needs. Although those structures may be copied to some extent from the originals found in Central Asia, they often have some different features in their design that adapt them to different climate and use.

In the United States and Canada, yurts are made using hi-tech materials. They are highly engineered and built for extreme weather conditions. In addition, erecting one can take days and they are not intended to be moved often. These North American yurts are better named yurt derivations, as they are no longer round felt homes that are easy to mount, dismount and transport

Now that we've go the boring definition out of the way, lets move on to the fun stuff.  Here are some pictures stolen from the internet so you can get an idea of what is out there.

As you can see, they can vary quite a bit.  You can have bathrooms, kitchens, second floors, lofts, the ideas are endless.  The Yurts we stayed in at Camp Morton Provincial Park are really comfort camping.  They about the size of your living room (16 feet in diameter) and have a heater, electricity, a futon, table, 4 chairs, and bunk beds.

I have made a little collage in Picasa with some of our pictures from our last 2 trips.  They are comfy little things.

From my research, a simple Yurt could cost as little as about $6K and a tricked out ones cost around $20K.  I used to think that The Provincial Park put the Yurts up every summer and then took them down for the winter, but after doing quite a bit of reading online, I think they are left there year round.  I wonder how the canvas remains undamaged, but I'm sure the Park has a system.  The Yurts where we stayed are definitely 3 season facilties.  They would do very in the fall and spring.  The little electric heater in them sure packs a punch.  I am definitely feeling a little Yurt crazy after our trip.  It would be wonderful to buy some rural property and instead of putting a cottage/cabin on it put a Yurt there.  Just a simple little Yurt.  :P

Here are some wonderufl websites to check out about Yurts
Pacific Yurts is like Yurt Porn.  Make sure to check out the Photo Gallery
Canadian Company Yurtco.
All sorts of information over at YurtInfo.
WoodlandYurt is a UK company.

Youtube has a few nice videos/slideshows that show the versatility of Yurts and their beauty.  Go to the tube and check out the many other vids.  Tres cool.





Enjoy!  Do some googling and maybe you'll find that a Park/Preserve in your area has Yurts to rent.

I recently downloaded Picasa and have been having enormous fun playing around with it.  Picasa is part of Google and didn't turn my computer all wonky or give me a virus or give me the dreaded blue screen of death.  It went rather smoothly, once I figured out that it was on my desktop and not in an internet tab.

I made the banner for my blog in Picasa.  I followed this tutorial and was pleased to learn how simple it really is.

I have also discovered that with the collage feature I can also make these...

I am so thoroughly impressed!  Picassa also imported all my pictures from my blog, so I didn't tediously have to transfer everything over.

I made this blanket out of scraps from my stash. It's made using the most beautiful and ingenious crochet stitch ever. I used this pattern - the corner to corner throw which I found on my new favourite website ravelry. Whoever thought it up is brilliant. However, it is not a pattern that translates well in words. I must have started and unraveled and started and unraveled a half dozen times before I decided to see if youtube had a video. Thank goodness they did, because I was lost. It took me a few watches, but I finally understood. (I wonder what people did in the days before Google and youtube?)

Once you start and understand, it is a very fast moving stitch. It works up wonderfully. I had, unfortunately, 2 problems with this blanket. (& they are completely and totally my fault)

1. The blanket is quite small. Granted, it is a baby blanket, but it is still small. I was very worried that I was going to run out of my 'colours'. Now, looking back I don't understand what I was thinking about in regards to those 'colours'. Orange, yellow, brownish-orange, pink, and hot pink don't really go together all that well. So, it's very small. Good for an infant I suppose, which is good because we actually know a few people that have just had babies.

2. I screwed up on the edging. It doesn't lay flat. The sad thing is is that I knew it was screwing up as I was going along, but I kept trying to convince myself that it was all going to work out. Hah. I should know by know not to trust my inner crocheting voice. I think it's simply my lazy conscious. I tried to add the scalloped edging in hopes that it would help it to lay flat...but it doesn't. I know I should unravel it...but I have no desire to try and fix it. I've already moved on to my next project (which is The Hexagon Baby Sweater--I said we have many friends that have just had babies). I think to the untrained crochet eye, they will not notice the ruffles--heck, they might even think that it's supposed to be ruffly, right? :P

All in all--

Will I use this stitch again? Absolutely. It's lovely and works up fast.

Will I ever use that colour combination again? No way Jose. It is straight out of 1977--the bad parts of 1977.

Will I pay more attention to my edging? Oh you better believe I will.

cheers!

~dinah

PS. I changed the blog template...what does everyone think? Better? Worse? Blase and boring now? Or elegant and refined?

Just a chance to show off my little man who is very nearly 5 in his jammies that nana bought him.

Things have been busy lately. A big whirlwind of life. We are going camping this weekend with good friends and I cannot wait to just sit down and relax. Andrew is super excited to go, although he is worried that the camping trip will somehow interfere with the trip to the UK (which is also fast approaching). I can't wait to be eating smokies over a fire and drinking my tea with bailey's irish cream. bring on the fun!

We are staying in a yurt again, which will be good because they have little heaters & electricity in case it rains or is cold. Our friends are bringing some games in case the great outdoors are not available.

Happy Spring Everyone!

Happy Mother's Day everyone!

That's my Mom and I circa 1981 or 1982. I love all these vintage pictures I have now. They all have such emotion in them.

I'm having a great day so far. Slept in, went to church, Andrew made a nice craft for Grandma, got supper started, tidied up and now I'm surfing the net. My Mom and Grandma are coming over for supper tonight. We're having spaghetti with meat sauce, garlic bread, and salad. Grandma made desert too!

I'm working on some crochet bookmarks for them. I'll post pictures when I'm done.

That's it for me this fine day. I hope everyone else is doing just as good as I am today. :)

We watch most of our TV as whole seasons. So far we've watched a ton of stuff. What should we watch next? We don't like shows that are canceled after 1 or 2 seasons and hubby is British so he loves to watch British shows too.

some of the stuff we've watched:

firefly
buffy
angel
er (all 15 seasons)
third watch
sopranos
house
joan of arcadia
northern exposure
life on mars
4400
burn notice
southland
that 70s show
the F word
lost
supernatural
star trek: voyager
outnumbered
dexter (half of season 1--didn't like it all that much)
rome (same thing)

We're just about done watching all of Voyager and I've started to download Star Trek TNG, but we are definitely open to suggestions.

2010 is quickly becoming the year of the funeral for my family.

One of my Father's best friends died last week. He was 64 and just like my Father it was very sudden and unexpected. Although my parents were very close to Bob and his wife, Ilene, I never really knew them. They were always there, but in the background. I wanted to do something nice for Ilene outside of sending a sympathy card. When my Dad died it got kind of silly. My Mother & I got hundreds of sympathy cards and when I did an estimation of how much they all cost it came out to about $1,000. I totally understand people wanting to send something or give us something express their sympathy and sorrow, but at the same time realizing that $1,000 was a lot of money. Especially when my Mother was trying to figure out how she was going to live and survive financially now that she was on her own and without my Dad's income. There is a big stack of sympathy cards sitting on my entertainment unit and I don't know what to do with them all. I don't want to throw them out, but I don't really want to keep them either.

In the end I decided to make a prayer shawl for Ilene. It will be something that, hopefully, she will use and that will give her comfort as she mourns. Ilene is a short small woman, so even though this is barely finger to finger on me, I'm sure on her it will be oversized.

It took me a couple days, but I'm quite pleased how it turned out. I found the the pattern on Ravelry and it was not very hard. Once you learned it it was just the same all the way through. The only part I had problems with was the trim. I tried a few times, but I couldn't understand what the pattern was asking me to do. In the end I just improvised. I think it turned out okay. I used yarn that I already had in my stash. I had found it at Value Village last year for a good price (like 8 skeins for 7 bucks) and snatched it up with no project in mind.
I hope she likes it and understands why a prayer shawl.