Lake Nakuru National Park photos

The second park we visited in Kenya was Lake Nakuru National Park.  We knew that we would get to see hundreds of pelicans and bright pink flamingos, but we hoped we would have the privilege of seeing a leopard.  They’re super shy cats and not everyone who goes to the park gets to see them.  In fact, it had been some time since anyone had seen one in the park and so when our guide spotted one relaxing camouflaged in the shade back from the road, he got on the radio right away and let all the other guides know the location.  We were hushed several times in our excitement at seeing the leopard, lest we scare him away before the other tourists got to see him.  And in fact after several vehicles pulled up, the leopard decided it didn’t like being in the spotlight and retreated deep into the forest.

I’m still in awe of that one – how close we got to this shy and beautiful animal…..how close we got to all these animals!  Such an amazing experience.

Here are some more photos from Lake Nakuru:

You can see all the photos (and larger versions of the ones above) on My SmugMug site.

Africa photos continued – finally!

Last June I bought a coupon for 75% off a photo book from Photobook Canada, intending to use it for our Africa trip photos.  Then I got sidetracked from finishing the processing of the Africa photos and suddenly it was January and my coupon was expiring soon.  Oops!

So now I have until the end of February to process the hundreds of photos left and put together a photo book – Eep!  But actually it’s good.  I needed the pressure to finally get back to it.  I don’t know why, but the photos suddenly felt like a monumental task and instead of doing the smart thing of processing a few here and there along the way, I let the enormity of the project get to me and did nothing at all.  ‘Cause a magical photo-processing faery was going to fix them up for me while I slept right?

Anyways, I have a goal of doing 18-20 photos a day and so far it’s working out.  I’ll share them with you along the way.  For now, here’s some collages I put together from the latest safari photos.  These were taken in Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya:

Baby animals are so cute!  This little guy had a lot of spunk.

As the rhinoceroses munched away slowly on grass, these little birds perched and ate the ticks off the rhinoceroses backs (when I went to confirm this fact, I discovered that the birds also eat the blood from open sores on the rhinos…which I really didn’t need to know but since I know it now, I thought I might as well share it with you too.  You’re welcome!).

Don’t fall little baboon!

Embrace the impossible

The main concept of Mondo Beyondo is opening yourself up to the possibility of your biggest, wildest dreams.  Because he’s such a sweet guy and he’s always encouraging me to dream big, Steve sent me a website the other day with 50 impossible quotes, to encourage me in my dreaming.  Check it out if you need a little fire under your butt to get kick-started on your own dreaming.    My two favourite quotes on the page were not actually part of the official 50 but were found in the reader comments:

And only you can stop you!

Avocado Spinach Egg Salad Sandwich

Since we found out I was pregnant, we’ve been trying to eat as healthy as possible.  We eat vegetarian at home so we were already doing pretty good on that front (Steve’s a vegetarian).  But still, we’ve been trying to expand our repertoire of tasty, healthy meals.

We always have avocados on hand and one of our go-to lunch meals is an avocado sandwich with cream cheese.  I’m getting tired of the old stand-by though.  So when I stumbled on this recipe that includes not only avocado, but also egg salad and spinach, I was super excited.  I love all those things!  Putting them together is genius!  If you too enjoy egg salad and avocado, you’ve got to try this beautiful marriage between the two.

You can find the original recipe here.  I modified it a bit.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 2 hard-boiled eggs
• tbsp of mayonnaise (or substitute plain Greek yogurt to be even healthier; or even omit – it will already be creamy without it)
• 1 avocado
• 1 celery stalk, chopped
• handful of baby spinach, chopped
• bread of your choice (I used ciabatta buns because we ran out of whole wheat bread – not quite as healthy!)
• pinch of red pepper flakes (optional)
• salt and pepper to taste

1.  Hard boil your eggs.  I hate runny eggs so I always look up how to hard-boil them (seriously, every time!  I have a bad memory), just to make sure they are done all the way.  I use these directions faithfully.  Cool them in ice water while you prepare the rest of the ingredients, or else leave them in the fridge overnight (FYI:  hard-boiled eggs will keep for 1 week in the fridge if the peel is intact and you leave them in a sealed container).

2.  Peel the eggs and mash them in a dish with the mayonnaise.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

3. Peel and pit the avocado.  Add it to the egg mixture and mash it all together so that you get a nice smooth consistency.

4. Add the spinach and celery and mix until combined.

5.  Spread some across your sandwich bread and add the red pepper flakes if you want a little bit of kick.  Enjoy!

Notes:

*Serving size:  I made 3 small sandwiches using these amounts.

* I ate this over three days.  By the second day, the avocado was brown on the top.  To avoid this, you could sprinkle a little lemon or lime juice in the mixture and make sure you cover it with plastic-wrap right up against the mixture.

Crochet baby booties for girls

One of my dear friends had a baby girl just before Christmas.  I wanted to make something warm and cozy for her little munchkin to wear.  I just love these booties so much!  I can’t wait to find out the gender of our little one so that I can make a set for us too.

I love the pom poms on the pink booties.

*I bought the patterns on Etsy here.  If you can count and mark stitches, you shouldn’t have a problem understanding the patterns, but the seller is very helpful in the event that you get stuck .  There are lots of pictures to guide you through it.

Short hair and a bump

I haven’t had short hair in years!  The last time I went super short was when I graduated university and headed off to China to teach English for a year.  So Steve’s never seen me in short hair.  Luckily he was all for the change and likes how it turned out.  I like it too, but I’m still getting used to it.  Another thing I’m getting used to?  That big ol’ belly right there!  I know, I know, it’s really not that big yet.  But it’s growing rapidly these days, so it feels like it just popped right out all of a sudden.  I can still hide it with certain outfits, but lately I’ve felt more confident about showing it off, since it looks less like a food baby and more like a real baby nowadays.

 

Stop and gaze at the steaming bales of hay

(Ok, maybe it doesn’t have the same ring to it as “stop and smell the flowers”)

On our drive back from the cottage a couple weeks ago it was -30 degress celcius (-22 degrees Fahrenheit) but these bales of hay were steaming.  Despite the freezing cold weather and the fact that I have to take my mitts off to take photos, we stopped so I could get a few shots.

I’ve learned the lesson again and again that you should take the photo NOW because it might not be there again next time.  Of all my 2o+ years of going up to the cottage, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen steaming bales of hay, despite the many farmers fields we pass along the way.

New ‘do again

What I loved most about dreadlocks was how easy they were.  Sure, I still had “bad hair” days where I felt like no matter what I did with them, they just didn’t look as good as the day before.  But in general, they were pretty low maintenance and I could just get up and put them in a ponytail and be good to go.  These days I’m finding my hair not so low-maintenance, especially since it’s Winter.  I need to blow-dry it or allow enough time after my shower for it to air-dry before going out into the cold Ontario Winter weather, otherwise my hair would freeze.

I was feeling lazy last Monday and didn’t blow-dry completely and this happened to me.

I also have to style it or it looks ridiculous.  In terms of styling, Winter actually comes in handy a lot of the time.  I can just throw on a toque and hide whatever cowlicks or other craziness my hair has got up to that day, as long as it’s just errands I’m running and I don’t need to take the toque off.  Regardless, I’m getting fed up with my hair (I did mention I’m a hairstylist’s daughter right?).  So tomorrow I’m going in to see my dad and getting it all chopped off!

Here’s the look I’m going for:

Winning a jar full of cat toys

There are exactly 27 cat toys in this jar:

Steve won this jar full of cat toys from the pet food store in our neighbourhood by being the only one to guess the exact number of toys.  Neither of us can remember winning anything in a long time so we were more than a little excited to learn we’d won a jar full of cat toys.  Is that sad?  Nevermind, we won free stuff!  Eeeee!

But even more excited were the cats.

We’d barely opened the jar before Kimba had his face inside, picking the toy he wanted to play with.  Said toy was destroyed five minutes later – a little furry mouse diminished to tufts of fur and pieces of plastic spread across the floor.  Kimba was sprawled out beside it looking very satisfied.

Since then we’ve hoarded the toys and bring a new one out every couple days.  Our cats (namely Kimba and Hobbes) tend to get bored with toys if they’re left lying around to be played with whenever they choose.  So we cycle their toys to keep them interested.  This new jar of toys should last us awhile!  The most entertaining so far have been the little squares filled with catnip.  It must be pretty potent stuff because the cats go nuts.  They clutch and roll over those little squares like they want to become one with the intoxicating bundles.  Up until recently, we’d avoided any toys with catnip since Kimba was still a kitten.  But he turned one year’s old at the end of December so the powerful kitty stimulant is now fair game.

 

Finding beauty and humour in the simplest of things…

 

It’s been snowing up a storm here since Christmas Day.  I was tickled that first snowfall to look out our front window at the tree in our yard to see that the Christmas balls we’d put up all had snowy caps atop their little round heads.