Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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I must buy a canoe this year

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I’m so envying my blogging friend RennyBA. You’ve seen him here many times as he’s a faithful commenter.

He recently had some very good friends come and stay with he and his family and they did some outings together. One of the things they did was go canoing on a beautiful lake. Lovely.

I swear I was born in a canoe. I used to white water canoe – now that’s an adventure!

Being Canadian you either play and live hockey or you are an avid camper and or canoeist – or something in between. Trouble is I haven’t been in a canoe in ages. It’s like a craving now after reading his posts and looking at all the photos they took.

I miss canoing and boating so much! We have a pop up trailer. I think I’m going to get a canoe sometime this summer and use it. I must get back into a canoe.

I can always store the canoe where we keep our trailer. Might as well have the complete outdoor package together right?

Does anyone else enjoy canoeing or boating?





Chris did make it home safe yesterday

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I was just thinking that I never did update my tornado warning story yesterday.

Chris managed to make it home last night without ending up in the middle of a Tornado, and here in Toronto we never did get the severe thunder storms or hail that they’d warned us about for hours.

It all seemed to blow over.

Yes there were Tornadoes or funnel clouds spotted in Southern Ontario but to the best of my knowledge they didn’t cause any major damage.

What strange weather we’ve had this summer. We’re either in a heat wave or a cool front comes in and drops us below seasonal temps. I think we might have an unusual summer weather wise.

Turning a favorite photo into a Canvas Print

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If you’ve been reading my site for a while you know that I love photography. Actually if you read my site this week you probably already know that I just purchased a new SLR digital camera. So I’m really excited about photos and photography this week.

Then I discover this great site called Canvas on Demand. This site allows you to have a favorite photo printed on canvas. You can have your photo manipulated to enhance the color and or features of the photo, or you can have a light brush stroke style applied to your photo to make it look more like a painting. You can also have black and white photos colorized, or converted to sepia tones to give them an aged effect. Canvas on Demand will also restore damaged photos for an extra fee.

The site is very easy to use. You can upload a digital photo that you’ve taken with your digital camera, scanned using your scanner or if your photo is a print you can mail it to them. The easiest and fastest way to have a favorite photo printed on canvas is to upload it directly onto the Canvas on demand site and follow the simple step by step directions that you’ll be given in order to complete the process.

Within three to four days of placing your order your photo enlargement and or enhanced photo will be printed on a high quality canvas material and shipped to you.

I’m going to do this. I just have to decide exactly which photo I’ll get made into a 16 x 20 canvas print. I’m excited! Within a couple of weeks I’ll have one of my own photos on canvas!

At this moment I’m thinking of getting a beautiful macro photo of a monarch butterfly on a lilac hibiscus flower made into a canvas print. I took the photo last summer after chasing the butterfly around my yard. It was a hard won photo and it turned out beautifully. The bright colors of the monarch look spectacular against the soft lilac color of the rose of Sharon hibiscus flower. Yes, I’m fairly certain that that’s the photo I’ll use.

I’ll be sure to take a photo of my canvas print when I get it! Maybe you’ll want to do this too?

Update: Yes I’m going to use the monarch and rose of Sharon photo that I mentioned. I’ve just placed my order! Here’s what the photo looks like:

Monarch and Rose of Sharon

What do you think? I think it will be beautiful on a canvas!

My new digital SLR camera

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The other day I mentioned that I got a new toy. Well … I was able to get outside and play with it for a little while this afternoon.

My new toy is a new camera! Of course … what else did you think it might be? Another laptop is the only other new toy on my list right now and considering how much money Chris and I spent on our respective toys on Sunday I don’t think I’ll be getting a new laptop anytime soon.

Ok so I bet some of you want to know what kind of camera I got? It’s a Canon EOS 30D digital SLR camera. It’s my first SLR camera so I didn’t want to go to crazy, but I feel that I managed to pick out a pretty good SLR camera to start out with. The CNET article is pretty good, giving the camera and 8.5 rating.

Since I’ve been working on upgrading my sites and trying to get their use of the servers CPU resources down I haven’t had much chance to blog, answer email or play with my new toy.

I did take a few photos Sunday night after I put the camera together and I could see right away that I’d be happy with it.

Then this afternoon I went outside while it was raining lightly and took photos of my flowers. I’ll upload those onto my computer in a little while and see how they turned out. Perhaps I’ll use some of the photos for Wordless Wednesday if they turned out as well as I think they did.

I still plan on using my Sony Cybershot DSC-H5. I love that camera! However when I really want to take a fantastic photo I think the new SLR will be the one I pick up first.

If any of you know of any pro’s or cons of the Canon EOS 30D I’d love to hear about your experiences.

The birds are hungry!

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I’ve mentioned before that I haven’t been getting out into my garden as much as I should or as much as I used to. In fact, we only just refilled the bird feeders on Saturday.

You should see the birds though! They must put out a neighborhood call that “diner” had arrived because our yard is just full of small little birds like house wrens, small starlings, finches and yesterday I saw a bird that I consider pretty rare in almost downtown Toronto. I saw a cardinal!

As a result of all the feasting going on the bird feeders – two big ones – are almost empty. Actually I think my husband filled them on Saturday and last night.

I think we’ve also got a few house sparrows building a nest under one of our upstairs window air conditioners. I can see them flying around the window every few minutes and they are chirping away like crazy.

If they are successful in building a nest and if we can’t get it out our July house guests will not like sleeping in that spare bedroom! Birds around here start chirping at about 3:30 a.m.! They don’t stop until around 10 p.m.. I think they need more sleep, don’t you?

It could be a noisy summer!

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