Who needs goldfish!?

What do think of my Shell-arium? I seem to have a surplus of shells, pebbles and other beach flotsam (if that's the word) that the kids insist on bringing home (nothing to do with me, I never, never bring things home from beaches.) Anyway, I put some shells in a vase and it looked prettier with water. Seb is fascinated by it and you'd honestly think it was full of tropical fish the amount of attention he's given it!

The invisible goldfish!

House tweaking....

I love our new home and I've been having a great time arranging and rearranging everything in my efforts at making the place all cosy. This house feels so much more like home than our last house in Beaumont, that house was never really me and it always felt a bit dull and lifeless and it didn't inspire me to do anything. Home shouldn't feel like that! It should feel warm and happy and colourful and full of life! Anyway, here's a bit of house tweaking I've been doing.....

Remember our boot-putting-on-bench area by the front door? Last time you saw it it looked like this....

Well, I kept thinking it needed some hooks up on the wall, a place for people to hang coats and stuff, know what I mean? Anyway, I was in town and found the most lovely shop called Covet. They sell all kinds of really nice stuff, jewelry, toys, books, home stuff, I really could've spent a fortune in there! I restrained myself as much as I could but couldn't resist these perfect hooks.....

It's made of a bug hunk of driftwood, is the perfect size for that little space and I LOVE it!!

I added a few pieces of driftwood I pinched from Mussel Beach to the window sill and I think the whole little nook looks extra super really nice now! : )

Now for my next tweak...remember my frame arrangement in the hallway? Well, I really like it but I kept looking at the pictures and thinking maybe I should change some of them. One in particular was bugging me. You can't see it too well in the photo below but the big square frame to the right has a paper moose that I originally made as a christmas decoration. It hung in my house for about two years after that Christmas and kind of looked ok with that lovely yellow and brown paint scheme that I loved so much in the old house ; )

Well, it didn't look so good here and I wanted to replace it with something that wouldn't cost me much (preferably nothing) and something that looked fresher and brighter and not so much like a christmas moose.

I dug through the kids craft stuff and found some nice coloured paper. I chose a nice fresh blue piece and spent the best part of half an hour trying to cut out a fern leaf (I've been quite fascinated by the pretty ferns in the forest here). I put it in the frame and was marginally impressed with myself! I liked it but once up, it looked too plain and bland on the white wall. I tried to think of something that would add a bit of something to it and came up with newspaper!

Hey presto, a bit of ripping and it looked slightly better. I decided to add some plain dark blue paper too just to make it look a bit more intentional if you know what I mean. I'm still undecided and will probably find something I like better eventually but for now I think it is an improvement on the red moose and I'll call that success!

Adventures at Mussel Beach

Mussel beach is kind of a remote spot, it takes an hour or so from Tofino, off the beaten track down a long and very bumpy old logging road. It's a beautiful beach with stunning views of the Broken Group Islands and the mountains of Vancouver Island beyond and it's covered in big hunks of lovely driftwood ( I like driftwood). We went there in search of Grey Whales and boy did we find them! All we had to do was look out at the water and wait a few seconds and they'd be blowing all over the place :) Apparently they like to come up close to the beach so that they can rub themselves on the rocks to clean off the barnacles from their skin, basically it's a Whale Spa! Some of them were about 10feet from shore, oh it was amazing!

We camped overnight at Mussel Beach wilderness campgound, so no power and thanks to a leaky pump on the bus, no water either. It's a pretty big campgorund with about a mile of sites along the shore but we had the whole place to ourselves! We picked a really nice spot that opened up right to the beach, it also had a cool Tiki hut bar thing made of driftwood where Neil immediately set up his BBQ :)

The weather was beautiful and waking up on the beach in the morning was breathtaking. There were some whales really close to shore and as we were sitting in the sunshine, in pyjamas, munching our bacon butties we could hear the air shooting out of their blowholes. Magical!

Before heading home I went for a walk (or should I say stumble) along the shore and through the tide pools with my camera. My pictures really don't do it justice, the water was so perfectly clear and the little fishes and other creatures were so colourful, maybe there's some special skill that I'm lacking about taking photos though water, just take my word for it, it was all too beautiful for words!

After dinner.....

My favourite thing about this house is that we are about 700m from this.......

So after dinner we can stroll down to the beach to admire the most gorgeous sunset (or trainset as Seb called it) over the pacific ocean. Wowser!!!

I think Seb was a little dissapointed there weren't more trains involved.