Memories (Cartoon Craziness)

This is Cartoon Craziness Week 6! Again, thanks to the hosts for coming up with such a fun challenge! 🙂 The theme this week is memories of a childhood vacation.

My family took vacations in three places while I was growing up. Grandma’s in Florida, The Farmhouse near Quebec City and Balsam Lake in Ontario. I have great memories from all three places, so it was really hard to decide which was my favourite, but I think it was Balsam. I had fun with this one, so I’m blabbering on a bit. Just scroll down to see my cartoons if you’re not in the mood for my nostalgia 🙂

Every July for two weeks, my family would stay at a resort on Balsam Lake. Since we went around the same time every year, like a lot of other families at the resort, we made some good friends. There were four families, you can see the whole gang in the first cartoon.

Geoff Summers – self-proclaimed stud who freaked every time a fish swam by him.
Kat White – the oldest, a popular tomboy.
Me
Ty Summers – the sensitive, extremely goofy one.
Roxy Summers – the loveable ditz
My sister
Krissy Cassidy – the boy-crazy stalker girl. She was always getting into trouble.
Spencer Cassidy and Jay Summers – the little guys. They were so much younger, I just remember them crying and collecting bugs.

The years are all blended together in my memory now, so I can’t really remember when what happened, but there are a few memories that stand out.

The Fish Hall of Fame. The owner kept a bulletin board in his office full of pictures of people from the resort holding the huge fish they caught. You had to get a pretty big fish to get on the wall. Being kids at the time, all we ever caught was a sunfish or a net full of minnows. So we got some bristol board and the whole gang went to it with markers, scissors and glue and we created the biggest fish the resort had ever seen. The owner had a good laugh, took our picture and put it on his famous wall. The photo was there for many summers. I imagine he has taken it down to make room for new photos, but at least we can say we were on the hall of fame! This is the cartoon replica of the photo.

The Food. The corner store run by Mr. Pye sold 5 cent candies and made the best broccoli pizza. There was no tomato sauce on the pizza,  just cheese broccoli and some sort of sauce…I think garlic and olive oil were involved. It was excellent! Then there was the rainbow sherbert in town. It’s the only time I got two scoops of ice cream. I always had to give it to Kat to finish. Finally, there was the fluffy whip…..canned whipped cream. Ty used to down one bottle every night the year the movie The Night at the Roxbury came out. Gross!

The Shoe Tree. We drove out to a little town that had a movie theatre once every summer. The highway that took us there was surrounded by trees. We would always look out for the “shoe tree”. A random tree with shoes nailed to it. Everything was on there, from baby booties  to mens sandal, womens heels and rainboots! I don’t know the story behind it, but we looked for it every year. I think it had become three trees by the time we stopped going.

The Big Dock. There were several docks on the property. The Big Dock was the break wall used to stop the big waves from getting to the little kid’s swimming area. The dock went the length of the resort along the water. The best sunsets I’ve ever seen were from that dock. It was some time in the mid 90s. Just before The Macarena became popular. You remember that song and the dance that goes with it? I learned the dance that summer. At sunset on the last night before everyone left to go home, someone played the song from their boom box and nearly the entire resort lined up on this big dock and did The Macarena together. This is what I imagine the big dock looked like that night.

 

Share Your World 2014 – Week 30

This is the Share Your World Challenge. If you missed the last couple of weeks, more information can be found at Cee’s Photography. Essentially, four questions are asked every week and you have to answer them. Simple and fun! (Thanks Cee!)

 

List 2 things you have to be happy about.

1. I’m on vacation!! It is a much needed vacation and a big relief. I’m not as happy as I should be though…I have so much work to do, I feel guilty to be taking vacation. I might end up doing some work while I am off.

2. I just finished a sketchbook for the first time ever! Usually they get lost, destroyed or I lose interest in drawing for a few years and feel the need to start over. I think having the blog has really helped me keep up with it.

List at least 2 things in nature you find most beautiful.

Just two?! That’s hard!!

1. The Pacific Ocean. I’ve seen the Atlantic many times, but this past winter was the first time I saw the Pacific. I was hiking along a trail on the California coast outside San Fransisco. Wow! It was impressive. The waves were huge! It was the perfect display of how powerful  Mother Nature can be. The colour of the water was gorgeous too, such a unique shade of turquoise. I’m sure this doesn’t have much of a wow-factor if you live near the Pacific, but to someone who is used to the dark waters of the Atlantic, it is definitely a wow! Even this photo (from Google Images) doesn’t do it justice.

2. Sharks. Some of you are probably thinking “What?!”. Yes, they can be scary and I wouldn’t want to meet one face to face, but it depends on your definition of “beautiful”. I define it as anything that pleases you senses or mind. Sharks please my mind. The idea of a species surviving from a time before the dinosaurs and with evolving so little is truly amazing. Check out the photo (Google images) below. You can’t tell me it’s not kind of cute. The Shark is even smiling!

Note: later found out photo was taken by Andrew Fox and Google had cropped off the watermark.

Most of you would still probably prefer this though….

Show us a 2 of your favorite photographs. Explain why they are your favorite. If you are not a photographer (serious or otherwise), think of a two favorite scenes in your life and tell us about them.

This is a tough one. Not only am I not a photographer, but most of my favourite pictures have me in them. My absolute favourite photo is one of my close family (minus one person, my aunt) on Christmas Eve about ten years ago. I have the photo in my scrapbook. I’m not sure if I want to post it. I’m kind of nervous about posting pictures that I am in. I guess it’s kind of blurry, so you can’t really see me, whatever, here it is.

Anyway, we are at my cousin’s place for Christmas Eve and we are all seated around the sofa smiling and laughing. I’m wearing a Santa Claus hat. My mom and sister are looking at each other and laughing about something. My Dad and I are doing the same and my Gran is on the end of the couch kissing my cousin’s golden retriever, Teddy. The photo just exudes happiness. It is one of the last photos I have of all of us together. It reminds me of happier, simpler times…before we lost Gran and before I was diagnosed.

The second photograph is a scene I have A LOT of pictures of. It’s a sunset over the lake at a resort my family used to go to every summer. The best sunsets I’ve ever seen were at that resort. Seeing this photo reminds me of childhood, old friends and happy family memories. It’s the kind of photo that gives you that prickly feeling behind your eyes and nose whenever you see it.

List 2 of your best personality traits.

1. Generosity. I think it’s important to be considerate of others, to help others and pay it forward. It’s also a lot of fun to give/make presents!

2. Hard worker. I think (I hope) this makes me valuable to other people. No matter what it is, work, hobbies, relationships…I give it my all. I may get tired, but I keep trying.

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

Last Week: I lost weight. I haven’t been weighing myself or measuring, but I’ve noticed my clothes are looser and I feel better. Yay Insanity Workouts!!

This week: Vacation.

Share Your World 2014 – Week 21

I am sooo thankful for Cee’s Share Your World questions this week! I haven’t been feeling very inspired lately, that’s why I haven’t posted in the last couple days. So I’m really glad to have some prompts.

This is my third week in the Share Your World Challenge. If you missed the last couple of weeks, more information can be found at Cee’s Photography. Essentially, four questions are asked every week and you have to answer them. Simple and fun!

If you could make a 15 second speech to the entire world, what would you say?

Be kind. Be open-minded. If we treated others the way we would want to be treated, the world would be a better place.

If you could take a photograph, paint a picture or write a story of any place in the world, what and where would it be?

This is a hard question! How can I choose just one place?! I’m feeling nostalgic, so I’ll say I’d like to paint a picture of a sunset off the big dock at Balsam. Balsam is a lake resort I went to for two weeks every summer with my family. I met the same friends there every summer and we basically grew up together. It was a fun, safe and care-free place. The sunsets over the lake were always so colourful. The big dock was the best place to see them from.

If you had to spend one weekend alone in a single store but could remove nothing, which store would you pick?

It would definitely be an arts and crafts store like Michael’s. There would be no end to the entertainment! I could finally try all the art projects I’ve been wanting to try.

If you were given a boat or yacht today, what would you name it?  (You can always sell the yacht later)

I would probably let my husband name it, he gets excited about things like this. He would probably name it after a superhero or a comic book character. I know boats and cars are usually given girl’s names, but he named his first car “Stevie T” after Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, so I wouldn’t doubt he’d call a boat something like “The Dark Knight” or something.

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

Last week: I worked from home the whole week and I got sooo much work done. It felt really good to get all those things out of the way.

This week: It’s the last week of May, so I’m looking forward to making plans for June. June is a big month….my sister’s birthday, my birthday, my husband’s birthday and our one year wedding anniversary! Busy, busy busy!

A Flower for May Flowers 🙂