Blue Skies

Pie Day : Photos and Results!

So Pie Day (the day after PI day) was a lot of hard work, and a bunch of fun. First off, some photos to give you an idea of the process involved with baking one hundred pies:

We started around 9 or 9:30 in the morning, at Eritia’s baking facilities in the Dutch Shop, Grimsby.  A sign and table were set up in the store so people knew that they could buy pies to help fight poverty. And buy they did! We couldn’t keep up with store orders for the longest time, let alone filling our pre-orders!

And speaking of pre-orders, it looks like next time I’ll be able to get many more pre-ordered.  It may be aggressive marketing to trot out pies to people who ordered them, in front of a whole bunch of people who didn’t, but it works. I didn’t actually do that intentionally, but in retrospect its a great idea.

With thanks to Carolin, Chris and his wife, and my siblings Hobbe and Heather, we managed to make one hundred pies and sell them all. All the costs were covered by donations, so Eritia and I both ended up with $448 each toward our Sea to Sea fund.

Also thanks to Bennett’s Apple and Cider in Ancaster, for donating all the apples; Dover Flour, for donating the pastry flour; The Dutch Shop in Grimsby, for allowing us to use their space, allowing pies to be advertised in their store, allowing pies to be run through the cashier so that customers could pay via Interac or Credit Card if they wanted, donating sugar, cinnamon, etc, and covering the majority of the cost for the boxes and pie tins!

Expect another pie day in a few weeks. Pies will be $10, and we’re working on possibly getting some pie filling donated so we can offer more kinds of pies. We have 300 pie tins left, and we’ve already got another donation of apples arranged, thanks to Drummond Orchards. Stay tuned!

Pie Day

Do you like pie?

That’s a great question, since I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who would say no to pie.

Well, this Saturday is the day after Pi day, which is a sort of mathematician pseudo-holiday (3rd month, 14th day -> 3.14 ~= PI). The day after is a Pie day - my sister Eritia and I, with the help of several intrepid volunteers, will be making apple pies as a fundraiser.

I’m told the pies will be either 9″ or 10″, and very tasty. One of these treats is yours for $8, and we’ll even let you order several!

If you want them prebaked, or baked and frozen, I really need to know by Saturday (short notice, I know) if you’re interested in picking up a few pies. We do plan on freezing a number of unbaked ones, so if you’re late, ask me and I can probably still hook you up.

Many thanks to Dover Flour, the Grimsby Dutch Shop, and Bennett’s Apple and Cider in Ancaster for their generous donations. Thanks to them, the cost of making these pies is next to nothing, so all the proceeds go directly to the Sea to Sea funds!

So email me ( art.smit@gmail.com ) or phone me ( 905-528-5907 ) or even talk to me in person if you want pies.

Exercise Update

So the quest for physical development continues. This week was quite rough, since my training session on Monday had a fun twist.

That day I had been somewhat tired at work, and wasn’t quite sure why since I had gotten plenty of sleep the night before. Nevertheless, I went off to my training session that evening. The first exercise was a series of leg press sets. Although I managed to do the weight I normally do, I found the exercise to be exhausting, and felt drained of energy this time around.

The next exercise was lunges. These are pretty fun to do, and I’ve been getting better at them. However, after the second set I all of a sudden felt the need to sit down, since I felt faint and my hearing was starting to “fuzzy”. My trainer told me later that he saw me sit down quickly, but the color in my face dropped faster yet.

At any rate, even after waiting for a bit and trying again, I couldn’t do any other exercises without getting dizzy, so we called the session quits early. The next day I also had very low energy, but after that I seemed to be doing much better.

I guess my body must have been fighting off some sort of bug; successfully, since I never had any other symptoms. I’ve also gotten more sleep in this past week than usual for me, and thats something I hope to continue doing.

My exercise session yesterday went much, much better, so it looks like we’re back on track!

Fundraising : Zion

So this past Sunday I finally managed to get the information / fundraising letters out to my church congregation. Believe it or not, but that sheet of paper has been in the works since the beginning of February. However, initially it was only for me, and now it includes Mark Brouwer who is also coming along on this great ride. Good stuff!

So, welcome to any Zionites who have come to find out more about what’s happening to me, to the cause, and to the trip! On the top of the site you’ll find a link to a page where you can find out how to help support me on this trip, and also a link to a brief explanation of the cause.

Over the next couple weeks I hope to be writing posts highlighting how the organizations involved work to fight the cycle of poverty and spread the Good News of Christ. Stay tuned!

Some website quibbles

I’ve put in some minor changes to the blog, primarily in removing some links from the “Meta” section in the sidebar. These links caused some confusion, and one link (to the blog of the theme designer) led to some inappropriate content, so I’ve had to remove them.

That being said, I hate to not give credit when I use someone else’s work. If you go to http://themes.wordpress.net/?s=john+doe  you’ll be able to see the themes this guy has put together. So there you go, JD - no blog perma-link, but a plug for your themes. Best I can do.

If anything seems out of place on the site, let me know, and I’ll see what I can do about it.