WordPress recently reconfigured everything, (grrr….) so please bear with me as I try to figure out how to make my posts look okay.
Lots going on this summer, including selling our lakefront cottage of 19 years – both our Ontario kids and partners are expecting their first babies, so we know we’ll be spending our free time with them as much as possible. 
So a strange mix of sad and super glad, I guess, as so much of life is. One thing I know is that I don’t like having to keep everything tidy for regular real estate showings, so I hope we can sell it soon and enjoy it for the rest of the summer:) 
I was recently chosen as a Covid Community Hero by Doctors Nova Scotia for the 3700 masks I made and sold last year, and the $18,000 I raised and donated to local non-profits, mainly to support kids. You can read about it, and my life in general, here:
Still busy with my Etsy shop – thanks so much to everybody who’s supported this new adventure for me and my soul smiles cards. You can see my shop HERE: and other illustrations here https://jancoates.ca/illustrations-art. I’ve been selling my cards through local farm markets for a couple of years now, and it’s so much fun combining pictures and words! Hope your summer is shaping up to be a good one for you!
Jan L. Coates - "What if...?" 
It will be bittersweet selling your lakeside cottage. Enjoy your summer. xo
Same to you, Darlene! Still no sale, but we did a price drop, so hoping that gets some action…
Jan, your lakeside cottage looks like a dream I had. At least you got to live my dream for a time š
Also: your kids are the most beautiful kids* I have ever seen, no kidding.
*Not including mine, because as mother never sees her own as others do š
Funny – They’re 13 years older than when that pic was taken, but still gorgeous:) (of course). Hope you’re well, and that you get to spend time at some peaceful oasis soon.
Congratulations on receiving a COVIC COMMUNITY HERO award! That’s a lot of dedication to make all those masks, but then writing also forces us to be discipline.
You have a new chapter about to begin. You and Don will love being grandparents. Congratulations all the way around!
Thanks, friend – I owe you $50…
I so want to go back to the old way of doing things on WordPress! I haven’t been able to figure out the “block system”, and now I can’t even set up the “Classic” system with the ease I had before. Grrr, is right! Congratulations on becoming grandparents in the near (or not-so-near) future, and congrats, again, on your Covid Community Hero Award.
Thanks, Peggy. Yup – I really dislike when they just decide to make a massive change without giving us any options other than to convert…