Ahhh...The Cottage Life!

One of the pleasures of cottage life is being able to entertain friends. The day starts with a big breakfast. We reserve these kind of breakfasts strictly for cottage time and entertaining. Bacon and eggs, pancakes and syrup, and hash browns are all a rarity at home but make a comeback for the cottage. Fruit is always on hand for those that prefer a light breakfast and gallons of coffee are made.

When the breakfast dishes are cleared, it is usually time to spend playing in the water. We enjoy water skiing, tubing, swimming, water ball and snorkeling. Fishing from the dock has landed some big sized fish but mostly the kids get little "small mouth bass" or "crappy bass". Here they are always encouraged to take them off the hook carefully and put them back to grow bigger for fishing another day. We have a light lunch while playing.

As the afternoons wears on we graduate to the patio for cocktails and dinner preparation. The kids play with  bottles of bubbles, badminton, cards or board games. Little ones are go down for a nap. The dinner is prepared casually, everyone pitching in with chores and ingredients are put aside marinating or in the fridge to await dinner time.

BBQ is always a good entertaining tool. Many times a guest will offer to cook over the BBQ too as their way to help and a lot of people, men especially, love to BBQ. As people enjoy different meats we often have a variety. Salads and veggies abound!

Meal time and washing up over, the bonfire is lit. Not quite dark, there is still time for another round of badminton  for the cocktails for the adults. Soon dusk takes over and the chairs are put out around the fire. Marshmallows are brought out for the kids to roast over the fire until toasty brown!

Soon kids are sent off to bed and it is adult time. Music in the background, flames flickering high, laughter all around. Good conversation abounds , the night sky clear and all the stars you can imagine a visible. We slowly drift off to bed, one at a time, to sleep with the clean sweet air in our nostrils and the call of the loon in the distance.