Not much to say!!

I want to thank everyone for reading and subscribing to my blog. I notice every time I get new subscriptions and I really appreciate them a lot!

I haven't been posting very much lately because there isn't much to say that is related to Islam and I don't want to confuse my blog with a bunch of personal posts. That being said, having some more personal posts not related to Islam once in a while isn't so bad!

I have mentioned my plan for building a chicken coop and having a couple chickens in my backyard, and this continues to be my little project! Last weekend me and a friend cut all the pieces of wood to build the coop and we plan on assembling all those pieces together over the weekend. It was a fun time at Home Depot finding all the different sizes of wood from the list, treated and not. We really didn't know what we were doing and laughed A LOT! The trips to my place with lots of 8 foot long wood in our smallish cars (one trip each!) was pretty interesting. It was all about hugging the wood.

I've been learning about all sorts of different chicken breeds lately trying to find a suitable breed for my little flock. I managed to find a bunch of breeds that have characteristics I am looking for, but had overlooked a part. I want to raise them from as early as possible for them to be used to being handled and to being with us. They will be our family pet, afterall! But the part I overlooked is that so young, pure breeds are hard or impossible to sex! Meaning I could end up with a ROOSTER!!! *gasp*!

I learn about a mix of breeds (can be different breeds but I don't know enough to know all the combinations) that will make chicks that can be sexed from hatch! The future hens are one colour and the future roosters are another! They call them sex-links. The picture at the head of the post is a red sex link. And they have all the characteristics I am looking for. Now I just need to find some in my area but I hear they are sold ready-to-lay, which is not what I'm looking for since I want babies...

Anyway! I will leave it at that with chicken talk.

It's... SNOWING?!

What the heck is this? We have about 10 cm of snow on the ground right now! It has been snowing pretty badly since this morning and it's just too wintery!

Check out this blog for pictures on what it looked like earlier this morning. It's even more snow out there now. It's April 27th and looks like the middle of winter! So weird...

Allahu akbar!

That's all :)

Building a Chicken Coop

I'm excited, I plan on building a chicken coop (very similar to this one) this weekend with a friend! I've never built anything but I bought some plans online and I understand them so that is a good start! Hopefully 2 building newbies like us will be able to build this coop! I will probably be getting 2 chicks soon to eventually occupy the coop! My daughter will have a blast and they should become very docile, friendly hens having been taken care of by hand since a young chicken age!

I'm bringing myself an inch closer to my dream of a farm by bringing the hens into the city! I'd also love to start a small garden for vegetables, but I will need to figure out where I'd put them... With all the natural fertilizer I will be getting, it would be a great idea! But I'm also a gardening newbie so I might be putting a bit too much on my plate!

Dua list

How does dua work? When you tell somoene you will make dua for them, do you take a moment to do it on-the-spot as you read or comment? Or does saying that you will pray for their situation count as dua since you are thinking about them and wishing them whatever-it-is, even if it's not formulated towards God? Or do you make a point to come back to it later when you are in a more spiritual mood? And if you do feel the need to make a special time for dua, do you make a list of people you want to make dua for? What if you tell someone you will make dua for them but you forget?!

The pool again!

Nora loved the pool so much that I decided to go again this week just for a free swim. I was supposed to go with my cousin and her daughter but she bailed out on us as I knew she would (I was waiting for her call all day! lol). It's actually really sad for her daughter, but I won't go into it. Maybe another time...

I get to the poolside and start getting us wet and an instructor from the courses that just finished comes up to me. She says, "We're aware that you wear your suit for religious reasons, but the evening lifeguards might not know and might ask, but it's OK and we know you and your daughter take courses here."

It was weird. I guess it was a way of reassuring me that they fully accept my suit, but that I still might get questions because not every employee is aware of it and it's not a regular thing to see people swimming in this. It was nice of her, really. I think she might have been the supervisor from last time, but I didn't see her so I'm not sure.

A big deal for a swimsuit, eh?

At the pool! And my bathing suit!

This is my bathing suit from modestkini.com! I don't wear the cap though!

I signed Nora up for swimming lessons and the first one was last Saturday. She's in the 30-36 month group and it's a sort of transition group where we, the parents, are supposed to spend at the most the first 4 lessons with them in the pool, guiding them along, and the last 4 lessons away from the pool to let them be independant in the water and just part of their group so they can graduate into the next level, which is all alone with the group-- no parents.

So basically, I had to get in my suit and get in the water! It was OK for me since I was pretty covered (VERY covered compared to everyone else!) but still a tiny bit awkward since it was mostly dads with their kids in my daughter's group.

Nora did so great! After the course was over, she didn't want to leave and tried twice to throw herself in the pool (but ended up leaving without a fit). Her only problem is the same as at the daycare she goes to... she doesn't take direction well. She likes to do what she wants when she wants and during the course, she was just happily spashing and swimming away from the group, not really caring that the instructor was giving her directions to do something else.

At the end of the class, the instructor came to me and told me her supervisor needed to know about my bathing suit... She was uncomfortable talking to me about it obviously... She asked if it was for religious reasons and I said yes. Then I told her it's a bathing suit, made with the same material as any other. I don't wear this on the street! She came back after consulting her super and said it was fine. I SURE HOPE SO! There'd be no reason to deny me the right to wear this bathing suit, I think!

My cousin and her baby have a class at the same time and she jokingly said, "So Candice, you're ready for winter?" when she saw me. lol

My introduction to Islam (late 2004)

I got interested in Islam after chatting with a Muslim man online when I had just entered college and was living alone for the first time in late 2004. It was a time for me to learn about myself after having been in an all white middle class environment for 17 years. I spent my time thinking about *MORE* when I was a teenager. I kept on changing highschools trying to find something more (4 schools in 5 years). College was amazing and full of diversity and exactly what I had been searching for! Finally I felt like I was becoming ME. At first, it had nothing to do with Islam, really. It was just about discovery from meeting people with different origins, reading, learning philosophy, all that stuff. But when I first learned a bit about the religion from chatting with that person, something about it gave me butterflies. I can't describe it any other way. I was an agnostic atheist at the time. And it was a spark in me that told me there might be a God.

Things with this person I chatted with didn't work out. I didn't really think it would, but I had hopes at the time I guess. After "it" (a friendship that was maybe a bit more than that to me) ended, I continued to have the feeling that I'd want to be with a Muslim. Don't know why!

Fast-forward only a couple months to May 2005 and I met my husband online. Married him a few months after when I went to Egypt and I had my daughter in May 2007. I continued to have periods where I would read everything I could about Islam and feel that it was somehow right, but without getting to the conclusion (of being Muslim).

During my time living in Egypt, I went online a lot and got into the "Qur'an alone" movement in Islam. It gave me huge hopes in Islam because hadiths were something I strugged with and it was reassuring to see that there were some people who felt the same way. What attracted me to Islam was that it seemed to be such an ultimate truth, but if hadiths were a necessary part of Islam, it just couldn't be this ultimate truth I could believe in. So this was one phase I went through in my research (Qur'an only)... With time, I stepped away from it because it was just another extreme... And I find hadiths have their place and are quite valuable (although not for law).

I was also attracted to Islam because of the hijab. This seems to get a lot of women interested, from what I've read on blogs and forums. Learning about hijab, we realize that it's really not about oppression, and it's an amazing thing that works on so many levels! Modesty, being recognized as Muslim and reminding us to act properly. I don't wear hijab, but I wish to, even if I don't believe it's an obligation on every woman.

To continue on now: I discovered a hijab fashion blog, and from it and the blog rolls, got into a lot of different blogs by Muslimahs. I felt I had something to say and I started my own blog... It's what made me continue to think about Islam and learn and ask... I used to block on something and just stop there, but with the blog, everything was out and I was getting feedback too so it's like my journey continued without stopping. I really consider this blog a big part of why I became Muslim when I did. It sped up the process bigtime and for that, I'm thankful! It sucks to be in religion limbo! (someone says this on their blog, and they are so right).

So there you have it. The way I was introduced to Islam and where it went from there!