Family-friendly Event this Weekend in Peterborough

If you live in our Avonlea community in Peterborough, this weekend is a perfect time to have fun with your entire family. Why? Because that’s when the ReFrame Peterborough International Film Festival kicks off.

There may be a bit more snow now, but Avonlea homeowners still prize community involvement and family-friendly activities.

Opening tonight at 7:30pm with a film about how bicycles can change the world, and followed by a live performance about the first woman to bike around the world, ReFrame provides a great framework to educate and entertain the family.

And while the festival aims to celebrate the latest works of film and video from local, national, and international filmmakers, it doesn’t eschew younger members of your family, as it includes programming for both children (REELKids) and teens (Changing Our World).

So if you feel like watching something that you wouldn’t catch at your average commercial theatre, check the ReFrame website for scheduling and ticket information.

Have you been to a previous edition of the ReFrame festival?

The Most Fulfilling Winter Activity in Barrie Begins this Weekend

Your next winter meal?

Ask people about winter activities, and they’ll most likely mention skiing and tobogganing and skating and hockey.

Yet there’s more to winter than spending time outdoors. Take the city of Barrie, home to our Just4U community. While Barrie does have its fair share of outdoors winter activities, such as alpine skiing and tubing, it also hosts another fantastic winter event that involves no athletic gear.

Called Barrielicious Winter Festival, this event kicks off today in various locations across Barrie and Simcoe County (and continues until February 5^th).

It aims to promote smaller restaurants, veering people away from big franchises and promoting the downtown area. Prix fixe menus begin at only $20 per person (and the maximum is $25). They include 3 courses, but no alcohol or taxes.

Previous Barrielicious sessions have garnered quite a few compliments, and this year promises to be no exception.

Click here for a list of participating restaurants (which number 50), and make sure you book soon if you’re interested — participating restaurants have a way of being fully booked pretty soon.

Can New Urbanism Be Applied to the Interior of Homes?

We at Mason Homes believe in applying the principles of New Urbanism to our communities, not just because they help preserve the environment, but also because they make life more enjoyable and convenient for our homeowners, who now get to walk more, enjoy nature, and reduce car usage.

But why stop there? Having applied these principles to the communities themselves, wouldn’t it make sense to apply them to the homes’ interiors as well?

Life is easy at Port Hope Golf & Country Club.

Take our Port Hope Golf and Country Club community. Designed for active adults, this is already a green community, featuring Energy Star-qualified homes and located so that amenities are within easy walking distance.

More to the point, it’s also a community whose homes are designed with ease of movement in mind. Consider their optional features that are part of our accessibility options program:

• Wider door openings and hallways
• Right-height raised toilets
• Easy-opening lever handles for doors and faucets
• Lowered light switches and upper cabinets
• Anti-slip bathtub in the ensuite bathroom
• Easy-reach grab bars in bathrooms
• Accessible spaces

Thanks to these features, Port Hope Golf and Country Club homeowners can rest assured life in their homes will be effortless.  And all it took was for design to place people first and foremost — much like New Urbanism does.