It breaks my heart and makes me believe in things

Lately all I can think about is a story I read as a little girl... now that I think of those books I think of how gruesome they were.  Far more than any video game.  Bluebeard, anyone?

So of course as winter nears I caught a thought of the story of the little match girl.  When I was young I always imagined she was me.  That I was out in the cold with no one to care about me, and that I'd just die there thinking warm and lovely thoughts.

It's truly morbid I know.. really.  I just find it so familiar, and beautiful, and sad.  Much like a lot of things I guess.  I could spend days thinking of all the familiar and beautiful and sad things in winter time.  All the great and happy and still moments I've spent.  They all seem to gang up on me and hang over me and find me when ... ever they want.  Winter has always been the most sentimental time for me.  It breaks my heart and makes me believe in things.

I hope you are all having a very merry.. warm and cozy... love and laughter Winter season :)

But in the corner, at the cold hour of dawn, sat the poor girl, with rosy cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall--frozen to death on the last evening of the old year. Stiff and stark sat the child there with her matches, of which one bundle had been burnt. "She wanted to warm herself," people said. No one had the slightest suspicion of what beautiful things she had seen; no one even dreamed of the splendor in which, with her grandmother she had entered on the joys of a new year.

Steak tip sandwich

We've had a big start to summer around here.. a full week at he cottage etc. (never enough time I miss it) but I am at the blog right now because I just don't cook.  I have realized for all my 'cooking' over the years I've made some good stuff but when kids become your main customer you tend to cook for them and not for you... therefore I suddenly don't know how to cook anymore!  As little as I can cook we all have our go-to foods; ie. breakfast food is my bitch.  I can cook the hell out of breakfast.  Sometimes dessert depending on what you like.  Dinner is another thing though, requiring a lot of thought and preparation for some reason.

Fast forward to tonight I just decided I was going to try something new and made the best sandwich ever!  Of course that means I have to share it with you.

Steak Tip Sandwich:

Ingredients are simple..... steak tips, kosher salt, pepper, basil, garlic powder, olive oil

• put it all together in a bowl and then start frying on med heat for however long you like your steak.  

• put the steak aside and toast whatever bun you like
• the water in the frying pan, grab 2 cups of very hot water and a pack of gravy mix and start making the gravy
• place cheddar cheese on the one side of the toasted bun, swiss cheese on the other
• place the steak tips on the bun/bread and a little drizzle of gravy (or a lot if you like that!)
• put it together and enjoy it!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

 I had two today.

Halloween

It seems like just yesterday I was updating about the end of Summer and now it's Halloween.  I am the worst blogger ever lately.

What has changed from last year?

Zero parties to about 4 costume parties.  So far I've been to three.. once as daenerys targaryen from Game of Thrones (that my friend Kim is wearing in this picture), then girl Rick Grimes from Walking Dead, then Ariel from the Little Mermaid.

I pretty much love dressing up, just give me a reason!  I also love holding wine.  Hope everyone has a very scary Halloween this year.. I'll try to keep updating this but you know, life is just crazy sometimes!  xoxo

Goodbye, Summer

Well the whole summer has passed without my updating whatsoever.  So.. who are you and why are you still here?  Clearly you thought I died and mourned for me, right?  Thank you for whatever candles you lit for me but I'm actually still around!

What's happened?  SO much there's almost no point in going over it but...

I've moved to a new house, gone cottaging, flew to Andrea's wedding out west, lots of beach days and parties and BBQs etc. and the start of school again. I realize my perfect life includes day-drinking, sun & sand, friends nights, a fire, swimming and a hammock.  If I could just make that happen all the time, hmm.

Anyhow I suppose I could dump a bunch of pictures on you..

5 Quinoa experiments

If you come over to my house it's no secret that I love Costco's Quinoa salad.  When I like something I eat it almost every single day but after about 3 months I realized hey, that's a lot of sodium and.. not even I can enjoy quinoa salad this long!

I did still want "some" of it in the week yet was forced to buy a giant pan full.. I made up my own "recipes" that include different ways to eat quinoa salad as an ingredient and if you have guests it's even faster to get rid of.  Maybe you can enjoy it too.. here's the home made recipe if you don't want to buy it from Costco or don't want to enjoy quite so much of it in a week like a normal person.

1. Omelette:  about a table spoon full for every egg.  other ingredients were red onions, mozzarella cheese and either chunks of chicken or cut up chicken breast cold cuts.
2. Hamburger:  self explanatory as it's a topping, about a table spoon full.
3. In fried spinach: lots and lots of spinach, garlic cloves, few table spoons of the quinoa salad and a cube of mozzarella cheese if you're feeling fancy.  can add this to chicken cutlets, turkey or stuff chicken breasts and is also good.
4. As tuna salad:  a salad out of a salad!  add white flaked tuna and a little mayo or mayo substitute, at least 3 table spoons of the salad and a little salt.  You can use the tuna salad in a sandwich of course, with cold pasta or I like them with lettuce wraps!
5. On a pizza:  home made crust add pizza sauce and the quinoa salad together, then put whatever toppings you usually do.  I like it with ham or chicken, red pepper, olives and/or goat cheese (again.. if you're fancy!)

You make me happy when you change my bedtime

An ode to Mother's Day.. portrait and poem

Dear Mom

I l<3ve you
Thank you for coming in for pizza day.
I remember the most fun when you took me to soccer.
Mom you look prettiest when we go out.
If I could give you a special present I would give you ME
You make me happy when you change my bedtime.
Thanks for being the best mom.

Love, Ethan




Dear Ethan,

I love you more than all the stars in the sky.  But my hair doesn't always look like that!!!  I swear!
(or this is 'when we go out'... sigh)

  

no bun on my 32nd birthday

Heaven

Well I had the best time at my relaxing girls birthday weekend away at La Scandinave spa at Blue Mountain.  It was heaven on earth, a whole retreat in the middle of nature.. bonfires outdoors and we spent about 4 hours there getting shushed by the 'shusher!', steamed, cold pooled, sauna'd, lots of laughs, and generally sweated out all the stress of life.  Then we re-toxified with wine, cheese and chocolate until putting stickers on our faces seemed really cool..... and it pretty much was!

We all decided we need to go back there yearly!  It just makes life better.

 The next day we did the spa massage thing and the lady doing my nails and massage really creeped me out when she said she (a cat and dog sitter in her spare time) watched so much crime dramas that she is positive she could kill someone and get away with it.  WOW.  Way to end the weekend lol.

Do your job

I'll be 32 on Monday.

32 is a number that means a lot of... nothing.  It's like turning 12, nobody cares about 12 and that's just a fact.  22 though was a fairly fun birthday for me.. I got a tattoo that year.  This year I got into two of my very first car accidents soooo nothing fancy was in my future for 32 other than our usual night out dancing however my very best girls decided to surprise me with a fun weekend at one of the places I've always wanted to go; it's on my 30 list!  The hot springs spa :)  Though it's at the ski resort I am not sure there's (thankfully) much snow left, guess I'll have to wait and see!  Pretty excited to go and more than that I'm just so happy to have the friendships I have.. you can't buy those!  Here's to more of it and maybe some better luck.. until my next huge flaming birthday cake of numbered mortality lol.

My life right now

As explained by crap I scroll through on Pinterest....

....because there's only so much rustic wedding decor I can find on the internet before my mind wanders away.

Detox / Double Hitler

By no means is this a health blog or will ever even look like one.  I see my blog as maybe a health blog's older, weirder cousin who likes to interrupt conversations at parties.  She's funny, and sometimes the information is interesting; other times she's telling you where she bought her pants and there's no follow-up.


However I did complete a self-imposed detox/cleanse for two weeks, this time without a formal 'box' to follow.  I included some supplements but even without, see how you feel without: dairy, wheat(gluten), caffeine, alcohol, sugar.

There's no trick to it... actually go without those things you will feel good.   So anyone asking me what I do for my cleanse I'm happy to tell you if you're willing to give up all fun eating.  ALL fun eating.  Not fun Tuesdays, where you have a treat to reward yourself for all the boring eating you're doing... but all fun.  It's just two weeks you can do it!  When it's over please don't have a party where you eat bread, cheese and a bottle of red wine.  It will be the worst thing to happen to your adulthood in years!  All I wanted to do was cry, have a cinnabun and sleep under a heavy blanket for the entire day.  Spoiler alert:  adults don't get to do that anymore!!


And here's the portion of the post where I tell you where I bought my pants....


So there's a Mamma board group on Facebook that I'm on.  It's pretty popular sometimes our convos make the news.... because the news is now 80% social media, 20% stuff that happens in the real world!  Anyhow, it's pretty hilarious without going too much into it you can sell stuff, search for deals, ask for advice or recommendations, plug your home businesses easily, chat about topics when you're bored etc.   Overall it's a nice group of ladies BUT there's quite a lot of drama.. and before you even ask I was added to the group by a friend and then Facebook won't stop putting it in my news feed so it's super hard to ignore.  It's as annoying as it is entertaining sometimes!  Here's a sample list of 'controversial topics' that have been heatedly discussed (and I mean heatedly, outright calling people idiots and assholes):

• Marineland, and how you must be Hitler to go there or anywhere animals are in captivity
• What to do with a Dad that swears sometimes
• If Ripley's Aquarium was busy, also just reminding you you're still Hitler
• Wedding gift vs Envelope of money, a gay couple made fun of someone who brought a basket of pantry foods as a gift <- that got us on the news
• How to explain to your child who wants to be nice to a lonely neighbourhood man who 'isn't quite right' that this is wrong 
• Selling carseats
• Vaccinating your children.  VACCINATING KIDS IS CONTROVERSIAL NOW.
•  Institutional vs Home Daycares, which one will take your sick children so you can make everyone sick and keep going to work!
• What the educational value is of a field trip to the movies to see Frozen

It goes on but you get the idea!  It makes re-watching this clip from 30 Rock actually hurt my abs from laughter.  Enjoy!!!

I caught the 'feels'

Friday was a special day for me, I feel the need to honour it by telling this story.

If you have read any of my posts leading up to September (aka my going to school posts) clearly it's been an adjustment to send my second boy to full time school.  Either I am emotional about it or he is, we take turns.  A solid 3 weeks in the beginning he wouldn't even get on the bus so I had no choice but to drive him there and drop him crying in the arms of his teachers.  You can try to express how hard it is to push your children towards a good thing, "school" the holy grail of independence, and no matter what you can't know how much it sucks until it happens to you.  It's the one time you as a parent can do nothing to help the situation other than removing yourself.

So much suck.

This Christmas I thought the gifts for the teachers should be especially special, I really wanted them to know how much I appreciated their extra care. They have really been exceptional.. in turn that helped me so much knowing Gabriel's first experience with school is such a positive one.   So I gave Gabriel the idea when I was thinking up teacher gifts to give them something nice for Christmas and he insisted to spend an hour decorating their gift bags himself.  I bought them both cute silver apple necklaces from Stella and Dot and Gabriel approved, put them inside, carried them proudly to school and gifted them himself.  I also got a nice gift for Ethan's teacher, don't get me wrong she's also great.. it's hard to keep him on task and I appreciate her job with him as well.  Ethan also spent a lot of time drawing a nice card for her and because I see her in school for pizza day I know she's gluten intolerant so that info was great to get her some gluten-free treats and a mug with hot chocolate, I think she liked it :)

So my story starts finally, every Friday pizza day I volunteer at the school to organize their lunch as part of a team of 3 moms.  We chat, it's fun and we're pretty popular since we hand out the equivalent of cigarettes in prison.  You can get kids to carry hot heavy boxes of pizza to classrooms if you pay them in pizza.. legit it's a currency.  When I went there this Friday and when our job is done as usual I went to each of the boys classes to give them my extra slice that I get for volunteering.  Ethan insists on it or else I'd think I was embarrassing him but he loves bragging about me helping at school for some reason.  It's very cute.. he tried getting me a job as a bus driver lol.  Gabriel likes seeing me but doesn't make any big deal that I'm there at all ironically and keeps eating his lunch.. but I get to chat with his teachers a bit while I'm there, they usually want to show me something he's been doing or pictures they take.  Really, they're the exception to even pretty great Kindergarten teachers at the school and I've seen them outside school hours it's really not a mask they put on they care about all their kids quite a bit.

This week one of the teachers just thanked me very much for the gift she wears it everyday and I thought that was so sweet.. his other teacher told me a story; one of her good friends was just diagnosed with leukaemia over the Christmas holidays and when she went to visit her she took her gift inside the bag Gabriel decorated and told her that it was from one of her most special students and she wanted her to have it.

Let me tell you I cried my eyes out in the hallway, holding pizza.. and she did too.  I cannot even type it without the tears so I have refused to even tell anyone about it more than once, except here, because there's no way to do it without losing my crap.  Is that not the sweetest thing you've ever heard, ever?  Dammit... all the 'feels' are pretty nice.

I'm 12+

LEGO: the Simpsons house

I'm going to need this...


And nobody can play with it but me.

Negative 5: I stay inside

Are you tired of my posts about the weather?  Just imagine I am that friendly cheery neighbour who greets you on your morning walk, except I swear when I'm cold, so it's more like oh hay good morning! have you seen HOW FUCKING COLD IT IS TODAY??


Like New Years Eve day.  There was a slight issue with the temperature and the FEELS LIKE temperature.

What they meant was it's currently pretty cold but it feels like you won't live longer than 5 minutes!  I'm exaggerating slightly because I really just don't like cold.  Here's my rules for venturing out of the house in winter.. don't worry, it rhymes.

-1.. is pretty fun!
-2.. there's lots to do!
-3.. build a snowman with me!
-4.. can't take much more
-5.. I stay inside


There isn't even anything that rhymes with seventeen.