May 21st

It's the Victoria Day long weekend already. I worked Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights so I was really happy to have Monday off and didn't want to waste it. It turned out to be a great day!

Chris and I had smoothies and bagels for breakfast :) yum. We went in the hottub for a quick dip before it got too warm outside.

Then we met up with some of my good friends from work: Tasha, Will, Lotfi and Jen. We made our way up to Twisty Cream for some ice cream and then off to Fitzroy Harbour for kayaking and canoeing! Everyone had such a great time and we all managed to not get sun burnt! That's a pretty big accomplishment for my pale face. - This picture is Tasha and Lotfi, unfortunately nobody wanted to a bring a camera in case we tipped over so this is one of the only pictures we have, taken with Lotfi's phone. But that's okay we plan to go a lot more :)

Afterwards we all met up at Jack Astor's for dinner and drinks.

That night Chris and I went down to Queen Juliana park for the Victoria Day festival fireworks. We made it there just in time and got a good spot - as good as possible because for some reason they weren't letting people sit on the grass, but we found some to put our blanket on just at the edge of the boundary.

They only ended up lasting five minutes. Some people were pretty peeved - I would be too if I came a couple minutes late lol. But they were beautiful while they lasted and free so who can complain?

May 20th

I went for a walk out back and found these lovely blossoms on one of our trees :)

May 19th

You might remember how I said I really really really like Pansies and Violas on my blog a while ago. Well some have grown out in the back garden and they are just adorable. I picked a few for our window sill today :)

And for dinner we had the first corn on the cob of the summer! :) That's when I start getting excited. Mmm I love corn on the cob. I used a few directions from Martha Stewart to make Pre-Buttered Corn, and I'm really glad I did because it was delicious. It was like infused into the corn, plus it's probably healthier cause you use less, I used maybe half of what they call for and the corn still tasted really buttery - plus everyone doesn't have to wait on the butter and get corn silk in it! lol

May 18th

Soo limes were on sale 10 for $1.00 at this new grocery store in town....

I decided to make some fresh lime sorbet with my new ice cream maker.

I also discovered the fourth most painful thing a human can experience (next to a broken femur, child birth, and getting kicked in the groin). I heated my limes up in the microwave to make juicing them a little easier. Unfortunately I didn't think of how the time would be different for a lime with its rind and a lime that has been scraped of all of its zest. I heated one up a little too long...

...I cut into the lime really carefully so no juice would spray out. I squeezed some of the juice out. And then I started squishing the pulp down with a spoon to break the juice pockets and get more out.... Well. One of the juice pockets broke and sprayed steaming hot lime juice right into my eye... I think lime juice would've hurt enough at room temperature but this was just horribly painful. Then I had the bright idea of opening my eye, which was stupid because the air on it just made it sting even more.

Anyways, I still have my vision so it's all good.

So here is the recipe I used, from Sam Tan's Kitchen. It's actually not meant for an ice cream maker, they just put it in a freezer for a few hours, took it out and stirred it, and put it back in the freezer. But I thought I could make it easier in the ice cream maker.

Anyways it didn't work for me. Not the ice cream maker but I just couldn't make the simple syrup properly. I'll have to practice that a little more. I also used up all the sugar so I couldn't retry it.

It wouldn't freeze to anything close to firm, even after hours and hours. It was also a little weird having so much zest in there (6 limes!). So we ended up eating it served with vanilla ice cream. That was pretty good because it made it more smooth and calmed down the 'zestiness' a little bit.

Next time I'll make sure to wear goggles before I go juicing any hot citrus fruits!

May 17th

We have this adorable Lily of the Valley plants around the side of my house that comes up nicely every Spring. They smell great and they're so tiny and cute.

I got one of these drinks from the international isle at work. They are similar to Jone's pop in that they always have messages under the cap, but they are always some ridiculous thing written to sound like a foreign person saying it because the brand makes Caribbean and Jamaican food products. "Cat foot sof' but him a 'cratch bad"? I'm sure there's some insight there somewhere.

May 16th

I bought these adorable flower pots today for only $1.25 each, even the hand painted ones. I'm going to put my basil, rosemary, and coriander/cilantro plants in them :) I can't wait to have an herb garden right out on my back porch!

May 15th

Tonight Chris brought home these lovely lilacs from the bushes beside his parents' house. They smell so wonderful :)

May 14th

Seedlings update :)

I now have seven cherry tomatoes coming up...

Four basil... how cute

And a watermelon! The little stem is huge compared to the other plants!

Oh and my bean sprouts... something went horrifically wrong. They must have gotten some bad bacteria in them or something because they started to grow weird things out the side and went ugly colours. Soo I had to throw them in the compost. I hope it works out better for someone else!

May 13th

Mother's Day :) ...

I found this picture while cleaning out a box in the basement and put it in my card to my mom. How ahead of the times was I? Leggings as pants and red shoelaces? Haha. I also gave her a book called The Secret Garden, we used to watch the movie a lot when I was a kid, it's a very sweet story about a little girl.

My mom and I spent the day at the Almonte flea market. I got these cute little earrings for 50 cents :)

I also found this Sushi cook book. It tells you everything you could want to know about making sushi and what types of ingredients to use. I'm very excited to start making some!

Also... my cousin made his family a salad for mother's day... which happened to contain raw fiddleheads... big mistake. Apparently fiddleheads can contain foodborne illnesses and you have to always cook them carefully, never eat them raw! Everyone who ate the salad got violently ill for a day or so. Luckily my other cousin's wife who is like more than 8 months pregnant just happened to go somewhere else for mother's day! This page on the Health Canada site talks about how to clean and cook fiddleheads to make sure they are safe to eat. Just thought I'd share that with as many people as I could.

May 12th

Today Chris and I went to the M&M Meats Charity BBQ Day for Crohns and Colitis. I used to go to them in Maple Ridge because the owners went to our church. And so I really wanted to go this year... oh nostalgia. For 5$ we got a hot dog, drink, chips and one of these M&M strawberry shortcake ice cream bars... yum.

I also made this upcycled cork board today. I got the idea off Balancing Home's tutorial. I bought a big cork board at Value Village for $3.99, bought some upholstery pins (or furniture nails) for $1.57 for a pack of 25, and I had the fabric already. Her tutorial says it all but basically I just ironed the fabric, set it in the right position over the cork board, measured the distance each pin would be going at and pushed them in in the right places. Then staple or hot glue the fabric to the back of it. I preferred to staple but then the stapler I've had since I knew what a stapler was decided to stop working after all these years... so hot glue works too. It's a great up-cycle idea, I really like how it turned out.

May 11th

Mmm, I remembered I have this bar of Honeysuckle soap that my mom bought me for Valentine's Day (last year) from Westport. It smells amazing and it's so adorable I kinda had to take a picture.

The little birdie soap dish was also a gift from my mom, she found it at a flea market. It's so cute! :)

Also I saw this car parked outside of the store today (which is why the picture is so tiny - I took it out the window!). It's the same as my car, which I love, but mine is dark red. This one is a really neat dark blue (at least I think so). I wish I could get Chris to Paint my car this colour! His father's business paints heavy machinery but they have painted a car or two. Mine next? :)

May 10th

My bean sprouts are growing nicely :) its been three days so far

And when I came home from work Chris had made me a lovely dinner of chicken, a butter garlic flavoured rice, and brown sugar acorn squash (which I'd never had before but he always talked about having as a kid). It was delicious!

May 9th

Now there are four seedlings! :) You can't see them very well but they're there.

May 8th

My first cherry tomato seedling came up! So exciting :) never thought I could actually make it happen. It took nine days for the first one to come up, the package of seeds said it would be 7-10.

May 7th

So I decided to try growing some bean sprouts using a tutorial I found on youtube, which I won't post because the woman in it was horribly annoying. But basically what you do is get some of the mung beans you are going to sprout, a jar with the round screw top rim, and a piece of cheese cloth (or a piece of a nylon, a sheet, etc. as long as its clean). You put your beans in the jar with four times as much water, put the scrap of whatever over top and screw the lid on around it. Then lit it sit by your kitchen sink (for humidity) for 24 hours. After 24 hours you drain the water out and leave it upside down to make sure all of the water drains out. Every 24 hours you rinse the beans and leave it upside down. You do it for about 4-7 days until your sprouts are long enough to eat. So anyways I hope mine work. I'm told you have to make sure they stay clean cause they can easily get contaminated with bacteria and you won't be able to eat them.

We didn't do much else today. I worked at night so Chris and I just settled into bed after that to watch Stargate (our favorite show which we won't be able to watch on Netflix anymore because of how much our internet has gone up - thanks Bell...), and eat Mini Eggs. Yumm.

May 6th

Chris and I made Strawberry Stuffed French Toast and it was delicious as usual. The link is to A Tasty's Recipe, her post on how to make it is great. And I don't even like french toast!

Then we went to Twisty Cream, a little ice cream shop in the Carp village that had just opened the day before for the summer season. They have amazing ice cream...

I got a twister with Skor and banana flavour burst (its like a flavoured syrup they have a bunch of different flavours in). And Chris got chocolate ice cream with Reese peanut butter cups. Although we had to run back into the car shortly after taking this picture because the mosquitoes are already out and Chris' neck was getting bitten all over!

May 5th

Just a couple pictures today...
Chris and I have been planting some seeds to grow a vegetable garden this summer :)

First we were just going to grow cherry tomato plants, so we planted a few of those seeds...

...but then we found the seeds from last year and decided to do a bunch. Basil, watermelon, cherry tomatoes, big tomatoes ("Hawaiian Pineapple Hybrid" tomatoes just sounded too delicious not to grow), and Spinach (you can see the scribbled out Popsicle stick... I wrote peas first and then realized I wasn't going to be planting them indoors).

May 4th

On my way to work the fog was soo creepy, like something from a Stephen King movie. Crazy!

We have these pretty white and pink tulips at work that I was eyeing all day. I just had to take a picture of them before they went!

After my luck at keeping the daffodils alive I decided it would be best to just take a picture instead of buying them.

But I did decide that I'm going to have these pink and white tulips for my wedding flowers... and that's that. :)

The way home was not like the morning, it wasn't exactly sunny but 25 outside! At the beginning of May?! Not bad Ottawa, not bad.

And what should I come home to after a long day of work but my boyfriend hilariously passed out on my bed. I'm sure he'd be pretty angry if he knew I posted this on my blog but... that's what he gets for not reading it! ;)

May 3rd

A few things I've acquired recently...

I got this adorable picnic basket from Value Village for $5.99 (plus %25 off... not bad). It's so cute and I've been wanting a picnic basket for a while so I was really happy to find it. I packed a lunch and cupcakes in it for Chris' birthday a few weeks ago :)

One thing I never knew about Value Village is that they have such a great book selection. Chris and I have taken a liking to going there and scouring the book section for quite a while. These are some of the ones I've picked up in the last few weeks. Did I mention they're buy 4 get one free? Gotta love bargains. Wuthering Heights (been wanting to read it for years thanks to Twilight...), the Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (my new found interest after watching Once Upon a Time this season), A Natural History of the Senses (just looked interesting), Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (never read the originals, and they're both in one book so why not?), and Asian Americans (an ethnography, written by an anthropologist, that caught my eye).

Another Value Village find... Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits CD. I am always looking for new things to listen to in the car, I hate having my mP3 player hooked up and its wires in the way so I prefer CDs. This one was like 3$ or something. It's totally rare that I like something the first time I listen to it but I really enjoyed this right away :)

Okay another thing I've found about shopping at Value Village, I never find shoes I like on the rack. I've begun to usually just browse over and assume there's nothing there. But it's happened to me twice now that I've been walking by the men's section and happened to spot a pair of shoes I liked just sitting on the ground, and both times that have been my size. These boots were one of those. I have tiny size 6 feet so I was really lucky that these fit me. And they were only 8$ plus 30% off (I always get coupons for donating stuff or from my card, it's great). They look so cute on.

Okay you can bet this is not from Value Village... It's my brand new ice cream maker I have been just dying to get since I made an Ice Cream and Sorbet board on Pinterest. And I absolutely love the colour too, so retro. Cuisinart has a whole line of products in this colour.