June 24th

Chris and I had a sushi night tonight. We bought all the ingredients and made a ton of sushi ourselves. And my god was it ever good.

We made all this for about $18... so I have no idea why sushi costs so much to buy at grocery stores pre-made...

It turned out really well. The rice worked perfectly even though I messed up the cooking process lol.

And rolling it went really well once we got the hang of it. This was like... legit sushi. I will have to try and make some more. A customer suggested I make smoked salmon with cream cheese and I can't wait to try it.

I got all the recipes and tips I used from my Sushi with Style book by Ellen Brown. I am so happy to have it. The tips are seriously great and I feel like a pro. I learned what types of tools you need, what ingredients work best, how to make, season and cool the rice, how to put the rice on the seaweed properly, how to roll, how to cut, just everything you could ever need to know.

June 23rd

Chris and I had birthday cake ice cream today.... who ever came up with that flavor is a genius...

Chris is boring but I made mine into a delicious sundae... yeah that's picture of the day worthy

June 22nd

The sky was pretty interesting on my way to work today. There were no clouds in the sky, except at the verrry edge of the horizon. It look pretty neat.

June 21st

I saw this adorable mini cooper 1000 at work today. It was cute all over, it took up like none of the parking space and it has the steering wheel on the right side and everything. Look at the little gas cap on the back corner. Man I want one of these.

June 20th

My garden is growing by the second... the plants have all gotten so much bigger I'm going to have to move them all. Here are some of my tomato plants that we just tiny not so long ago...

And here is the tomato plant that Chris' mom gave me, it was started earlier and now its like ... 50 times the size of my other ones!

Chris' grape plant has grown so much that it has nowhere left to grow, it was trying to grow up the flower pots on the railing for a while and now its growing across instead.

June 19th

All the pretty flower bouquets we have at my store :) I actually took this picture to show Chris and coax him into buying me some but it might as well be my photo for the day

Pina Colada Fruit Dip

I made this Pina Colada fruit dip for a friend's surprise party and it was so good I decided to blog the recipe. It was kind of hard to find a complete recipe with measurements that made sense online, so hopefully this will clear it up for me when I want to make it in the future - which I definitely will want to.

Ingredients:
-one 8oz pkg (brick or tub) of cream cheese (softened slightly)

-one container of Jet Puffed (or other) marshmallow fluff

-1/2 cup shredded coconut

-half of a 19 fl oz can of crushed pineapple

First, stir the cream cheese and marshmallow fluff until combined. Then fold in the pineapple and coconut until the mixture is even. This dip tastes best after it's been chilled in the fridge, I left it over night but a few hours would be good enough. It definitely tasted better than when it did when I had just made it, so chill it. Enjoy! 

June 18th

Today I helped Tasha set up a surprise party for Will. We had a lot to do, including picking up balloons from the party store... Yeah I felt really safe driving with these in my rear view mirror...

Skip ahead several hours. Here is some of what we made. That's my rainbow fruit tray at the bottom. With pina colada dip, I'll post a recipe after. Then Tasha made a layered dip for nachos, a veggie tray, two yummy punches, and Will's mother made skewered bocconcini, cherry tomatoes, and basil drizzled with balsamic vinegar, and a black bean dip with diced tomatoes and cilantro - both were amazingly good.

Here's the cake we ordered... I few jokes about his computer gaming... and in the corner - "NO BASKETBALL" - which, of course, was not actually supposed to be written on the cake lol, they had written that on their sheet when they decided they didn't want a basketball on there.

Tasha, Will and his brother Travis. The surprise went pretty well considering that they came back early, before all of his friends had arrived...

June 17th

And here is one of Chris' "projects"... it's a really nice old banker's desk, but it's become a bit of a hassle because we have to get new veneers for it and all this stuff so it's sort of just sitting around lol.

June 16th

Thought I would get some pictures of the lovely flowers in the back garden...

A pretty pot arrangement on the deck stairs...

Sweet little purple fuzzy flowers...

A solar lamp my aunt gave us....

Cute little wicker planters that hang, but we couldn't find anywhere to hang them so they're on some other stairs...

Preeeetty pink flowers. :)

June 15th

This is one of my latest "projects." I use quotation marks because I haven't started working on it at all yet. It's a nice old mirror I got at a garage sale for $10. Chris and I are planning on restoring it.

June 14th

Soo I tried making one of those grapesicles today - you stick a bunch of grapes on skewer and freeze it. I thought it was such a good idea... Turns out I totally hate eating frozen fruit. Oh well!

June 13th

Mmm I love my soaps lol. Pears transparent soap is one of my favorites for some reason. Just opened up a new bar, a good way to start the morning.

I also saw these vintage Pears soap tins at Value Village, how appropriate. :)

June 12th

Ahh warm sunny days off..

The pool is just about ready to swim in...

Still a little slimy on the bottom but, better than nothing right?

June 11th

Just some lovely roses from the garden out front :)

June 10th

It's been raining a little bit lately. Chris and I spent a rainy day working on this puzzle I bought at a thrift store, specifically for rainy days. It was hard and actually took like three days to fully complete. But hey, we're pros now ;)

June 9th

Since we've been having a few BBQs lately there have been a lot of fruit trays around. We keep putting honeydew in them which I never really had much of before, turns out I love it...

Will's mom gave Tasha this drinks recipe book for her birthday and it has a yummy recipe for a slush drink with honeydew in it.

I will certainly have to make it sometime but for now I'll keep these pictures as a record of the recipe.

June 8th

Today Chris and I had a BBQ at my house with a bunch of friends from work. Tasha, Katelyn, Jackie, Jen, Will, Andrew, Grant, and Lotfi all came. It seemed like it was going to rain all day and then about half an hour before everyone got here there was a huge hail storm. But luckily Chris and I had just covered up the firewood with plastic, and after about five minutes of marble-sized hail, it got the sunniest it had been all day :) We all had a great time, lots of food and a nice bonfire after dinner. Unfortunately I didn't think to take a picture until it was too dark but here is the only one I took - everyone's in it... but you'll just have to trust me on that since you can't see them.

June 7th

My good friend Lotfi became a Canadian citizen today! :) Chris, Tasha and I went to his citizenship ceremony and we all went out to breakfast afterwards to celebrate. Here he is holding his certificate.

June 6th

I saw this wedding invitation today at a friend's house and I have to say, it's adorable. I've seen similar ideas on Pinterest before but this one was really well done. Classy :)

June 5th

Silly Phoebe and her hang out places... Today I walked into the garage to find her asleep in the seat of the riding mower hahah

June 4th

Ohhh flowers... I found this beautiful pink rose on one of the cashes at work. It's so lovely ... *sigh*

June 3rd

A beautiful Black Iris in the garden out back. It's so lovely, it almost looks like it's sparking!

June 2nd

These were the freakish hanging black clouds I saw on the way to work today. Woah... seriously weird. If you enlarge the picture you can see how sweeping they are against the light clouds behind them.

June 1st

Hehe, today I put Phoebe in my market basket as a joke, but she took a liking to it...

She kept going in it and let us carry her around and everything...

Clearly not much was going on today lol.

May 31st

I spent the day at Chris' parents' house. While helping his mom plant some flowers their dog, Phoebe jumped up into the flower bed for a rest.

And then over to my hoodie for another rest... haha

Chris' dad found three baby raccoons above their barn and he is raising them, feeding them formula from baby bottles and everything. I helped him feed them and they were soo adorable the way they grabbed for the bottles with their little hands. After their bellys were full they would waddle around, so cute.

A chicken in the next barn stall was really nosy and kept peeking his head through to get a good look haha

Chris let one of them crawl around on his shoulders which I could not believe, I was never too crazy about raccoons...

Oh and there were a TON of little (well medium sized) chicks, a few weeks old, in another stall. I thought it was funny how this one hen was walking back and forth in front of the pen as if she was guarding it.

Chris actually convinced me to let one on my shoulder and I, of course, took a liking to the little one. It was tired from eating still so it just clung to my shirt.. soo cute

sooo cute...

ohh sooo cute.... :)

His mom's vegetable garden is just getting started. She has a lovely pattern laid out in wood chips

And... heres a picture of Phoebe and a rhubarb leaf that is at least twice her size hahaha. Teeny tiny doggy.