New Blog

For anyone wondering where I have gone...

Food Life Pole w. P

New Blog

For anyone wondering where I have gone too...

Food Life Pole w. P

Christophe's Skylander Collection

For his birthday Christophe has asked for Skylanders and only Skylanders.  To make life easier for the gift buyers I made a list of all the ones that he already owns.

Christophe's Skylander Collection:

• Bash
• Slobber Tooth
• Knockout Terrafin
• Prism Break
• Blast Zone
• Eruptor
• Wash Buckler
• Eye-Brawl
• Rattle Shake
• Pop Fizz
• Pop Thorn
• Legendary Free Ranger
• Magna Charge
• Countdown
• Shroomboom
• Bumble Blast
• Ninja Stealth Elf
• Tree Rex
• Trigger Happy
• Spyro
• Gill Grunt
• Jet Vac
• Cynder
• thumpback
• star strike
• scorp
• Ignitor
• Warnado
• Camo

Skate Video #2

Six Months in Six Minutes - Skate

BYE BYE TREE - THE CHOPPING DOWN IN IMAGES

MEET FLUFFY

Meet our new addition Fluffy the dwarf hamster...

C MONSTER NEW FOOD GUIDE

One of my biggest challenges as a parent is to get C Monster to eat fruits and vegetables. To make it less arbitrary to him when I say "you can not have more bread until you eat vegetables", I decided to make him an interactive food guide.   I used the canadian food guide as my example. They have a section where one can create a personal food guide.  I used this to determine how much food a 4-year-old boy should be eating. 

For the interactive guide I just drew and coloured a chart on a piece of paper and then printed pictures of the food groups off the internet.  I cut each one out and attached a magnet to each. Voila: a food guide simple enough a 4-year-old gets it.

The house rules for the food guide are:

• No dessert until all other categories are filled up.
• Once you are done your bread products, that is it for that category.
• Once you have filled up all 4 food group categories, you get a sticker.

DANCE RECITAL

The C Monster had his first dance recital on Saturday. A 6 minute hip hop dance routine.  He looked so cute. 

VICTORIA DAY FIREWORKS

I have been busy as always and that = me not having time to post anything.  2 weekends ago on Victoria Day we took the C Monster out to see fireworks at Ashbridge Bay.  We live close enough that we can walk and well if we could not walk there I am not certain you could pay me to go - traffic is nuts.

We packed a picnic and headed down wagon in tow to the lake for supper and fireworks.

Geoff trying to eat his supper...

All that said I have to say the city puts on a pretty good firework show at Ashbridge Bay.  And cuddling up with my little C Monster on the sand while watching the fireworks and hearing him say wow, ahh, beautiful mama and start spontaneously clapping is well worth it.

I think it took C Monster 5 minutes after the fireworks to pass out in the wagon. He was so tired he fell asleep eating the rest of his supper I had to fish out sandwich bits from his mouth.

WEETABIX ?

I have to say this one took me by surprise.  When I purchased a box of reduced Weetabix the last person I pegged as eating them was C Monster.  Here he is enjoying Weetabix with vanilla yogurt and a little honey.  He also likes them with just a little milk.

I wanted to also take a minute to talk about cereal in general.  I am very particular about what cereal we buy in our house.  Our food is no longer 100% organic that is a decision we had to make when we decided to purchase a bigger house.  Bigger house = bigger mortgage = cutting cost in various locations.  However we do not buy food that is full of additives and chemicals.  So what do I look for in a cereal?

1. Sugar content must be 6g or bellow; ideally between 0g and 4g
2. It can not contain any preservatives or ingredients that one would not find in a well stocked kitchen pantry
3. It is on sale. As cereal is a treat in our house we only buy it when it is on sale. 

If have to say once you follow all these rules there is not much left out there one can buy; so I was delighted when C Monster decided that he LOVED Weetabix.

GROWING GREEN ONIONS INSIDE

I read a post on apartment therapy about 3 weeks ago about re-growing green onions inside your home. I decided to try it.  Here is the final results after I transplanted my newly sprouted green onions to there more permanent  home - a planter from purchased from Urban Pot. 

On a side note I have to say I was very pleased with the customer service and product from Urban Pot and will definitely look at them again in the future for my potting needs.

I also added some green onion seeds to the pot in hopes to increase my yield of onions, here they are just 5 days later sprouting.

Next indoor gardening project will be sunflower sprouts.

DAY OUT WITH FRIENDS

I have to say I feel so fortunate to have made some fantastic friends in my neighbourhood and am reminded of that almost daily.  Last week I made a trip with Sallyanne to Playground Paradise; it's in the Flemingdon Park area of Toronto and is so worth the trip every time.

We left extra early so we could have a picnic lunch and play in there outdoor playground before they opened for the afternoon.  We should have hung out at the park that is just across the street until Playground Paradise opened as the playground was pretty much just a climbing structure and a bit to complex for Sallyanne daughter.  However it's a pretty cool climbing structure that C Monster & H really enjoyed.

Look at me I am Spiderman

Once we got in at Playground Paradise everyone had a ball.  I would post picture but I can't as no cameras are aloud inside.  On the way home we just missed our bus, meaning we got stuck in rush hour traffic.  There was kind gentlemen that gave his seat to C Monster and H. The picture below is of them pretending to sleep squished together on a single TTC bus seat.  G, Sallyanne daughter, was comfortable in her stroller sleeping for the trip home.

C Monster & H on the bus

Thanks Sallyanne for a great day.

BTW - H is the little girl I looked after last summer, Sallyanne is now her care provider.

BATHROOM ACCENT COLOUR - SELECTED

When it comes to home decor it takes me forever to select anything for my house.  For a client I can do it in no time; myself well it took us 6 months to select a bunk bed, but that is for another post.  This post is about the main bathroom.

When we moved in last December the house had no mirrors; we have been taking our time selecting mirrors for the bathrooms.  In January we selected and purchased the one for the main bathroom; however before putting it up we want to paint the bathroom.  Selecting the accent colour took me another 4 months.  I decided I wanted to paint one wall to match the accent colour of the towels and bathmat.  The image below is the winning colour.  After bringing home 12 different towels and returning them all we found this one at Simons it was exactly the colour I was imagining in my mind.  Now to make the trip to Paint Depot to have them colour match it for my paint.

Image from Simons 

I almost forgot you are probably curious as to what mirror we selected. Trinity from Electric Mirror.

Image from Electric Mirror

SUNNY DAY HAPPY MAY 24 WEEKEND

PEAR POMEGRANATE POPSICLES

As summer approaches I really get into popsicle making.  I find this is a great way to get C monster to eat more fruit.  The flavour of the week for popsicle is pear pomegranate.

It's very easy just mix in with emersion blender or regular blender 1/2 cup pure no sugar added pomegranate juice with 2 cups packed no sugar added canned pears.

I make my own canned pears to avoid the BPA in the can liners; if you do not want to use store bought pears just measure out about 4 cup pears and cook them until soft. You can boil them in a little pear juice or water. You can bake them in the oven. Use your imagination.

Once the mixture is complete just pour them into your favourite popsicle mould freeze overnight and enjoy!

MATCHING WINDOW COVERING

 

One of the many home reno projects we have on the go is C Monster's bedroom.  We recently added a black out blind from the Shade Store that matches with his bedding.  We let the Monster select the style; he chose a rolling blind.

BACK YARD RENO PART 1

You ask what have we been up to?  Well as the weather warms I have been spending my time in the back yard working hard.  I spent the 2 months of "winter" in our new home trying to plot out the best location for a garden.  For this year it is along the east side of the back yard.  This plot of dirt originally had cedars running along the fence; they were only a few years old so this made them prime targets for successful transplant to someone else yard. Thanks to Freecycle and Craigs List they were all gone in about 2 weeks; all 64 of them. We kept 3 that we relocated to the back of the yard to create a visual barrier. Eventually behind the cedars will be a potting bench and a compost bin.

I know some of you are thinking why remove all the cedars they were hiding that ugly chain link fence well we have other plans that will hide that fence in a few years.  This includes hopefully a new fence and some berry bushes and trees, but for now taking the Cedars out gave me a great temporary space to plant vegetables for the next few years.  

As you can see in the picture we have started planting and I still need to work on turning the rest of the dirt and adding some nice black earth to the top and so on.  I will be planting cucumbers, tomatoes, string beans, peas, kale and radishes to name a few.

More picture to come as the work progresses.

SPRING BLOOMS IN YOUR HOME

One of my favourite spring home decor touches is to cut branches from blooming trees and make floral arrangements with them.  It's a great inexpensive way to have flowers in the house and well at the same time you are trimming your trees.

C Monster also made his very own arrangement for his room.  His vase is a tiny pear juice bottle he got a few months ago at a restaurant and as he put it "mama it's so cute and tiny I need to keep it because it's cute like me"  Ever since he brought it home I have been trying to place a flower in it regularly; I think right now it has a tulip from our front yard but in this picture it has a matching floral arrangement to the one I made with branches.

MY NEW SPECTACLES