And it ends.....

To my blog stalkers :)

Thanks for enduring my lack of postings and sticking through this crazy ride with me. I've realized that I'm not a writer. I mean I knew this before I started this blog but thought this may be different. However it's not. I'm a talker, always have been always will be. I was joking with a friend that I should take videos of myself and post them. Regardless I am done blogging and just didn't want to delete all my insanity over the past couple of years. Thanks again for your love, support and comments. Want to know what's going on with me? Guess you're going to have to call or come out for coffee with me! :)

Smiles all around.....

From April 3-10 Jason and I were at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando Florida. We LOVED it and had soooooooo much fun. Anyways, I don't have time right now to post all of the details. However I did want to share these pics with you. You can clearly see just how happy we were in those moments. We only wanted pics with the classic characters. We just weren't interested in all the new characters. In fact a couple of times I had to ask some parents who some characters were. Oh the life without kids :) Anyways, it was definitely worth the money to have 8 days together, especially with all that's been going on.

Long time gone.....

Man there are a lot of you out there who actually read this thing. It's amazing to me how many of you ask me when I'm going to update this. The truth is I've been wanting to give it up. I've been wanting to just delete it. I'm not sure why though. However I just don't bother deleting it because something just doesn't seem right about that to me.

There's been way too much going on for me to rant about it here. I can say this about it all though..... although I see God's hand all over everything that's crappy right now I'm still not okay with it. I'm having a hard time processing where I'm at right now because I've never been here. This is all new territory for me and my brain and I'm not exactly sure what to do with it all just like those of you who are closest to me right now who don't know what to do with me. My poor, patient husband said to me last night during one of my new found anxiety attacks (loving those) that he wishes he could just tell me to suck it up but realizes that this is so real to me right now that that would do more damage than good. Ha ha ha shows how far we've come in 5 years because back then he would have just said it.

Anyways, my heart has been heavier than it ever has over the past 5 weeks. Today is the (although I hate this saying) straw that breaks the camel's back. Tomorrow my mom will be putting Bob (our dog that we've had for about 15 years) to sleep. Although it's the last thing that my mom, sister and I want we realize it's necessary. The poor guy is just not doing so hot right now and hasn't really been doing well for a few months now. However we kept hanging on. We kept saying that we'd leave him be until we thought he was suffering and now he seems to be at that point. My heart is broken and I'm sure this is heightened because of other things from these past few weeks that I haven't dealt with, but it still sucks.

So in honour of Bob Putty (this is what I wanted to call him but I got overruled) Wilson here's a few pics of him. I've got loads more but don't have a scanner so these will have to do.

Quick and easy recipe.....

I'm finding myself extremely drained right now. I'm working through lots of emotional stuff that is leaving me feeling like I've run a marathon by the end of the day. So last night when I got home the last thing I wanted to do was make a big supper and mess in the kitchen. However I had this simple recipe that I changed slightly to make it more helathy and it was yummy. Jason loved it and says I can make it again. That's a big joke in our house though becuase I hardly ever end up making the same recipe twice. I wanted to share it with you for those rushed nights in your house. It made a lot so it would even be good for potlucks or having people over.

One Dish Beef Stroganoff

3/4 lb boneless beef grilling steak cut into strips
1 large onion sliced
1 cup sliced mushrooms
2 cups reduced sodium beef broth
1 cup water
1 can low fat cream of mushroom soup
2 1/2 cups of uncooked whole wheat fusilli or rotini noodles
1 cup frozen peas
1 tbsp worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp black pepper
3/4 cups light sour cream or plain yogurt

1. Cook beef in non-stick skillet on medium high heat until browned. Remove beef and reduce heat to medium. Add onion and mushroom and heat until cooked. Set aside with beef.
2. Combine broth, water, and soup in skillet and heat to a boil. Add pasta and cook at a gentle boil until al dente stirring often.
3. Stir in peas, worcestershire sauce and pepper and simmer for 3 minutes.
4. Return beef, mushrooms and onions to skillet, stir in sour cream/yogurt and heat through.

Pork anyone....

Some local churches in the Petitcodiac are raising money to bring a refugee family over from Africa to live in Moncton. I have read the story of this family and cannot even begin to tell you the horrors that they have faced. Unfortunately no details can be released in this public forum in order to protect those involved. However trust me when I tell you that this is a worthy cause. I'm thrilled at how much money these church groups have been able to raise. So far they have enough money to support the family for a year! How exciting! However more help is definitely needed.

Therefore a local farmer, Murray Bunnett (who is also the chair of the Ten Thousand Villages board), has offered to sell boxes of pork and will donate 6 dollars for every box towards this. So not only are you helping out a great cause, you're also getting some pork. Oh and this just isn't any pork. This pork is raised naturally WITHOUT hormones or antibiotics!

You get:
3 lbs of pork chops
3 lb pork roast
2 lbs ham steak
2 lbs ground pork

So that's 10 pounds of naturally raised, antibiotic and hormone free pork for only 27 dollars and don't forget 6 dollars of that is going towards helping a family in need.

Interested? PLEASE talk to me.....leave a comment, email me, call me, whatever works! The cut off date is February 15 and the pick up date for the meat is March 1.

Hope to hear from you all soon :)

Good for the soul.....

I'm having a great day. Today is my first real day off in a while and I'm loving it! The two days that I took off last week, although I wasn't working, they didn't leave me feeling fulfilled and ready to go back to work. One was a sick day and the other was one of those errand days where you run all around doing way too much. Anyways, today I slept in, checked my email and then headed right to the kitchen. After 2 hours of productivity from start to finish (clean up and all) I had all of these delicious goodies made.

How yummy does all of that look? (from back left to front left) The cookies are for a friend whose mother in law has passed away. The circumstances around why I baked these sucks however I was excited to be able to do it. Normally when I make chocolate chip cookies I have to make the recipe Jason likes because they're for him. This time I got to use my favorite recipe from one of my sister's friends. The secret ingredient is vanilla pudding. They're so yummy! The sweet bread is an applesuace bran loaf. I decided to make this and the next thing instead of muffins for a change. You see I've spoiled myself so much that I only like my high fibre healthy things that I bake for breakfast now. I get really cranky when I have to have toast or cereal. Next to the loaf is baked oatmeal. Have any of you ever had this? It's so yummy. It's like a big oatmeal cookie or muffin with a hint of cinnamon and apples. I don't know it's hard to explain. Throw some fruit and yogurt on top and it's delicious for breakfast, dessert, whatever. Then the last fatttening ooey gooey thing you see there is the beginnings of a caramel chocolate truffle pie. I have to wait until the crust and caramel cool before I can put the topping on. I've only made this once before. However we're heading to a friends house tomorrow night for games so it seemed like a good occassion to pull out a great recipe.

Okay so how many of you are thinking I'm insane? I only have one friend, who now lives in PEI :( who enjoys doing this. Everyone else really thinks I'm nuts. I so love baking. I can't even begin to explain it to you. I was reminded of how much I love it because of how I felt while doing it today. It had been so long since I got to just spend a few hours in my kitchen and do this all by myself. I just love making yummy things that bring people together I guess. Oh and the compliments I always get help too...ha ha ha.

I hope each one of you are able to pick a day some time soon where you're able to do what you truly enjoy without interuptions. Now I'm off to the couch to watch cooking shows!

Our house.....

Although we've been living here for over a year now I realize that some of you still haven't been here to see it and have asked me some questions. One of you was even trying to figure our house out from the pictures of Jason and I baking (too cute). So it got me thinking that I should post some pics on here. Our house is definitely an original design so it may be hard to follow but I'm going to do my best. Also it is a work in progress. Some things are working right now because we don't have the time/money to change it. Now onto the pictures.

1. This is the shot of the outside that was taken by the house inspector a while ago so that's why it looks all green and such.

2. One major change that Jason's done to the outside for a BBQ and a patio set is build a 12x12 deck extension because the deck wrapping around the house isn't wide enough. So from the picture above the door on the side by the satellite dish now has this when you go out the door (it will be my fun job in the summer to stain it since you have to let it weather for a year... little tip there from the girl who used to work in the paint department).

3. Now the door that we use to get into the house is the one that you see next to the garage. When you walk in this is what you see (the room in progress but border is working with my old furniture so it has been left for now)

(to the right of this is the garage, no need to show you pics of that mess. In the background where you see the closet doors the one to the left is a closet and the one on the right hides our washer and dryer)

4-6. Now when you go up the stairs if you turn to your left you see a small hallway with 2 bedrooms (neither of which have been changed because someday they will be children's rooms and who knows what we'll decide to do with them then) and a full bath

(please tell me you all have a room like this where everything that you don't know what to do with ends up?)

7-9. I hope this isn't getting too confusing....so if you go back to coming up the strairs from the basement and look straight and to your right you'll see our favorite part of the house.

(there's the side door that goes out onto the deck extension that I should you earlier)

10-13. Now we're going to go up those stairs that you see in the last picture. So here's some shots from the landing up there.

(took the last picture for a contractor who's going to attempt to change our ceiling fan into something more my taste...hooray!) oh and here's what I see when I walk out our bedroom door

(this picture was on Sunday before the last storm hit)

14-16. So those previous pictures were if you went to the top of the stairs and turned right. If you turned left you would enter into our bedroom and then another left to our bathroom.

(my side of the room)(Jason's side of the room.....it used to annoy the heck out of me that he didn't put his clothes away. Now after 4 years I could care less, ahhhhhh how freeing.)This is our small bathroom but we really don't need anything bigger, plus just having to clean a stand up shower is so much better than a full bath (we never use the downstairs one).

So that's it. That's our house. Hope that made sense to you. I'll leave you one last shot of our view (this one is from the front door in the livingroom/kitchen/diningroom area) that was taken this morning. Hopefully you'll all be able to come out and visit some time. Although the drive gets annoying at times we love it here. We feel so blessed to have this wonderful house and view. If I'm honest sometimes I feel guilty for all the space that we do have. However Kitty and Alpine seem to enjoy leaving hairy messes in every room for me to clean so it's kind of like I have 2 kids most days, other days it feels like 3 :)