Happy Halloween 2011

Here are our Jack-O-Lanterns. 

 I think that they turned out really well. Kathryn and Tansley both carved their own and I think they did great!

And here are my clever kids all dressed up and ready to go Trick-or-Treating.

 The garbage can. She came up with this idea all on her own and then she and I  put it all together.

 The detective. She put this costume together all on her own.

 The bag of Jelly beans. I had seen this cute idea on the internet somewhere and she was so excited to get dressed up.

And finally our Ferocious Lion. He is actually roaring here. too cute!!!

Ummm...my apples have teeth...

So here is that last of my fun Halloween treats. I just made these to take up to the school for the kids...you know so they have a healthy snack to go along with all the junk that they'll be eating today. Maybe if the healthy snack looks cool, then they kids won't mind eating it along with the junk.

Happy Halloween! Here, have some worms for lunch.

I sent my kids to school with these this morning.

I know, they're gross! I wish I could watch the other kids faces when my girls pull out their bowl of worms and a fork and start munching away. I promise, they taste better than they look. Of course, I found the idea on my new favorite place to waste a little time, Pinterest. If you want to make your own gross bowl of worms you can find the directions here.

Candy Corn sugar cookies

Here's one of the things we were up to today.(We got the idea here)

First I made a batch of my favorite sugar cookies dough.

Then I divided it into three and coloured them accordingly.

Then I layered them on top of each other and put them in the freezer.

Then I sliced it like bread and then cut into triangles and they looked like this.

 Then we baked them and they looked like this....

 Apparently my sugar cookie recipe doesn't hold it's shape very well.

Once they cooled we dipped the white end in melted white chocolate. 

This part was the kids job...I had to stand back, put my hands in my pockets and hold my tongue and just let them do it their way. It's hard for me to do sometimes when I have it pictured a certain way. But in the end they turned out just fine.

Wait till you see what else I am making for Halloween threats!!

Satisfaction and Pleasure

What a year for canning! And it's not over just yet. I still have apple pie filling to put up and possibly some pumpkin pie filling as well. But lets take a look at what has already been done....

1 batch of Raspberry/rhubarb jam (raspberries were from my bushes)
4 batches of Raspberry jam (raspberries from my bushes)
51 quarts of peaches(about 120lbs ordered from our local grocery store)
41 quarts of pears(about 88lbs ordered from our local grocery store)
31 quarts, 13 pints of Apple sauce (from my tree and about 15lbs of apples from our fabulous grocery store)
11pints, 5 1/2 pints and 1 quart of My Salsa (I was getting low on jars)
10 pints of Grandma Kaye's mild salsa (all tomatoes from my garden)
8 pints of mixed Salsa (grandma Kaye' and mine mixed together)
13 quarts of tomato sauce (tomatoes from my garden)
5 pints apple/strawberry sauce(a selection from the 80lbs of orchard fresh apples in my garage and frozen strawberries)
7 pints apple/blueberry sauce(my favorite)(a selection from the 80lbs of orchard fresh apples in my garage and frozen blueberries)
8 pints apple/peach sauce(a selection from the 80lbs of orchard fresh apples in my garage and a few of my jars of peaches)
5 quarts, 9 pints of antipasti
40 freezer bags(2 cups each) of Taber corn
3 ice cream buckets of frozen crab apple slush
and a whole lot of garden carrots stored in my extra fridge in the garage

And now my shelves are full and pretty.See that little empty spot on the bottom shelf, just under the sleeve of the hockey jersey hanging there on the right? that spot is for the apple pie filling...I'm thinking that I'm going to have to rearrange some stuff to make a little more room. I get great pleasure from just looking at my shelves of food. It has been a satisfying canning year, and a successful one, I'd say.

A mini getaway

For our anniversary, Daniel arranged for us to go on a mini getaway. He likes to plan these sorts of things and not tell me about anything. I just have to go along for the ride, and the ride is always a blast.

the only pic I have of my cool hair

On Friday after the kids were done school we packed them up and dropped them off in Lethbridge at Grandma's house. Then Daniel took me down to Zaks hair salon where he had booked me in for a cut and colour. I decided I wanted to do something fun. I had Roxanne add some fun red chunks. I loved the result! What I really loved was that she understood me and the fact that I wasn't likely to be in again in 4-6 weeks to have it touched up. So she suggested that we but the colour in places where it wouldn't be too noticeable once it started to grow out. So I have a chunk of red in the back on the left side that you can see when I have my hair in a pony tail(and lets be honest, this is most of the time) and another chunk of red just under the surface on the right hand side that you can see when I pull it back just a bit. I discovered why I don't have this done professionally very often. I sat in the salon with my hair in various stages for three and a half hours!!! It killed me to be doing nothing for all that time. Who has that kind of time to sit in a salon? And then of course their is the cost factor. I simply don't have $100 to spend on my hair every 4-6 weeks. But all in all the experience was wonderful and I love the end result.

Looking up at the B&B

Doreen and Brian with June

Seven Sisters

After I was done there we headed out to the Crowsnest pass to a gorgeous B&B called Sasky Mountain B&B. The hosts(Doreen and Brian) were wonderful and the food was fabulous. They had also left in our room and plate of chocolate dipped strawberries and a card to congratulate us on our 10 year anniversary. We can't wait until we have time to go and spend two or three nights there!! And we will definitely be returning. We spent the day in the Crowsnest pass exploring new possible camping and hiking destinations for next summer.
When the day was drawing to a close we headed to Lethbridge for a fabulous dinner at the Keg. We then picked up the kids and headed home.

Crowsnest Mountain

It was a great little getaway. I love my hubby, he is simply awesome.

10 years ago

10 years ago today was the perfect day. The sun was shining. The wind WASN"T blowing. The morning was cool and crisp. Which was just what I wanted. Only days before it had been 30C. I had knitted a pretty shawl that I had planned to wear with my dress. I had spent hours and hours on it and I would have been devastated(OK maybe not devastated, but somewhat disappointed) if I wouldn't have been able to wear it on that very special day. But the morning was just as I had dreamed it would be. The whole day was perfect. Everything, to my knowledge, went off with out a hitch. Everybody was where they were supposed to be, the flowers were perfect, the cake was gorgeous, everything was perfect. There isn't a thing that I would have wished went differently.

The week that followed was full of adventure. We spent time at a couple of B&B's, a night in a fancy shmancy hotel room, went to three Oilers Hockey games(yes I am the best wife ever), visited hotsprings, explored some of Jasper, and spent a night or two at my brothers place in Edmonton. It was fun and relaxing and adventurous all at the same time.

Daniel was working in Saskatoon at the time, so that is where we started our life together. In a modest basement suite that cost us $400/month all utilities included(except phone) and it was mostly furnished. We rented from a nice elderly lady  named Joyce. Daniel had been renting a room on the main floor previously, and just before we got married her grandson had moved out of the basement suite, so she had left it open for us.

A few days after we arrived in Saskatoon, Daniel received an interesting phone call at work. I had come to Saskatoon not knowing what I was going to do for work. I had a resume already made up but I hadn't yet done any job hunting since I was still working on getting us settled into our new home. My former boss at Bentley Leather's in Lethbridge had taken it upon herself to help me out(which I was unaware of). She had called the district manager of Bentley Leathers in Saskatoon and told her about me and that I was Manager material, she didn't have my home number so she told the district manager that Daniel worked at Jersey City in Midtown plaza mall and she could find me through him. Well it just so happened that they were in need of a new manager starting the very next week at the same mall that Daniel was working at. When all was said and done I had a job in a matter of days without even putting out a single resume.

Our first year of marriage may very well have been our richest. We were living the high life(which is easy to do when your rent is dirt cheap). We ate out when ever we wanted. We went to the movies all of the time. We could easily live on what Daniel was making so nearly all of the money that I made went to paying off my student loans. The result was that we were able to have those student loans paid off in less than 5 years. I can't say that we ever lived the life of the incredibly poor newly weds. We have never had to struggle to buy what we needed. Only now, 10 years later does it feel that money is tight. But of course we have 4 kids that need clothes and food...lots of food.

We have been greatly blessed. I could go on and on about all the amazing things that have happened to us to help get us to where we are. But I think it's just easier to say that the Lord has taken care of us, right from the beginning. Ten years has gone by so fast and yet it seems as thought it has always just been this way. It seems like just yesterday I was standing in the temple beside my best friend Leah drooling over how handsome my new husband looked in his wedding suit as he walked around the corner. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world. That he had chosen me, that he loved ME, that HE was MINE forever. Not much has changed. I still drool over him, especially when he is all dressed up in a suit and I still feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

Life is grand!!!