Penguin faces

J's best bud I, moved far away from Vancouver to Edmonton just before Christmas. J misses her tremendously and doesn't quite understand how far away I lives now, except that it's further away than Kelowna and that's five hours and that's a long time!

J (and her mommy) was super excited to find out that I and her family were here visiting friends the Canada Day long weekend. It was gross and rainy, so we decided to take advantage of their still-valid Aquarium passes and head inside to visit some fish and large mammals. Oh, and penguins. And a snake. The girls touched a snake. That was the most exciting thing ever for both of them!

I's favourite fish by far was the clownfish. I think she's seen Finding Nemo, or at least she knows the story.

J hasn't seen the movie ever, but she does have the Disney book. We've only read it a few times, but now she talks about how much she loves Nemo and orange is her favourite colour so all the little Nemos at the aquarium are her favourites!

There were lots of kids activities set up, which was great. J and I decided they wanted to get their faces painted.

J has her eyeshadow painted on and now it's time for a mustache...

J and I, happy little penguin girls! And happy little friends. There were lots of hugs and J was quite sad to say goodbye to I and her family. She keeps asking if we have to move to Edmonton someday too...I told her no, we probably wouldn't, but maybe one day we'll visit!

Decks in bloom

When we lived in the Blue House, we had a super large deck - it was awesome. The deck was off the kitchen and we used it all the time. We were super spoiled at the Blue House; we had three eating areas in good weather: the kitchen, the dining room, and the deck.

I loved it. Okay fine, I loved the whole Blue House.

But the deck. The first summer we were in the house, I knew I had to do something with it but I had no idea where to start. My friend Chandra gave me an early birthday gift of plants and planting materials and we spent a very pleasant day making the deck look beautiful.

The deck became a central part of our life that summer. It was home to a big table with an umbrella, a bunch of solar powered lights (there was no power on the deck), an awesome park bench and our bbq. We played board games out there. We ate our meals out there.

We often had friends over for meals and of course we ate out there. We had birthday cake for breakfast out there.

We had parties out there, lots of deck parties. We had birthday parties out there, more than once.

We had an upstairs neighbour and a downstairs neighbour in the Blue House and they both had their own small-space gardens. Water our respective gardens became part of our evening rituals. After the sun had set, the crows had flown home to Burnabye and I had taken down the ugly sheets on the kitchen windows (I finally made and hung the curtains before the second summer) and opened the windows and doors in the house to cool it off, I'd head to the deck to water my plants.

Around the same time K and R would both be out doing theirs. We liked our neighbours and we saw them often and this became a time, just before bed, for the three of us to exchange pleasantries and stories. By that second summer, K was preparing to move out and R and I were on tenterhooks because we didn't know when/if the house was going to be sold and we'd be looking for another place to live. The second summer I pretty much only had volunteers and herbs. I didn't want to leave much behind if we did end up leaving. And the deck had started to rot. K probably would have replaced it for us, but she no longer owned the house and the new landlords were...difficult.

Moving into a condo was a huge adjustment for us. We downsized tremendously. Our outside space shrunk. We lived in close proximity to a whole bunch of people, not just our beloved neighbours K and R. Oh and we had a brand new baby.

But I still wished for a garden and a green space and some plants. And this year, I finally figured it out. It's not as spacious as the Blue House. There's no grass. I can barely fit a kitchen chair out there, so it's not exactly a comfortable place to eat or read or do much of anything. But it's ours. And it's pretty.

And J is so excited about it...and that makes it 100% worth it! Oh, and I'm excited to what the plants will produce...looks like lots of strawberries and herbs, a few tomatoes and some beans...which is way more than we've ever had before!

The first harvest

39. Grow herbs on the deck

One of our requirements when we moved into this place was that we needed to have some outside space. I didn't care if that was a balcony, a deck, a patio, a roof; I just needed to be able to open a door in my home and be outside and have space to have a few plants. Between here and the Blue House, we lived in the Pink Palace disaster zone and there was no outside space and I hated it.

We've lived here for four years now. FOUR YEARS. And for most of those four years some sad empty pots and a few dead plants lived on our little balcony. And then a stroller took over pretty much all of the space. And then we had some storage issues and the stuff from our storage room ended up on the deck.

And then I had enough. I wanted a garden. But we didn't have a yard so the deck would have to do.

Partway through the clearing up process (I forgot to take a real before shot)

We were cleaning things up and putting things away and I discovered some gross stuff on the carpet (yes, there was ugly green carpet on our deck) and I as I was trying to figure out how to get it off, I realized the carpet wasn't stuck down. Up it came and off to the home store we went to invest in some floating deck tiles. I LOVE THEM! Why didn't I do this four years ago?

I went crazy with the plants and had to get more planters. And then I bought too many planters and so, for this year at least, some of them have to live in the storage room, but next year, they will all be out there full of plants.

J helped me plant everything - I didn't manage to get any pictures as we were both covered in muck. She had just come back from my mom and dad's where she had helped them plant some things in the garden and she didn't quite grasp that she couldn't make the same mucky mess on the deck that she could in the garden. We had a great time planting and now she's excited to water them before bed every night and check the strawberries for ripe fruit.

Tonight we made our first strawberry harvest:

J is pretty stylish these days - those glasses are bug glasses and the lens open up...

Isn't it cute? J said it was super yummy. We're now on strawberry watch as there are a number more on both plants that are just a few sunshine-filled hours away from being edible.

With the nice weather the last few days, we've really noticed everything taking off. Some of the flower baskets have totally filled out, the tomato plant is almost as tall as J, the beans are looking more like beans everyday, the basil is visible from inside the house. It's awesome! J is so excited about our garden. Now she just laments the lack of an easily accessible yard space. One day kid, one day!

Oh yeah, and I get to cross one off the 101 list because we have basil, rosemary, parsley, chives and oregano out there. We've used some of the basil, chives and oregano so far. I love having fresh herbs. One day when we have a real garden I will have ten times the number of basil plants though...we love basil in this house!

Belarus - Animals in a tree

Postcard from Mad_Lilac from Belarus.

China and USA: Light and mountains and I want to go

Postcard from sysukun from China.

Description: Western Sichuan Scenery

Postcard from heatherc from the USA

Description: Docks on Lake George

When I got home and found these waiting, my first thought was to head to the airport and go to either of these places. They're both so beautiful and the light in both cards is amazing and I just really want to go.

Russia in Canada

Postcard from MariaZots in Canada from Russia

Description: Into Winter, Denis Kuksenko.

The woman who sent me this card is from Russia and the card is Russian, but she is in Canada for a few months working. She told me a bit about her job and it kind of made me wish I had a job where I could travel and live abroad...kind of. I like being at home too...

Finland, The Netherlands & Taiwan: Berries, an elephant and a dock

Postcard from Leyla from Finland.

Description: None. But the back does say the card is a reproduction of a print from 1900 and it's part of the Post Museum collection. I thought it was holly except the leaves aren't holly and I can't read the signature at the bottom well enough to guess at the letters and google it.

Postcard from Hessel from the Netherlands.

Description: Elmer in the Wind (c) David McKee 1997. I think this is a charity card, but I'm no 100% sure. It was sent to us by a 3 year old and his mom. J was thrilled!

Postcard from EmmyAi from Taiwan

Description: This is Emmy's own photograph and it's of eastern Taiwan in the late morning. I think it's such a pretty and peaceful looking place...

Germany - Half What?

Postcard from HansW from Germany

Description: translation of the front courtesy of Google Translate

Are you more of the half-full - or half empty - type?

Neither: I am a half-eight-type

Belarus, Belgium, Brazil and Russia: 3Bs and an R

Postcard from richi_ber-lin from Belarus

Description: Happy Day

Postcard from Apollinaire from Belgium.

Description: "A l'aube de toi" Nathalie Polfliet

Postcard from cinthiamor__ from Brazil

Description: Carnival of São Paulo - Sambadrome - samba school parade in the Sambadrome in Anhembi Park. As shown, the parade of school X9, champion 1997(translated via Google Translator)

Postcard from Lastivka from Russia

Description: "Rooks have arrived." A. Savrasov

Bread, Lovely Bread!

36.51, 35.52, 36.53, 36.54, 36.55, and 35.56 Try 50 new recipes


Apparently, if you ask me, I don't like bread. This is true. I don't like bread. Except that maybe it's not quite true. I make a lot of bread. In the not again recipe post, two of the four recipes were bread. I asked for a bread maker (and received it) for my birthday last year. And, the most telling point, all of the following recipes are bread of one kind or another. I think what I don't like is grocery store bread. Homemade bread, I'm good with that.

Lemon Lavender Loaf

I don't usually use mixes when I cook or bake, but this is an exception. I received this as a thank you gift from a cousin who bought it at another cousin's Lavender Farm, but it's also something I would buy for myself without hesitation. Let me tell you though, I got a lot of grief for using a mix when I made it...

Here's the ingredient list. See, nothing I wouldn't put in a loaf if I was making it from scratch. It's all good.

When it's done, you make a lemon glaze and pour it over top and it's finger smacking good. Those people who gave me grief because I used a mix? They loved it too. There wasn't a crumb left when they went home!

Baking Powder Biscuits

I have a baking powder biscuit recipe that I think might be from my grade eight cooking class. It does the job, but it's a bit blah. I went on a search for a better recipe and thankfully I only had to try one to find one that I liked. Canadian Living to the rescue again!

Quite possibly the reason why these are infinitely better than the grade eight cooking class version is because instead of shortening, they have butter, a whole cup of real butter. We don't have these very often because biscuits are best hot out of the oven and we don't each need 1/3 of a cup of butter in our evening meal. Even if it tastes delicious!

Cheese Scones

After the tomato soup hater discovered Jamie Oliver's tomato soup recipe and decided we should live on it (that would be me), we tried a bunch of things with it. Grilled cheese was the perfect companion, but we could only eat so much grilled cheese. We had baking powder biscuits and they were yummy too. Then I made these delicious Good Housekeeping scones. Oh, were they ever yummy. We'll be eating that combination again when the cooler weather returns (I know, June has been horrible, but I feel like I should at least try to eat summery food)

Whole Wheat Cinnamon Swirl Bread

This recipe comes from Jenna at Eat Live Run and it is sooooooo good and soooooo easy.

I would definitely recommend this recipe if you want to try making bread but you're scared of yeast - it's pretty easy and making the bread isn't time consuming, it's the rising time that makes it seem like bread is so much work. But while it's rising you can just do something else.

I keep meaning to try adding raisins to this and making raisin bread. I think it would be super yummy! I increased the cinnamon a little because I love cinnamon, but otherwise this is a perfect treat! [I blogged about it here but I didn't count it for some reason, probably the messed up brain thing]

Whole Wheat Bread

When I finally got myself sorted out and bought some vital wheat gluten, this is the bread recipe we landed on for our everyday bread.

It's one of the recipes in the book that came with the machine and everyone loves it. It's 100% whole wheat and it has molasses in it so it's a lovely dark colour.

I did discover though that while our machine will make a two pound loaf, I'm better off making a one or one and half pound loaf. The bigger ones get caught under the basket handle. And the bread is fresher if I make three one pound loaves in two weeks than if I make two two pound loaves. And there are fewer bread crumbs for the freezer.

Quick White Loaf

I've only made this a few times. Usually when I have an oh crap there's no bread for tomorrow's lunches moment. The quick white cycle on the bread maker only takes an hour. I need 4 1/2 hours to make a whole wheat loaf (the quick whole wheat loaf is just too dense)

The white loaf is dense too, but not as dense as the quick whole wheat.

Oops...I guess that's seven in one post...I'm not going to count the last one! If you made it this far you must love bread as much as I do!