A look back...

Back in 2006 I filled this out...and because I have nothing better to do tonight (like the dishes or sleep...ahem) I thought I'd see what my answers are now like (sisters, I know you drop by occasionally...you both answered the questions in 2006 too...) Green ones stayed the same, blue ones are new answers.

1. WHAT COLOR ARE YOUR KITCHEN PLATES? plain white

2. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING RIGHT NOW? The Disappeared

3. WHAT'S ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? red stuff

4. FAVORITE BOARD GAME? trivial pursuit

5. FAVORITE MAGAZINE? Real Simple

6. FAVORITE SMELL? J after a bath

7. LEAST FAVORITE SMELL? the asbestos building I work in

8. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING? really? morning already? please let it be Saturday

9. FAVORITE COLOUR? I like blues and purples and pinks

10. LEAST FAVORITE COLOUR? yucky orange (there is nice orange too)

11. HOW MANY RINGS BEFORE YOU ANSWER THE PHONE? no more than four, because that's when the answering machine picks up. no one ever calls me anyway!

12. FUTURE CHILD'S NAME? There's going to be more than one?

13. WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT IN LIFE? living

14. Uh...there is still no 14?

15. CHOCOLATE OR VANILLA? vanilla

16. DO YOU LIKE TO DRIVE FAST? sometimes

17. DO YOU SLEEP WITH A STUFFED ANIMAL? I have a teddy who sits on my bed during the day, but usually sleeps on the floor at night

18. STORMS - COOL OR SCARY? very cool

19. WHAT TYPE WAS YOUR FIRST CAR? Alex's Honda Civic

20. IF YOU COULD MEET ONE PERSON DEAD OR ALIVE WHO WOULD IT BE? my grandma

21. FAVORITE ALCOHOLIC DRINK? what is alcohol? I think it makes me sleepy

22. WHAT IS YOUR SIGN AND YOUR BIRTHDAY? cancer - July 3 - odd that this is the same...

23. DO YOU EAT THE STEMS OF BROCCOLI? yup

24. IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY JOB WHAT WOULD IT BE? I have that job - I'm J's mommy!

25. IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY COLOUR HAIR, WHAT WOULD IT BE? I like my brown hair even though it's got golden highlights right now (yellow according to J!)

26. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN LOVE? mmmhmmm

27. IS THE GLASS HALF FULL OR HALF EMPTY? half full

28. FAVORITE MOVIE? love actually

29. TYPE WITH YOUR FINGERS ON THE RIGHT KEYS? yup...I was forced to take grade nine typing and as much as I loathed it, typing has probably done me more good than the table I could have made in woodwork.

30. WHAT'S UNDER YOUR BED? under the bed storage boxes filled with towels and sheets

31. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE NUMBER? 13

32. FAVORITE SPORT TO WATCH? hockey

33. WHAT IS YOUR SINGLE BIGGEST FEAR? something happening to Alex or J

34. FAVORITE TV SHOWS? I have too many...Bones, Rookie Blue, Criminal Minds, NCIS, NCIS Los Angeles, Law & Order (the original and SVU)...

35. KETCHUP OR MUSTARD? ick..neither

36. HAMBURGERS OR HOTDOGS? burgers! but sometimes hot dogs are the right thing to eat (usually those times involve a campfire and burnt marshmallows too)

37. FAVORITE SOFT DRINK? San Pellegrino - limonata

38. THE BEST PLACES YOU HAVE EVER BEEN? home, London, Italia, Copenhagen

39. WHAT SCREEN SAVER IS ON YOUR COMPUTER RIGHT NOW? ummm...the screen goes blank after a few minutes of being ignored

40. BURGER KING OR MACDONALD'S? neither

Okay, now I'm going to do what I should have done an hour ago...I'm going to bed...good night!

Hello Summer!

After what felt like the longest winter and shortest spring, it looks like summer is here. We're on day four of sun. It's cooler than usual, but I'm okay with that. Last weekend I got excited and did two weeks of menu planning which means I was all ready to post is (and another post) last night - with a few modifications. But then our computer decided to die. But it didn't really die. It turns out it has a virus. So it's off to the doctor and I'm on a borrowed computer until it's fixed - probably later this week...





Last week's menu went off without a hitch...I made two new dishes and Alex made one...and all three will likely make it into our regular rotation. (sorry no picture of Alex's, we all inhaled it too quickly - it was a basil, tomato and Italian sausage fettucine) We had so many leftovers the papaya chicken fell off the menu - probably okay since I couldn't find any nice looking papaya that didn't eat up the bulk of our grocery budget in one gulp!

Dinner in Minutes' Tuscan Tuna and White Bean Salad

Jamie Oliver's Salmon Cakes

This week's somewhat summery menu is linked to Menu Plan Mondays at I'm an Organizing Junkie.

Monday: Leftovers from yesterday's birthday party, including the black bean burgers from last week's menu that I made up but we never got around to cooking

Tuesday: Crustless Quiche

Wednesday: Stuffed Peppers with Chickpea Salad

Thursday: White Bean and Basil Salad with Lemon and Garlic Chicken Breasts (Alex's night)

Friday: Leftovers or Rice Salad with Salmon

Saturday: BBQ at Alex's parents' for our niece's 4th birthday (YAY no cooking for me!)

Sunday: Channa Masala with Naan and Brown Rice

Salmon cakes

36.34 Try 50 new recipes

If you’ve been following my menu planning, you might have noticed that Salmon Cakes keep showing up. But one way or another they just haven’t actually made it to our plates. Until tonight.

I had trouble finding a recipe that didn’t have mayonnaise or mustard in it, but I finally ended up finding two (I’m sure there are more, but at that point I stopped looking). One is from Canadian Living and uses canned salmon, the other from Jamie’s Food Revolution and calls for fresh salmon. They’re similar recipes and we decided to try the fresh salmon recipe first (nothing against canned, we just happened to pick up some very lovely, very fresh salmon at the Granville Island Market yesterday).

They turned out wonderfully! Even though, again, I forgot parsley and had to substitute basil. Oh well, I love basil.

The recipe suggested these were easy to freeze, so instead of eight cakes, I made ten and froze half. Now we have dinner in the freezer for another night. These ones are fried (the Canadian Living ones are baked) and I might try baking them the next time…

Dinner was so good. We’re at the tail end of asparagus season and I’ll be so sad to see it go. It’s one of my absolute favourite vegetables!

The end

Today we got rid of a piece of furniture that has been with us for the last five years. It was a key table in the Blue House and held our keys plus other random stuff that came into the house (cell phones, mail, apparently if you take a peak at the picture, miniature Christmas trees). It was a bedside table in the ghetto Pink Palace. And here it was also an entryway table/recycling station until it got repurposed into a side table in the living room.

But then we got new tables. And the sewing table had to go. There was no room for it. I liked the little table. I had great plans to refinish it and fill the sewing machine hole and then take out the sewing machine holder stuff and put a shelf behind the door. But that wasn’t really ever going to happen.

So we put it on craigslist and made a few dollars and put them towards the new storage for the living room (I hope by the end of the summer we’ll have it!)

But that’s not all we got rid of today. Alex helped me carry the table out to the waiting car and send it off to someone else’s home and continue its life. I wasn’t sad to see it go, but when I walked in the house, I felt a lot lighter. It took me a minute to know why I felt lighter and then I realized: I hadn’t just said goodbye to a table, I had released an old relationship. That table was the last remnant of that relationship.

Five and a half years ago a friend of mine came to Canada from far away and lived with me. For many reasons it didn’t work and she left early. There were unhappy words said and not said. There were hurt feelings. There was resentment. There were unmet expectations (often because they were also silent expectations) and there were unmet responsibilities. I ended up inheriting some furniture and other bits and pieces as part of my “compensation” for a few things…

Over the last five years we’ve had two moves and three or four big clear outs of our stuff. This is the last piece of that relationship – the rest of the things were either donated or thrown out or accidentally left behind.
When I came back in the house I realized that the lightness I was feeling came from getting rid of that last piece of furniture. Sending it off to a new home allowed me to stop mourning a long dead friendship. I realized that even though the hurt, sadness and anger are long gone, and even though I know things are best the way they are now, and even though our friendship breathed its last breaths back in 2006, and even though I knew it could never be, some piece of me longed for the friendship we had before she came to Vancouver. And that piece of me left with the sewing table.

One of the questions that you can ask yourself when you’re decluttering is “Does this item make me feel guilty?” Maybe instead I need to ask myself “Is this item giving me a [negative] reason to live in the past?” I never would have thought a simple table could hold so much power over me!

So tonight I said goodbye. And I think that’s it.

O Canada flag’s birthday

[UGH…excuse the quality of some of these pictures. We had the camera with us, but I was also using the phone and somehow it reset itself to all the lowest settings between this morning and when we went to Granville Island]

Today is Canada Day…J hasn’t quite got the connection between the anthem, the country and the flag sorted out, but she got the gist of it. She loves all things decorated with the Maple Leaf. She’s very patriotic for someone who isn’t even three yet!



Our first stop was at the tattoo station where we both got tattoos on our cheeks and she would probably have had the guy put the Maple Leaf on every visible piece of skin. She left with three – one on each hand as well. She insisted on no bath tonight so that she could show her tattoos to my parents tomorrow. But there will be a bath tomorrow night.

Then we stopped and listened to some Jazz Festival jazz and watched the throngs of people doing their thing. We bypassed the playground because it looked more like a crumb that had attracted a colony of ants than somewhere kids would find remotely enjoyable.

We walked past the face painting without J registering what it was (there happened to be a very long line up too). And the we went for gelato.



It’s hard to see in this picture, but the line up is really long. Alex went in for our treats and J and I waited.



J found some flags and sang O Canada for anyone interested in hearing a toddler’s version of O Canada. And then Alex came back with the gelato. The line up was surprisingly fast.

If you’re on Facebook with me, you might have seen my status a few weeks ago about sending Alex out to get Smarties to decorate a cake and he returned with two pounds of Smarties.

Well. I specified flavour and cup over cone, but apparently I should also have asked for ONE scoop.
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THREE scoops. It was yummy, but wow was I full…



J quite liked her strawberry ice cream…although it was a bit chilly down by the water.

Happy Canada Day fellow Canadians!

Week 25: Don't Just Think About it

Last week's challenge from Laura was to pick a spot that you were avoiding and just do it. She suggested we'd probably be surprised at how little time it took...






Our bathroom drives me nuts. J's bathroom is tidy all the time. Not ours. Our washer and dryer and hot water heater are in a closet in the bathroom. Which means our bathroom often doubles as a laundry room. You'd think that would motivate me to get the laundry put away, but it doesn't. Go figure. Because it's our laundry room as well, our drying rack is in here and stuff gets pulled off of it or out of the dryer and dumped on the counter. And then I get distracted and it stays there. Until it falls over or drives me nuts.

So on Sunday while J napped, I decided that I'd tackle the laundry. It took 15 minutes to move it to the bedroom, fold and sort it and put it away. And then something happened. I was inspired....

I'm not sure how I managed to get myself ready in the morning - all my face stuff and other things were underneath that massive pile of laundry.

This end of the counter isn't much better....

Some of that stuff should probably go in this drawer, but I can't even see what's in the drawer, let alone add to it!

And while I was at it, this cupboard could use some help...

And so could this one...

But not this one...this one is my husband's domain, so it's spotless! He is in charge of switching and washing towels and he does a great job...they never sit on the counter for longer than a few minutes! I didn't include my husband's drawer because the only things in there are a brush, a tube of toothpaste, the q-tips and one or two small things. It's already very well organized!

Less than two hours later, my bathroom looked like someone else's bathroom. While I make sure the bathroom gets cleaned at least once a week, I did give it a special deep cleaning - and it took less than two hours. With two not so helpful helpers helping me!

Look at that bathroom...it's so shiny and clutter free and yes there is still laundry on the rack but that's because it was still wet. When it dried and I took it off, I had a beautiful, flat, clutter-free counter to fold it on!

Still lots of stuff, but not as much (one day I hope we'll have an over-the-toilet cabinet to put a bunch of this stuff in)

And that drawer that you couldn't even see into? Well, when the toiletry bag was moved to a more appropriate home, there was lots of space in there. I repurposed a gift box (now empty of) of soap and hand cream to hold some of the smaller things.

I had a Groupon from the Body Shop a while ago and got about a year's worth of products all at once at a great price - they're in the clear box on the left (I will use them, they're all products I normally use). The wooden box is repurposed from some other bath products and now my face stuff is all in one place and I can get at it all once, but also put it all away together.

Under the sink is  much prettier - it didn't need a lot of help, just a few things needed to be moved or thrown away.

In the course of cleaning out the bathroom I found one bottle of expired Tylenol 3, two bottles containing a total of about 20 percocet, two bottles with some old antibiotics, a bottle of face toner that I know I bought when I lived in London TEN years ago, two empty Shout bottles and a bunch of junk. I discovered I need to take a lot of  baths and probably never have to buy shower gel again (okay, maybe in 2013). Alex took the expired drugs to the pharmacy. They were very happy he took them the narcotics. Apparently we could have sold them on the street for a couple of dollars each....

I applied the same idea to the dishes later on that night when all I really wanted to do was lie in bed and read. You know what, 11 minutes later I was draining the sink and heading to bed!

I do have a question though...because the laundry is in this room, everything gets covered by a thick layer of dust in no time at all. Other than dusting daily, is there anything I can do to minimize the dust?

If you need a gentle push to get your organizing project started or you need some inspiration or new ideas, visit Laura at I'm an Organizing Junkie and check out the 52 week challenge.

Tuscan Tuna & Bean Salad

36.33 Try 50 new recipes

So this is me, ignoring the stuff that's in the queue and just getting on with it...Queued recipes will make it up here...eventually...

Last night's dinner was Tuscan Tuna & Bean Salad from Dinner in Minutes. When my mom went back to work when my sisters were in high school, someone gave this book to my mom because it was a great cookbook for working moms. My mom never used it. Partly because she only went back to work for a few months and partly because the after school routine was a bit nutso at our house - both my sisters were on the swim team and had other extra curricular activities as well - my mom had nusto dinner routines down pat before she went back to work.

I inherited the cookbook not long after (or possibly shortly before) J was born. The subtitle of the book is "Memorable Meals for Busy Cooks." Was my mom trying to tell me something? I ignored the cookbook thinking it was one of those cookbooks that is all about good food but it's really just a bunch of pre-prepared food dumped together to make one dish. For a whole bunch of reasons, we don't eat much that comes in a package.

I was pleasantly surprised when I actually opened it and read the recipes over the weekend looking for meals for this week...there's good stuff made from scratch in there!

The book pairs this with a zucchini and tomato salad that looks yummy except that raw tomatoes are not my friend. Since it was just J and I and I wasn't convinced Alex would eat the zucchini, I just made the bean salad. And served it the way the book suggested. Except I didn't heat the bread up...the description says it's perfect for warm evenings but then it wants you to turn the oven on? UGH. Our bakery fresh bread was fine not heated up! I made two little tweaks to the recipe too...I had parsley on my list, but somehow it never made it into the grocery cart. I had some basil that was on its last legs in the fridge, so I substituted that (I LOVE basil) and swapped the red wine vinegar for balsamic. I used white kidney beans because the store I was at last night had the most pathetic selection of beans. I think I'd use navy or Great Northern the next time - I prefer their slightly firmer texture. Or if I think of it far enough in advance I'd do my own...And I'd make it with lots more basil. Or I'll try the parsley.

This meal is supposed to serve four, but I think it made a lot more. We all had it for dinner last night and J and I both have some in our lunches today and there's enough for dinner tonight if I add some other veggies on the side..

This is yummy. This is summer-perfect food. I will be making this again.  Often I think. Oh, and I think the leftovers would be yummy stuffed into a pita or a wrap too...mmmm....

And it was silent...

So, dear readers, you may or may not know (because I've moaned about it here, on various forms of social media, by text message or maybe by phone) that my kid has not been going to sleep. She's been going to bed and for the last three or four weeks we have a decent system of bedtime routine and then stay in your bed in place, but she would not go to sleep.

We're big believers in the you-can-lead-a-horse-to-water-but-you-can't-make-him-drink child rearing philosophy. We can make our child sit at the table during meal time, but we can't make her eat. We can make our child sit on the toilet before we go out, but we can't make her pee.

Apparently it applies to sleep too. We can make her go to bed, but we can't make her sleep. Once she figured out that she had to stay in her bed and be quiet, it was much more manageable, but mornings were horrendous. To the point where I got the daycare to shorten her nap in hopes that thirty minutes less nap would equal thirty minutes earlier to sleep. Yeah, right. Then we starting skipping breakfast. I'd roll her out of bed and into her clothes. We'd sleepily get her hair and teeth brushed and we'd stumble out the door to daycare. By the time we got to daycare she was awake enough to eat her breakfast.

I do blame a percentage of this no-sleep thing on the NHL...almost all of the Canucks games ended around 8:00...bed time...and our building is on a busy street near the Granville bridge. It got noisy outside our house. Especially when the Canucks won. J would get up and watch all the cars and celebrating folks. So, now that the playoffs are over, two months of disturbances pretty much every other night are over too.

Back to the no sleep. The other part of this is that Alex has been home in the evenings for a while and the last two nights he was on bedtime duty. Sunday night didn't go badly, but there was resistance from a toddler. Last night, I had to go out and you would have thought the world was ending. The same kid who runs sobbing down the hallway after Alex when he leaves for work at night crying "Daddy, don't go to work. Stay home. Daddy, don't go." was adamant that she wasn't staying with Daddy and only Mommy knew how to put her to bed.

A very tearful little girl walked me to the elevator and wailed all the way back to our apartment with Alex. What J didn't know was that I was just going to a strata meeting in our building, so I asked our next door neighbour when she arrived if she could hear J...nope. Thirty seconds after I left and all was well.

But I was convinced she'd still be awake when I got home just a few minutes after nine. Because it's been ten o'clock or later every night for the last two weeks. I opened the door very, very quietly and there was no noise. I tiptoed in and Alex appeared from our room, talking in his NORMAL voice. J had been asleep for over half an hour. Needless to say, this morning was very smooth, we had time for breakfast at home and J was in a great mood...

I don't know how he did it, but Alex is amazing. I'm now trying to convince him to figure out how he can be home EVERY night for bedtime...

Friend Makin’ Mondays: What’s in Your Fridge?

Yay to AndreaClaire for introducing me to Friend Makin' Mondays. Want to participate? Answer the questions below and then head over to Kenlie's blog and leave your link in the comments.

1. List a few common items that can always be found in your fridge. Milk, yogurt, carrots, apples (except maybe in the summer), berries (when there are no apples), butter
   
2. What kind of milk do you drink? I don't "drink" milk, I just use it for cereal and coffee and baking, but we buy 1%
   
3. Do you prefer fresh or frozen vegetables? FRESH
   
4. What do you currently have to drink in the fridge? Milk, white wine, grapefruit juice
   
5. How often do you clean out your refrigerator? I wipe it out whenever something spills and then do the whole thing once a month. We try to buy in small enough quantities that things don't get hidden or go bad very often...
   
6. What’s the healthiest thing in it right now? Some watermelon, blueberries, veggies for coleslaw
   
7. What’s the most unhealthy thing in it right now? There isn't really anything "unhealthy" in the fridge...no treats either. But there are some popsicles and ice cream in the freezer
   
8. What do you wish you had in it that you don’t have now? Nothing. We're pretty well stocked. I could make dinner tonight without going to the store.
   
9. How often do you shop for groceries? Usually one "big" shop on Sunday or Monday and then we pick up fresh meat, fishes and produce as needed throughout the week.
   
10. What’s the weirdest thing in your fridge right now? A lavender eye pillow and some teething rings. No one at our house is teething.
    

Monday again?!

I'm not sure how the weekend went by so quickly...last week dragged and I was kind of hoping for a slower weekend too...oh well, four day week this week, so the weekend will be here soon enough!




I dusted off the cookbooks and we spent some time yesterday going through them picking things we'd like to try. We ended up with two weeks worth of planning! Yay! Now we just need to see what we do and don't eat this week and move things around next week. If we have lots of leftovers this week, it could mean we have the next week almost planned too...YAY!

Monday: Homemade chicken fingers

Tuesday: Tuscan Tuna & Bean Salad (from Dinner in Minutes)

Wednesday: Papaya Chicken with Rice & Peas (from Dinner in Minutes pg 83)

Thursday: Fettucine with Tomato, Basil & Sausage (Dad's Own Cookbook - guess who is making dinner!)

Friday: CANADA DAY - which means we'll come home and eat leftovers or eat out depending on what we end up doing...

Saturday: Salmon Cakes with veggies (from Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution)

Sunday: Burgers - beef (probably premade) and black bean burgers (probably Emily's recipe)

Looking for more ideas? There are already over 100 over at I'm an Organizing Junkie.