New Hair

 
I really do have a short attention span when it comes to hair styles. Every few months I find myself do a major change. I think it is partly because I'm not the best at "doing" it so I'm always looking for a cuter, easier hairstyle. My friend Debbie came over yesterday and cut it for me. It is actually really deceiving, because you make it all spiky and standing up it looks like I have more hair than I really do. There was a crazy amount of hair on the floor when Debbie was done. But it feels good, and according to Darrel I look young. Which is kind of what I was going for, young, hip, trendy Mom. (As opposed to dowdy, blah, Mom.) Hooray for new hairstyles!

Hamming it Up

Eric is such a little ham, much more so than Jack ever was. He often says cheese and gives his goofy, closed eye, smile when he sees me take the camera out.
 
 
 

Spring Time in Alberta

We had a doozey of a spring storm this past weekend. Many of you have heard but I kind of want to document this just for my own personal history (so I can tell my grandchildren about the blizzard of '08)!

It snowed a litle bit Saturday but on Sunday the heavens opened and the snow really started flying. It snowed all day Monday, twirling and whirling snow that came from the side, from below and above.
 Darrel hauled out the snow blower for what I hope will be the last time to clear the snow out of our driveway. I felt like I was in "Little House on the Prairie" both Monday and Tuesday as between Darrel leaving for work and early afternoon the driveway would become completely unpassable due to the way the wind would swirl the snow into our driveway.
 
 You have to realize that the weekend prior to this the yard was completely bare, we had repopulated the sandbox with trucks and diggers, and now we couldn't even see the sandbox! You can also see the wind path carved into the snow, it whipped around the garage, onto the driveway and then deposited the snow right in front of the door and in between the house and the shed -rendering me house bound. Not that I was driving anywhere anyway, the highways were nasty icey.
 All I can say is once again, God knew when he was doing when he put me in this century -I would have made a lousy pioneer woman.

Good Food

Here are some yummy recipes that I have tried out lately and want to share.

Cosmic Cookies (from Planet Organic)

These are a very filling, very big, very yummy gluten, egg and dairy free cookie. They sell them in the bakery at Planet Organic and I bought them a couple of times and loved them. I wanted the recipe but thought it would be top secret and then last month I was there and lo and behold they had published it in there monthly newsletter (bless them!)

Don't let the gluten, egg and dairy free thing scare you off as these are soooo good! You also could substitute with whole wheat flour and regular milk and they would turn out fine. The recipe calls for dark chocolate chips but I use my milk chocolate ones and they turn out just fine. I also have made them with fancy molasses when I was out of blackstrap and they tasted pretty much the same to me.

2 1/4 C Quick Cooking Oats
2 C Spelt Flour
1 C Sunflower Seeds
3/4 C + 2 tbsp Pumpkin Seeds
1/2 C Shredded coconut, unsweetened
1/4 C Flax Seeds
1 C Granulated Cane Sugar
1 tbsp Cinnamon
2 1/4 tsp Salt
1 3/4 C Chocolate chips
1 1/4 Raisins
1/4 C Water
1/4 C Blackstrap molasses
3/4 C Canola
1 C Soy milk

Preheat oven to 350F. Line baking trays with parchment paper. In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients - everything from oats to raisins. In a seperate large bowl, combine wet ingredients -everything from water to soy milk. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix slow at a low speed (or by hand) until just combined. Do not over mix. Portion cookie dough using a 1/3 Cup measure and place onto lined baking tray. Gently flatten cookies before baking. Bake for 24 minutes or until lightly browned. Yields 24 cookies.

Homemade Mushroom Soup

My friend Andrea in Manitoba sent me this soup recipe and I adore it. So yummy, tastes nothing like soup from a can and chock full of vegetable goodness that the kids can't see because it's pureed! Hooray!

Cooked pearl barley, 1/2 cup before cooking

1/2 lb each parsnips, carrots and onions, finely chopped
5 T unsalted butter
2 T veg oil
1 lb mushrooms, wiped, tripped and finely chopped
3 T flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
1 large clove garlic, minced
3 c stock of your choice (beef, chicken or veg)
1 c light cream (or skim evaporated milk) (Note: I used plain soy milk and it turned out really good, so I imagine you could use plain milk to cut the fat and still have a very yummy soup.)
1 T lemon juice (or to taste; I often end up using more)
salt and pepper, to taste
thyme, to taste (about 1 t to start, and then keep adding if you like)

2 T unsalted butter
1/4 lb cleaned mushrooms, finely chopped
sour cream for garnish

Prepare barley your regular way and set aside.

Melt 5 T butter and oil in a large soup pot until butter foams. Add the thyme, parsnips, carrots and onions; coat with butter/oil and cover. Cook over low heat until vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes.

Add the mushrooms and the parsley and continue cooking another 5 minutes. Add the garlic, then ladle in 1 cup of broth and mix well.

Ladle the mixture by batches into a blender or food processor and puree until almost smooth. Return the puree to the pot and stir in the remaining stock, cream (or evap milk) lemon juice and cooked barley. Season with salt and pepper. Simmer 10 minutes or until heated through.

Meanwhile, sauté the remaining mushrooms in the remaining butter until just wilted, about 1 minute. Put some of the wilted mushrooms into the bottom of each bowl; ladle soup into bowls; garnish with a dollop of sour cream and some more minced parsley.

And finally,

Baked Pork Spring Rolls
We made these for a Young Womens activity one night and they are delish!

1/2 lb ground pork
1 C finely shredded cabbage
1/4 C shredded carrot
2 green onions, sliced
2 tbsps chopped fresh cilantro
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tsps grated fresh ginger (I buy the pre grated stuff because I'm lazy)
1 1/2 tsps minced garlic
1 tsp Thai chile sauce
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 tbsp water
1 package of egg roll wrappers
4 tsps vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 425F. Place pork in medium saucepan. cook over med high heat until evenly browned. Remove from heat and drain. In a med bowl, mix together pork, cabbage, green onions, cilantro, sesame oil, oyster sauce, ginger, garlic, and chile sauce. Mix cornstarch and water in a a small bowl. Place approximately 1 tbsp of the pork mixture in the centre of the egg roll wrappers. Roll wrapperss around the mixturn, folding edges inward to close. Moisten fingers in the cornstarch and water mixture, and brush wrapper seams to seal. Arrange spring rolls in a single layer on med baking sheet. Brush with vegetable oil. Bake in the preheated oven 20 minutes, until hot and lightly browned. For crispier spring rolls, turn after 10 minutes. (Note, mine cooked in a lot less time so watch them...)
Yields about 18 rolls.

I am in love.

I found these fun photoshop actions to play with, well really Darrel found them and I merely downloaded them and started playing with them. Photoshop actions are basically a pre-recorded set of commands, a script basically of things to do to edit your photos. You record a series of steps and then instead of having to do 20 things to a photo you click the play button and the script runs. Well, these scripts from The Pioneer Woman (check out this fabulous blog!)are so fun fun fun to play with. Here's a before and after picture from one I shot of the boys today.
 
 
Fabulous eh?! I don't know what I did without photoshop. Seriously.

And Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy

 Dale and Tina introduced us to the world of Hairy Maclary and his pack of colourfully named pals when they gave Jack two of Lynley Dodd's books. We have read and re-read them and loved them to pieces. A couple of weeks ago we discovered that our library has more of the books in the series, well it's been Hairy Maclary and Slinky Malinki non stop since then. Part of the appeal is that the stories and rhyming are so fun and clever, Darrel and I are entertained ourselves as we read them. I can actually recite most of the books off by memory at this point, and it doesn't even bother me, in fact I have to smile when the odd line like:
"at night to be brief, Slinky Malinki turned into a thief!"
crosses through my mind. Who can't enjoy a book about a pilfering slinky black cat.

A Favourite Picture From Last Summer

 Just to prove that Eric is not getting all the scrapbook pages.

What a Monkey

 A few months ago Karly sent me a picture with one of her friend's little boys sitting in the toilet. She sent it to me as a boost to say, "See it could get worse, look at this crazy kid" when I had told her Eric was into everything. Well, Eric has now joined the ranks of loo swimmers. My only commiseration is that a) I wasn't home to clean it up and b) Darrel took pictures to put in the slideshow at Eric's wedding reception. :)

www.DaBaby.ca

A girl in our ward had a t-shirt for her son from this company. I went to check it out and they've got some pretty funny stuff. They basically sell all black t-shirts, hoodies and sweat pants with one of many designs such as these screened on it.


I think some of them are a riot but it's one of those things, would you actually put your child in it? Totally depends on what you think is funny -and how you think other people would perceive it. The short attention span/kitty one made me laugh at loud as we often employ this trick at home if one of the boys is being cranky.





At any rate, a fun gift for a baby or toddler whose parents have a quirky sense of humour.

Smiley