Month: June 2011

This weekend was SO GOOD!

Friday Night!

Hot dogs, corn on the cob & my own personally invented and delicious potato salad:
5-7 small potatoes, washed/cubed/boiled/cooled + 1 clove minced garlic & 3 diced slices of bacon sautéed in 1 tsp olive oil and cooled + 2 tbsp sour cream + salt & pepper to taste
Normally I’m a potato salad hater but this was AWESOME.

After we ate we played a game of Apples to Apples, then I read Sym a chapter of our current bedtime book: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It’s fun reading these books to her, she’s so involved and excited about everything that happens, and has all these theories about what’s going to happen; it’s hard for me not to spoil it for her!

Saturday!
Saturday was BASICALLY the best day of my life.

Reason 1: summerrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Reason 2: Opening day for the West End Farmer’s Market! I checked it out with Sym and we got organic eggs, blackberry honey, assorted cherry tomatoes and French Breakfast radishes which were grown on a non-profit farm that’s right inside the city! Very cool.

Reason 3: the return of Popsicle Party!

Reason 4: THE BEACH THE BEACH OMG THE BEACH

18°C and super windy? IT’S BIKINI TIME. Sym and I spent two and a half hours on Sunset Beach and had endless fun.

Reason 5: our Vancouver Canucks

Taylor and I watched game two of the Stanley Cup final at La Belle Patate with Leanna, Katrina and Carleigh (who doesn’t have a blog HOW WEIRD). Things were a bit nerve-wracking for a while but it all worked out in the end.

Sunday!
Sunday I woke up with a small hangover, so I did what any person would do: I killed it with brunch. Taylor and I went to Glowbal in Yaletown, one of our favorite brunch places, and they did not disappoint!

mini doughnuts & mimosas

strawberry mint smoothie (I was CRAVING one of these the whole way there!)

my food: a Kobe beef and burrata cheese frittata with potatoes and fresh greens

Taylor’s food: wild berry panettone french toast with white chocolate mousse (should have been organic rosemary honeycomb but we’re not complaining) and a milk chocolate shot

SEE YA, HANGOVER! After brunch we had boring errands to run. Taylor bought a new PS3 to replace his old dead one and I bought a shower curtain rod like WOW what fun. I also somehow tricked myself into thinking it’d be a good idea to try on bathing suits. I know, I’m CLEARLY out of my mind. Anyway I got frustrated and came home and ordered this one:

I have a problem with loving rainbows. Hopefully it’ll arrive before the summer is over; there’s a rolling mail strike going on here!

After we got home from shopping we took the dogs out for a big epic walk, from Sunset Beach to English Bay to the Stanley Park dog park.

Kichou was very well dressed in his little Canucks jersey! We got a lot of compliments on it.

Someone once said to me that Georgie always looks so clean and nice, but here’s some proof that isn’t always the case, she’s a very ocean-going dog.

Now I’m off to go read Sym another exciting chapter from Harry Potter. I hope you all had wonderful weekends too!

Summer is here and so are popsicles!

In case you weren’t around last year, all summer I make a different kind of popsicle on Friday night and then Sym and I test them out on Saturday. Last year I was lazy and resorted to just using store-bought juice way too many times, but this year I’m determined to be more creative and hands on.

These were definitely hands on! Pitting all these cherries was tedious and messy, but worth it in the end!

After removing the pits and stems from all the cherries, I blended them in the blender until they were finely chopped. I ended up with just under two cups of blended cherry, half of which I put aside and the other half of which I used to make cherry syrup.

Ingredients:
3/4 cup blended up cherries
1 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
Combine in a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir until all the sugar is completely dissolved and then simmer for approximately 15 minutes. Allow to cool completely and then strain through a fine sieve to remove any lumps.

I mixed the cherry syrup and 2 teaspoons of lemon juice into the reserved blended cherries and then poured it into my popsicle molds!

And the result?

Delicious!

Sym painted this family of Russian nesting dolls months ago, but I didn’t get around to spraying them with clear coat until this weekend.

I love the different facial expressions she gave them, they’re so cute! I told her to keep the colour scheme simple so she only used white, grey, yellow, green and pink, plus the flesh tone on the faces and a little bit of red detailing. She did the outlines with a fine Sharpie.

She’s also been continuing her Harry Potter Felt Flatties series.

Hagrid, looks like Professor Sprout but is actually Professor McGonagall, and my personal favorite, Voldemort. I love the evil look on his face.

I’ve also been hard at work finishing the glitter garland for my giveaway winner! This will be going in the mail (or more likely, get Fedexed because of a looming mail strike) this week.