From Our Home to Yours ...

wishing you and your family a very ...

2013 Christmas Card - designed by www.feitobytania.com



Christmas ...

 

As each year passes, it seems like people just keep forgetting what Christmas is about. 

 

Our Christmas Tree!

 

 

Hope everyone is beginning to enjoy their holiday season!

 



 

51/52 - Advent Calendar

At the beginning of December Louie brought the Lil Man a chocolate advent calendar from Santa.

 

It's his first year having an advent calendar and I was not sure if he was a little to young for one. I guess Santa knows what he is doing because he loves his advent calendar. Everyday he asks for his chocolate. He is really enjoying it. The odd day he needs a little reminder that he can only open one window per day.

Do you have an advent calendar or do you do something else?

Hope everyone has a wonderful Tuesday!!
 

2013 Gingerbread House

It has been snowing here non-stop since early Friday morning. We have received quite a dumping that I have had to dig out my big Sorel boots early this year. It is definitely beginning to look a lot like Christmas here.

Every year for the past 5 plus years one of our Christmas traditions is to decorate a gingerbread house at the beginning of December (when possible the first weekend). The tradition continued this year and it was the first year the Lil Man helped.

 

 

I usually just buy a pre-made house and then we construct it and decorate it. I have not felt adventurous enough yet to make it all from scratch. I find it is such a busy time of the year and I just don't have the time to bake the house myself. I always make a run to the Bulk Barn and grab extra candy because I find the kits don't come with enough.



We ran into a little problem with our new little helper. He took a bite of the Gingerbread man the instant he put his hand on it and said "Mmmmmm mmmm mmmm" and continued eating. It was gone in no time. Then he wanted to eat all the candy instead of putting it on the house. He just couldn't resist all the sweetness.

 

 

This was the finished product. We don't try to make the house pretty, our goal is to get as much candy on the house as possible.

 

 

Do you and your family decorate a Gingerbread house over Christmas?

 



50/52- Who Needs Christmas Ornaments

I can not believe we are this close to the end of the year! Where did 2013 honestly go ... especially November and December. I have kind of given up on trying to catch up. It just seems impossible at the moment. I am sure things will slow down come January and February which will hopefully allow me to catch up then as there are a few things I really want to blog about.

This year the Lil Man helped me decorate the Christmas tree. Like last year, I had to decorate it in stages which took a bit longer, but needless to say we finally finished it. When I told the Lil Man it was time to decorate the tree he decided to start decorating himself ...

 

Who needs ornaments when you have toys you can use?
 

49/52 - We have a Visitor!

Meet Louie the Elf, our visitor who is staying till Christmas ... a full month!! I hope he does not get into too much trouble.

Louie brought the Lil Man a book when he arrived on December 1st. There is a train on the back of the book so of course Hugo loved it! He wasn't too sure about Louie at first, but after watching the Elf on the Shelf Movie, he's slowly warming up to him.

Christmas is a time for Traditions both old and new. They help us make memories which we hold dear to our hearts for years to come!

Happy Tuesday Everyone!!

48/52- This Little Piggy ...

Wow I can not believe it has been a full month since our last blog post.  Were has November gone. A month from today is Christmas Day!! As you may have suspected things have been crazy busy around here and I do not think it will settle down until after the Holiday Season is over. One day I will have to work on catching up some how (not too sure when that will be though).

Over the past little while our Lil Man has been enjoying "this little piggy went to the market ..."

 

For the longest time he really disliked us touching his toes because it tickled him too much I guess, but he loves it now! If we don't have socks on our feet he starts doing it on our toes lol.

Well that's it for today, short and sweet. Hope everyone is staying warm with all this wintery weather we have been getting. It was right on schedule for Byron's Birthday this past weekend.

Happy Monday!
 

44/52 - PJ's

I just love all the Pj's that are available for little boys ...

 

they are just so cute.  Happy Wednesday!

 

SnOW & a Little Sneak Peak!

Well we have been anticipating it all week with the radio and news stations going on about it none stop and here we are Friday and it finally arrived in our area ... SNOW {insert sad face}. There should be a rule that it can not snow until a week after Halloween. The snow just makes the temperature outside much to cold for the little ones to trick or treat.

Hope everyone has been having a good week. I can not believe Friday is here already! Here's a sneak peak at what we were up to Thursday evening ...

If you missed our post about the Lil Man's last hair cut you can find it HERE. It was probably my worst trip ever to the mall with the Lil Man. Needless to say I was a little apprehensive to return there with him to trim his hair again so we decided to take matters into our own hands. We are big DIYers and this was an item on our list. Perhaps we are a little TOO adventurous ... check back next week for the out come photo!

Hope everyone has a good weekend!!

43/52 - Little HeLpEr

Such a great little helper ...

 

 

 

 

Crossed off another thing off our Fall To Do List this weekend. Hope everyone is having a great day!

 

42/52 Curls, Sick, & George

The Lil Man's curls are starting to come back. I love his curls but I think it's almost time for another hair cut.

 

This week has been a bit of a rough week ... the Lil Man has not been feeling the greatest because he has been sick with a cold since the long weekend. Mid way through this week I of course caught it too. There should be a rule that mom's are not allowed to get sick when their little ones are sick because it just plain sucks {insert extremely sad face}. 

The one nice thing about us both being sick ... I get extra cuddle time with the Lil Man which I love and will take it for as long as I can. This week we have been watching a little more tv than usual simply because the Lil man has not really been feeling like playing. I let him pick what he wants to watch and of course for the past little while his favourite show to watch is Curious George. When you ask him what he wants to watch he instantly says "George" and that is all we seem to watch on TV.

I've been meaning to post this for the last couple days but I am just getting a chance to do it now. Hope everyone is enjoying this cool and wet weekend.

41/52 Nursery Rhyme Time

Wow! I can not believe it is Thanksgiving already! Sneaking this post in almost at the last minute this week ... things are still a bit crazy at our place and probably will be for the next couple weeks. As I was picking the pictures for this post I realized I really need to use the SLR more. It just seems so much easier using the iPod as it is always an arms reach away. Knowing my luck, if I have the SLR around the Lil Man will probably refuse to have his picture taken.

For the past little while we have been having fun looking at all the pictures on Hugo's beautiful nursery rhyme quilt his Oma handmade for him! As we look at each of the pictures I say the nursery rhyme and he just loves it and is really starting to pay more attention to what is going on in the picture. I must admit there are a couple of nursery rhymes I really need to practice but for now I can make it up and he doesn't correct me yet. 

 

 

Hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving with family and friends. Happy Thanksgiving!!

 



5 Years Ago Today...

... we were saying I Do! I can not believe 5 years have past already. 

Seeing as I was not blogging then I thought I would share some photos from our wedding day -- it was a cool windy fall day, mainly overcast (which was perfect for photos) and it spit a bit while we were heading to our reception location (Tangle Creek). The fall colours surrounding Tangle Creek were beautiful as you can see in the following photo.

 

 

 

I can not believe it was 5 years ago that I married my best friend, an amazing husband and father. So lucky to be able to call you my husband!!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

 

40/52 - Life Lesson from an Almost Two Year Old ...

Every day no matter how busy our day is the Lil Man ALWAYS insists we stop and smell the flowers! This has been going on for a couple months now. At first it was really frustrating. It would be time for us to head inside and he would decide he had to stop and smell the flowers.

We get home from running out and the first thing he runs to do before I can even convince him to go inside ... admire and smell the flowers.

Now, however, I am grateful that he started doing this. We are surrounded by such beauty around us, and quite often we are just so busy running around and never take a moment in the day to take it all in. In a couple weeks we will be surrounded by a different type of beauty {a blanket of that fluffy white stuff}. If you have not done it today ... take a minute and smell the flowers before they are gone until next year.

Hard to believe October has arrived. Happy Tuesday!

39/52 - 23 Months Old Today!!

Today our Lil Man is 23 months! I can not believe he is going to be two in a month. I tried to get a full body shot of him but he is constantly on the go and it is near impossible. I managed to get this one. It is not the greatest (he's not in focus) but it will have to do.

 

 

He did say cheese and posed in his new favourite position for this one though.

 

 

Sometimes life gets a little bit busy as you can probably tell from our lack of posts lately, but that's life. When things are not so crazy around here I will be back with more weekly posts, but for now all we have are the Lil Man's weekly posts. I never realized how busy the fall season actually is until now.

Hope everyone is enjoying this lovely weather we have been getting this week. Happy Friday!!

Garden Update - September

This will probably be my last garden update. It is hard to believe fall official arrives this weekend. Overall, we were quite happy with our garden this year considering the yo yo weather we had at the beginning of the summer. Our cucumbers are finally done and to be honest I am kind of happy about this because I am starting to get tired of eating cucumber. Our beans also did really well this year. I picked what was left last week.  Our tomatoes really struggled this year and they were just starting to ripen but I had to pick a bunch of them early because we had our first frost a week ago (it was kind of early this year). We have had two other nights of frost this past week and yesterday the weather felt like summer again.

Last week I finally had a chance to take out our potatoes.

 

I was shocked when I started to dig up the potatoes and saw the size of some of them. They are the biggest potatoes I have grown in our current garden.

 

 

Our carrots also did well this year.

 

 

And so did our jalapenos and red chillies. 

 

Our Halloween pumpkin is almost ready to be picked. I am just waiting for it to turn completely orange. I always have trouble growing pumpkins in our garden, so I am so happy one finally survived.

 

At the beginning of this season I was not very optimistic that we were going to get much produce from our garden, but we were pleasantly surprised.

 

 

 

38/52 - First Dinner at a Restaurant

This past weekend we took the Lil Man out for his very first dinner at a restaurant.  Overall, the experience was not bad.  We skipped appetizers and tried to keep him distracted until his food arrived.

 

 

We did not go anywhere fancy, just Boston Pizza.   We ordered the kid's Pint-Sized pizza for the Lil Man ...

 

Byron had the Spicy Perogy Pizza

And I had a Zorba the Greek Pizza

 

 The Lil Man's doggy bag was so tiny.

  

I do not think we will be returning to BP any time in the future as we were surprised with our bill at the end of our meal (it was quite pricey for the amount of food we were served). However, I must add that the pizza I ordered was very enjoyable.

Happy Wednesday!

 

A Canadian Tradition {Butter Tarts}

I finally attempted making butter tarts for the first time from scratch. I may have not picked the best time for baking as it was a relatively hot day in the middle of July. Plus I was kind of mean to the hubby because he was away and was not able to taste them until he returned home the following day from his biking weekend with the guys. I may have tortured him a bit by posting this yummy picture on Facebook when I was done photography these delicious tarts ...

All I have to say is it would not be fair if only he had fun that weekend. I figured I was allowed to have a bit of fun myself. Which for me meant baking something yummy. Don't you think that is only fair?

 

I was really happy with how my first attempt turned out with a couple exceptions. My filling had too many raisins and my tarts turned out a wee bit too small because I did not have a larger circle circumference to cut out my pastry. My pastry however, turned out AMAZING. I always have issues with pastry but NOT this time.

 

You are probably asking yourself why the heck did she want to make butter tarts in the middle of the summer? The desire to make these tarts all resulted from two things - first my father-in-law kept mentioning butter tarts when he came over (I can't remember why they kept coming up in conversation but for some reason for three weeks in a row, butter tarts were always mentioned when my in-laws came over to visit) and thus I had butter tarts on the mind. Then in the June issue of Canadian Living they had a mouth watering photo of Maple Butter Tarts on the cover and the recipe was included in the issue. The picture looked so good and from the second I received it in the mail I wanted to make them. A couple days after I received the issue my mother-in-law  borrowed it to give them a try and shared some with us. I found the Maple Butter Tarts were a wee bit to sweet with the Maple syrup, so I used a different recipe for the filling. The recipe I used however, called for too many raisins and made too much filling so I was not very happy with it. I will have to work on finding something else.
 

 

 

Before I forget I must mention that I had my own personal photographer photographing me as I made these delicious butter tarts.  This is not a common occurrence but it sure did speed things up and she did a fantastic job -- it was my awesome sister (aka Tia)!

 

If you are interested in making the Maple Butter Tarts that were included in the June 2013 issue of the Canadian Living magazine it can be found HERE.

To prepare the pastry, whisk flour with salt in a bowl. Cut in butter and lard until in fine crumbs with a few larger pieces. Drizzle water and sour cream mixture over flour mixture, add more water if necessary to form ragged dough. Press into disc; wrap and refrigerate until chilled (about 30 minutes).

On lightly floured surface, roll out pastry. Using 10 cm round cutter, cut out 12 circles. Fit into 12 muffin cups.

The shells ready for the filling.

Ingredients for the filling.

Whisk together brown sugar, maple syrup, butter, eggs, vinegar and salt. Add raisins to pastry shells. Pour filling into each shell.

Shells filled and ready to go into the oven.

Bake in 350 ⁰C oven until filling is set and pastry is golden, 20 to 25 minutes.  Let cool in pan for 20 minutes. Transfer to rack; let cool.

 

The butter tarts looking oh so yummy. At this point I could not stop snapping photos ...

 

I received a wonderful comment from my Hubby when he finally was able to have one. He informed me that my pastry was perfect -- the thickness, texture and taste!

Do you have a go to butter tart recipe? If so, leave a comment I'd love to hear what it is!