The Szmurlos

Pink Mountains

2012-02-17T14:00:00.010-05:00

Friday, January 6, 2012. Maggie and I were out for her morning potty break when I noticed the pink sky towards the west. Usually, I'm too tired and lazy to walk all the way down the hill first thing in the morning, but this day I felt unusually inspired. We walked down, then I let Maggie off leash. I guess she wasn't digging the extended time outside first thing in the morning either because she just plopped her butt down, and cooperated as the subject of my photos so we could head back to the house asap:

Pink mountains!

Jackie's Promotion Dinner

2012-02-17T08:00:00.047-05:00

Thursday, January 5, 2012. Jackie recently received a promotion at work and offered to take us all out for dinner. We decided that we'd go for sushi at a new place in the south, Izumi Sushi. I went to this place a few weeks earlier with my friend Angie and thought that it was good so I convinced the family that we should go there instead of our usual place, Misato.

JT and Jackie were hard to convince since they love the Calgary rolls, but I've been hating more and more on Misato because they raised the prices a 3ish years ago so those massive Calgary rolls aren't a deal anymore. It was still alright because the rolls were still big and filled with a lot of good quality fish. Then, in the past 1.5 years or so, I think that they've been cutting back on the amount of fish in those Calgary rolls and have been increasing the amount of rice. ACK!!!! I can handle upping the price as time goes on, but I definitely can't handle cutting back on the quality. I assume Justin and Jackie haven't noticed the difference in quality, because I can't understand why they still love going there so much ;)

So before the meal, my parents needed to get their passport photos taken so they could apply for their India visas. Blacks Photography is usually a total rip-off, where you get something like 2 pictures for $20. Turns out that Superstore also does passport photos ($6 for two, I think), which was a better place than Blacks for Lauren and I to waste time while our parents were doing their picture thing:

We then went to the restaurant and each picked something different, despite my warnings that the plates and rolls were ENORMOUS!!!! Even with Justin, my dad and I, we weren't able to finish it all. We can jam a ridiculous amount of food down, so this is sort of a big deal. Sorry, Jackie, you are too tiny to play in the big leagues with us (although Justin would say that I've fallen off my game too):

Chugging away at it...

After dinner we all went to the movies to see Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Justin's friend, Russell, ended up meeting us 10 minutes into the movie. We had these Movie Night Out passes that came with pop and popcorn - thank goodness Russell came hungry because we were all too full to eat any of the popcorn and the piles of candy that we snuck in :)

Thank you, to Jackie for treating us to a fantastic dinner. We are so lucky to know such a generous person, and congrats on the promotion! And, we might have even found a place in the SW that rivals Misato as a 'favourite.'

Beautiful Dog Park Pictures

2012-02-16T18:00:00.000-05:00

Thursday, January 5, 2012. Again, we were at the doggy park close to when the sun was going down. The timing of the walk was intentional. I wanted that soft, glowing, yellow light... Maggie's posing started off a little rough:

But it just got better and better from there:

All of these pictures were taken with my iPhone. Pretty impressive for such a little thing, right? I was also able to send these pictures directly to Eric, who was working in Toronto. He said that it was such a nice surprise to see his pup at the beginning of a very long night:

There was much running around before and after the pictures were taken. When we got home, Magsters just melted into an exhausted puddle in my mom's arms:

Maggie's Asian-Kid Bowl-Cut

2012-02-15T12:00:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, February 7, 2012. We are really into pomelos right now. They are grapefruit-like fruits, but bigger, sweeter and more delicious (in my opinion). I'll peel one in a sitting, and we'll eat it over the next 2 or 3 days. We love them so much (it's hard to tell who loves them the most, Eric or Maggie) that we'd eat and entire pomelo a day if we could. The skins of the pomelo are really thick and tough, so they can be peeled back in one piece... and I thought that we could do something fun with that resulting piece of pomelo skin:

Poor pup. This humility was her price for a toy filled with bits of pomelo for dessert that night:

We call this one (there is another... to be posted at a later date) her "Asian-Kid Bowl-Cut" wig. Every Asian - boy or girl - goes through a stage of their life where they have
1. Bangs that start from the back of their head,
2. A bowl cut. I.e. a bowl was put on their head and the hair was cut to the edge of that bowl to give a very straight and very blunt edge.

This is Maggie's version of that Bowl-Cut:

Eric's Scary Face Video

2012-02-15T08:00:00.000-05:00

Thursday, December 1, 2011. Andrea and Matt took this with their iPhone and modified it with an app:

Happy Valentine's Day!

2012-02-14T16:00:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, February 14, 2012. This post is for you, Laura!

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! I actually got into a baking mood for this "holiday" so I whipped a few things to bring to Eric's office. Valentine's is my least favourite holiday of them all (it feels to commercialized and like I'm being duped by chocolate and flower marketers... says the girl who absolutely adores Christmas and overdoes it by 200% every year), but there were too many great things that were Valentine-related to pass up at Home Sense a few weeks ago. And since I had them on hand, it just made sense to do something with them :)

For the first time, I used some silicone baking liners that I bought last year. I would have pulled them out earlier but 1) I forgot that I had them and 2) I was rushing to make my Christmas cookies so I used my usual baking sheet liners, parchment paper stuck to the pan with a bit of oil. I had to use them for this project because I was making stained glass cookies, and I needed the most anti-stick material under the cookies that I could find.

Stained-glass cookies = cookies with cutouts in the middle of them, filled with some kind of hard candy, then baked to create a 'stained-glass' look. I made standard vanilla-flavoured sugar cookies:

Then a chocolate version (although I didn't know how much cocoa to add to the dough, and it didn't end up being enough - I put in 1/4 cup for a half recipe):

I filled them with broken pieces of Jolly Rancher candies:

Maggie was quite upset at all the hammering because it all sounded like banging on the front door to her. She was confused at why we were just sitting about, ignoring the potential threat at our door.

After just 6 minutes of baking (and 15 minutes of cooling off), the stained-glass look came through exactly as I imagined it to:

Although the stained-glass cookies are gorgeous to look at, they are a bit hard to eat. I made a number of non-stained-glass cookies as well, including some marbled hearts, as per Lauren's recommendations:

After a day of resting the cookies (rather, I ran out of energy that night because we played a game earlier on Sunday morning and didn't have any girl-subs... but I scored!!!!! And I'm hoping that I've finally broken my non-scoring streak which had already lasted months), I put down my head and got to decorating them with some royal icing:

Freddie came over to help me bake. I didn't trust his piping skills and I didn't want him to attempt to learn on my hearts because I didn't make that many extras to practice on... that was until he was giving me a hard time and was bragging that "it's not that hard. I could do that." Joking or not, I decided to show him that my hearts didn't look they way that they did because I was skill-less and lucky. Guess which ones are mine and which ones are Freddie's:

Granted, I've been doing this a long time and have had practice icing hundreds, if not thousands of cookies. His weren't terrible for a first try, but there is a lot of room for improvement. Best of all, there wasn't much beaking after we compared his two cookies to mine, so we could continue baking in peace once our hierarchy was restored :)

Monday was a bad baking day. Bad. So many things went wrong.

First, my cupcakes sank after they came out of the oven and cooled a bit :( I put Freddie in charge of doing the cupcakes so I naturally blamed him for the problem, but after going over the details of what he did and did not do, I couldn't find any problems. We even over-baked the cupcakes to dry them out a little more and to make them more firm. We left the second batch in there for 23 minutes (the recipe recommends that you bake for 18-20 minutes, so adding 3 extra minutes is already a lot), then did the third batch for 26 minutes. Both shrunk a little, despite being WAY overdone. I am praying that the cupcakes didn't bake as we predicted because we messed up, rather than because my oven is breaking. After all the construction of the last year, I can't handle another appliance being out of commission for weeks.

Secondly, I wanted to make a raspberry-flavoured cream cheese icing. Lauren and I usually do it to taste (we like it really cream cheese-flavoured and less sweet) so I headed this part of the project and planned to let Freddie ice them. Everything was looking good with the cream cheese and icing sugar, and things were looking even better with the raspberries that Freddie was pushing through a sieve. The world exploded when I put the raspberry juice in with the cream cheese. All of the sudden, the entire bowl turned to liquid.

No matter the amount that I beat it, it wouldn't fluff up. No matter the amount of icing sugar I added, it wouldn't thicken :( I even looked online for solutions to 'fix' the icing, but the only real solutions were to
- put it in the fridge to cool off. Nothing changed after letting it sit overnight.
- add more icing sugar. I didn't want to do this initially because it would be to sweet... then when I was desperate and was willing to try anything, I used all the icing sugar I had and it still wasn't enough
- add butter. I was pressed for time this morning and couldn't get enough butter to room temperature fast enough
- add shortening. Didn't have any on hand.

So I was left with a tub full of super runny cream cheese icing. I was torn between throwing out all the cupcakes and icing sugar (I had already eaten a few for breakfast and knew that I'd eat them all if they were sitting in my kitchen, so they had to go), or trying to salvage them and send them into the office with Eric. I chose option 2 since we hauled that red velvet cake mix all the way up from the California to Calgary, then flew it to Toronto with us last summer. It was too precious to waste.

My solution was to cut out little circles in the middle of the cupcakes, then push the centre parts down, then fill the void with the runny icing (which tasted FANTASTIC, by the way. It just looked super sad). I think that the final result looked alright, considering the circumstances:

You might ask why I didn't just pull out the excess cake in the middle instead of push it down. I tried that. Cutting out the middle results in a hole that is about 2/3 the depth of the cupcake (that's a lot of cream cheese to eat!) and red crumbs everywhere. As much as I'd like to eat equal proportions of cake to icing, the thought sort of makes me feel like it might be too much for my system.

Oh - and it turns out that if you overbeat cream cheese, the cheese melts and it gets liquidy. And you can't ever get it to go back. FYI.

Just before I was to deliver the cookies to Eric's office, I packaged them up all nice and pretty. The big box is for people at the office, and the small bags are for people to take home to their spouses or kids... plus it was a good reason to use all that "just in case" ribbon that I have tucked away (Laura, I'm talking to you!) :) :

They look so good together in the box like that. My third baking disaster yesterday was that my royal icing got everywhere and the entire ordeal was far messier than usual, and that I made the royal icing too thick so it wasn't sticky, so the little dots were coming off the cookies the next day. ARGH. I've done this enough times that I shouldn't be making amateur mistakes like this. I'm just mad at myself for stupid errors.

I'm not sure how the people in Eric's office like the cookies since I haven't heard anything back from him yet. Regardless of how they taste, they look great, don't you think?

Happy Valentine's day, everyone! Hugs and kisses!!!

Go Number 12!!!

2012-02-14T08:00:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, January 4, 2012. Some of my family, Shirley, Ken and Maddy, came to watch Lauren and I play in a soccer game. Although Aunt Shirley preaches to Maddison that nothing should distract her when she's playing in one of her own hockey games - especially not people in the crowd - Shirley couldn't help but to make a little "Go Ling!" for Lauren and this "12" for me and cheer us on:

Thanks for coming to support us, guys! But too bad you missed Lauren's goal :( Next time, maybe.

Rainbow Pup

2012-02-13T14:00:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, January 4, 2012.

New Year Puppy Love

2012-02-13T08:00:00.001-05:00

Sunday, January 1, 2012. Just hanging out, loving our Little Beast, after the Beauty and the Beast show:

Beauty and the Beast

2012-02-12T14:00:00.002-05:00

Sunday, January 1, 2012. Eep! Beauty and the Beast, LIVE!!! This was a huge thrill for Lauren and I since Something There and Beauty and the Beast are in the top 100 songs of our constant/mindless singing (there are a lot of Little Mermaid songs in that list too).

We went with the whole Tse Family, where my parents and JT and Jackie were 3 rows in front of us (you can see Jackie between us, with her black jacket with the brown liner).

New Years Eve 2011

2012-02-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

Saturday, December 31, 2011. Our family hosts a big party on New Year Eve every year. What started out as a kiddie-birthday party (my brother's birthday is on December 31st), has evolved into a New Years Eve party over the years. We usually have between 70-80 people, so we considered this year's party to be a "small" one of only 50 people (little did we know that Justin's friends were going to stop by before going to another party, increasing the number of people we had to feed by 12ish, where 10 of them were male).

I think that we kept the menu the same as last year (15 dishes, most of which were hot and had to be cooked right before). Us girls work like a fine-tuned machine now, especially now that Lauren and I have grown into our potential (we both used to be pretty lazy so my mom would end up working like a dog for 3 days straight - now we share the responsibility). December 28th is to shop for groceries, the 29th is to do all the prep-work and cutting and cook anything that keeps well overnight and can be reheat the next day (curry, beef brisket, etc), the 30th is to finish up with the food, clean up, set up cutlery and drinks, and (theoretically) get changed and relax before our guests arrive.

WE WERE ON SCHEDULE THIS YEAR!!! So we actually got to do the relaxing part of that plan!

I burned out sometime earlier that day, and my mom usually loses her head when she's stressed so Lauren really picked up on our slacking about. I have no idea how many times she reminded me, "Ummm, aren't you supposed to be soaking the noodles?" and "Why are you just standing there? Check the list and do the next thing on it." Yay for teamwork!

Cousin Anna (with Mrs. Tong) brought some "2012" glasses for us to wear when the clock struck midnight. Her sister, Doreen, found them in Houston somewhere, and although she wasn't able to make the party, asked Anna to send them along:

15 minutes before midnight, Eric (who's self-appointed title was "The Drinkmaster" for the evening), prepared the champagne and the sparkling apple juice for consumption:

10 minutes before midnight, my mom was supposed to gather all the remaining family members (most left early between the end of dinner and midnight)... but got chatting with someone so people only arrived in the kitchen when we thought that there was 1 minute left, according to the oven clock. The TV was on and turned to the channel that my dad thought was live for our time zone... but when the oven clock went past midnight and the TV was running some commercial about trading gold for money, we started to figure that something had gone wrong with our intended countdown to 2012. People started checking their phones to see what time their networks had and sure enough, midnight had come and gone! Jon (cousin Erin's boyfriend) told us that we were supposed to be on channel 7, and when we changed the channel we saw people celebrating with confetti flying about. Oops ;)

So it was a really quick "3-2-1 Happy New Year!!!!" followed by lots of hugs and pictures:

What a bunch of goofballs:

Those "2012" glasses definitely made their rounds:

To the amusement of all our friends and family, Maggie wore her formal dress for the evening. AND, turns out that it was just the right shade of metallic tweed to match my new metallic shirt-dress. I did not buy the dress to match my dog, but I did notice it sitting near that top of my pile of clothes and chose to wear it so that we would match. Yup. I'm *that* dog lady. Eric's grey sweater was just a coincidence. I'm sure that if he knew that he was part of our colour coordination, he would have picked something else:

This is Maggie using 100% of her puppy-skills (the ones that get you to do anything that she wants you to because she knows how to act and move to manipulate humans), attempting to get my mom's protection. I think that Maggie was hoping that she'd get my mom to defend her against actions that could be considered puppy-torture...

... "2012" glasses for a pup!

By the end of the night, we were all pooped. This was the final dinner that we had to host of the holiday season (there were 4 bigs ones this year) and as I had burned out earlier that day, Lauren and my mom followed as soon as dessert was served. We were like zombies by the end of the night, just running on fumes. Maggie, however, managed to keep up her energy until all our guests had left, then passed out on the couch in her dress, no less:

I wish that I had found an empty booze bottle and put it next to her for these pictures. Oh well, next time :)

Breakfast with Tonia and Her Mom

2012-02-08T14:00:00.017-05:00

Thursday, December 29, 2011. I can't believe that I hadn't managed to have a meal with Tonia and her mom since I got back to Calgary. What is usually a top priority for me slipped away until T called me up to see if I could fit them in. Tonia knows about our party on the 31st and knows that we start shopping for groceries two days earlier then start cooking right after that, and her mom was only going to be in town until the end of the week, so time was quickly running out. Thanks for the reminder!

We went to Nelly's on 90th, and sat chatting away for two hours until Lauren came to pick me up so we could go directly to Superstore. It was a good thing Lauren came for me. If it had been up to me to get up and leave, I would have been there all afternoon. When we get talking, there is no end. I love both Tonia and her mom's company!

I managed to get a picture of them before we departed, even though both of them HATE to have their picture taken:

Dinner at the Thomas House

2012-02-08T08:00:00.021-05:00

Wednesday, December 28, 2011. It had felt like weeks, but it had only been 5 days since the last family dinner with my mom's side of the family. On this night, it was at the Thomas' House, Connie & Glyn. The fare is a special treat: the theme is PIE.

Connie and her girls make these amazing pies. The crust really puts them over the top. Connie says that she just follows the instructions on the Tenderflake box, but we don't believe her because the crusts are always crisp, light and not-over-worked (crust gets really hard when you tug on it too much). Along with many other dishes (like Shepard's pie, ribs, stew, and gravy in a special insulated gravy pourer - so smart!), we get chicken pot pie for dinner and - my favourite - apple pie with vanilla ice cream for dessert. YUM!

Us 'kids' sat at the kitchen table so we had good access to the food and were able to see most of what went on, including a total meltdown over a dropped cookie, the final rush in the kitchen before the food was served, and who got seconds before some had even gotten firsts. SCOFF! We were also able to hang out with the biggest celebrities of the night, Anna and Sydney the Elf:

Doggy Walk

2012-02-07T08:00:00.014-05:00

Tuesday, December 27, 2011. For the first time since Eric arrived in Calgary, the three of us were able to go on a walk together. It was the first time in days that Maggie was allowed to go off-leash so she ran and ran and ran:

We brought the Nikon along in hopes that we'd capture that nice Calgary sunset sky, but we were out too early. There was still too much direct sun, and not enough bouncing off the particles of pollution in the clouds :)

On the way back, Maggie got into something. Uh oh. Someone's in trouble:

Then after 5 seconds of looking at me with the cutest puppy face in the world, she was forgiven. How can you stay mad at a face like this?

Tse Family Photoshoot. Black Shirts.

2012-02-06T14:00:00.055-05:00

Monday, December 26, 2011. Black shirts. These are our moms, taking a picture together, but were a little stiff (right) until Chuck made a joke which broke the ice (left):

Our shopping crew (with only some of the bags we collected that day):

I thought that I could open my eyes really wide when I wanted to (and also when I don't want them to, but can't help but to over-do it with the facial expressions), but Tiffany has me beat:

Cheeseballs, and a cheesehead:

There were hardly any individual pictures of people in their black shirts. First, we had already been at this for well over an hour. Secondly, Chuck had been going at it for even longer than that because he and Eric had to set up the lights and get the entire thing tested before the models even moved in on the turf. Plus, he had to control the equipment, get the models to stand in the right place, face the right way, then get us to perform. He must have taken close to 500 pictures by this point. I was in there for a bit, trying to be a good assistant, helping out with 'artistic direction,' but I think a few people thought that I was coming across as being too bossy (which might have been true, if I'm being honest about my personality), so I soon sat back and enjoyed my special "pomegranate juice" that Lauren made me :)

Anyway, it was getting late so we moved right onto a group picture:

Everyone was told to a "Passport" face. I.e. no smiling, no teeth. I guess Justin didn't get the memo. My dad just doesn't have it in him not to smile when he's having fun:

The final set of photos was going to be an all-out goof-fest. Justin distributed all the props that we had in the room, and tried to ensure that everyone had at least one prop. Ta da!

A MASSIVE thank you to Chuck and Gayle, who brought all the photo stuff over from their house. An even bigger thanks to Chuck who stuck with it and put up with us for the hours and hours that we were taking pictures. I know it was tiring because I was exhausted at the end of the session, and all I had to do was boss some people around and look cute! Thank you also for turning over the finished/processed photos so quickly and for giving us all access to them.

(PS, family - if you're going to use these photos, give Mr. Szmurlo his credit please!)

Tse Family Photoshoot. Coloured Shirts. Group.

2012-02-06T08:00:00.012-05:00

Monday, December 26, 2011. Group shots in the colourful shirts. The girls:

The girls + Maggie. Magsters wasn't very patient with this set of photos. She became interested in whatever flavours were on Jenn's face:

Chuck needed a break from photographing, so aunt Shirley stepped in. Her concept was for us to "point towards her." We started off just pointing at her, then were told that we had to step into it. So we stepped into it. Then we were told that we needed to point "harder." And this is what we got:

Here you can see most of the set-up for this photo shoot (the white sheet in the back, two the flashes on either side of the screen). The whole group. Aww. Don't we look so pulled together?:

Our attempt at "The Robot":

The "Asian" pose:

And as everyone was told to change into their black shirts, Lauren and I took one more. Did I mention that we have very little shame?

Tse Family Photoshoot. Coloured Shirts.

2012-02-04T08:00:00.081-05:00

Monday, December 26, 2011. Like every year, my parents host my dad's side of the family (and the Szmurlos) over for a 'simple' dinner on Boxing Day. Everyone had just spent the past few days stuffing their faces for 24/7 and needed some less-rich foods to cleanse so while the girls are out shopping throughout the morning, my dad takes a giant pot to this Vietnamese place where they fill it with soup, the give him bags of vermicelli and Pho toppings. We invite the family over and we all get to eat the warming soup noodles for dinner.

While we were getting dinner ready, Eric and his dad, Chuck, were setting up a "studio" for a photo shoot when dinner was done. There were multiple flashes, all lighting up different things, all remotely receiving different instructions from the camera. There was a white background that had to be lit up on its own to make it look crisp and white. There was a light box...

I had requested that everyone bring a brightly coloured shirt, and a black shirt to dinner, and pre-warned them that we were going to take pictures. This is the set of pictures of "individuals in bright shirts." Hundreds upon hundreds of pictures were taken (how tiring would that be for the photographer???), so this is just a small fraction of the best. Most, if not all of them, were taken by Chuck Szmurlo.

In this post, I tried to include a 'nice' picture of everyone, like this one of my parents...

... and then a 'silly' one:

My family has no shame so everyone was game when we brought out the props. It turns out that we have a lot of props ;) ... rather, my brother, Justin, has a lot of props because we pulled most of them from his room (which he's moved out of for years but it still remains full of his junk). We also found some sweet decorative items from around the house, like this pear:

Eric chose to use dogs as his props:

My brother and his girlfriend, Jackie (who has the most consistent smile of anyone that I know):

Night vision goggles. Justin had night vision goggles in his room. Where would one get something like that?

A Superman cape where the part sitting on your chest makes a 'wind' sound. Justin held the cape up then moved out of the way as the picture was being taken here:

Lauren and her cat-paw beer bottle opener. She got it from her friend for Christmas:

Tiffany, who joined us for dinner. She took the best pictures out of all of us and she claims that it's because her brother, Xander, has been training her for years. He watches a lot of ANTM (America's Next Top Model) so he knows that you need angles and you need to 'smile with your eyes' to make a picture look good. I guess he knows what he's talking about because Tiff's pictures turned out great! I'm thinking about hiring him as a personal pose-consultant ;P

Eddy and Jeannie's family next (this isn't the order that the pictures were taken, but I've laid out the pictures in order of families so that I didn't forget anyone):

Rock and roll party animals!

Their kids, Tim and Kim (see their matching dimples? So cute!):

Tim and his wife, Jenn (left). Kim and her boyfriend, Mazin (right). Hmm. No silly pictures of these guys. Maybe there was a hockey game on or something:

Ken and Shirley was the next family:

Is that supposed to be sultry? I can't tell. Sorry:

My uncle looking like a skeeze-ball. Haha. My aunt then thought it would be a good idea to get a picture of them chest-bumping. The picture turned out pretty good but since my uncle is significantly heavier than my aunt, and she charged at him with everything she had, she sort of bounced off him like a ball hitting a wall. Her rebound almost had her knocking over one of the flashes then crashing into the Christmas tree, but her cat-like reflexes saved her. Phew!

Their daughter, Maddison, who started her session by saying, "I'm not photogenic." (This is making me laugh out loud: Maddison has a low voice, and even as I type the words that she says, I hear that low voice that we mock her for in my head.) Psht. These pictures say otherwise, Madd:

And lastly, a sweet family picture of the three of us before we took a picture of the entire group in their bright shirts:

Boxing Day Lunch

2012-02-03T08:00:00.001-05:00

Monday, December 26, 2011. This is our Boxing Day shopping team. My mom, Tiffany (my sister's friend who has joined us for the past 8ish years?), and Lauren:

They aren't very impressed with me because I caught them on camera being super gross. After a morning of shopping (we were there when the mall opened at 8), and when enough damage had been done to the credit cards, we needed to find sustenance. We considered the food court but it was 90% full and we didn't want to fight for a table just to sit next to a group of bratty kids. Instead we got into the car (which was parked at the perfect spot - facing outwards out of the parking spot so you don't have back up when people are vying for your spot, easy access to an exit, but close enough to a mall entrance that you could leave your jacket in the car so you don't overheat while shopping, and so you can run to the car and drop off bags if you don't want to carry them around but aren't done shopping... we've obviously done this before and have honed our skills over the years) and drove over to Oscars. Oscars is a restaurant near by that has the BEST dried pork ribs, and when I mentioned the idea Lauren said, "I was just thinking that too." We had decided where we were going to eat.

When we got there, it was closed :( We couldn't think of anything else close by that might be good, so we opted for fast food. Tiffany worked in the area years ago and told us that there was a Wendy's near by. It's no dried pork ribs, but I'll take it. My mom, sister and I always order cheese & bacon potatoes (I love that rubber cheese!) with a side of chicken nuggets to share if we're really hungry, but after paying they told us that they only had 2 potatoes left. They offered to give us large fries instead. This is where it gets gross.

Between the three of us, we tried to decide who would get the potatoes with the toppings and who would get the plain, tasteless (by comparison) fries. Lauren loves potatoes whatever the form so she said she was OK with the fries, but you could tell that she would have preferred cheese and bacon. Tiffany piped up and said, "Why don't you just ask them to put the toppings on the fries?" HAUNH.

We then requested that the toppings be put on top of the fries, but the ladies behind the counter already put the fries into a container... then one of them suggested that they could put the toppings into a separate container that we could dip the fries into.

YAY FOR TEAMWORK! Without everyone's efforts, we wouldn't have a container of melted, rubber cheese with (real?) bacon bits floating around in it ;)

Christmas 2011. Evening.

2012-02-02T08:00:00.029-05:00

Sunday, December 25, 2011. My afternoon nap was glorious. I got to go upstairs and pass out (I had only been sleeping 5 - 6.5 hours at night and had only 1 afternoon nap with Maggie on the couch for the 3 weeks leading up to Christmas... which is obviously not enough beauty sleep for me!) while Eric stayed downstairs and spent quality time with his parents talking and watching sports on TV.

Dinner was, as usual, delicious. When it was over, we pulled out our new board game, Settlers of Catan (which I'll have to talk about later since it's my new obsession), and "played" a game. My brother is sort of crazy-obsessed when it comes to Catan (he can't do anything with the family on Thursdays because those are "Catan Thursdays" where he gets together with his friends and plays on this massive board made for 8+ people) so he later told us that we were playing by the wrong rules. Oops. (I'm looking at you, Steph, the Hoarder of the Sheep!)

We then moved over to the family room where we sat around chatting and watching the dogs, who were extra cute on Christmas night. Riley with her big, brown eyes (left). Titus the 'Snuggie for Dogs' that Maggie gave him (right):

And little Maggie who had a wardrobe change into her evening wear:

Another great Christmas with the family!

Christmas 2011. Afternoon.

2012-02-01T08:00:00.021-05:00

Sunday, December 25, 2011. Before I could treat myself with "my Christmas gift to myself" - an afternoon nap - Eric suggested that we take the pup on a walk in the park behind his parents house:

Although Eric's parent's dog had just been walked, she begged us, with her massive brown doe-y eyes, to come with. Riley insisted that Chuck hold the other end of her leash, so he came with us too:

This dog is so cute. She has sensitive paws to the salt, of which the city dumps on the pathway behind the house near the water pump, so Chuck and Gayle pick her up through that section to avoid contact :) Sensitive paws :)

I was still continuing my fashion show by wearing my brand new Coach scarf from the Szmurlos. Maggie wore her day-time sweater:

It wasn't a far walk. Turns out the purpose of this walk was to stop and take many cute pictures of our cute pup:

Eric took a picture on this bench with Maggie last year so it was my turn this year:

Family photo:

Christmas 2011. Morning.

2012-01-31T08:00:00.092-05:00

Sunday, December 25, 2011. Christmas morning! Family time!!!

As mentioned before on this post, we were all very tired from being up so late the night before and getting up so 'early' on the 25th. Still, we were ready and excited about the day. We have a good time hanging out with the fam on Christmas, and things generally feel serene and peaceful (I have to put in that 'generally' because last year, Maggie collided with Eric's parent's dog, Riley, and broke her front tooth which later had to be removed. And Eric won't let me get her a puppy-veneer :) Obviously I was upset by the entire ordeal).

Maggie, in her new sweater (another gift from Chalubee) and her Aunt Steph at the Szmurlo House:

Chuck got some pictures from the gift opening at their place, but I forgot to copy them for my records before departing Calgary. The following pictures were taken on our camera at the Tse House.

When we arrived, my parents were up and moving about, but my siblings were just waking up (Lauren) and were scrambling to finish wrapping the presents (Justin). Maggie found a nice spot by the tree and waited there while we gathered our caffeine-infused drinks and made our way out into the living room:

Notice the box that my mom's gift (from Justin) is "wrapped" in? It may or may not be the same box that came with his photo frames from the White Elephant gift exchange the night before:

This year, my dad bought his own gifts for us to give him since we obviously have no idea what he wants (he usually gets socks and new clothes... which he never wears because he's got the most heinous 'home' shirts and wants to save the new clothes for special occasions... of which there are none because my parents are home-bodies). I guess that Justin "bought" him a car jack this year?!?!?!

What could it be? Flannel sheets. Sometimes she's so easy to please:

I lost my sweatpants (Lululemon ones that I got at the Lulu outlet near NYC in 2010. Pants that I bought for $24 when they were $108 originally!!!!) because I didn't tuck them away in my soccer bag when I took them off and one of the guys on the teams that played before us grabbed it and put it in his bag accidentally. OK, maybe not accidentally because I'm pretty sure that a guy would notice that a women's size 6 is smaller than his normal pair of pants. And if he noticed, then you'd think that he'd realize that he took a pair of pants from the soccer field that weren't his. And then you'd think that he'd be a decent person and bring them back to the lost and found. NO. HE DID NOT DO THIS. I know because I was playing soccer 5 times a week at the same location at the time and checked the lost and found everyday for weeks. Nothing.

Anyway, it was my own stupid fault and as much I would like for that guy to get kicked in the thigh in the middle of a game, I'm also mad at myself. Which is why I've been on a mission to find those sweatpants again. Almost 1.5 years later, I still haven't found anything close to my precious sweatpants, and I made it known that I'd be willing to take my sister's sweatpants (I bought her the exact same pair since they were such a good price and were/are AMAZING) off her hands since she has so many other pairs.

My brother picked up on this and told me that the sweatpants that I was talking about could never be better than his men's, super-thick Lulu sweatpants. It was a different material, different cut, and didn't have the elastic around the ankles so I couldn't run in them. No. I did not want them.

Despite my reasons for thinking that they weren't the pair for me, Justin thought that I just needed to try them on to change my mind. So he bought me men's sweatpants for Christmas. Coincidentally, the same ones that he was wearing that same day:

So they look pretty good in the picture above but they fit terrible. He bought me a small (turns out that my lower half is a MEN'S MEDIUM! Yikes!!!), and men don't have hips, so the waistband was not stretch and was super small compared to the leg width. It was really hard to get over my butt and had to sit at my actual waist. Even then, then crotch of the pants were half way down to my knees.

I appreciate the efforts, JT, but we just aren't made the same :)

He made up for the botched pants (which I later returned and got some sweet sort-of-similar sweatpants to my original amazing ones from Roots... and they were on super-sale so I got these really nice tights that are made of thin sweatpant material, so I can go out into public wearing something respectable, but are actually home-pants) by giving Lauren and I iPhone covers. Yup. Those are rhinestoned-Hello Kitty covers:

As much as I made fun of the covers, I sort of like mine. You all know that I can't resist something shiny and sparkly. We took iPhone pictures of each other:

These are the purses that I brought back from Argentina (plus another casual summer purse for myself and a little blue one for Steph). Jackie, I have finally posted pictures of it and I'm doing it for you! The reason why I couldn't post before was because I was going to give one to Lauren and I couldn't 1) show her what I was going to give her before it was in her possession and 2) couldn't risk that she was going to say "That's sort of an ugly purse" about mine because I didn't have a back-up gift. Now that I've given it to her, she HAS to like it :)

In March, while we were in S America, my goal was to get something with tassels on it because they seemed to be all the rage. All the ornamentation on the purses was overdone for my style in Toronto (which is non-existent because I naturally stay away from anything too trendy), so I was losing faith that I'd leave the country with a good keepsake. Then on the last day I found these at the first store we went into that morning. Since it was the first store I was hesitant to buy them without looking elsewhere so I put them on hold. When we came back an hour later, the purses were being eyeballed by a lady in their hiding/holding spot behind one of the counters. I rushed to find someone who could understand my English, who then grabbed them from behind the counter and put them in my out-reached hands. SUCCESS!

After the gifts were opened, there was much sitting around playing with toys (Eric and Justin)...

... looking for the deals that we could hit up on Boxing Day (dad and Lauren)...

... Excessive trying-on of new clothes and fashion show (me)...

... and the inevitable slide into unconsciousness (mom and Maggie).

So this is the progression of the two of them through the gift opening. Right at the beginning. Excited and energetic:

Less energetic:

A little sleepy:

Why are you waking me up to take a stupid picture?

Christmas Eve 2011. Tiered Mini-Cakes.

2012-01-30T08:00:00.199-05:00

Saturday, December 24, 2011. Yay! I can finally post about these. I've been holding off because I think that they were *that* good and deserved their own post.

For the past few years Eric and I have been considered 'adults' - and therefore our own 'family.' As our own family-unit in terms of the extended family, we now have to contribute to the feast on Christmas Eve when we celebrate with my dad's side of the family. The host always provides the turkey, another family does the potatoes and yams, another does the veggies, then there's "us" (we all know that Eric's contribution is mostly in the form of moral support when I'm screaming at my icings and batters to do what they should) who are nominated to do the dessert. Not that I mind seeing as how I feel like I don't get to do it enough throughout the year :)

So a few weeks before Christmas, the three of us girls (my mom, sister and I) were waiting in traffic, probably trying to get home from a run to Costco. We started talking about what we (yes, "we" - I have somehow managed to wrangle my sister to join my 'dessert team') should do. We were just throwing around ideas when Lauren mentioned that she saw this brilliant idea for cakes online. She pulled up the picture on her iPhone (we love our phones!) and BAM! It was decided. We were going to make 'tiered'* mini-cakes:

The idea came from an party coordinator who specializes in themed dessert tables, Amy Atlas. This particular blog entry was called Oceanside High Tea.

* I have no idea why I'm stuck on calling them "tiered" when they are obviously "layered." Too bad.

Now for the process. So, as mentioned in this previous post, I failed miserably at my first attempt at baking the green layers so I was at Safeway when it opened at 8am, buying new batter and an additional two dozen eggs (we had just bought the 36-egg pack from Costco the day before). As I got started on the baking of the cakes, Lauren began the very labour-intensive process of making fondant out of marshmallow:

We needed SEVEN different colours of cake. Red, dark pink, light pink, and white, completed by mixing various portions of red velvet and white cake mix together. Then green, medium green, light green and white, made by dying white cake mix green, then mixing another few boxes of white cake mix with the intensely-coloured green.

First, it's really disturbing to see how much red dye is in red velvet cake mix (we like to use straight cake mix from a box because it's always both moist and the firmness is just right for being able to hold up the weight of whatever decorations we put on it). I put in A LOT of green dye to make the greenest of the green cakes, and it wasn't anywhere as potent as the red velvet when I mixed the strongest colours with white. Eww.

Secondly, I didn't want to have the same problem as the previous attempt at baking the cakes so we did a whole box of each of the green colours. The cakes were going to be thicker than we needed but we needed to trim them down so they were flat on both the top and bottom anyway. Doing a whole box per colour resulted in a TON of extra cake, but thankfully, my friends Tonia and Ada were kind enough to take most of it off our hands... and there was enough to make a 3-layered 6" (diameter) round cake for them to enjoy over the holidays :)

I have to admit that Lauren did almost all the work on these cakes. They were really her babies. She came down with the shingles (pretty much chicken pox that make a comeback appearance in adulthood) so she had to stay away from old people (who already have weak immune systems) and babies (who have not been exposed to the chicken pox virus yet), so she wasn't allowed to go to family functions... which included Baby Ethan's "one-month" celebratory parties, Calgary edition.

Soooooooo, since she was home and I *had* to go to the lunch and dinner, she ended up doing most of the work. While I was stuffing my face at lunch, here she is assembling the layers and gluing them together with buttercream (most still require the top layer, the white one, to be put on):

There were 12 cakes to make. And because they were so small they took a lot more time than one big one would have taken. Plus, Lauren wanted everything to be pretty perfect so it was taking her extra long... but we're working on that, aren't we Ling ;P And I should mention that I under-baked the green layers so they were super soft. So soft that they would crumble when Lauren tried to spread the icing, making her job about three times more difficult (oops). Thinking back, we should have just thrown the cut circles of cake back into the oven for a few minutes to dry out the outer layers and give it a bit of stability. I bet the moistness from the inside of the cake and from the icing would have rehydrated the cake when it sat overnight. Next time...

We came back home between lunch and dinner where I helped out where I could. Lauren had iced all the layers together and the mini-cakes needed a coat of buttercream to incase the entire thing and make it air-tight (to prevent moisture for seeping and drying out the cake, and to give the fondant something to stick to without destroying the cake as the fondant is being pulled and worked). She allowed me to do the red ones because they were more firm and I wasn't familiar with the finicky green ones. Despite getting the easier of the two, turns out that I'm not very good at icing. Yikes.

After coating the cakes in icing, we threw them in the freezer to make the buttercream hard. Putting fondant on cakes is difficult, especially when you don't do it all the time (and we don't). We knew that our efforts to coat the cakes in fondant were going to be rough on the cakes, so the frozen buttercream was going to protect the cakes and maintain their shape while we abused them.

When the 12 cakes were covered in buttercream, Lauren got started on putting fondant ribbons around the white-fondant covers and we went to dinner. The ribbons were made of real fondant ("real" fondant is technically supersaturated water + sucrose, which is then forced to cool and crystalize while being beaten. Since it's being moved about while the crystals are forming, many tiny crystals form to make a pliable medium, rather than one large crystal which would be rock hard. Wow high school chemistry really comes in handy in the baking world!), which was bought earlier for a previous project and was on hand for this one. We used real fondant because it's consistency is more smooth and less sticky - better for rolling out super thin and handling with warm hands.

Note: LT was 9 hours into the project (most of which is on your feet, hunched over) and was still going strong.

By the time that we came back from dinner, she had completed the 6 red cakes but was running out of fondant, and out of energy. Eric and I made a quick run to Michael's (which was open super late for the holiday season, thank the heavens) and used our 40% off coupons to get some white and coloured fondant (we had to use Wilton - definitely not my favourite brand, but beggars can't be choosers when it was the only choice). When we got back, Lauren and I got back at it and had those green cakes finished within an hour. It was probably midnight or later by this point:

Down into the basement the cakes went to rest overnight, then back up the next day just before our guests arrived. We ate dinner and did our pictures, and as we were getting ready to eat dessert and open presents simultaneously we snapped a few pictures of our creations before the display was disturbed. Eric just had to stick his head in here at the last second, and obviously I moved the camera to tell him to get out as I pushed the button because the picture is blurry. "Get out of there!"

That's better. What a pretty cake stand. Is it new by any chance?

Haha. Other than the cake stand, we already had everything else that we needed (including corresponding metallic plates AND crystals) hiding in the basement. As much as I hate having so much 'clutter' in my house (I mean both mine-mine in Toronto, and my parent's house in Calgary), I love it when everything you need is tucked away, just waiting for you to remember that it's there (the first delightful surprise) and for you to find it (the second 'yippee!'):

Lauren and I laughed as soon as the fondant ribbons were put on the cakes. The cakes ended up looking shorter and fatter than the one in the picture that inspired us. The ended up looking like oil barrels, and that's what we referred to them as from that point.

When the 12 of them were sitting together, finished, we looked at them and weren't happy. Maybe it was the shape or maybe the ribbon work wasn't as good as it should have been. There was clearly only one solution to a dull-looking product. GLITTER! Lauren took edible glitter and covered all of them with a good coat. You can't see it in the pictures below, but it took the cakes from 'meh' to 'TA-DA!'. Yay!

Everyone was so stuffed by the end of the night, we all opted to eat just half a mini-cake. Isn't this such a good picture of us and our cakes?

You might have noticed that the green cakes are all shorter than the red ones. Well, that's because the green cakes were under-baked and were therefore not as firm. The weight of all that fondant and icing was able to compress the softer cakes more easily:

Overall, this was one of the most labour-intensive projects that I've ever attempted... and I'm stating that even though I did about 20% of the work on them. All of the credit for this project goes to Lauren. She discovered the inspiration, she pushed for us to do it, she thought of how we could maximize our efforts, she thought of the process and order that things had to be done in, and did almost all of the work. 12 cakes, even though they are "mini" (now I know why mini-cakes are so expensive when you try to get them for weddings, and that's even compared to over-priced wedding cakes!) is a lot of work, so Lauren deserves a very big applause for this one.

Good job, Ling!

Christmas Eve 2011. Extended Family. Part 4.

2012-01-29T08:00:00.111-05:00

Saturday, December 24, 2011. After pictures, we watched each family's slideshow. Each family (Eric and I are now considered our own family now that we're married!) was asked to provide a DVD of their favourite pictures throughout the year, lasting somewhere between 15-20 minutes. Eric was in Toronto much longer than I was so he had access to the computer where all of our pictures live, and was therefore responsible for pulling ours together. I criticized his choice of music when I heard/saw a rough preview over FaceTime, but everyone was impressed by his choice of non-popular, but very recognizable tunes. Oops.

Everyone who was wearing a dress changed around this time. I wasn't going to since I don't get to wear dresses very often and wanted to maximize the time that I could feel 'pretty,' but those damn tassels ended up getting caught on every little thing. The knobs on the kitchen cabinets, someone's watch, my rings, the necklaces that I was wearing. I was inches away from taking scissors to the dress, so off it went.

Lauren and I then prepared our special dessert, which we planned to eat during our White Elephant Gift Exchange. Here's another teaser (the next post will be solely dedicated to our creations):

Maggie found a sweet snuggling spot during the gift opening:

This year, we were told that we could either buy or bring something from around home worth approximately $30. The rules of the White Elephant gift opening are that you draw numbers to determine the order that people get to open presents in. When your number is up, you have the choice to open a wrapped present from the pile in the middle of the room, or you can 'steal' an already-opened present from someone whose turn it was before you. If you steal a present, the person who you stole it from gets to either steal another present from someone else or open a wrapped present. An already-opened gift can only be stolen once 'per round' to prevent a single present from going around and around.

Uncle Ken drew the number "1" so he started off the game by unwrapping a present of his choice (he also gets to steal a present at the end if he wants since he doesn't get that option at the beginning, being the first person). Justin was so stoked when Ken picked his gift:

Yup, that is a mini-chocolate fountain in the picture above. And if that wasn't special enough, Justin also included a mini-stocking with Justin Bieber's face on it. Wow... umm, that's really nice...

There was confusion about the rules, so the experienced ones, Justin and Lauren, had to constantly tell the rest of us what was going on and the options that we had when our turn came around:

Eric had his first gift stolen (a safe that looks like a book), probably because Justin thought it was the best thing in the world and talked it up to the point where it was extremely desirable by my uncle Eddy. The second gift that he opened was this album for a coffee table (we weren't able to bring it back to Toronto with us - too much post-Christmas shopping on my part) so it now lives at my parent's house until a later date:

As the gifts were opened, people whose numbers had not yet been called upon were asking to see those that had already been exposed, just to check them out in the case that they were steal-worthy.

The very last present, this sad little blue box with pretty paper that had been crudely wrapped with patches of tape all over it (and very non-crisp corners), topped with a sad red bow, was opened by my aunt Shirley. Ooo. What could it be???

A box filled with diamonds? No... there must be something else inside. No one would have spent $30 on a box of diamonds...

Ummm... yup, I'm pretty sure that there are only diamonds in this box and nothing else hiding in there. I'd better put on my "Wow, what a nice gift" face so that I don't offend the gift-giver:

So guess who bought $30 worth of diamonds... ME! I have a bowl of diamonds sitting on my desk right now and I LOVE it. I put my pens and pencils in there, so it's both pretty AND functional. Everyone who sees my bowl of diamonds makes fun of me, but without fail, each and everyone of them then put their hands into the bowl and let the diamonds run through their fingers. It's irresistible.

I was hoping that one of my uncles or the guys would have opened the gift (which is why I wrapped it so terribly. My mom and I figured that boxes that were too pretty would have suggested a very girly thing inside, so the opposite would have applied to a box wrapped in a non-girly way), which would have made for some amazing pictures. Aunt Shirley didn't disappoint in this case.

Our back-up plan was for me, my mom or my sister to steal the box of diamonds away from whoever opened it. I wanted them since my bowl of diamonds could always use more friends. Since the three of us knew what was in there and there were only 11 people in attendance, there was a very good chance that one of us would draw number "11" and would have the chance to steal it from whoever opened it. Too bad for Shirley, it was the very last gift to be chosen and she had the very last number.

I'd still be willing to take it off her hands if she didn't want them. Just throwing that out there...

As a final note about the gifts, since the family decided that the 'kids' would not receive anymore gifts after their 21st birthday, the need to shower something with presents has been directed towards the dogs. Maggie's first outfit for the evening was her cheongsam:

But when she received a new dress (with tiered ruffles, a black bow to accentuate her waist, and metallic tweed to stand out against her cream fur) from Chalubee (knowing how much he despises her, it probably wasn't his idea to give her a Christmas gift), she just had to put it on and model it for us (left). I like the picture on the right because I can just hear her say, "Yeah, I'm wearing a dress. What of it?!?!?"

She also received a brightly coloured sweater and some Calgary Flames gear (a water bowl and some toys that she knew were for her as soon as they were out of the bag... how is that?).

The question I ask now is what happens next year? In human-years she'll be 3.5 years old, but in doggy years she'll be 24. Does she still qualify to get gifts next year???

Uncle Ken ended up with one of the most desirable gifts - it was stolen every round, including in the final move of the game, which was his turn to steal since he was the first person to open a present (and I have to mention that I bought it for Eric to submit to the game, so I'm patting myself on the back right now). It was a bag of sponge toffee half covered in chocolate from Rocky Mountain House (you might remember that Justin is in love with the stuff) with a $20 gift certificate to Tim Horton's. Not bad for the $30 limit:

And somehow, the mini-chocolate fountain and the Justin Bieber stocking went to Maddison who attempted to use the stocking as a Blackberry carrying case... but ended up looking more like a Justin Bieber crotch flap (which we made fun of her for, of course) :)

Christmas Eve 2011. Extended Family. Part 3.

2012-01-28T08:00:00.070-05:00

Saturday, December 24, 2011. This set is filled with really good individual shots like this...

... and also randoms that aren't quite as flattering:

Look at those pups! By this point in the evening, both were over-tired from being on high alert in the case that food dropped to the floor or something interesting needed investigating (Maggie), or from being terrified of being harassed (Chalubee):

We told Justin - my mom's precious son - to get a picture with his mother. He was going for a "I extremely-love my mom" look, but ended up creepy instead:

Here, my aunt and I are recreating an event that happened at Christmas Eve last year. She and my mom were talking about something 'juicy' (i.e. salacious) and someone caught it on camera. They had the look of guilt on their faces, which is what we're trying to recreate here. Unfortunately, like most things, we overdid it (there was too much white in our eyes, we were told), then broke into laughter half way through:

JT with some sweet candles my mom and I found at Home Sense a few weeks earlier:

Another theme for this year was The Duckface. It came about when my sister got her hair permed then took a picture of herself in the bathroom mirror to send to me to show. I scoffed at her since taking a self-photo in the bathroom is something that every teenage girl trying to look 20-something/slutty, single, over-tanned trollop looking to pick up a bar/muscle head who wants to show the world his over-sized arms but manages to hide his chicken legs does... none of which is a very pleasant description. The thing that they all have in common is that they push out their lips in the attempt to make their cheekbones stand out and lips look fuller. Instead they mostly end up looking like DUCKS.

Lauren wasn't dressed like a teenager, nor did she look like a muscle head or like she was minutes away from stepping out the door to the bar - she was in her sweatsuit (yup, sweatpants AND the sweatshirt). Still, we made fun of her the entire holiday.

From that mockery came The Duckface, but to the extreme. My mom's first attempt at it:

Then the three aunts gave it a try together. HILARIOUS!

I love taking pictures with the family. Everyone is up for doing anything which - as shown in the pictures I've posted from this evening - results in good times and good laughs!

Christmas Eve 2011. Extended Family. Part 2.

2012-01-27T08:00:00.041-05:00

Saturday, December 24, 2011. When the cameras have had their test shots, and the photographers are warmed up (everyone has their own camera so it's a little nuts), we settle for the 'formal' portraits:

My uncle Eddy and aunt Jeannie. Their kids, Tim and Kim, weren't able to make it because their significant others also celebrate Christmas with their sides of the family on the 24th. Compared to the packed house of 20ish people last Christmas, this was a small affair at only 11 people:

The Gees. Shirley, Ken, Maddison and Chalubee:

Like I said, there are multiple cameras going at once so while one camera is taking the formal shots above, another is taking pictures of people as they are. This is one of my favourites. A laugh so intense that Lauren is almost crying (although really trying to control it to save her makeup), and the deep blue of her dress is made so much more vibrant by the golden tablecloth behind her and the 'cranberry juice' in the glasses:

Here, I'm shimmying my butt off to get the tassels on my dress to fly away. Maggie is just trying to figure out what in the world I'm doing:

The final picture of the 'formal' series is one of the entire family together. We always use Eric's camera because 1) he knows how to set it to maximize the chances that the picture will turn out (especially in big rooms with high ceilings) and 2) he knows how to set the timer :) Eric's just testing his camera in the next two pictures but I like showing the progression of how we all come together by comparing the before and after pictures:

Ta da! What a pretty family!

Before we all disassemble, we take a silly picture. This year's theme is... The Robot:

Some of us did it better (uncle Ken) than others (I'm looking at you, dad and Maggie!).

Christmas Eve 2011. Extended Family. Part 1.

2012-01-26T08:00:00.048-05:00

Saturday, December 24, 2011. Just a few pictures of the decorations that were set up that night first. My mom and I saw an amaryllis display similar to this at a Home Sense (yup, it's fake!). We liked it so much we considered purchasing it... but were stopped when we realized that we already had all of the supplies needed to put it together back at home (and better quality stuff too). It was just another project that we jammed into the "free" week between when we finished baking cookies and Christmas Eve.

My aunt Shirley also brought over candles, like she does every year. Everyone in attendance lights up a small votive for themselves, and the big ones are in memory of my grandpa and my cousin:

The mantle. I made the "happy holidays" banner (I already had the template available from a previous project for a friend), and there's my Christmas card just below the wreath:

And the tree. I love our tree. I love it so much. And I loved arriving in Calgary on December 7th and seeing it all set up (great job, Mom!):

Oh, and notice that all the presents have BOWS and TAGS on them??? Usually, we're so late with getting the presents under the tree (they make their appearance early on the 25th) that we don't have time for tags (a Post-It or writing 'From' and 'To' directly on the box with a Sharpie is a good solution), never mind pretty bows. This year, we were so ahead, everyone wrapped their own presents and I followed by making them pretty. Yay!

Anyway, after dinner (oops, no pictures), we sat around the table for a bit, talking. Maggie was already pooped by this time so I lifted her up so that she could take a nap in my arms:

While the leftovers were being dealt with, the extended-family pictures started:

Poor Chalubee. He spent the entire night hiding from Maggie, his torturer. She's 5 years younger than he is and still has that puppy energy - not that she directs much of it at him, rather, she has a compulsion to checked every little thing out. He's used to being the only dog around so it makes him nervous that there is this bigger, more active dog in what is usually solely his turf, sniffing the things that are usually only his to sniff, and splitting the entire family's attention away from him:

Christmas Eve 2011. Immediate Family.

2012-01-25T08:00:00.000-05:00

Saturday, December 24, 2011. Christmas Eve, the day that we celebrate Christmas with my dad's side of the family, was being hosted at our house this year. Unlike every other year to date we were sooooooo on top of things and were ready well before people arrived (we are usually running around like chickens with our heads chopped off, trying to complete the meal or clean up, when the extended family arrives). Lauren and I even had time to get our hair done earlier that day, then come back, sit around for a bit, then get dressed (my mom was supposed to come with us but was feeling stressed that she might not have the time).

I like to put the pictures that I post on this blog in the order that they were taken, but I had to put this one on top. It's just too good! I love that we all have REAL smiles on our faces (the ones that come from actually laughing - my favourites - instead of the ones where you smile nice for the camera... which are also great, but not as awesome), and we're all standing close together like we actually like each other. To top it all off, Maggie is even looking at the camera (the pic was taken on the timer, there isn't even anyone standing behind the camera!) and is 'smiling' herself:

So, back to chronological order. After we had dressed and were waiting for Eric to get the settings on his camera sorted, Maggie took a nap at the top of the stairs where he had a good vantage point of everything going on (little did she know that she probably should have slept the entire day instead of just a few hours):

Don't you just love her little paws and that pink nose? A pink nose which started to darken back to black during the five weeks that we were in Calgary, by the way :)

Lauren and I setting up drinks (note how clean the counters are - WOW!). Thanks to Lauren for letting me borrow one of her dresses (it was brand new and still had the tag on it) and for lending me the jewelry (I flew to Calgary with absolutely nothing nice to wear, assuming that I'd shop for something. We ended up running out of time so I had to fish around in Lauren's closet. Her vast, vast, vast closet filled with a number of choices... not that I'm judging or anything):

Lauren's "natural face." Again, I refer back to this older post regarding this unfortunate condition:

Finally the camera settings were right and we got started with pictures of just our immediate family. Although my dad is by far Maggie's favourite person at our house (he lets her do anything she wants... yes, even compared to me, who already spoils her), I love the look on her face in the picture on the left. She clearly doesn't have very much confidence in how he's holding her:

Two things to note in the picture of Maggie with my parents.
- My mom and I are the only ones who hold Maggie like an actual child. She seems to like it because she straddles us (I put her on my hip), then puts her front paws on our shoulders, as shown below.
- Maggie is wearing her cheongsam, her Chinese dress that we picked up from Woofstock earlier in the year in Toronto. We weren't sure if it was going to fit since she had grown a bit thicker through the chest, but it fit like a glove and she looked radiant :)

There were a lot of silly pictures taken this year...

A good one of the 'kids':

Us doing the 'robot' (a theme this year):

Ethan's One-Month Celebration (Calgary Edition)

2012-01-19T08:00:00.000-05:00

Friday, December 23, 2011. Like I mentioned in the previous post, Lauren was stuck at home baking while the rest of the family was out for dinner at Ethan's One-Month Celebration. It's a Chinese tradition to celebrate the passing of the first-month of a newborn, rather than have a baby shower before the birth or just after. It's also supposed to be the first time that the mother and baby leave the house since the birth. I suppose that it comes from old-school China where central heating didn't exist, making it very dangerous for the baby (who is small and weak and doesn't have an immune system) and the mother (who just put her body through some major work) to venture out into the cold. I'm just guessing though.

Anyway, Eric and I were very lucky to attend Ethan's One-Month Parties in both Toronto (here and here) and Calgary. We were seated at a "kid's table" at the Calgary dinner, which is lower-ranking than many of the other tables... which is why I have zero pictures of Ethan at this event. The guest of honor was being fought over at the higher-ranking tables filled with grandparents and big aunts and big uncles.

We were able to acquire another baby for photos later in the evening. The acquisition was a delicate thing...

- Rosalind, who is 19 (or something), is super-awesome with kids. She's a magnet; she's drawn to them and loves to hold them, and they love her and will sit pretty whenever she's holding them. It's been this way since Rosalind was 10. Rosalind is also a very gentle and sweet soul so people can't really say 'no' to her. She knows this and exploits it every chance she gets.
- Somehow, she wrangles Sydney (who is 6 months old and the best baby ever... you'll see why later) away from some higher-ranking relative and brings the baby back to our table. Sydney is as happy as can be, sitting in Rosalind's lap.
- Jon, my cousin Erin's boyfriend, is sitting next to me and says, "Awww. I wish that I could hold Sydney. I haven't held her yet." I tell Jon, "Exercise your right as a Goa-Goa (translation: older brother) and get over there and take that baby if you want her. You're older. You have rights."
- Jon gets up, bee-lines it for the baby, states, "I am older than you. Give her to me," (Ok, he probably said it nicer than that) then baby-snatches Sydney away from Rosalind before she knew what was happening. BAM!
- Jon could probably sense what was going to happen next because he didn't return to his seat next to mine for a few minutes. When he finally did, I exercised my right as a Jya-Jya (older sister) and stole Sydney from him.

And that's how it's done:

Our table was really good as passing the baby around so everyone who wanted to hold her (and even those who didn't, like William) got to have her for a few minutes, including Eric. Ack! Those cheeks are just begging to be squeezed:

And Erin:

The buddha-belly is killer!

Christmas Eve 2011. Dessert Preparation.

2012-01-18T16:00:00.000-05:00

Friday, December 23, 2011. Despite staying out too late talking with Tonia and Ada the night before, I was at Safeway 2 minutes after it opened at 8:02am to get more supplies for the dessert that Lauren and I were responsible for making for Christmas Eve. We attempted to get the baking portion of the baking done the night before but it ended in diaster. I miscalculated (high probability) or the dye used to tint the batter affected the batter's ability to rise (also probable since we were using a ridiculous amount of green). Either way, we ended up with cakes that were only 1/4" thick when we needed a minimum of 1/2", and we were out of boxed-cake batter (it's fantastic because it's always moist and it's generally firm enough to handle the weight of the decorations that we put on top of it) and eggs :(

Two dozen eggs, 2 lbs of unsalted butter, and 4 boxes of cake mix later, I was headed back out to the car when I saw pink streaking the sky (I love having a smart phone so I can take pictures on the spot like this!):

Back at home, I was busy baking the cakes (we needed 7 different colours) and Lauren got started on making fondant out of marshmallows. Although I had taught her how to make it two years ago, it had been ages since I've even attempted to make a batch so she was telling me what to do. How fast they grow up...

I was going to include pictures of the semi-finished product, but I want to save all the pictures from this project for one post instead of breaking them into two separate ones. I do have to mention that Lauren did the majority of the work on this dessert (and found the inspiration)... especially while I was away at lunch AND dinner, at Ethan's One-Month Celebration (Calgary Edition)...

Christmas Rush

2012-01-16T14:00:00.002-05:00

Thursday, December 22, 2011. There are so many things to do around Christmas time, including going to Costco to pick up supplies for dinners on the 24th, 25th and 26th. Apparently, everyone else in south Calgary had the same idea as us on the morning of the 22nd.

When we drove into the parking lot we were shocked to find that the entire thing was packed full. We drove around for a bit but when other drivers got aggressive, we just looped around to the far side of the lot and parked closer to the Home Outfitters. There was a median between the car and the Costco parking lot so we wouldn't be able to push the cart right up to the car's truck, but we were only stopping in to get a few things. We could carry those few items to the car. This was going to be short and easy trip to Costco... right???

Wrong. Who cares about where we parked and having to carry those items to the car. We should have been more concerned about what was going on INSIDE of Costco. All the passengers of all those cars were doing their shopping, just like us, on the same time frame. We didn't really notice a problem with the increased people/cart traffic until we started walking to the checkouts... then were stalled by people filling the main aisle... stalled AT THE BOOK SECTION. That's like 50 metres away from the checkouts!!!

Upon further investigation, I found that there were actually two line-ups in our aisle, and one of then hadn't yet been discovered so we jumped into the second one and managed to get to a till within 10 minutes (by the time that I called my mom over to the secondary line-up, the original line had stretched back to the vegetables!). Later, when we moved forward enough to see what was going on, we thanked the heavens that we chose the line that we chose because it fed into five checkouts whereas the one that we originally were in only fed one :( Those poor people. And those stupid Costco employees that should have been managing these lines a little better. They could have cut our line off from two of those checkouts and given it to the other line, making both lines feed three checkouts. Ai ya!

It wasn't just our line-up that was totally crazy. Turns out that there were 6 massive line-ups leading to the checkouts - yes SIX! Two down each of the main aisles, then one down the side edges. It seemed that everyone who's car was filling the parking lot was now in the line-up since there were just a handful of people shopping in the aisles.

I know that I'm devoting a lot of time towards Costco, but I've never seen it like that before and I go ALL THE TIME FOR AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER. It was insane! The killer was that most people had under 10 items in their carts. Most were like us, "Just stopping in to pick up a few things and get out of there before it got really busy."

Anyway, we got out of there pretty quickly considering where that line-up extended to and after packing up the car (and having to carry our groceries over the median :s) we were dreading going to Superstore in the case that we'd be faced with the same problem as Costco... our fears were for naught as only half the customers of Costco had the same idea as us (we recognized the people around us in line finishing off their grocery lists just like us), but Superstore had anticipated some serious traffic that day and opeend up every single checkout. Usually Superstore is notorious for not having enough checkouts open and for being super slow. This time, we had our pick of no-waiting checkouts and were out of there in record time.

Our grocery shopping morning ended quite nicely :)

My mom and I swung by downtown to pick up my sister who had decided to take the afternoon off to help me bake and decorate our sleigh, then we drove up to the airport to pick up Eric who was flying in to start his holiday in Calgary. He came back to my parent's house to drop off his bag (we were staying at the Tse House this year) and to say hello to Magsters, then walked her over to his parent's house to hang out for the rest of the afternoon before meeting my family at a Chinese restaurant for some Peking Duck. (Sorry, there aren't any pictures of our two families at dinner as I was hoping someone else might taken them :) )

Another pre-Christmas thing that I had to fit into my schedule was to go over to my friends' house, Tonia and Ada. I had seen them at a soccer game a few days earlier but hadn't managed to see them since then. What a bad friend I am! They were nice enough to stay up late so that I could visit with them after dinner and get a few rants and laughs out. While there, Tonia's cat, Lucy, sat and posed for some pictures as soon as I took the camera out (this is not her first photoshoot):

Ugh. There are so many things to do and get done during the Christmas season. Now that Eric was back, this was just the start of the super-action-packed segment of our Calgary stay...

Dinner with Some Louie Cousins

2012-01-16T08:00:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, December 20, 2011. My cousin, Anna, invited us over a few of the Louie cousins over for dinner so that we could catch up. Our family gatherings are pretty BIG so it's a better idea to work out a small, intimate gathering if you haven't seen each other in a while and want to know what's the latest in each other's lives. Andrea, Erin, and Ethan were also in attendance.

We had this pasta with garlic and lemon for dinner (yummy, as usual, even though Anna wasn't too impressed with Inna Garten's recipe) with sides of salad and garlic toast:

To finish we had a 'really simple and easy' dessert, creme caramels. Only the Queen of Baking could call creme caramel really easy :)

Of course dinner-time conversation was good, and even a little heated... when we got talking about whether or not "the guy from Thor" (Chris Hemsworth) was in the latest Star Trek movie. Anna claimed that he was George Kirk and I said, "I think that I'd know if he was in the movie. He's fairly recognizable." Anna was right and I was wrong. *sigh* I don't know why I thought to even challenge her in the realm of Star Trek. Everyone knows that Star Trek is her domain.

Dinner also revolved around Ethan, who was in his chair on the floor while we were eating. He had found his voice and was into talking. I tried to capture him talking in picture form, but only got this shocked expression...

... and this beauty of a picture, where I think that he looks like a Cabbage Patch Doll:

Cookie Sleigh

2012-01-14T08:00:00.076-05:00

Thursday, December 22, 2011. Lauren and I made a sleigh out of cookie this year (last year it was the "gingerbread house" with the stained-glass windows made of candy). These are the pictures taken with my iPhone the minute it was finished (the final details were taking forever so it felt like a big deal that it was finally done!):

And these are the pictures taken with the big Nikon a few days later. We were all sitting around the TV when I looked up and saw sunlight coming through the window, lighting up my sleigh:

Some specs:

- The base and interior of the sleigh is made of rice krispie treats. We were going to make it hollow but the weight of the cookie and icing was too much and would have collapsed the structure. We were also going to attempt to complete the project without a base but realized that even materials as strong as wooden dowels would not have been able to hold up the 10+ lbs sleigh. Yup, it's seriously that heavy.

- The sleigh itself is made of sugar cookie (super thick to ensure that one of the curly parts didn't break off when it inevitably got bumped by one of our hands) and is covered with red-tinted royal icing (the same recipes as the sugar cookies we put on our cookie platters). After the red icing was flooded and dried, it was painted in a layer of edible gold paint to add depth.

- The 'gates' are royal icing, piped onto parchment paper, allowed to fully dry, then glued to the structure... actually everything that is white is royal icing, made extra-thick to hold it's shape when piped. And most of it is covered in edible iridescent glitter. GLITTER!

- The candy canes are made of gum paste. The white and red ropes were twisted together, cut, then allowed to dry in a candy cane shape... then glued onto the sleigh in the heart-shapes (that was all Lauren, who claims she's not very girly)

- The runners and runner-supports are made of giant candy canes and Pocky, respectively.

- The presents are rice krispie treats cut into little boxes, then covered in Fruit Roll-Ups. We weren't sure if the Roll-Ups were going to be bright enough colours to match the bright red sleigh, but it totally worked! They were then finished with ribbons and bows (we were going to put bows on all of them but our self-appointed deadline was too-quickly approaching... we had another project that we HAD to get going on). Some of the boxes were also coated in sanding sugar of a matching colour.

What a good project this turned out to be. I would say that it took approximately 20 man-hours for Lauren and I to complete this, not including the drying time of the icing:

The design was off the top of my head (although I used one of my software programs to generate a template), and we didn't really have a plan for what we wanted the end-product to look like. We are usually pretty anal about this kind of thing (planning everything out so there aren't any surprises, and so we have all the supplies we need ahead of time), but we're working on being more flexible and adaptable, so this was a big step for us :)

This year's holiday structure took a shorter amount of time than last year's gingerbread house because of what we learned the first time round. We learned just as much this time so it'll be interesting to see what we come up in 2012...

Another Sweet Sunset in Calgary

2012-01-13T18:00:00.015-05:00

Monday, December 19, 2011. Maggie and I were coming home from our afternoon walk and noticed that the sky was picking up some very-intense warm-toned colours. I didn't have a camera on me at the time so we had to run the last little bit :) This picture was taken facing west, towards the mountains, from the bathroom window of my parent's house (which has a fine layer of dust on the outside of the pane) with my iPhone (which I've learned isn't the best camera). Still, it turned out pretty good, don't you think?

Maggie's Pre-Calgary Cut

2012-01-13T14:00:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, December 7, 2011. I figure that we should make Maggie look as pretty as possible before our arrival in Calgary for Christmas, so I book her an appointment at the "Spaw" to get washed, cut and combed. She's beent to the Spaw before, when her coat was super-thick after last winter - too thick for me to cut - and loved it. I also loved it. The staff was really good at making sure I got what I wanted in the cut and was reasonably priced considering the amount of hair that needed to be cut and the number of mats that would surely require them to spend time combing through. After I confirmed that I liked the cut Maggie received back in the spring, the groomer made some notes in her file for next time.

'Next time' was the day before we went back to Calgary for the holidays. Everything went so well the first time, I just told them to follow the notes in Maggie's file for this particular cut.

When I got my dog back, I realized that I had made a serious error. The first cut was meant to prepare Maggie's coat for the upcoming spring/summer... meaning that it was super short. It was so short that her fur looked pink because you could actually see her skin underneath. I had just cut off all of Maggie's insulation and we were going to SUPER COLD CALGARY!!! Not only that, but we were supposed to fly the next day; sometimes the cargo area that the doggy-crates are held in aren't as warm as the airlines intend them to be, or sometimes the crates are exposed to the elements while the other luggage is being loaded or unloaded.

Oops:

My first problem to deal with: the flight. It gets quite cold, as mentioned above. It can also get quite hot if the temperature in the heated-compartment is adjusted incorrectly. We also give Maggie her doggy-Xanax before she flies, just to take the edge off, which can also hinder her natural ability to control her body temperature... so many factors to consider and try to find a solution for! Eventually, I thought of something. I found the smallest t-shirt that I could find, wore it while packing all day (so my scent/stink fully saturated it), then made Maggie wear it during the flight. It was just enough to help her keep warm if it was cold, but not too thick that she would overheat.

I didn't get a picture of her in the shirt but when Eric saw her after coming home from work that evening he said, "There is no way that I'm going out in public with her looking like that. She looks like a gay go-go dancer." Did I mention that the t-shirt was super bright magenta with a super-deep v-neck? I'll have to get a picture of her in it at a later time and post it. As of right now, I'm just trying to catch up posting all the good things that we saw and experienced over the holidays.

Despite all that, Maggie had the best flight she's ever had. She was relaxed getting into the crate, and it only took about 30 seconds before she calmed down after getting out in the Calgary airport. We'll need to test with the t-shirt again at a later date to see if that's what made the difference :)

Dinos for Jesscia

2012-01-13T09:00:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, December 6, 2011. Our friends, Ian and Jess, ordered these dinos to give to Jess' brother's 6-month old twins for Christmas. I've never done a pastel-combo, but I think that it looks super cute:

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-26T00:50:00.002-05:00

Sunday, December 25, 2011. Our first stop of the day was at the Szmurlo House where the three dogs made for a very puppy-crazy house:

I'm still getting used to my iPhone and have no idea how to upload edited pictures (I did change the demon eyes on my phone but the edited file won't upload to Picasa):

Next stop was at the Tse House where it became even more apparent that Maggie was totally sleep deprived. We were up celebrating Christmas until 3am the night before and had to be up at 7:30am on Christmas morning. AND there was so much going on all Christmas Eve that she didn't even get to nap. Instead of investigating every last present and scrap of wrapping paper, she just hit under Eric's legs either looking at us suspiciously or staring into space:

I hardly look any pictures on my iPhone because we had the big camera with us. You'll just have to wait for those pictures to be posted when I get back to Toronto and can filter through them a bit. This gift from my brother Justin to my sister Lauren did deserve an immediate posting though. He bought us both Hello Kitty iPhone skins (yes, they are totally covered in rhinestones). They were supposed to be a joke, but I'm starting to get attached to mine :)

Merry Christmas, everyone. Love, the Szmurlos:

Traffic is Bearable When...

2011-12-24T08:00:00.008-05:00

Saturday, December 17, 2011. ... you get to drive towards a sky like this:

Driving around the holiday season is always a pain. There seem to be so many more cars on the road than usual. The time does seem to pass more quickly when you take in a breath, relax and enjoy surroundings like this though.

Sushi Lunch with Angie

2011-12-23T20:00:00.019-05:00

Saturday, December 17, 2011. Angie and I (and Teresa when she's in town) always get together for sushi when we can. We usually like to go to Misato, but they have been getting more expensive and have been cutting back on their portions so we've been looking for other options. I don't mind when restaurants increase their prices, but if they cut back on their food AND increase the $, I become offended.

Anyway, we tried out a "new" place, Izumi Sushi at Southport Crossing. It used to be Tokyo Garden, but after 20 years it disappeared. Haunh. We got too into talking about our own things that we forgot to ask what happened to the previous Japanese restaurant located in exactly the same place. In fact, the decor was exactly the same, although the menu seemed to change a bit.

As usual, we over ordered. We normally don't have a problem polishing off all the food when we have Teresa with us - she's only 90lbs but can pack down three times as much as Angie and I, and it's not like we hold back on our consumption when we're together. We're too close to have those kinds of manners. Our food that day for 2 people:

I love getting together with Angie. Too bad Teresa wasn't able to make it, but I'm sure that I'll be back in the summer and we'll have to reprise our sushi gorging (and catch up on the latest). Thanks for lunch, Angie!

My Parents and Ethan

2011-12-23T14:00:00.012-05:00

Friday, December 16, 2011. My family was invited over to my aunt and uncle's house to have dinner and spend some time with Ethan. Before we ate, my parents stole in away (yes, stole him because there is such a high demand to hold him from the occupants of that house) and I got some pictures of them with the little guy:

Ung Babies

2011-12-23T08:00:00.011-05:00

Thursday, December 15, 2011. My mom and I were on a mission to deliver as many plates of our Christmas baking as we could. One of our stops was my Aunt Kathy's house in the northeast. We were pleasantly surprised to find my cousin Shelley and her babies having lunch there at the same time.

The newest addition to her family, Sydney (6 months):

Brenden (2.5 years):

Bradley (5 years) with my mom and Shelley:

Warm Sleepy Spot for Maggie

2011-12-22T20:00:00.004-05:00

Wednesday, December 14, 2011. My brat dog finds some pretty good sleeping spots. Most of them involve the warm, squishy bellies of my parents. My dad and the Magsters:

Eyelash Extensions

2011-12-22T14:00:00.070-05:00

Tuesday, December 13, 2011. My friend, Jill, came across a deal at a local beauty-boutique in Toronto before a left. They specialized in eyelash extensions. This is when individual, fake lashes are glued onto your natural eyelashes. I got to see her a day before I left for Calgary and loved how the lashes looked, so I Lauren call to make appointments for us immediately (I didn't make Lauren call because she's my younger sister/slave, but because she works and therefore has the more limited schedule). We both figured that it might be nice to have a little extra something for the holiday season.

We ended up choosing a place called Lola Lash Bar in downtown Calgary. They specialize in lashes and had been around for a bit so there was a lesser chance that the final result was going to make us look ridiculous.

We were told not to wear any make-up upon arrival to minimize the amount of time required to clean the lashes before applying the fake ones. I was stressed out about having to find a place to park (OK, I was stressed specifically about having to parallel park... I know that I'm bad at it and didn't want to crash the car or make a fool of myself attempting to get into a spot 5-6 times) so I didn't have time to take a "pre-" picture of my eyelashes before I got to the appointment. This was my attempt at a self-photo on the sidewalk just outside the lash bar. Needless to say, I have a lot of room for improvement on the self-photo front:

The process of eyelash extensions include taping down your lower lashes (as seen by Lauren below), then keeping your eyes totally closed until the lady is done and tells you to open them. It took about an hour, during which time I fell asleep twice. The lady actually prefers you to sleep because it means that there is even less movement of your eyelids (even if your eyes are closed they move around if you're awake).

When she was just starting finished up, I started to wake. The last 10 minutes or so consisted of the lady cleaning up the lashes and removing any excess glue. At the very end she yanked something off the corner of my eye then she gave me a mirror to check out the work immediately after. Whatever she pulled off my face stung and caused my eyes to water, and in addition to the first words out of my mouth, which were "Wow! They are really long!!!" then followed with an open-mouthed gape, the lady thought that I was upset with her work and that I was crying from being so upset. Oops.

I mean, of course I was shocked to see such a big difference in the way that my eyes looked. My lashes were suddenly 4 times as thick and 2 times as long! But I wasn't upset with them and I wasn't going to cry over the miracle of eyelash extensions.

Lauren's appointment was right after mine which is why I was able to get this picture of her:

Post-extensions:

So they aren't crazy-long or crazy-thick. It's just like I'm wearing a ton of mascara :)

Now that I've had them for a week, I can say that I'm comfortable with them. Although, the night that we got them, both Lauren and I were complaining that we were tired... then realized that it was just our eyelids that were tired from keeping the extra lashes and glue up (which is significant if you have almost-non-existent natural eyelashes like me). It took about 3 days for my lid-muscles to get stronger, and now it's like I was born with these beauties.

Another thing that we didn't anticipate was that the fake eyelashes turn and twist occasionally. Sometimes they turn and poke you right in the eye - OUCH! - other times they turn and just tickle the skin surrounding the eye (very annoying), but most times they just turn and get tangled in each other so you have to comb them back into place. Haha. Combing eyelashes is such a funny idea.

These things are supposed to last 4-6 weeks, but we're not sure if that means that the last one falls out in that time, or that's the time when the fakes are so sparse that you have to pull the rest out so that you don't look ridiculous. Either way, I freak out every time one of them falls out (they are supposed come out when your natural eyelashes fall out, but I was a little rough removing make-up the other day and lost 3 in one night... ALL OFF THE SAME EYE!). I don't have many natural lashes so the lady wasn't able to put a ton of fake lashes on me, making each one very valuable ;)

Happy Birthday Boudreau

2011-12-22T08:00:00.001-05:00

Sunday, November 20, 2011. Remember when I made these beer glasse for our friend, Matt's, 30th birthday? Here are the pictures from the actual dinner/party that our mutual friend, Diane, hosted for him. Again, a gorgeous picture of my amazing creations:

The card and the wrapped present:

Diane thought of this meal as a "really easy, just thrown-together type of meal." We didn't agree. As the main dish, we had brisket:

A side of roasted brussel sprouts with walnuts:

And a casserole version of latkas. Does that sound like a meal just 'thrown together' to you? And to top it off, we had fancy champagne:

The birthday boy with his meal... and a terrible mustache which he grew out for Movember:

Maggie was even in attendance, although she didn't get to eat any of the brisket. Diane couldn't stand this cute face looking at her saying, "Please, ma'am. I'm starving. Don't you have a single thing that I could eat?" So Diane fished around in her fridge and found some basmati rice that had been in the same container as some flavourful Indian food then put it in Maggie's bowl. Maggie was grateful for the special birthday treat:

After dinner was done and cleared away, we turned down the lights so that Diane could present Matt's birthday cake. We sung Happy Birthday, then Matt made a wish and blew out his candles in hopes of making it come true:

When all the candles were blown and it was time to cut into the cake, I went over to the light switch to turn the lights on when I heard Diane call from the kitchen, "No, not yet. You have to go sit down." And that's when I saw that she had bought me a cake as well. My birthday was in two days, and it was only my 29th so I wasn't expecting anyone to remember, and especially not to make a big deal out of anything. The red velvet cake was made that much more special by Diane's efforts:

I also have to mention that Eric, who was away in London for business at the time, sent an email to Diane reminding her that my birthday was close to Matt's and if she could do something a little special for me, he'd really appreciate it. So, thank you to Diane and Eric for my birthday cake!

When we had our fill of cake, I asked Matt to open up his gift. He was both surprised and pleased with the glasses. Yay!

We were so full after dinner that the most that we could do was to roll ourselves over to the couch to chat. I got a few pictures of the birthday boy and our wonderful host before putting the camera away and allowing the food coma to settle in:

Happy birthday, Matt.

2011 Christmas Cards

2011-12-21T08:00:00.031-05:00

Saturday, November 26, 2011. I was super organized this year so I made my own Christmas cards before flying out to Calgary. I had everything ready to go (idea, design, cutouts, etc) when I saw this package of ribbon at HomeSense when I was browsing with my friend, Diane. I love ribbon. I LOVE RIBBON!!!! I love it so much that I knew that I couldn't walk away from buying this set. The only problem was that I didn't know what I needed it for and I've really been trying to cut back on buying stuff that I don't really need but with the pretense that "I'll do something with it later."

So, I stood there in the middle of the store, solidly still like a granite statue, thinking of what I could do with the ribbon...

BAM. It hit me. Christmas cards. The idea came to me and I could see how well it was going to turn out in my head. I bought the package of ribbon and as soon as I had a big break from other holiday-related things-to-do, I pulled it out and started cutting my pieces:

I was going to make trees out of the ribbon. A few details had to change because my mental-measurements were off, but the idea was sound:

When the trees were glued to the cards, the cards looked a little bare and too minimal for my tastes. And there were a distinct lack of glitter (my love for glitter has also increased and I can't seem to finish a project without incorporating the sparkly stuff in some way). Thankfully, I had glitter glue (not as much as you think, but definitely enough to get me through the next decade of crafting) on hand and used it to spice things up a bit by adding stars. Here are my cards drying on my kitchen counter:

And here's a sampler of the cards that I made and sent out this year. Each one is different, not only because of the colours of ribbon used, but also because of the cardstock. My goal was to do this project without purchasing any other materials (ribbon excluded)... and turns out that I had all that stuff on hand as well. Huanh:

When I was done with the Christmas card crafting, I noticed that the spools of ribbon took quite a bit of space. Another rule of mine is that I can't buy ribbon if there isn't any room in my ribbon-basket (a handly little trick to control my ribbon purchases)... there wasn't enough room for the ribbon on the spools that it came in, but there was enough room if I took the ribbon off and wrapped them around cardboard. Ha! Aren't loopholes great?

I love my ribbon and I love my cards. Now I have to think of another project for the remainder of that ribbon so that the next time I see a sweet deal or a beautiful set, I can buy it and there will be plenty of room in my ribbon-basket to hold it :)

Ethan's Awake!

2011-12-20T08:00:00.012-05:00

Thursday, December 1, 2011. Andrea, Matt, Ashley and Ethan came over for dinner a few weeks ago and for the first time, Ethan was wide awake and interactive. Since he was born, whenever I've seen him, he would be sleeping, or he'd wake for 15 minutes to eat then goes back to sleep right away, so this was a big deal for me. Obviously I had to take pictures of this momentous occassion:

Christmas Cookies. Toronto Edition.

2011-12-19T20:00:00.001-05:00

Thursday 1 - Sunday, December 4, 2011. If I'm in town in December, I try to make cookies for our Toronto friends and family. This year, my sous chef, Freddie, was invited to come over to help. Although teaching someone else how to do things slows me down, he was very good at learning, keeping up, and doing things the RIGHT WAY (i.e. my way). I also threatened him with "I am on a very tight schedule. If you slow me down in the slightest, don't think that I won't kick you out of my house."

I started out totally distrusting Freddie. He was only allowed to read me recipes, then was upgraded to handling pans going in and out of the oven, then upgraded to measuring out ingredients, then was allowed to make icing and ice these cranberry-orange drop cookies:

In the end I made 8 different types of cookies in just 3 days. I needed enough for 2 large plates, 14 small plates for individuals, and 1 large platter for Eric to bring to work:

I estimate that I made close to 700 cookies this year:

Haha. This is what I look like after 3 days of baking and in the middle of rushing to get plates ready for delivery...

... and to think that this was just the beginning. Or pre-Christmas baking. Or warm-up. I knew that we'd need about 2,000 cookies for our friends and family back in Calgary. Right after these were done, I took a whole of 2 HOURS to recharge and get ready for the big event back at home ;)

Which City Has The Best Sunrises/Sunsets?

2011-12-19T16:00:00.017-05:00

Monday, December 19, 2011. Eric and I argue about which city has the best sunrises and sunsets. I've always argued that Calgary and London (England) have been pretty reliable to which Eric counters, "Do you think that it's a coincidence that you think that the best sunrise/sunset cities are also ones that you've lived in?" Haunh. He has a good point... still, we've lived in Chicago and Toronto and neither of them have provided a sunset like this for us over four years:

I was walking Maggie at the off-leash park just near my parents house when I saw that the sun was going down and the clouds that make up the Chinook Arch (the clouds cover the city and keep the warm air in, which is why the temperature has been hovering around 0C for the past 2 week... and hopefully for the next 3 weeks to come!) had been lit up. From the bright, glowing colours that I saw in the sky at that point, I knew that it would only intensify as soon as the sun went below the mountain-lined horizon. Unfortunately I didn't have a camera with me at the park so Maggie and I ran back to the house where I grabbed my iPhone and snapped the above picture from the bathroom. THE DIRTY BATHROOM WINDOW!

It's still undetermined which city has the most-consistently best sunrises/sunsets... but I can say that Calgary definitely is up there when I get to see something like this fairly often.

A Morning with Shirley Goo Goo

2011-12-19T08:00:00.004-05:00

Monday, December 12, 2011. My mom had a doctor's appointment in the north and I had a few things to pick up there so I went with her. Since the appointment was just before lunch, we asked my aunt Shirley if she had time to meet us for a little bite.

Since my stay in Calgary was already such a whirlwind (I had only been in Calgary for 4 days and it felt like 2 weeks), the first thing that I decided to do was to try out Starbuck's holiday special Creme Brulee Latte (those crunchy caramel bits on top are divine) and take a moment to breathe and to put a few lists together. Mainly a shopping list and a list of dinners that we are to attend during the stay:

When it was time to meet aunt Shirley, I put on all my winter gear and treked over to the restaurant that we pre-arranged to meet at. While I was waiting (in the cold!), I noticed that there was a rainbow that went all the way around the sun like a giant sun spot. I think that it was caused by the little snow particle floating in the air that morning:

Unfortunately, we were meeting about 45 minutes earlier than the restaurant opened so we had to find an alternate place to eat. Katana Grill it was. The light was good but this picture didn't turn out the way that I wanted it to. I was hoping to get some good light on Shirley's face, but I accidentally took a picture with the bright white window in it so it's blown out and everything else is dark :(

We weren't able to stay and chat for very long because Shirley had an appointment of her own to make... thank goodness too! After making that list and looking at it, I had a lot on my plate and needed every moment possible to get things crossed off on it!

Be A Veg... The Cow Version

2011-12-18T20:00:00.000-05:00

Friday, December 2, 2011. Noooooooooo! Eric sent this to me, comparing two things that I absolutely cannot live without. Puppies and beef. We all knew that this day would come...

Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory

2011-12-18T08:00:00.005-05:00

Thursday, December 8, 2011. My mom and I drove up to the outlet mall, Cross Iron Mills, and had lunch with my brother. I'm embarrassed to admit this but we had Arby's... And it was my request to do so. All of the Arby's in downtown Toronto have disappeared in the past year so it's been a while since I've tasted that "roast beef." I jumped at the first chance for a Regular Beef 'n' Cheddar without ranch sauce with curly fries.

After we had a bit of time before Justin had to go back to work so I bought a fancy caramel apple from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory for us to share.

Justin wanted to buy a fancy apple for himself - the one coated in caramel, then sponge toffee and finally sealed in chocolate. When he asked the girl to pull it from the shelf for him she noticed that the stick was a little loose. Their policy is stick loose = too old = unsellable. So she just threw it into the closest garbage. ACK!!!

Justin was determined to get that apple... And besides, we get caramel apples all the time from Stampede and leave them in the fridge for at least a week before consumption. And the sticks are more than just a little loose at that point. Haha. Am I grossing you put yet?

JT also noticed that this could be a good opportunity for him to get a deal on one of these apples too so he asked if 1) they would sell the apples to him at all and 2) if they would sell at a discount since they were just going to be thrown out otherwise. He ended up getting the two remaining "old" apples in addition to the one that I bought and had cut for immediate consumption. Victory!

Justin and Jackie seem to think that their sponge toffee apples are better than my caramel/chocolate/Skor bits apple but after tasting the two within a day of each other my opinion hasn't changed... But that was an old apple. Further testing is definitely required.

New iPhone!!!

2011-12-14T19:39:00.003-05:00

Friday, December 9, 2011. I got my first smart phone and I finally got a break from Christmas baking to download a blogger app and post something. Of course my first post would have to include the Magsters.

She's sleeping in her new bed. My mom bought it for her and she's totally taken with it. We put one of my shirts in it for her to use as a pillow and placed it on the stairs landing so she could see both out the door at the passing traffic and into the kitchen to keep an eye on us bakers.

That dog is so spoiled :)

Fela!

2011-12-07T08:00:00.000-05:00

Thursday, October 27, 2011. Before going on our NYC trip, we were trying to figure out which Broadway show we'd like to see. Eric suggested "Fela!" and I suggested "Memphis." We were tied at a stalemate until I got a promotional email from a theatre producer in Toronto containing discount codes for "Fela!" That decided it. Fela! in Toronto, and Memphis in NYC.

We almost wasted our tickets by missing the show. For some reason, I thought that it was the week after, but luckily I was talking to one of our neighbours about his bongo-playing/practicing every afternoon (which I can hear through the walls, two apartments away). He had tickets to the show as well and he was excited to hear all the drums played at the musical... that had me wondering about our tickets. I looked into it and... our tickets were for the very next day. So lucky!

So I met Eric at the office after work. We went to dinner at my favourite place of all time, Chipotle - yeah, there are classier places, especially on a dinner/show-date night, but when I'm downtown I'll choose Chipotle 90% of the time and Eric is nice enough to oblige me :)

We then walked through the mall and stopped off at Shopper's to get a few snacks that we were going to sneak into the theatre. Gummy bears (which ended up being so strong-smelling that I refused to allow Eric to eat them), peanut M&Ms, and a green tea ginger ale to drink.

We were pretty early arriving at the theatre:

And because the tickets were pretty cheap, I didn't skimp out and instead got us tickets in the orchestra level:

As we were seated (our seats were right next to the aisle), the usher told us to please participate in the show when asked. Ugh. We knew that there would be a lot of dancing so we were instantly threatened with having to get up and dancing in the aisles with one of the performers :( Neither of us are into that kind of thing and ended up spending the 15 minutes waiting for the show to start and the first 30 minutes of the show being anxious. It was only when the main character of the show asked the entire audience to get up and do a little hip-shaking that we could relax.

I really like the music at the beginning of the show when it was upbeat and party-like. I felt that there was a lot of yelling and loud bursts of noise which became tiring to my ears about halfway through. Eric didn't like the last four songs because they were slow and soulful and extra-dramatic... I agree, but I kept myself occupied by paying attention to the technical difficulties of the songs and the strength of the woman who played Fela's mother; great range, great control, and great power for the climax of the songs.

Another huge plus about seeing Fela! in Toronto rather than in NYC was that the guy who played Fela in our version of it was the one who won the Tony for his performance when the show debuted in New York the year before. Again, how lucky is that?

Wurst

2011-12-06T08:00:00.042-05:00

Saturday, October 22, 2011. Eric and I had a date night and actually went out on this particular weekend. We first went to dinner at this new bratwurst place called Wurst, then to a movie at the closest downtown theatres to us, then to a friend's birthday party. WHOA! That's a pretty crazy Saturday night for the us!!!

So Eric's been wanting to try this WVRST (pronounced "verst") place for a while but I've been reluctant to go because there are so many other places to eat around us and bratwurst isn't at the top of my cravings-list when we're faced with the decision of where to eat. Luckily for Eric, I was just talking about "Wvrst" to Lauren over email the day before. She said that she went to a restaurant by the same name in Calgary with friends a few days earlier and had the most amazing hand-made soft pretzels. Soft pretzels completely changed the game. I would do anything for some good soft pretzels. We thought that the two restaurants might be related so we gave it a try.

The Calgary and the Toronto locations are not affiliated so I didn't get my pretzels :( We did end up getting some pretty good food for a good price though.

After ordering, we were given a number on a stand and told to sit wherever we wanted along the long benches filling the middle of the room, or at the high tables near the windows:

We then waited for our order to be filled then brought to us. Waiting... waiting... waiting...

By the time that food arrived, we had eyeballed everyone else's food around us. Our mouths were watering in anticipation. Eric got a classic bratwurst, and I got turkey-chicken seasoned with cilantro (mine tasted good, but it wasn't a very distinct taste considering the ingredients). We also got a side of large fries which came with two dipping sauces. There were about 12 sauces to choose from so we asked which was the cashier's favourite. She did not steer us wrong with the mayo-based Chive & Garlic. I usually won't touch mayo with a 10-foot pole, but I could eat this stuff by the spoonful, it was so delicious. Our other sauce was a hot mayo-based one that we chose ourselves. Mmmm:

Five Year Anniversary Gift

2011-12-05T08:00:00.020-05:00

Wednesday, November 30, 2011. It was our five-year anniversary this year. This was my gift from Eric (and my ring-based happiness is my gift to Eric):

We got the ring from my dad's cousin, Connie, who is a jeweller in NYC - the purpose of the trip was 1/2 to see the city and family, and 1/2 to pick up the ring. I'vd had my eye on something sparkly for a while :)

THANK YOU, ERIC. For the ring, and for the past five years. I felt that we were close before, but our relationship is so much more now. I can't wait to see how we'll grow and change in the next five.

This picture didn't turn out great, but I only had space for 2 pictures left on my SD card and was too lazy to find another. I've also been swamped with getting my own Christmas things ready since I'm leaving for Calgary in just a few days. I know that I won't have time to do my own things once back home because my mom and other commitments seem to monopolize my time upon landing. This picture was the better of the two.

Brunch with Cousin Angie

2011-12-04T14:00:00.023-05:00

Saturday, November 12, 2011. My "cousin" Angie was in town for work a few weeks ago. Usually, her time in Toronto is all booked up with family-related meals and get togethers, but she found some time before going to the airport for her return flight to have breakfast with us. It took about 30 minutes to find a place to eat because everywhere we went didn't open until 10 or 10:30am. What kind of breakfast places don't open early, when people might be looking for breakfast???

After we exhausted all options near our place (we made Angie drive while we gave her very vague and indecisive directions from the passenger- and backseat on Queen St West, so thank goodness is was early on Saturday morning when there was minimal traffic on the usually bumper-to-bumper road) we drove west to Easy Restaurant. We had heard about this place as a 'favourite breakfast place' by our old landlords and thought that we'd give it a try. We did have to wait 15 minutes for it to open (9:30am), but it was worth it.

Angie got some healthy pancakes, which she made unhealthy by smothering them in maple syrup. Eric got some crepe thing and I got eggs benedict. Everything was delicious. Mmm:

Next time we're looking for a breakfast place - especially when we're taking an out-of-towner there - we're going to do our research first... or just stay and bust out our trusty griddle for breakfast at home!

Lunch in Paris

2011-12-04T08:00:00.005-05:00

Wednesday, November 23, 2011. Eric's work group at lunch in Paris. IN PARIS. How tough are their lives? That's Andrew smiling at the camera. He wasn't feeling great this day because of some bad steak tartar the night before :(

Beer Glasses for Boudreau

2011-12-02T08:00:00.167-05:00

Sunday, November 20, 2011. Our friend, Matt, just had his 30th birthday. Since thirty is a pretty important number, I made him a gift with an extra special personal touch.

Matt went to university with Eric, so they know each other much better than I. Under these circumstances Eric would usually be the one to think of a gift, then pass the idea onto me to find it and make it presentable (wrapping it) as a birthday gift. Unfortunately he was travelling for work so the entire process fell on my shoulders.

I was reminded about a birthday dinner that a mutual friend of ours, Diane, was hosting at her house at the end of the week. Only seven days from when I realized that I couldn't show up empty-handed. Seven days was not much time to think of an idea then execute it. Thankfully, I've been on a creative kick lately so it didn't take long for my brain to find a gift that was both personal and useful.

The idea came to me when I thought about the last time that we were at the Scarlett's new home. We were just over for some beer and Korean takeout. Diane is always the most-proper host so she provided some beer glasses for everyone to drink out of. Her set of glassware was so cute - there were six, and each of them had a different picture enameled on it.

Haunh. Beer glasses. That's not such a bad idea since we spend a lot of time with talking over a pint of beer. They'd definitely be used. Now how to make it special for a 30th birthday... I could etch them with his monogram... but that doesn't seem to be enough...

That's when I sent an email to Eric to call me immediately so we could brainstorm some ideas. The monogram was good, but it was fairly plain. Was there anything else that we could add to the glasses for a more personal touch? When we hung up, we had come up with five or six ideas, but none of them very good or feasible. That day, as I was travelling downtown on the streetcar to meet a friend for lunch, it hit me.

Why not contact some of Matt's friends to see if they'd be willing to supply me with adjectives that describe Matt or remind them of him?

The idea was gold! I was half distracted the entire meal trying to work out the logistics of getting the adjectives (I only had six days to get the job done now), how to do it (I was going to etch the glass with an etching cream), where to get the glasses, and where to get the supplies to etch. After running the idea by Eric (he was still pushing for another, lesser idea) and assuring him that it would be awesome (the visualization of it was awesome in my head in any case), the email went out requesting three adjectives.

With five days to go, I only had two responses, so another email went out to harass our friends to get the thesaurus out and send me those words. During that time, I gathered my supplies... which took a lot more effort than I would have liked since all the art stores downtown seemed to be out of the etching cream, and I couldn't find beer glasses that had the 'right shape' and weren't too thick- or thin-walled. The etching cream and vinyl was found at Michael's in Mississauga and the glasses were discovered at Canadian Tire.

Four days to go and I had most of my supplies and words. That's when I got to work.

First, I designed the monogram and the look of the adjectives. I use a different font for each word, so 18 different looks. I also tried to find a font that somewhat represented the word. I then used a mixture of programs and machines (Inkscape to design, SCAL to program the cutter, and my beloved Cricut to cut the sticky-backed vinyl) to cut out stencils:

I peeled the wax backing off the stencils and adhered them to the glasses, pushing away all the bubbles, ensuring that the etching cream wouldn't seep out past the holes for the letters, and most difficult, working around the curves of the glasses. Why could these glasses not have been flat-sided? Because they wouldn't have looked so elegant in the end, that's why. Thankfully, the vinyl was pretty stretchy so it was probably the easiest medium to work with in this case:

The glass made for some great photos since shadows from the stencils were cast on all the surfaces the glasses were laying on:

I used Armour Etch to etch the glass. I did some research about what techniques to use, how much to use, and how to apply it on YouTube before putting it on the glasses. It was just a handful of videos, but I highly recommend watching someone else do it before you try. One hint I picked up from those videos was to use Q-Tips rather than a paintbrush. The cream would have destroyed the bristles on the brush so you'd have to throw it away at the end of the project:

As you can see, I sort of over-did it with the amount of etching cream that I used. I learned that the deeper you want the etch, the more cream you use and the longer you leave it on there. I wanted the words to be fairly frosted so I was aiming for more etch. Once the cream was applied, I had to be careful because it started to run downwards and I wanted to minimize the accidental drip marks:

Also, the container says that you're to leave the cream on for FIVE minutes before rinsing it off - this is only if you use a specific stenciling product of the same line (I don't know what it's called anymore). The cream doesn't eat through plastics so I left it on for about 20 minutes before rinsing it off completely, then washed the glasses with dishsoap and hot water.

This was the final result. A monogram for his last name on one side:

And the three words on the other side. Each glass contains the words from one person, so each represents a friend:

I haven't disclosed which glass belongs to whom, but the contributors are:
- Eric Szmurlo
- Diane Scarlett
- Matt Fong
- Tim Hannigan
- Ian Cameron
- James Fenske
- Matt McCormack

I didn't submit any words, so I marked the glasses in my own special way:

The six glasses, close-up. Redoubtable, scurrilous, impregnable:

Circumlocutory, perspicacious, articulate:

Entertaining, smart, ponce:

Anachronistic, loquacious, infatuated:

Cantankerous, funny, loyal:

Gregarious, awkward, exuberant:

You might have noticed that there were seven names given as contributors, but only six beer glasses. One of the 'friends' came back with words that weren't as endearing, but I didn't want to eliminate his efforts completely, so I made this little shot glass in the beer glass' place. I think that it completes the set perfectly. Affable, annoying, unacceptable:

This was a great project and a great gift. The idea was completely in synch with the final result, AND I found another excuse to use my Cricut. This has got to be one of my best creations yet!

The pictures didn't turn out too bad either:

Down-Home Goldendoodles

2011-12-01T08:00:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, November 29, 2011. Every once in a while, I think that I need a new puppy in our house. OK, maybe not every once in a while, it's more like everyday except I manage to keep myself away from actively looking for a new dog. Not this day.

I was cruising around Kijiji and found an ad for Mini Goldendoodles (I'm still not sure if I want the same kind of dog - which I've have to buy - or if I want to adopt something, but it never hurts to look at what's out there). I clicked on it and saw the cutest pictures of 6ish-week old puppies. As if that was enough to satiate my need for daily-cuteness. So I clicked on the breeder's link: www.downhomegoldens.com

So cute!!!! That's when I notice that this breeder lives near Arthur, Ontario. "Hey," I think, "that's where Maggie's from." I do a little more browsing and see that is IS the same breeder's. I recognized the kids in the pictures, their house, yard, and the little shed that the dogs live in. Not only that, but I swear that the litter of cream/white Minis is Maggie's:

This one looks EXACTLY like the sister that made it into the "Final Two" with Maggie when we were trying to decide which one was going to be ours:

I do some more browsing to the "Puppies Available" and see that Hunter (mom) and Peanut (dad - although I'm positive that the "Peanut" that sired Maggie was distinctly grey) are the parents of the newest litter. Ack! My heart is breaking for a new puppy. How awesome would it be for Maggie to have a sister by the same parents???

- I've got my eye on Female #5... although you can see a bit of 'crazy' in those eyes. You'd think that I would have learned from Maggie. She had the same look of a touch of mischief and still I picked her. - - Maybe Female #8? Or is she too similar in colour to Maggie? Is a matching set cuter, or the same pup in different colours?
- Maybe Female #10? I think that she might look more like a Golden than a Poodle though...

When I'm done ogling the puppies, I move onto the Testimonials page. I thought that Maggie was an exception to Mini sizing (most are taller than she is, and they weigh 30-35lbs where she's never broken 21lbs), but turns out that most Minis from this breeder are on the smaller end. Big enough to run with but small enough to pick up and cuddle with on the couch. Another reason to purchase my next Mini from them!

As I move down the page I see the next section dedicated to a dog named "Maggie." I think, "Hey, they have a dog on there with the same name as mine." Then I scroll down a little more and see the picture of this dog named Maggie and think, "Is that dog wearing a scarf and leg warmers? Who does that to a dog???" And that's when I realize that I'm looking at a picture of my own dog:

So that's what people think about us when we walk around with those leg warmers on her paws. Haunh. (I'm still going to use them for practical reasons by the way - they minimize sludge splashing up into her leg and belly fur. No, really they do.)

Oh, why do I do this to myself??? I know that I can't have another as long as we're in Toronto. The only thing holding us back (yeah, us, since Eric just recently joined me on the bandwagon) is the fact that it's almost logistically impossible to bring two dogs back to Calgary for Christmas... I guess that that means that we'll just have to move back sooner rather than later :)

Flight Path to Munich

2011-11-30T14:00:00.001-05:00

Monday, November 14, 2011. Eric just got back from a 2-week business trip to Europe. He travelled from Toronto -> Istanbul -> London -> Paris -> Istanbul -> London -> Toronto. Ugh. So much flying (and one Chunnel ride from London to Paris).

On the first segment from Toronto to Istanbul, the plane was to land in Munich where the group would transfer to another plane to Turkey. Unfortunately, there was severe fog in Germany so most planes were being diverted to Zurich if they had enough fuel. The plane Eric was on did NOT have enough fuel so they were forced to circle for an hour before landing. This is their flight path:

Of course they ended up missing their connector (which departed only an hour after the first plane was originally supposed to land... and they were supposed to gather their luggage, then go through customs, then check their luggage onto the next flight, then make it to the flight???), but made the next flight three hours later. I have yet to check the little camera to see if Eric took any pictures from his trip that I need to get through. Sigh.

Be A Veg

2011-11-30T08:00:00.000-05:00

Thursday, November 10, 2011. So while we were living at my aunt and uncle's place, Eric had to take the subway into work and back. One day he comes back and says, "Maybe we shouldn't be eating pork anymore." I tell him, "Don't be silly. I can't give up bacon," and the conversation is dropped. Many times, we have had the conversation about how society is heading in the direction of becoming vegetarians, and that we will eventually become vegetarians in the far, far, FAR future.

As of right now, I just can't give up meat for two reasons.
1. Nutrition/Laziness - it's hard to get your daily allotment of protein in if you can't eat meat. I also know that I need my protein because when Eric goes away for work travel, I cut back on the meat drastically. Mostly because I'm too lazy to heat something up. After about a week, I start to notice the difference in my muscles when I play soccer. I don't have as much power or as much speed, and I tire much quicker. This theory has been tested and proven over five times over the past two years, so I've convinced myself that I need some serious protein in my system if I'm going to be active. Beans, tofu and soy could replace the protein that I get from meat, but they seem so hard to cook and don't seem to get the job done despite a 1:1 replacement. I suppose that my body might just need some time to adjust...

2. Taste - I LOVE my beef. I think that I have over 20 postings about beef and/or meals that include beef in them in this blog. I also love other meats (excluding pork which I only like... and bacon is NOT pork, btw) and there isn't any non-meat product out there that can compete. I've been told that there are some amazing vegetarian-Chinese restaurants out there where they make the tofu look, taste and FEEL like real meat. I would have to be the judge, but I could handle that. Unfortunately, they don't sell that kind of stuff in a normal grocery store, and I'm not willing to give up that meaty-goodness.

Anyway, I'm staying a meat-eater as of right now. I know that there are a ton of other reasons why I should and shouldn't eat meat, but I don't have the energy or the effort to get into the finer details in this post. I will, however, get into the one that planted the idea in Eric's head that he should suggest that we shouldn't eat meat anymore. He saw an ad on the subway:

He must have had to stand by it, and therefore stare at it for the 25 minutes ride. I have to admit that the picture of the smiling piglet even has ME contemplating vegetarianism...

Believe Banner

2011-11-29T14:00:00.055-05:00

Sunday, November 20, 2011. I made this "BELIEVE" banner for my friend, Diane. A few weeks ago, we were talking about how to decorate her mantle for the upcoming holiday season. She's had her mind on a banner for a while. When I told her that I just made one earlier in the year for my cousin's birthday (which was then later converted into a "Congratulations"banner for another cousin's bridal shower back in Calgary), then offered to make hers, we got excited. Diane was excited that she was one step closer to her banner. I was excited because it was another reason to use my Cricut (a machine that cuts specified shapes)! Yay for us!!!

Even though we went back and forth about 30 times, Diane pretty much gave me free reign. Her only requests were for
- each panel to be in this antiqued/scrolled/rectangle shape
- the colour to be blue
- a snowflake to be behind the letters

Although that sounds pretty specific, now looking back on the requests, it wasn't. There are a lot of blues out there. There are also a lot of fonts that totally change the look of the banner depending on which you choose. Finally, I know that Diane's style is clean and contemporary with hints of French Country and antiques. How was I going to convey this in the banner?

AND, how was I going to minimize the amount of additional supplies I needed to purchase for this project? Whenever I have a new project, it seems that there is always something that I need to buy. Just one thing per project, but as I'm sure you can tell, I have a lot of projects throughout the year. That means a lot of partially used project supplies. It's getting out of control.

So I was digging through all my papers and raw materials and BAM I came across some ivory colour vellum. Just two sheets with stripes and just two sheets with polka dots. What can I do with such a little amount of each??? Argh. Why do I not buy more at one time??? Then a second BAM. Use both and alternate! Both are perfect for Diane's style. And, on top of a very bright blue, they mute everything to a gentle colour to match her walls:

Finally, because it's the holiday season which - to me - means extravagance, I found a fancy font and used the Cricut to cut it out of glittery gold cardstock (I had to clear the glitter with Diane just in case she's not a fan. She was. And that's why we're friends). Cardstock was used so that the letters could stand up off the backing, giving the banner a titch of a 3D effect.

And to top it all off, I got this super crisp picture of the banner on the mantle (she was so happy that she hung it up right there and then) while holding the camera in my hands. No tripod, just resting my elbows against my body and the mantle.

Thanks for allowing me to make this for you, Diane. It's always fun collaborating with a friend over something pretty. And it's even more fun when it turns out as well as this project did.

Believe, everyone!

Dinner with Eric's Work Group

2011-11-29T08:00:00.001-05:00

Wednesday, November 2, 2011. This was originally supposed to be a employee + partners/family event, but when I arrived downtown to meet Eric, he notified me that I might be the only non-CPP person there. How awkward is that? :( Not only that, but they moved the date of the dinner so that the head of the group could make it since he was flying in from London earlier that day. The Big Boss was going to be there. And he was paying.

I mean, I've met almost everyone and had about 1/3 of the group over for dinner at my place in either Toronto or London when we had the corporate apartment, but the dinner suddenly became more formal in an instant and I had the walk from the office to the restaurant to ready myself.

I started off a little shaky and quiet, especially when Big Boss sat down, scanned the table, then did a double-take at me. He said, "Hey, you're the only one who I don't recognize as being on my payroll." Nope. I'm not.

We've met before so at least we had the ice breaker of, "I believe that we've met before. At Rob's party. At his house in London. Across the street from Buckingham Palace." Yeah, that's right. I've been to a house party DIRECTLY across the street from the Palace that the Queen lives in when she's in London. Of course that opened a door to a new conversation about their co-worker's old digs (he's had to move since they had a baby just a few months ago).

Anyway, a glass of wine, the security of having Abby next to me (I don't know any better at making someone feel comfortable at a work-function) and some soup-dumplings later, the conversation was flowing and we were all having a great time. There was about 50% too much food, even though all of us were stuffing ourselves, but all of it was delicious. I can't wait for the next one ;)

From left to right - Caroline, Andrew (Eric's mentor), Abby, me, Eric, Letty:

West Coast 2011. The End.

2011-11-28T19:00:00.000-05:00

I made it to the end of the West Coast 2011 posts!!!

Despite all the stress of our final day, we made it back, and I only have fond memories of our trip. There were stressful moments, but I think that those times make the good ones that much better. We reconnected and went over stories and events that had happened to us, individually, but hadn't yet had the time to share with one another. We faced some challenges together, but laughed together at so many other instances. We were best buds, for sure, again, by the time that we got back to Calgary.

This was too good of a picture not to give it its own post, and what better opportunity than the final post?

West Coast 2011. Day 12. Flight Back to Calgary.

2011-11-28T18:15:00.001-05:00

Friday, August 5, 2011. Happy 5th anniversary to us! We've had five anniversaries now and FOUR of them have been spent on plane. This time, we were flying from Seattle to Calgary for my cousin, Ashley's, wedding.

Our morning was spent gathering our things and jamming everything that we bought into our suitcases. When that was done and we were checked out, we went to a mall and bought Eric some shoes from Clarks. Casual enough to wear with shorts, but still OK to wear with jeans. We didn't think that we'd be able to find something so versatile, but when you're lucky, you're lucky. We then went to Costco to pick up a few more items (like caramel clusters covered in macadamia nuts and chocolate) and some shirts. I'm pretty sure that we got some hotdogs for lunch too.

We then went to the airport and dropped off the car. We were so scared that we were going to forget something in the car, but as of right now we've still got all of our stuff. *crossing our fingers*

When we left San Diego (we had already driven about 25 miles by the time we we remembered to take a picture) the odometer read 29101... meaning that we drove 1,768 miles. WOW!

We got to the airport so early because we thought that we'd have problem returning the car (remember when the Avis in San Diego tried to charge us an additional $1200 since we were dropping the car off in a different state than the one we picked it up in?) but turns out that the girls at the desk have seen this problem before and knew exactly how to handle it. Within three minutes of Eric stepping up to the counter, he was done.

We then spent TWO HOURS trying to check in. First the machines kept freezing everyone out. Then the lady who was at the desk was swamped with people needing help... and those were people who were supposed to be flying American and got directed to the AirCanada desk. The people who were actually flying AirCanada didn't have anyone to help them. We also weren't able to check-in online because Seattle International doesn't allow it... or something like that. The guy behind us was doing some research on his iPad. Finally, after two hours of frustration and standing around (and fighting with this very loud, sassy lady in the other line who was upset that she wasn't able to return a ticket that she was too late to make, then wanted the airline to pay for a hotel for her and waive her flight change fees, AND allowing a returning soldier to skip the line because he was coming back from Iraq and still had two transfers to make), we got our bags on the conveyor and were able to hang out in the lounge. Oh, and after we got to the desk and the AirCanada lady scanned our passports, she noticed that Eric was a Star Alliance Gold Member then told us that we could have check in - with NO LINE-UP - at the Executive check-in. Doh.

With 30 minutes before the departure time, we lef the lounge and went to the boarding area. When we got there, Eric went to check the status of our flight by standing around the gate while I sat with all of our stuff. After 5 minutes of inactivity, he came back and we sat around until our departure time. When the departure time came and went, we started to wonder why we hadn't been called yet. That's when he went back to the desk to get some questions answered:

Turns out that they boarded earlier than 30 minutes in advance and that everyone who boarded got on there so quickly that by the time we came up, there was no one else in line. While we were making our way up to the gate the lady was calling us over the intercom in the waiting area. By the time that we got to the waiting area, they started calling us over the intercom in the lounge. Talk about very unlucky timing :(

Anyway, we were supposed to fly from Seattle to Vancouver, have a 2 hour layover, then fly from Vancouver to Calgary and arrive at midnight (those were the only flights that we could get using our points). The lady was mad at Eric when he showed up at the desk, but managed to get us onto the flight from Seattle to Calgary direct. We arrived at 11pm, an hour earlier than our original plans. I guess it worked out alright.

West Coast 2011. Day 11. Crab Pot.

2011-11-28T18:00:00.001-05:00

Thursday, August 4, 2011. A row of pepper bundles were just hanging from a storefront and this one was lit up by the sun. So pretty! I don't even want to think about the person's hands who made these. If they weren't wearing gloves then some pepper juice must have been absorbed by their hands, and if they accidentally touched their eye... *shudder* ... So pretty!

The original Starbucks:

Neither of us was really needing coffee, but we couldn't walk away without buying anything either. So we got an iced latte (???) to share:

We then walked down to the water to check out potential places to have dinner. I had been planning on going back to The Crab Pot (I went with my mom and sister back in June) but Eric wasn't really into it so I thought that going there and seeing what they do might entice him. When we got there, he didn't even want to go in to peek through the window at a table with food :( I still had time to try to turn him though...

We had some time through the afternoon so we checked out some ferry rides/tours. Unfortunately, the only ones that were left were the sunset ones. They would get back close to 9pm, and we weren't dressed for the cooling weather so we walked on.

I made Eric take this picture with Elliott the Sea Otter because Lauren and I took one just a few months before with the stuffed animal and he thought that it was hilarious. I think that Eric's picture is better:

When we finished scoping out all the dinner options by the water - and still hadn't agreed on anything - we went back up the hill to downtown. We stopped off at a bar that we walked past earlier and had a few drinks to mull over our choices. We had a fantastic conversation about the house that we'd like to have once we could afford one (Toronto downtown prices are RIDICULOUS!), and the basics of how we'd like it set up. It's so fun to talk about a future where anything goes!

After I got two drinks down into Eric, he was a little bit more receptive to The Crab Pot. He wasn't outright saying "no" anymore. I told him that he'd love it, even though he was saying that he wasn't really into seafood at this point in our trip. I told him to suck it up since we only had one more meal/chance to have fresh, fresh, fresh crab. Guess who won that battle.

I DID!

So we took our seat in the outdoor section of the restaurant. I swear, every inch of everything that belongs to that restaurant is covered in a layer of sticky crab juice. Eww.

Still, I knew that it was the easiest place to find good crab, and I was determined to show Eric that he'd love it. At this point, he still thought that crab meat wasn't worth the effort to get it out of the shell:

So, he ordered some grilled scallop dish on a bed of rice with steamed greens. Bleh. I ordered "Crab, crab, crab" which consists of 1lb of Snow Crab, 1lb of Dungeness Crab, 1lb of Alaskan King Crab. All of it is thrown in a pot with corn and chunks of potatoes and spices, then boiled until it's all tender. The waitress brings it over in a bowl which she then dumps out on the paper-covered table, then leaves the bowl for your garbage and shells. You are also supplied with a wooden board and a mallet to break the shells. Or you can do the "Chinese method," which is using your teeth:

Oh, and they also give you a bib so you don't make a mess on yourself. Making a mess is a given. Localizing the splatter is how you know if you're a pro or amateur:

So I start out opening up my crab shells and making clean, organized piles of crab meat on the edge of my board. I only eat the little bits that don't come out whole, which isn't very much because my crab-skills are (I don't mind if I brag) pretty good. By the time that I'm through the Snow Crab and just part of the Dungeness Crab, I look up to see that Eric has finished his entire dish (he didn't even save me part of a scallop!!!!) and is eyeballing my pile. As if I'm going to share with him! He didn't share with me and he wasn't interested in getting the Pot with me even though I pushed him to.

So I continue to work at getting the meat out of all the shells. My melted butter is getting a little cold, but it's OK. I'd rather enjoy piece after piece of uninterrupted crab than have to break to get more meat out. I look up again and Eric's "eyeballing" has turned into lustful staring. I have a choice at this point. To share? Or not to share?

Since we did just have a fantastic road trip and connected after months of him working and travelling for work, and since it is the last night of our trip, and since it was his birthday just the day before, I give in. I let him have a few pieces. That's when I realize that he's not staring at my crab piles, he's starting at the mallet. He wants to pound the shells himself (it's messy, dramatic and fun). Haunh.

I give him the go-ahead and it's like I released some beast. Eric goes crazy and starts digging the meat out of everything that he can get his paws on. It turns out that Eric's idea that crab meat is not worth the effort to get at has changed :) I'm so happy! We can now share my love for crab!!!

I would have let him be - it means less work for me - except for the fact that he was eating most of what he was de-shelling, not putting the big pieces on the piles for all-at-once consumption. I had hardly eaten any of my food and he had already eaten his entire dish so this behaviour was beyond my sharing abilities. I took my mallet back.

When all the crab had been shelled, we dug in. We compared the three types of crab and decided that we like Dungeness the best. Snow didn't have much meat and had a weak flavour. Alaskan's texture was extremely soft but the flavour was lighter and more subtle. Dungeness was meaty (great for soaking up all that butter) and the strength of it's flavour was more than the other two combined. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

When we were done, we weren't full because it took so long to get to all the food. And not being full was good. We had to walk all the way back up the massive hill to the car. On the way we came across this piggy and took pictures with it. I didn't have the guts to jump up onto it, but Eric certainly did (see his feet in the air?):

We then checked into our final hotel of the trip (thank you, Marriott Points for all you did for us this trip), where our room had a jacuzzi in the middle of it. We did not use it. In fact, I was totally grossed out by it:

West Coast 2011. Day 11. Seattle.

2011-11-28T17:30:00.054-05:00

Thursday, August 4, 2011. We were sad that we only had one day in Newport at the B&B... but then again, it wasn't really our style to stay at a place like that either. Breakfast was at 9am sharp and I'm sure that you would have received a scolding (like your mom would deliver) from Terry. Although Eric was a bit hung over and we were up late, we were so nervous about being late for breakfast that we were up hours before.

There were two tables in the dining area. We sat at the larger one with three other couples. One was from Arizona - and they got us talking/comparing central heating. Houses down there don't have heat, and we don't have air conditioning in Calgary... both sounded crazy to the other. Another couple was from only an hour away. They just needed to get away so they drove west to the coast. The final couple was the most entertaining. The man used to be in the electrical industry but was newly retired and his wife was a teacher. We got talking about anything and everything. It would have been nice to spend more time with them since they were talkative people, who weren't interested in talking about traffic and weather.

The view of the ocean and the bay from the patio:

We decided to walk down to the beach to check out the remnants of our fire, and to see what we missed the night before because we got the beach too late. I like this picture because it looks like I'm marching with intent:

I thought that we took a picture of our ashes, but I guess the photo never made the cut. These are the stairs that we had to navigate in pitch black just 12 hours before. Eric was also intoxicated and we had tons of stuff to carry so I'm surprised that we didn't slip and hurt ourselves:

We checked out and were off again. This time, our destination was Pike Place Market in Seattle. It was early afternoon by the time that we arrived so many of the bouquets at the Flower Market were already sold. Still, there were some really, really, really good deals to be had:

Like this $15 bunch of various pink flowers. Pink... it's what I'm attracted to :) It was interesting to see the different flowers used in the bouquets in August compared to the ones that I saw during my visit with my mom and sister back in June:

Mmm. Seafood. MMM. Massive seafood... big seafood is so appealing because there is so much more meat for the same amount of work to get at it... then again, when it's big, it means that the animal was quite old when it was killed which means tougher and less delicate meat. Such a fine balance when purchasing:

We hung out at the famous seafood distributor, hoping that someone in the crowd would buy something so the guys would throw it around before packaging it. It's what they're known for. No one seemed like they were in the mood to purchase for the five minutes that we were there so we moved on:

We are so lucky with the weather. Another gorgeous day that we were able to spend both in and outdoors:

Little Pink Nose

2011-11-25T14:00:00.007-05:00

Wednesday, November 9, 2011. I'm always cold, especially when I sit for hours in front of the computer, not moving. The blanket that I usually use to wrap around my shoulders accidentally fell to the floor and someone thought that it made a good bed to morning-nap on:

Another Early Morning

2011-11-25T08:00:00.010-05:00

Wednesday, November 9, 2011. After driving Eric to the subway station, I found more pretty photo ops of sunlight poking through clouds and trees:

Courtney's Prime Rib

2011-11-24T14:00:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, November 8, 2011. As I mentioned before, we ate like kings and queens while living with the Chungs. This time, it was my turn to make dinner since everyone was at work or school all day and I thought it would be nice for them to come home to a warm meal. My choice was prime rib:

It's a little fancy for a Tuesday, but totally worth it. When there are people around to cook for, I get really into making food, and boy did I ever have to make a lot of food this evening. There were 6 of us eating dinner (six ravenous adults who each eat 1.5x the amount of a normal person, I swear), and 4 people taking leftovers for lunch the next day... which means preparing an abnormally large amount of food.

The main dish was prime rib, quickly seared to keep in all those amazing juices, then slow-cooked for over three hours to a perfect 135F (the rare-ish end of medium rare). *sigh* Look at that crust. There isn't even a millimetre of grey between the crust and the pink inside, suggesting that I over-cooked it at one point. Perfection! (Although I can admit that I could have improved my presentation.)

My sides included heirloom tomatoes with two different sizes of boccacini, sliced basil, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Chantelle and I were just talking about how we like to eat tomatoes and she insisted that she doesn't like to eat them raw. I thought that I could convinced her otherwise, and convince her I did. As if she could resist the tomatoes when they pretty much act as a base for all the other yummy flavours:

"Dirty" mashed potatoes ("dirty" meaning that they skins were left on) seasoned with milk, a titch of sugar, salt, pepper, and some herb and onion cream cheese. I used almost 5 lbs of potatoes. FIVE POUNDS to make 10 servings. And it was all gone by that evening after everyone had eaten their dinner and put together their little tupperwares for the next day's lunch:

Finally, I made some roasted brussel sprouts and carrots topped with craisins for sweetness and almonds for additional 'earthy' flavouring. I used to abhor brussel spouts (bad incident with them as a kid), but since my cousin Ashley introduced me to them roasted and mixed with other flavours last Christmas, I use any excuse to eat them. Yum!

I've mentioned that my family eats a lot in this post. It's true. We do. But I haven't balanced out the negative-connotations that come with that fact with my admiration of the love that we have for food. We eat a lot because we love it. And we love great food. And we all share that love. Only with my family can I eat whatever I want, and as much of it as I want (it's terrible for the waistline, I know :( ), and know that I'm not alone. Food is pretty much our religion. Whenever something important happens, we get together, eat, and bond at the dinner table. I love my family.

My Birthday Flowers

2011-11-24T10:00:00.018-05:00

Tuesday, November 22, 2011. I had a lovely surprise waiting for me when I got home from an appointment on Tuesday morning:

Eric bought me birthday flowers! Birthday tulips. In November. Tulips are one of my favourite flowers of all time, so I'm very pleased that Eric remembered that little fact about me. Just when you think that everything you say goes in one ear and straight out the other...

Also, tulips are spring-time flowers... which means that they were imported from either South Africa or the greenhouses in the Netherlands. Eep!

Eric wasn't able to be in Toronto for my birthday since he's travelling for work. Over the past two weeks his travel schedule is as follows Toronto -> Istanbul -> London -> Paris -> Istanbul -> London -> Toronto... gross :( He was in Paris on the 22nd, so I thought that it was fitting to take pictures of my birthday flowers in front of a photo of the Eiffel Tower that Eric took back in 2006:

Thank you, Eric. Even though you're far away, you filled my day with love and happiness and warm thoughts on my 29th birthday.

Linda's Beef Bourguignon

2011-11-23T14:00:00.000-05:00

Sunday, November 6, 2011. So while we stayed at the Chungs, we ate like kings. This Sunday night meal is an example of the yumminess that we got to be a part of. We were so lucky to come back from a morning where we played soccer downtown, and an afternoon visiting with a friend, to a house that smelled like butter and herbs and beef and warmth. My aunt, Linda, made beef bourguignon for dinner:

It's French, so of course it's ridiculously flavourful. It's pretty much fried bacon, beef browned in that bacon fat, potatoes, onions, mushrooms, carrots, lots of spices and wine. It took Linda - and Maggie who stood by dutifully watching for scraps to fall her way, and meticulously licking the bacon splatter of the floor - an entire afternoon to make it.

Since the main couse was so rich, we went healthy with the side dishes. Roasted and sliced beets:

And a simple jicama salad:

Mmm. Thank you for including us in this royal feast, Linda!

Frosted Leaves and Chippy's Fish & Chips

2011-11-23T10:00:00.001-05:00

Sunday, November 6, 2011. As usual, Eric and I had our Sunday morning soccer game to go to but this time we needed to drive back downtown to our apartment to pick up our soccer stuff then head over to the fields for the game. We left before anyone else was awake in the house and when we went outside, we found the world had been frosted over for the first time this year:

Eric scraped the car's windows off while I took pictures of the yard:

I really like these two. The bluish tinge from the picture being taken in shadow plus the frost, competes with the warm colours of the leaves. That and the frost is so crisp:

I took all these pictures with our little point-and-shoot (which I try to always have with me in my purse), which I've been complaining about to Eric. I don't like the camera and the kinds of pictures that it takes, especially when it needs to use the flash. It takes a ridiculous amount of time to process how much flash, and how to adjust the other settings to compensate for the bright light. I say that I miss my old Canon (which also weighs 50% more than this new one) to which Eric replies that this new one is far superior in all ways. I don't think that he knows anything about either of them because I'm the only one who uses the small camera... so we're at a stalemate... until now. I admit that this new camera takes better macro pictures, even in as low light as this:

I'm still mad/right about the flash function though.

The soccer game went really well. There are only 4 teams in our league this time (usually there are 9) so we play each of the teams once a month. Two of the teams are mainly made up of individuals, we have been around for 6 rounds so we all know each other and play together well, and the final team has been in the league for about 3 rounds, making them our biggest competition. This is who we played on this particular day. We lost to them the first time that we played, but managed to win 3-1 this time. I assisted all three goals, one of them being Eric's (go Team Szmurlo!). It seems that I've lost my ability to score myself but my passing has gotten better (more accurate and the weight is just right). I'll take that.

We didn't want to bring all of our stinky soccer stuff back to the Chungs just to haul it back later that week when we planned to move back, so we went back to the apartment and cleaned up there. By the time that we were done, we realized that we were famished and wanted something quick and close. Eric has been dying to go to this fish & chips place just a five minute walk from our condo, so that's where we went. Chippy's Fish & Chips:

The guy battered and fried the fish right in front of us. He even gave us a really good piece of fish because we paid him in two $5 bills instead of something bigger when he spotted the smaller papers in Eric's wallet and said that he needed them. Both fish and chips were smoking hot and so fresh and perfect when we got to chomp into it. Mmm.

Bathroom Lighting

2011-11-22T14:00:00.021-05:00

Saturday, November 5, 2011. Like I mentioned before, something happened to me during our stay at my aunt and uncle's. I didn't seek out great lighting. I'd just be hanging out then I'd look over to check that Maggie wasn't getting into trouble, or would walk up to Chantelle's room where we were staying to grab something, and out of the corner of my eye, I'd see things like this:

More surprisingly, I wasn't too lazy to go to the den (my designated area for the piles of 'stuff' that I brought with me) to get the Nikon, then go back and take a picture.

This picture was obviously taken in a bathroom - the Chung's newly (within the last year) renovated bathroom. I love glass tiles, and I especially love glass tiles with colours behind them, so it was a given that I would find coloured-glass tiles lit up withe morning light appealing.

During our two week stay, I spent more time that I'd like to admit trying to figure out the pattern of the tiles. It took a while, but I figured out that the positioning of the 'block' that repeats is quite small, it's just that the colours inside that block are totally random. Yay for me!