Saturday, February 25, 2012

Team Pancake Breakfast

I am so lucky to have an amazing team at work - each of them has unique gifts and qualities, see below for a picture of the three of them.  We had our first ever pancake breakfast on Friday morning.  I brought in the tablecloth, dishes and cutlery, and borrowed Kim's pancake griddle to make the pancakes.  The team brought in fresh fruit and some great toppings - cinnamon spread, and lemon/sugar.  It was such a nice way to start the day!  You'll recognize the Fiesta dishes, they looked even prettier in the office.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Octopus for Noah

I had to post this picture!  Kim is such a creative mommy, she sent me this picture of a meal she made for Noah.  An Octopus (sort of)!  Apparently Noah didn't like the mustard eyes - Kim says next time she'll make them with ketchup.  I think it's clever what she did with the hot dog, corn and those little fishies.

Short-Term Snow, Kim's Glasses, Quilt Photos!

I woke up to snow this morning, it was super pretty.  Take a look at the snow on the magnolia tree and the rooftop:

Kim and I had planned to do some errands this morning, starting with taking some photos of some quilts.  She picked me up and we went to Sugar Beach down by the water, and Kim took these quilt pictures while I acted a hanger.  Kim said that we were lucky to be taking the photos at this time because it was a "good colour temperature" this morning.  Whatever that means!!  You'll recognize a couple of them from a previous post, but these are so much prettier to look at given the background.
Neptune Hexagons
 
Flutterby Diamonds

Kaffe Yellow Windows

Seagulls watching from shore at Sugar Beach

An old favourite - fabric I bought in Atlanta in 2006

Probably my favourite quilt - unnamed to date

Fresh Flowers

Sugar Beach in winter
And then Kim had an errand, to get lenses put into some new frames she brought back from New York.  So off to the optician we went, and here's Kim as she is getting measured for her first pair of progressives.  She's wearing her new red frames, and then the optician put this wacky piece of plastic around and in front of the glasses to measure properly for the lenses:


After her frames we walked down to a nice little spot for tea and lo' and behold, they had scones!  Yummy, we each had two tiny scones, double cream and jam, and a pot of tea.  Nice.

And not to bore you with all of the details of the errands, but I had purchased a couple of groupons for a local quilting store, so I dragged brought Kim with me and bought a few things.  The prices are great at this place.

A quick trip then to Fedex to pick up some makeup that was shipped from the US.  On New Year's Eve I talked Kim into buying a few things from this cool cosmetics store online. *smile*  So, we both received some lipsticks, eye pencils, mascara and blush to try.

After all of the errands we then went to see The Iron Lady at a nearby theatre.  While Meryl Streep was excellent, the movie was not great.  I was pretty excited to be going to see what I thought would be a political history of Margaret Thatcher.  Her politics aren't a fit for mine, but as the first woman PM of Britain, I thought it would be fascinating.  Not so much - it turned out to be basically a story of her experience with dementia.  There were a few flashback to her political career but the rest was her, alone in her apartment, having hallucinations.

At least now I know what Auntie Dave and Mom are going through with their dementia.

And now, at 9:00 pm, most of the snow is gone.  There's a little ice on the sidewalks, but the snow melted during the day.  This is the strangest winter I can remember.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Yummy Salt and Vinegar Potatoes

I saw these online, and since I had just this morning received some nice potatoes from the Leslieville Farmers Market.  I had to try them.

I followed the recipe pretty closely. although I used a large white potato instead of fingerlings, and added some rosemary.  Here they are before going into the oven:


And here they are after being under the broiler for a few minutes:


Yumm, yumm, yumm.  Not sure they're great on the calorie side, but as an occasional treat, they're vegan and tasty.

Early Valentine's Treat for Daisy

Noah and Kim brought me two nice rice crispy treats - one for me, and one for Daisy.

And Daisy loved hers!  Here she is just about to eat it.  Thanks Noah for thinking of us!

Saturday, February 4, 2012

More Binding Done

Maybe this will go even faster than I thought it would.  Here's another completed quilt with the binding done, with my handsome guy Bert in the background.  I think Bert approves, although he seems to be ignoring the quilt in this picture.

Busy Binding

It's a busy couple of weeks coming up as I finish binding some quilts.  Here's the first one finished today, I'm calling "Fresh Flowers".  It's super bright!  I'm going to use it as a table cloth in the dining room and outside in the summer on the table too.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Almost a Guest Blogger

My best friend Kim started her blog up again last year, but soon, day-to-day life and being a mommy caught up with her and she didn't have time to keep the blog going.  So being the good friend I am, I offered Kim the opportunity to be a Guest Blogger on my blog any time she wanted to send out a posting.

So lo and behold, she sent me some pictures to put on the blog, but no accompanying message.  Still, they are mighty cute pictures of snow and Noah, and so here they are.  I'm sure Kim will find time to do a little writing at some point in the future and when she does, she can provide a story and more photos to share with you, dear readers.

We haven't had much snow here recently, and in fact we have had an extremely mild winter.  So when Noah told his mommy that he wanted to play in the snow, Kim had to figure out a way to deliver!  She and Noah walked up and down their street, "stealing" snow from their neighbours.


They piled the snow onto the front deck:


And then, Noah asked for his mommy to bury him in the snow.  Here he is:


Also from Kim, you can see her creative side at its best when finding games to play with Noah.  Here's a picture of Mommy and Noah playing "recycle the organics":


And, finally, a picture reflecting Kim's culinary talents: glow in the dark jello.  I'm sure it tasted as yummy as it looks.  The bowls of jello are shown here under the black light Kim bought so that they could see the glow.