Thinking of Springtime in Paris!

You Belong in Paris

Stylish and expressive, you were meant for Paris. The art, the fashion, the wine! Whether you're enjoying the cafe life or a beautiful park... You'll love living in the most chic place on earth.

What City Do You Belong In?

My Vampire Name!

Your Vampire Name Is...

Guinevere of Pain

What's Your Vampire Name?

Brayden's Birthday and Easter Dinner

After the hunt, we also celebrated Brayden's birthday today! We had a wonderful dinner and Brayden got some fun gifts including a new bathing suit and shirts, Diddy Kong Racing and a new bike!

Annual Outdoor Easter Egg Hunt

We held our annual easter egg hunt in the snow today! My Mom started this tradition approximately 10 years ago and we think this may be the first time there has ever been snow on the ground. For the first time, it was also at my sister's as my Mom was just returning from vacation. The kids had fun finding all the new hiding spots!

Easter Creations!

Just a couple of things I made for Easter, a card and some purses! The purses are made from one 12 by 12 piece of paper and are very easy. Instructions are from A Cherry on Top.
Just use this link:
http://www.acherryontop.com/article?a=661

For the purses, I used paper from Paper Salon. I love their line of paper!

These are the Daves I know

I heard this on Dave FM the other day and thought it was funny! Made me think of all the Daves I know, none of which are mentioned in this song.
Here's the link:

Look!

The roses Steve brought me last week are really lasting!!!

An Easter Tradition, Coloured Eggs!

Brittany and I coloured these eggs today!

Academically Speaking

Its been a good week for my daughters!

Brittany brought home her report card and she received 7 A's! She is pretty pumped!!

Then Brianne attended the honour roll breakfast at her high school on Thursday and received a plaque for having the top Grade 10 Scholastic average!!

Yep, I'm a very proud Mom!

Random Conversations with my Daughters

The other night at scrapbooking we were exchanging stories about things we've said to our children that will lead them to requiring therapy in their adult life.

You know things like:

If you don't stop that right now I'm going to beat you to a pulp......4 year old daughter's response, "but I don't want to be a pulp Mommy."

Or when your six year old daughter says to you "where are we going Mommy?" and you say "I'm going to drop you off and see if you can find your home", to which your daughter responds, in all seriousness, "I don't think I can find my way home from here Mommy."

And then there's other conversations that just kind of stop.

At scrapbooking, one of the ladies said that in their home they don't speak "Whinese". I thought that was pretty good so told my 15 year old daughter who responded with a flat "That's lame."

Then I asked my 11 year old daughter to come help fold clean underwear. She responded with "Ewwww....."
So I said "what, they're clean!"
She says, "no one folds underwear"
To which I responded, " who have you talked to about folding underwear?"
"Well no one"

Wildcraft

Last night, we went with friends, Kathryn and Dave, to a newly opened restaurant in Waterloo called Wildcraft. It is owned by the same people who run Charcoal Steakhouse, Del Dente and Martini's so given our experiences at these restaurants we did expect that Wildcraft would be good. And it was!

It is in a new building with extremely high ceilings showing the duct work and a two story glass walled wine room as you enter. The decor has an uptown boutique hotel feel. I should have brought my camera for some pictures(next time!).

I had an Asian salad, that was fresh and not overwhelmed by dressing followed by beef n blue,a bacon wrapped tenderloin topped by blue cheese served on mashed potatoes with sauteed broccolini. While I did ask for my tenderloin medium well, I think it came out medium rare, which was actually OK. I know chefs do not like to overcook beef so I gave the rarest pieces to Steve. He had short rib quesadillas and one of the specials, trout. He did comment that he doesn't like trout unless it is cooked well(sometimes it tends to be overcooked) and this was cooked properly! For dessert we shared the platter for two that included a small creme brulee, flourless chocolate torte and twice baked white chocolate cheese cake. By far our favourites were the cheesecake and the creme brulee although the creme brulee had a bit too much sugar on top that was carmelized for just a bit too long. I also had a passable cosmopolitan, a good Gerwertzaminer, and a yummy B52 coffee.

Kathryn and Dave also enjoyed their dinners, Boston Bibb salad, Turkey BLT soup(yep, turkey, bacon and tomatoes!), shrimp stir fry with a unique presentation and fillet of salmon. They had creme brulee for dessert that was served in large teacups and as a result was a larger portion that some other restaurants may serve. Kathryn also quite enjoyed her dessert coffee, I forget the name(was it Raspberry Truffle?), but is was coffee, raspberry liqueur and chocolate liqueur and it was gone in a flash!

Before we went the restaurant, I looked for the menu online which I did find with the following link:
http://www.charcoalsteakhouse.ca/wcgallery.html

I also found a blog, SapphireMartini, that reviews restaurants in the area and is actually quite interesting. I've added to my list of blogs on the left.

Spring Flowers.....

.....are one of my favourite things!

Unexpected Flowers!! And the return of my Keys!

Well, when DH told the ladies at work what he did with the keys, they all sympathized with me and suggested to DH that perhaps flowers would be a nice way to apologize. So he stopped on the way home and bought me a beautiful bouquet of yellow roses with 3 irises. Aren't they pretty! And I have my keys too! Now I can go do all those postponed errands!

Missing Keys and an Unexpected Walk!

Well, unexpectedly I didn't have keys to my car this morning. My DH took both sets with him to Toronto. Yes, he's on his way home with them now so I can do the errands I need to do today. So I had the unexpected pleasure of walking Brittany to school. Usually I drop her off as I rush to work. But today, we spent 15 minutes in the sunny morning air walking together and it was fun. We listened to the birds observed the bulbs up in the gardens and talked about nothing in particular.

Spring!!

Nature's way of saying "Lets Party"!!
Yes, these are the crocus and snow drops up in our garden!
It was a beautiful warm day!

Croppin!

I spent the day yesterday scrapbooking with a lot of very talented ladies. Kathryn and I went to a day crop in Waterloo put on by Karen of Go Scrapping. It was successful day as I completed 7 pages and 1 card (in the slide show below)!
She also held a fund raiser for Holly who is participating in the walk for breast cancer and I won. You had to guess how many feet of ribbon were in the jar(pics attached). There were 64 feet and I along with one other person guessed 65. There was a tie breaking draw and I won! I counted the number of ribbons as well and there are 33 different ribbons. I'll have fun with it!

Soccer!

Well, for the second time, Brittany's soccer team won their house league tournament. Throughout the season her team was in the bottom of the standings but during playoffs they really came on strong and won it! The final was an exciting game. They were up 6 to 1 then down 9 to 7 then won 11 to 9! And Brittany got not one but two goals!! Way to go Britt!

Does it Suck

or Rock?

Here's a real time waster. Put your search term in and it will tell you if it sucks or rocks.

Scrapbooking rocks!

Here's the link:

http://sucks-rocks.com/rate/scrapbooking

Not the only one on the Road!

Well, I was out earlier getting groceries and encountered many drivers who seem to think they are the only person on the road!
Examples include: stopping in the middle of the road for some unknown reason, going 15 kms below the speed limit, not signalling a turn, not proceeding in proper order at a 4 way stop. These all happened within the 1 km(or less) distance from my house to the grovery store! Ahhh, feel better now for having gotten this off my chest!

Signs of Spring!

Haven't seen any robins yet, but here's a few pics of some bulbs up in my front garden and some even have buds! I know they started to come up in January when it was so mild so hopefully they'll keep growing!

Ribbon Swap

I recently participated in a ribbon swap with some of the Go Scrapping message board members. We sent in enough ribbon for each person and received a different pattern back from each member. We all got lots of great ribbon and a beautiful card made by Judy. A very fun swap!

Elizabeth I

For some reason I've always been fascinated by the Royal European families. I like to think its beacuse I was a member of one in a prior life( as if!!).
Anyway, as mentioned in a prior post I rented the HBO film of Elizabeth I and I thoroughly enjoyed it!!(I watched it with an intermission of Amazing Race, can you believe Rob and Amber are out!)Its detailed without being too long and starts a few years into her almost 45 year reign. Its interesting to think how she(as other monarchs) had to continuously fight to maintain their position and could never trust anyone.
Here's a link to the film website in case you want to check out:
http://www.hbo.com/films/elizabeth/

Recipe Swap

I recently participated in a recipe swap through the message board at Go Scrapping. Ten of us created a 6 by 6 layout of our favourite appetizer or soup recipe. So we did create 10 of the same layout. We then sent them into the swap coordinator(thanks Karen!) who then made sure to send all of us back one of each recipe. I received mine yesterday and they are amazing layouts and I can hardly wait to try out the recipes. Have a look at the slide show below.I'm sure those of you who know me will be able to pick out mine!

Next is a chicken recipe swap, can't wait to see how they all turn out!

Handmade Cards

A natural extension of scrapbooking is cardmaking. I've recently been making more and more of my cards rather than buying them. The bonus of cards is that they make up so quickly, its a form of immediate gratification! And a hint I read in one of my scrapbook magazines, is to make cards from your scraps as you create your scrapbooking pages. I've tried it and it really helps to use up those scraps you keep meaning to go back to but never do!

Here's a sampling of cards I've made recently. Some from scraps and some from a kit. I've also included three cards that my Mom hand-painted.

Movies!

The girls started March Break this weekend so we decided to rent a bunch of movies!

They both really enjoyed The Illusionist(nominated but no wins)! Marie Antoinette(won for costume design) was a bit of yawn. The Prestige( no awards I think) didn't keep Brittany's attention and did seem to drag. The Departed(won for best picture and director and others) was for Steve and I, the girls didn't watch it. I quite enjoyed The Departed, it had a sense of humour throughout, quite interesting considering how it ends. I would highly recommend The Illusionist and The Departed.

Here's some links in case you want to check them out.
http://thedeparted.warnerbros.com/
http://www.theillusionist.com/
http://touchstone.movies.go.com/index.html?dlink=prestige
http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/marieantoinette/index.html

The girls also watched Stranger Than Fiction that Brianne said wasn't very good.

Next I'd like to see The Queen and Dreamgirls to catch up on the Oscar nominated films I haven't seen yet!

I also have Elizabeth I to watch. Its the HBO movie starring Helen Mirren. I'll let you know what I think of it!

Check out Meez

where you can create an online you!

Busy Weekend

Well, it was busy and fun weekend around our house!

Friday started off with the girls having a "snow" day because of the snow and ice on Thursday night/Friday morning. I took a few pics of the ice on Friday morning.

I then left(the roads were fine!)for a scrapbooking retreat at Tom Horton's Camp Onondaga south of Cambridge hosted by Two Scrapbook Friends! I'll post the layouts I finished to my blog later this week but I have added some of the photos I took of us cropping! Of course we did need to take breaks with silly games involving oreo cookies and as well as draws! I won two chipboard books and a design book in the draws! It was a great time with lots of scrapping and laughter(and late nights)!
By the way the camp was great, I can see why kids would love it there! Lots of open space, great two story cabins, nice common area with loft(a few of us scrapped in the loft and became known as the "lofty ladies"), barn with animals and other facilities including a pool!

And while I was scrapping a picture of Brittany just starting to learn to play the piano, she performed a piano piece in Beckettfest and received good feedback from the moderator.


Steve took the girls to see Bridge to Terabithia on Saturday night then today took them both and Brianne's friend Claire tubing at Chicopee Tube Park! They all had a great time! We all hope to go next week with my sister and her family.

And now I'm off to wath Amazing Race! Who will finish last tonight!