From Scratch

This past Sunday I went crazy.

Mike and I decided to eat really healthy for the next two weeks, so I had to make sure we were prepared for the week. On Saturday we did our healthy groceries..discovered that a big ole turkey was on sale and bought it. After we defrosted it I realized that we had just finished leftover turkey...and now we had an whole week of more turkey..boo urns.

Sunday, after a movie date with a friend (aside..I went to go see Titanic in 3D..at IMAX...yes I could watch it for free, but paying almost 20 bucks for a ticket was almost worth it. Man I really like that movie..ok back to food related post). After coming back from the very long movie it was around 8 pm on a Sunday evening. Perfect time to START COOKING A TURKEY. The full stuffing, (borrowed) roast pan and all. Told you I went crazy.

Once I got the Turkey in the oven I started on all the other business. Mike helped and chopped and peeled and washed all the veggies. Meanwhile I made two things that I refuse to buy from a store anymore:

1. Almond Butter

Almond Buttery Goodness

This took some time, but the end result was awesome. I simply added almonds to a food processor and blended away. One thing I learned was to only add a little bit at a time. For some reason the almonds didn't start creating oils unless there was lots of room in the food processor. I also added a bit of olive oil to make it lest almond dust and more Almond Buttery. After a lot of blending (and probably annoying my neighbours) the end result was DELICIOUS. It is light and fluffy, and even my "natural nut butter" hater of a BF likes it! The best part was that for a 300g jar of Almond butter costs like 8 bucks and I was able to make about 900g of almond butter for 6 bucks..yay!

2. Hummus
 I have made homemade hummus before, but this time was perfection. I added 2 cans of chickpeas, a couple spoonfuls of tahini, some garlic, lemon juice and some Sriracha hot sauce and a wee bit of olive oil and processed it up. The trick to get that nice creamy hummus without adding tons of oil is to leave a little liquid with the chickpeas. Perfection. Once again, homemade hummus is WAY cheaper. So for 2 dollars (for the chickpeas) I made about 1L of hummus. Now we just have to eat it!

And after all that (pushing midnight by now) the turkey was done!

It is a gobble gobble

And now for the second week in a row, we have been eating turkey. No more turkey please.

As for eating healthy we have stuck with the Low Sugar Diet Solution plan this week. I had a few little cheats today, but resisted the temptation of work donuts. The past few weeks at work there has been a ridiculous amount of "morning treats" and I have no will power in the morning, but this week I realized that I don't even like donuts..so why should I keep eating them! I would much rather eat timbits haha. 

Do you make any thing from scratch? Have you almost forgotten to take out the giblets while prepping a turkey?

Catch Up or Ketchup...If You Prefer

Too busy to blog...arrghhh! 

After hanging up my lovely curtains, the next day my parents came to visit for Easter! We had a lovely visit, spent some time shopping, and some time exploring china town. We also went to a Second City comedy show and it was fantab. 

Side note..this was my curtains the next day:

Curtain Fell down :(

So I still need to fix that curtain. 

Because I have a serious lack of food or fitness related info to share from last weekend..here are some silly Moseby pictures. Me and my parents were chilling down on the patio of my building and I had the brilliantly idea to bring Moseby outside. It was a semi successful endeavor.

Big adventure for the Mose

He was super scared especially with the elevator, but I think he enjoyed the outside. 

Afterwards when we were setting up for dinner...Moseby decided to make his apperence as a dinner guest:

Nom Nom

We shooed him away before chowing down on a delicious fish dinner. I guess that is why Moseby was so interested. 

After a super fun weekend with the fam, I spent this week tutoring and studying for the professional practice exam. Oh and I also had a BIRTHDAY!

On Thursday I celebrated my Birthday with Work, studying, tutoring and a surprise quick visit from my friend Trish who was in town for a conference. We went out for thai food, and I only ended up at home around 11pm, very long day, but a good day!

I wrote my test today and it went very well, and now I have a super excited night of watching some old Harry Potter movies.

And tomorrow, for the first time in a very long time, I get to sleep in!

I Have Been Dyeing to Tell You Something

Firstly this title is horribly punny. Get over it.

Secondly rounding up pictures for this post took 4eva and I may or may not have gotten horribly distracted at looking at old pictures and then a big phone chat with Mike's Momma. I am totally focused at finishing a task 100% of the time...ooo look Real Housewives of Vancouver is on...*runs away for 15 minutes*

OK NOW I am writing this post for real.

Actually my ADDness is some what fitting for this post, since this project started in August. Ooops.
In the spirit of the Dude Get On That Already Challenge from Young House Love (side note for those who care..aka Mike...this challenge is about completing DIY/projects that you have procrastinated for a very long time), I decided to GET'ER DONE.

That being curtains. Kind of.

Rewind to August..or July even.

After having super sexy vertical blinds installed by the land lord in our apartment,

Only Before Pic of the blinds I could find

I decided that I needed to give them some love. So I bought some cheap shear IKEA curtains that were beige and had a brilliant idea of dyeing them teal.

All I needed was a Bucket, some Dye, and some Tongs and a pot of boiling water. I could have dyed them right in the pot but I didn't want to stain my new Paderno!

Once the water was boiled, I poured it over the curtains in the bucket and added the dye, and started stirring

As I started dyeing I realized that the bright perfect teal of the dye was not translating well to the shear curtains, they were coming out a light teal colour. Even letting them sit longer than the recommended time before rising, I kind of knew that they weren't going to be as dark as I wanted.

After washing they looked like this:

A pretty colour but I was hoping for this:

But I was happy with the colour overall and knew it would work out fine. So did Moseby. 

So all I had to do was wait for them to dry and then iron them and hang them up. Apperently that took from the August long weekend until the Easter Weekend. 

Tonight I finally ironed them and hung them up and it took all of 10 minutes..and here is the finished product. 

Ugh I really should have taken down the clothes rack..oops. Anyway now that we have accent pillows that kind of balance the teal and the grey and the light teal, I actually really like how the curtains look in real life.  Also this picture makes my apartment look a lot more squishy than it is in real life. But anyhoo. And the big fancy hanging up method...tape. I just taped the fabric to the inside of the blind cover thing.

I am actually glad they are light in colour because the moment I finished attaching them I remembered that we are only suppose to have neutral coloured window coverings in our building..and I bet from the ground it looks like they are white.

There one project down...50 million left to go.

PS...I found this video while trying to find the old pictures...look at the cuteness!!

Anyone else have projects ongoing since August? Anyone else want a kitten now!!?