March April May Recap

Hey bloggy friends!

No I didn't forget about this blog, it just got put to the back burner for a while. But as the school year is wrapping up (tutoring will be ending soon) I will have more free time and do want to get back on the blogging train.

This summer I am going to run a Sprint Triathalon (Ahhhh!). This will be a good place to blog about my progress. I also am finally going to do some DIY/home decor projects, and learn how to photoshop. All of these things are blog worthy!

This past spring there were some blog worthy moments that I just didn't have time to share. There were also some sad/stressful moments that I didn't want to share/didn't want to come on here and be like "Happy Happy Joy Joy". Blogs (to me) are happy places, to share recipes/workouts/projects and adventures, and that is what I will continue to write about.

This blog is also a place where I recap my life so I can look back and see what was up..par example..last year I only posted a few times in the spring too (busy busy!).

So without further ado...MARCH APRIL AND MAY...

My parents came to visit to Easter, and for a surprise my brother flew in for part of it! I had no idea! We were out for supper and my mom wanted to go for a walk after dinner, so we walked down to the City Centre Airport (at 10 at night) and Mike and I thought my parents had gone crazy! They led us around the very quiet ferry terminal, and finally just as Mike and I were getting ready to head back home, we went around a corner and there was my brother!

It was my Birthday in April, I turned 25! In normal fashion it was spread out over about 3 weeks. First Birthday surprise was Mike bought me a bike...(oops no pictures!!). Also a group of us went out for dinner drinks and bowling at the Ballroom! My super awesome friends made me a cake and made me wear a crown and beads!

Chocolate Lasagna

Party!!

With my new snazzy Bike, I have been going on all kinds of adventures. Pre-bike was a 4 hr bike ride with Mike (using a bixi bike) around High Park/Roncesvalles. Biking is the perfect way to get around Toronto (and as a bonus it is exercise!). Since getting my new bike, I have done two 25+ km treks, and a few mini trips around the city.

Some other fun stuff:
Mike and I went to the Canadian Home and Auto Show featuring Cake Boss, Olympic Athletes and the Stanley cup. It was an event made for Mike. It also featured every single appliance and they were all giving out free samples!

Epic Photo Bomb!

Buddy!

This past weekend (long weekend!) a group of us went Hiking at Mono cliffs and then spent the rest of the day driving around Orangeville and Caledon. We found an amazing cidery, and the Badlands, and ended the day with an amazing potluck BBQ dinner.

In between I got to see some long distance friends with a quick visit from Trish, and then I went down to Houston/New Orleans to visit my friend Erin for the week. We were vegetables for a few days (much needed) and went to New Orleans for some site seeing and an Alligator Swamp tour (PS Bourbon street is fun jet terrifying!)

Bourbon St.

Baby Alligator!

When I came back from my trip I had some exciting work things to look forward to. I moved offices to the downtown office (same company slightly different position) which is down the street from my apartment!!! I can walk to work! No more commuting! This will stay exciting until it is pouring rain one day.

And that was my spring in a nutshell..whew. Time for summer to relax...or you know...train for a triathalon!

Anything exciting happen to you in the Spring? Any advice on Bike adventures??

February Is Over...

...and it is already the time change...whhhaaatt??

I hate the "spring ahead" time change. It messed me up today. I couldn't fall asleep last night at my normal bed time (which never happens for me, normally I am out like a light) and then this morning it was all dark when I woke up...BLLLAAHHH.

Ok enough complaining about the time change...

It is March Break this week in Ontario, which means NO TUTORING!!!
Don't get my wrong, I enjoy tutoring, and genuinely like the kids, but working 50-60 hrs a week was getting to me. Now I just go down to my normal job (which is still crazy busy).

To celebrate having some free time this week, I went to Zumba for the first time in forever, and came home and made fancy Tuna Melts! I also watched Glee from last week, and it wasn't that good. I am kind of over that show (except for Darren Criss...A Very Potter Musical holds a special place in my heart....I may or may not have just gotten completely distracted watching half of A Very Potter Musical..whatevs.)

Pesto, Sunflower Sprouts, Tuna and Cheese. Sunflower Sprouts = fancy

I am taking full advantage of my less crazy schedule to fit in more gym, more hot yoga, more eating healthy, and more blogging!

Here is a quick February Catch Up:

1. The weather was gross. I hate winter.

2. I did about 15 classes of Hot Yoga in the month of February. It was awesome. I did a little bit of hot yoga last year, but after 15+ classes and going 2-3 times a week, I am now obsessed. So much so that when my 20 class pass ran out, I bought a new 40 class pass!! I do Bikram Yoga and I think it deserves it's own post...I may get to writing it...in June or something.

3. Mike and I auditioned for Amazing Race Canada. I am pretty sure we would have heard by now if we made it to the next round, so maybe next year! We had to submit a video and the editing process almost killed my soul. It involved downloading 4 softwares and 2 converters and editing the whole thing 4 times. Bleh.

4. Because we are so busy (and since we spent a whole weekend doing Amazing Race video stuff) our apartment was kind of a disaster zone, so Mike and I decided to be grown ups and now we have "chores" to do before we go to bed. Last week we tired it out and amazingly got to the weekend with no dirty dishes, and most of the laundry was done! YAY!

And that is about it!

How was your February?? Anyone else happy it is almost spring?

Snow Day!

Happy Snow Day Everyone!

I woke up this morning to SNOWMAGGEDON!

There is normally a major road in the distance!

I quickly decided to take the day off. It was a pretty good call, since I am pretty sure most of my office took a vacation day today..benefit of being in a consulting business is that the vacation days are pretty flexible. My friend who is a nurse had to trudge to work this morning. She gets a prize!!

I took full advantage of my day off and spent most of it relaxing and watching the 5th season of True Blood (I am finally caught up!!!) and making delicious Banana Oatmeal Muffins. They turned out perfectly!

Recipe from here, with dark chocolate bits added: Source

This was a well needed vacation day, as this month has completely flown by. I have some new responsibilities at work and the days don't seem to be long enough to get everything done. But it is good though, I always work better when I am crazy busy. Add tutoring and other extra activities and I was feeling a little tired. I guess mother nature was on my side today!!

January was also the month of getting stuff done. I have a big running list of things I need to do, and I crossed off quite a few things from that list. I cleaned out my closest, and got rid of 2 large garbage bags of clothes, I made all my yearly appointments (Doctors, Dentist etc.), then finally dropped off a ton of stuff to be dry cleaned and hemmed. 

I still have a big list of things to do, but by going through the list 1 by 1 it certainly helps to stay focused. I also signed up for this 52 week clean home challenge with Home Storage Solutions 101. Every week they send you a challenge that shouldn't take more than 15 minutes a day. So far it has been very kitchen focused, and I haven't done most of the tasks, but I am hoping this weekend to get slightly more organized with the kitchen, and with some of my paperwork. I know I live a super exciting life. I wish I had more time to stay organized...I am way more organized in my head than in real life haha!

In other news this month Mike and I decided to get a NEW KITTEH to keep Moseby company:

Introducing TESLA! 

She is 7 months old, and was completely terrified when we got her from the SPCA.

Once we got her home she warmed up to Moseby pretty fast, but was still quite scared of Mike and I...but over the past couple of weeks she has really started to be friendly, and can sometimes be a little too comfortable.  She has a funny wacko personality, and is totally the bossy little sister to Moseby. It is a Charlie Brown and Sally type of relationship. But today I caught them snuggled up together...it was pretty cute.

Lurking lurker. 

That pretty much sums up my January! Perhaps I will blog more in February...maybe. 

Anyone else enjoying the snow day in ON/preparing for one in NS? Anyone else love Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins???

Mega Cooking

Hey all! Happy 2 year blog-o-versery!

I started this blog 2 years ago to document my free time in the strange between finishing university and work place of my life. I have since 1. found a job and 2. don't really have that much free time any more!

As I mentioned a billion times, Mike and I tutor every. single. night. So that means from Monday-Thursday we have no free evenings. I still love tutoring and it helps with some extra spending money, but this means we need to be prepared to take on the week on Sunday.

Over the holidays I was pinteresting a lot. Like every day countless hours a lot. But in doing this I did manage to find something that actually looked like it could help the Monday-Friday no time thing.

I pinned this link to Loving My Nest for Freezer Crock Pot Meals. What I liked about these meals is that they were full of veggies and weren't all chilli. After looking over the grocery lists and the recipes (which Jessica from the blog has all ready to go), I decided to take the plunge. I did one of each recipe on her list (except for the spaghetti sauce) and added the Goulash Recipe from Mama and Baby Love.

Now what hurts my soul a little is that Jessica from "Loving my Nest" was able to double or triple most of her recipes and only spend 150 for all her food. She found chicken breasts for 1.69/lb. That just doesn't happen here. I made 12 meals (all of which will have double leftovers), so food for 6 weeks, and it worked out to be around 250 bucks (I also did normal groceries for lunches, and a costco run, so my bill was a lot higher!) But still that works out to be just over 30 dollars a week for supper for two people. Not too bad! So money wise it isn't a huge saver, but time wise it should be very helpful.

All the food (except for the meat)

When I arrived home from shopping Mike and I quickly organized what was for the MEGA Cooking, and what was for normal groceries. Next we started washing and chopping all the vegetables. I following the instructions at Loving my nest, and figured out per ingredient what needed to be chopped/diced/sliced etc. I then would tell mike chop 9 carrots, dice 5 etc. We also figured out what an "average" serving of each vegetable was..so one carrot = 1 cup, which made it easier to put together the recipes.

Once we had all the vegetables chopped the kitchen/table wasn't looking too bad. It took us about 1.5 hours to chop all the veggies. I figured that was the hardest part...I was wrong.

Labelling the bags

Next came assembling the bags. I labelled all the bags with the title, the date, and the instructions (ex add chicken stock). Then I started with the bean soup (no meat) while Mike cut up all the chicken breasts. As we went through each recipe things got a little complicated. For instance I had only bought full tomatoes, not "tomatoes with chillis" or diced tomatoes. So when they showed up Mike had to dice the canned tomatoes, and add some jarred jalapeños. Also I made the taco spice from scratch, the enchilada sauce from scratch.

Meanwhile, we also had a chicken cooking all afternoon to get the shredded meat for the tortilla soup, so we had to deal with that, and we had to cook the sausages for the sausage and bean recipe. ALSO...we went to a potluck last night and had to pull something together for that.

At one point, the kitchen/table was a disaster. I think doing this kind of meal prep would be much better suited for a normal sized kitchen not a condo kitchen.

Sorry for the blurry Pic..This was the state of my mind haha

But in the end after a few hours of meal assembling, the bowls of veggies were disappearing, the bags were going into the freezer, and the ingredients were getting put away. The clean up at the end only really took maybe 45 minutes (a few dishes to wash today, but nothing too scary!).

6/12 done!

And typically I spend at least 3 hours every Sunday in the kitchen preparing the weeks food so instead of spending say 18 hours over the next 6 weeks, I only spent about 5. And now our groceries each week should be fairly simple. I have yet to try any of the recipes, but one is going into the slow cooker tomorrow, and hopefully it tastes good!!

Anyone else do MEGA Cooking?? Anyone else like living off their slow cooker in the winter?

Happy New Year 2013

Happy New Year everyone!!!
First off, belated Merry Christmas! I spent the holiday in Bathurst with my family. (Mike was in Halifax, Moseby was in Toronto).  Christmas was great, and nice and relaxing! 

I rang in the new year in Halifax at the free Concert and Firework show with Mike and my parents! It was a blast! Mike and I ended up at our friend's house afterwards for a few drinks to celebrate 2012.
There is something about New Years Eve that I love. I love Auld Lang Syne, I love the noise makers, I love fireworks! And I get to spend it with Mike!

And then there is the new year resolutions...lets recap to 2012. In January 2012 I was bright eyed and bushy tailed, without overtime at work and many hours of tutoring forecasted, and big plans to meet these goals. Since my life (and Mike's) kind of got taken over with extra work some of these goals were not met. But I am ok with most of them:

GOALS 2012!

Blog Goals:
-          Blog 5 times a week
Obviously didn't happen..sorry folks, tutoring was more profitable than blogging. I like the pace that I am blogging at, whenever I feel like it! I don't feel guilty about missing a week, or jumping back in later. I will keep blogging, and perhaps have more focus..we will see!
-          Take more pictures for blog
I tried! Having a smartphone and a nice camera helped. I would like to use photoshop and get into editing photos and learn more about my camera. This may be a project for the summer this year. 
-          Complete a craft/DIY project twice a month
Bahaha this totally didn't happen. I bought stuff to do a project, and pinned a lot of things on pinterest, but this was a the bottom of my to-do list. Maybe a summer thing???

Food/Fitness Goals:
-          January Diet
-          Lose 15 pounds by May 1^st-          Go to the gym 5 times a week
In general I did well with my gym/diet until March/April. I did ok in September, and not too bad in November.  I didn't do that well with going to the gym in the past couple of months, and want to improve. 

ME goals:
-          Actually have a bedtime routine (aka don’t read pinterest while lying in bed then fall asleep)
Umm...kind of forgot I made this goal. 
-          Keep my “clean” clothes off the floor in my room
I did slightly better maybe. I just asked Mike his opinion and he said "I can't remember if you improved"...probably not a good sign. 
-          Remember Birthdays
I still was mailing cards at the last minute and doing last minute gift shopping. Didn't do well with this one!
-          Stay on Budget
Did ok with this one because of tutoring. I still spent too much money on restaurants, but overall not to bad. 

So for this year:

GOALS 2013!

1. Get my E-life organized (photos/files etc.) Mike and I have been having computer/hard drive issues and this needs to happen so I don't lose everything!
2. Get my finances organized..actually go to a bank and talk to someone so I am getting the best account/TFSA etc. Actually be a grown up.
3. Go to the Gym and stay focused on the diet. Run a 10 km in the fall. Do the Mud Run in 50 mins.
4. Pick up my clothes off the floor/be more organized

5. Have more free time on the weekend!!!

What are your New Years Goals??  Can eating more cheese be a goal for me??

Blog Post 100- Grateful and Happy

Happy 100th blog post! Thanks for sticking with me and reading this itty bitty blog that I post semi regularly at.

Just a forewarning, this is a pretty introspective post...

The story behind this introspective post is that tonight I was going to go on Facebook and moan and complain that my cell phone isn't working, and Mike has to reformat it, and it may cost me some money to fix/replace. I could have ranted about Rogers, and how annoying it was that I had to deal with this phone issue.

But then I stopped.

Yes it sucks that my phone doesn't work. Know what would suck more..not having a computer/internet to write the complaining post on facebook. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.

I think in general people (including me for sure) complain way too much. We complain about traffic, we complain about other people, we complain about technology, we complain about work. The list goes on and on.

What if we all just stopped.

Would we need 500 dollar I-Phones?

Would we be nicer to people?

Would work be more fulfilling?

Would commuting be more pleasant?

Would we be happier?


Or does complaining or venting make us happy...are we hard-wired to complain in some way? Was it some survival instinct left over from cave-man days?

Whatever reason, I personally want to stop, or at least cut back on my complaining. So yes my phone is glitchy, but like I said, worst case scenario is I have to buy a new phone. It isn't the end of the world and I am so lucky and gracious that I would even be able to buy a new phone if the reformatting doesn't work.

I am so gracious that I have a nice apartment with all the amenities. I am happy for a car that works, and doesn't leave me stranded on the side of the road. I am happy for my work and tutoring, as crazy busy as it is, I have a job that I like and that pays the bills. And I am extra happy that I get vacation in a couple weeks.

Above all that I am happy that I have a great relationship with my boyfriend, my parents, my brother, and my boyfriend's family. I am happy that I have a great group of friends near and far and some who even read this blog :)!

And I am happy for the Moseby!

So maybe this is a pre-new years resolution, or maybe it is the Christmas Spirit, but I am going to try to more grateful, not just when my phone breaks! I still may complain about things like Elf on the Shelf or Facebook, but I will try to be more grateful for the positive things in my life!!

What are you happy/grateful for?? 

I am happy for comments and blog love!!

Aint Nobody Got Time for Dat- Christmas Edition

Hi Blog Readers!
Apperently meeting Sherry and John was so overwhelming that I couldn't blog again all month. JK.
I was super busy this month with tutoring and other fun stuff so no time to blog...and the lack of spare time led me to this idear for a post....

Source

CHRISTMAS EDITION!!!!

(In this hopefully regular feature, I am going to post some of my finds from Pinterest that make me shake my head)...

Christmas Garbage Box:

Source

Looks simple enough, but this is a box that you wrap, specifically to throw wrapping paper in so that Christmas morning pictures don't have a garbage bag in them. Who has time for this??? And who cares??? I can't imagine, that as a grown adult, exhausted from Christmas morning with the Chillins, that I will think..."oh darn, wish I had a wrapped box for garbage to be fancy, people are going to judge me for having a garbage bag in my photos." Seriously. If you have time for this in your life, you are way too on the ball. The best part (?) of all this is that is being constantly repinned..so obviously EVERYONE will now need to have a wrapped box to be a good person. Face Palm.

Elf on the Shelf (Super Intense Version):
Another thing that I see all the time is the "Elf on the Shelf". I think in general the elf is a good idea. For those who don't know, it is a toy elf that shows up on a certain day to watch the children and report back to Santa if they are good or bad. Apparently is a great encouragement for good behaviour. The elf also is in a different spot every morning for the kiddies to find. Exciting. Once again, seems simple enough, but then people go on Pinterest with idears of crazy stuff that the elf gets into, like fishing for gold fish, and colouring and being in the "hot tub" with a barbie, stuff like that. Then this happens:

Source

(The elf is in the tree btw. Side note this girly is like a professional Elf on the Shelfer. She is going to be on CNN on Monday to talk about it...crazy)..Anyway it is still ridiculous, first she would have had to have a perfectly clean house, then purposely mess it up, then clean it up again. ANGTFD!! (I am not alone in this thought..this Blog is hilarious!)

I don't know why this bothers me so much...it is probably because one day I won't have time for this kind of stuff, and I will feel like a failure. Frig you pinterest for giving me future guilt.

To make up for this future guilt, try cooking with cheese. This is something I will always have time for :). Mike and I got a groupon for good cheese and have spent the past month using the weekends to make delicious food:

Toasted Pita, Truffle Brie, Black Berries, Thyme

Kale Salad with Mustard Vinagrette, Smashed Potatoes with Thyme, Portabellos with  pesto, prosciutto and goat cheese 

Truffle Brie Mac and Cheese (From here, with Brie instead of Parm, and chilli flakes instead of paprika)

I also forgot to take a picture of Turnip Gratin (source) with a 12 year old chedder. So good!!!

Maybe to you, you are saying "ANGTFD fancy cheese cooking!!" But at least I get to eat my time waster, instead of cleaning up toliet paper. Just sayin. 

Anyone else have any ANGTFD moments?? 

Please share, my comment section is all sad and lonely.