Mmmm, Salsa!

My cousin Nerrad and his wife are amazing cooks! Nerrad has often gifted us with jars of home-made Salsa proclaiming how easy it is to make; I decided to give it a try this afternoon.

I already had plenty of jars at home but I wanted the wire basket lifter thingy for the pot of water and the rubberized jar tongs so at noon I went to Canadian Tire to pick them up. The rack was perfect for dropping and blanching the tomatoes and the tongs also worked to pick up the hot tomatoes.

I had picked up this book from the Library on Thursday to find the perfect recipe. From beginning to end it took about 3 hours and made the exact quantity specified. I ended up with 5 x 500ml jars and about a half cup left over.

Click on the picture to make it bigger

Taste testing the leftovers...it appears that it's going to be awesome! I think it needs a little bit of salt to round out the flavours. Next time I'm going to make it an all day adventure and make a few different batches. Somehow I don't think these will last very long!

New Garage Doors!

Just a quick post to show off our new garage doors. Below are the awful doors we had....

and these are the brand new doors. I love them so much! The new doors are so quiet when they go up and down. Only minor downfall is the lack of daylight since we chose to not have windows.

We had Durham Doors arrange the purchase and installation. Great Guys, excellent quality product and I would recommend them to anyone in an instant!

Went to the Legends Centre gym in Oshawa with Quilting Newbie this morning. I'm so very proud of her; she has stuck firm to her commitment of a new healthy living!! That's about it for now. I have a new quilt picture for me next post.....see you soon.

Vacation = Another Reno Project

Like most of our vacations, if we don't go away, we tend to tackle some sort of home improvement project. This time we chose our front entry doors.

After two price quotes at about $5,000.00 each for new entry doors, we decided to go the less expensive option and try and improve them ourselves.

Our main complaint about our front doors were the builders window inserts. You can see by the picture above that they had to cut a chunk out of the window framing in order to fit the insert plate (that is normally behind the lock).

This creative cutting was not only on the outside doors but also on the inside doors. I can see if it was a fluke, but EVERY house in our neighbourhood has the same cut-outs. Obviously this must have been a measure once and cut situation!

After the doors were out, and it being a sweltering 38 degrees out, we tried to keep the AC in the house. No such luck, Big Man still sweat off 7 pounds during the whole process.

Doors sanded and ready for painting in the oven; sorry, I mean the garage. Two coats and 10 hours later they were dry enough to add the new window inserts and hardware.

We are trying to do as much home improvements, within budget, as we can this year. The Canadian Government is allowing you a 15% Home Renovation Tax Credit for the 2009 taxation year.

It took us a total of 3 days to complete this project.

It was not one of the easiest projects, but for about 17% of the cost of the original price quotes, I'm definitely satisfied and proud of our efforts. -- Amazing how we could get the door locks to fit properly!

Our vacation was not a full working holiday, we also spent a great day out in Kingston, Ontario with my cousin and his wife, thanks Nerrad and Map! There were birthday celebrations at The Keg and a visit to the Farmer's Market in St. Jacob's.

Now I'm just really tired and need a vacation from my vacation.

And it's not even my Birthday!

I'm sure I've mentioned it before but I have the best Big Man in the world!! Look what was waiting for me when I got home from work yesterday...a 16GB I-Pod-Touch!!

I'm not quite sure exactly what I did to deserve such an unexpected and amazing gift! (I wonder what I have to do to get a new Bernina 440 QE with BSR?)--just joking Big Man.

Look, he even got it engraved with my name, cell number and 32.5!

Now I have to learn how to use the freaking thing, technology is not my strong suit. One guess on what my first movie download will be........"Twilight" you say.....that's right, just think Edward at my fingertips wherever and whenever!

This is just the GIANT spider that has made a huge web across my backyard sun tent. I feel so bad that I'm going to destroy all his web crafting, but I almost walked into it a few times already....the scream would/is going to be insane when I actually forget and plow straight into it.

32point5 One Year Later

The year is over in the 32point5 plan. To recap, I wanted to see what exactly it is that I do all my time with the intention of reaching a waist size of 32.5 inches.

I should have called it the 33point25 plan. Sadly I was off by 3/4 of an inch, however pretty good considering the starting number was 38. I know, disgusting!

Comparing the pictures above I have on the same shorts and belt. What you can't see is that I was actually holding it in in the first picture, the pants were unbuttoned and the belt was tight. I'm relaxed in the after picture, fully buttoned up and the belt on the last available spot.

These pictures don't really show much of a comparison other than I am a lot happier and physically fitter. Exercise has become a part of my daily routine, I now enjoy long walks, running on the treadmill and tennis. I've always thought that I eat well, however I still struggle with portion control.

I especially have to Thank my Big Man. He is constantly my biggest supporter. Some days were tough and he was always there to kick my ass and motivate me to keep going. He's my own personal "Tommy Europe", the white chocolate kind -- Smooches!!

Finally, what better way to celebrate the end of a great year....with home made Bumble-berry pie! Best part is half of it is still in the freezer....see portion control.

Thanks to everyone that took the time to read my blog. I will still be posting; it's been nice to realize that my life is not as boring and lame as I thought it was.

Stacked Coins

I'm going to a Baby Shower this afternoon for one of my girlfriends who's baby is due the first week of July.

Above is after washing

Nothing like leaving things to the last minute; I only finished hand sewing the binding and washing it this morning.

Above is before washing

The idea came from Crazy Mom Quilts blog and the pattern can be found here at Moda fabrics. (Don't forget clicking on the pictures make them bigger)

I used one charm pack of Moda's "Flutterby" pattern and random fabrics from my stash to finish out the required coins. The baby's room is in green so I made that the focus colour with orange as the second colour because that's her favourite colour.

It took me three weeks from start to finish. One really solid weekend of sewing and then just here and there before and after work.

I didn't really find any mistakes in the pattern; although, I had to trim the top and bottom coin strips by a bit to make them fit the white lenghts of fabric in between the rows.

I really like how this quilt turned out. I enjoyed the process of making it and would recommend the pattern. My pictures don't really do it justice, it's wicked in real life and crinkled up perfectly after washing. The Big Man gave it his stamp of approval!

NOW THE BEST PART is finally here....since I had such a tight time line on getting this done I REFUSED to let myself start reading "Breaking Dawn" which is the final book in the Twilight Saga written by Stephenie Meyer. I snuck one look and made the Big Man read me a random paragraph to tide me over from the withdrawl I was suffering. See you soon!

Bye Bye Water Bell

One of my favourite things about our town was the Water Bell. I work so far away, it was always a welcome sight in the horizon knowing that I was almost home.

Sadly she is now gone. There is an article about it here from our local paper. You can't really make it out on the lower left hand side; but during the night some kids went up a spray painted "Brooklin Boys-Boo Ya!" Yowza, we really have some toughies in our town -- watch out!

It's so funny, any type of vandalism you might see is quickly cleaned up within a few days. That's what I like about our neighbourhood, everyone knows that shit-heads and messy houses are not allowed. Brooklin membership has it's privileges!

In other news, my Poppy gave me five magnificent blooms this week, with no rain to really damage them.

My husband even took the picture below for me today so I wouldn't miss out on it.

I'm working on another baby quilt this weekend. Saturday is busy, playing tennis in the morning with my husband, a walk to the farmers market in the afternoon with a girlfriend and going to a sneak peek of The Proposal with another girlfriend in the evening.

I plan to spend the evenings with Edward. Enjoy your weekend!