The Christmas Train!

I have a million zillion things to post about with all the festivities going on around here, but i'll just do it all a bit at a time. Things are busy with work, but thankfully slowing down finally. Ah, the joys of the retail toy industry during Xmas! I must have been overheard a hundred times in these last few weeks saying "I feel like one of Santa's elves", since my job is to manage the website and do the orders and shipping.

Just before Christmas, the train came into town. It was quite an exciting and HUGE event; I couldn't believe how many people were there at Lakeside Park just to see the xmas train. It had to be in the thousands. There was live music. roasted chestnuts, hot cocoa. popcorn... and best of all, it's a fundraiser for the food banks. They travel all across Canada earning money and food donations for the needy.

And of course, Aloka also got some fun playtime at the park in the pitch black amongst about 30 other children, all sliding down icy slides in their snowsuits, shooting out and off at 100mph!



Goodbye Christmas Train!

Cookies

A more exciting post is on it's way in a couple days about the Christmas Train that came through town, but for now, here are some cookies I made tonight! They are a brown sugar cookie with toasted pecans and a caramel glaze, aka Praline Cookies! Wish I could eat one, but I'm off sugar and gluten. I'm making about 4 other kinds too, for tins for Xmas gifts. Aloka helped me so much with these. She loves baking!

Lots and lots and lots of snow!

Well, it finally came, at long last. Everyone was waiting for it; the day's were getting progressively colder and colder. The mornings would sometimes have a few flurry's. We all knew it was coming, but boy when it finally did, it REALLY did! In this below video, you can hear me say it's the 2nd time i shoveled the driveway that day! this was only a couple hours after i had just shoveled it. Richard got a foot in one day up at his house.
The snow here is the best champagne powder as far as skiing goes. It's light, and fluffy.

BUT, then only a couple days later it warmed up a bit and rained!! Ugh! Can you imagine what that did to the roads? The day it was raining I heard two people describe it as "gross". My boss, Judy, said "Rain in the winter is just disgusting!" and I agree. It was slushy, messy and icy. Now it's chilled up again and my driveway is clear but very icy!
Here is a video of the first big snowfall!

Gingerbread and fun

My dad and Jeanne were here a few weeks ago, and i'm lamenting that i didn't get more photos. Dad got a gingerbread house kit for Aloka, and the two of them built it together. Well, actually Richard did the construction of it (he's good at building houses, real or gingerbread apparently!), and then Dad and Aloka decorated it after it set.
The Martha Stewart in me screamed inwardly that I should be making it from scratch, but i quickly subdued her and enjoyed the absence of tasks needed to be done for this fun project!

I will be posting some pictures and a movie tomorrow or the next day of the massive huge amount of snow we got the other day. Winter came with a giant explosion of snow, starting on Josh's birthday, the 26th. Aloka has already tobogganed and I think we're going snowshoeing this weekend! fun fun fun!

More Halloween stuff!

Jeez, it's taken me a while to get these posted. Once again, my excuse is that I'm so darn busy I can't see straight, but it's a good thing too. Josh is working on my website now, and I'm SO excited to be running my own gig. I'm going to need to be working like I am now for a while because of course, I couldn't live off my business for a least a year or two, until it starts generating a good revenue stream .
I'm excited to be carrying my cousin Julia's awesome dolls that she makes *hi Julia!* and I think they will do really well. I have some waiting to be put up on the website, and I have to hide them all from Aloka because she cannot keep her hands off them! Josh is also just finishing up her website so once it's done, there will be a link to it on this blog.

My dad and stepmom, Jeanne just visited this weekend, and we all had a great time. It was a whirlwind, but wonderful nonetheless, and Aloka loved waking them up in the mornings (they slept at my house). Jim and Lynn, we hope you come soon too! Aloka misses you terribly and wants to crawl into your bed at 7am to wake you up too!

And now for some fun pics from Halloween. I dressed up as I-don't-know-what, Retro future Austin Powers chic or something. I threw my old Ant hat and costume that we made a few years back onto Richard, who by the way is so not into dressing up for Halloween. So it was pretty cute that he put it on for me. We took Aloka trick or treating just a little bit, and Richard's daughter Emily also took her out for a half an hour or so. She got to pick out a small pile of candy that she wanted, and I told her the rest was going over to Josh's house. It did go over to his house, but she forgot all about it, and Josh got some yummy sugary treats all to himself! So it worked out well, she wasn't uncontrollable and only had a strong sweet tooth for a few days afterwards, and it's now under control again. She has such a tendency to get so hooked on sweets if they are around.
I was hoping Josh would take her out for some trick or treating too, but he had a crazy deadline, and was busy working.

And speaking of sweets, I am totally off of sugar and gluten! I stopped eating gluten at the suggestion of my cousin Cara, and I can't believe how much better my belly feels. It did make me loose 5 pounds which I didn't really want to loose, but oh well to that i guess! I'm trying to compensate by eating tons and tons of ghee, my new addiction! ;) It's so good! It tastes like popcorn butter.
Ok, enough typing, here are some pics. The first batch (and a couple movies) are from Aloka's Waldorf school. Sheilagh, Aloka's teacher, put on a Halloween Market Place, which was like a little village with all sorts of different market booths (parent's dressed up). The children got "money" from the bank (chestnuts) and could go around and buy things at the different booths. There was a baker, and hat lady, a miller, a candle maker, a wizard who tended a fire and you could buy a wish rock and throw it in to the fire and it would spark. it was very magical and fun. Aloka didn't want to leave!

Her purchases, and some chestnut money still jingling around in her basket

The Baker

Aloka and Claire (the unicorn)

She wished she could be a real fairy she later told Josh in secret!

Here's another great video. The world through Aloka's eyes, notice how long she lingers on things that interest here, ie. treats!


And then later that night Aloka and Andrea (our roomate) both dressed up as Cinderella!

This is Andrea and her friend, in the second costume of the evening, Wayne and Garth!



And Richard, borrowing my Ant costume!

Kinda young to start working, but hey, it was her decision!

I just found this old photo when I was sifting through some past online photos! She was just over one!

Pumpkin carving with Aloka!

Ok, this post will be a little more upbeat than the last dreary one. Fall is still completely beautiful here, with lots of sunshine and yesterday was even a warm one. Leaves are still beautiful colours and crunchy everywhere I go.
Winter is starting to tease us with the occasional morning snow flurry, and up at Richards house, it's already starting to stick to the ground (he lives right next to the ski hill).
So Halloween has come and gone. It was quite the festive and exciting holiday for us, and it seemed to creep up on me without me realizing it, and then all of a sudden it was in one day and I had a hundred things to do!


Aloka and I went over to Richard's house and we carved some pumpkins with Beth and Emily.
Richard didn't do one. He was busy puttering around getting his land ready for winter. He gets a TON of snow, and everything is completely covered by about 5 feet of snow and unable to be uncovered until spring.

Aloka had SO much fun. She did some carving and lots of drawing and playing. While we were all busy working on our designs, Aloka decided to make everyone pumpkin soup! She found a pot full of hot water on Richard's wood stove (to humidify the air) and added a whole bunch of pumpkin innards (mostly fleshy chunks of pumpkin, she avoided the stringy stuff!), then she found the salt and added some of that, and stirred it up.
We're so busy with our carving and she's humming to herself as she's cooking, no one realizing what she's doing! Then she got 5 little bowls, spoons, and a ladle and served everyone up a bowl. Soon we noticed we each had a bowl of steaming hot pumpkin soup sitting on the table, one for everyone!
We all actually did eat some of it, first dressing it with a little tamari. She's such a cook!












Our pumpkins turned out great, and I got a video of Beth and Aloka.

Next post will be a fun one of Halloween, costumes and all!

This is the one Aloka and I did

Beth did this one

Emily's is on the far left.

I'm overwhelmed and just need to bitch

It's been a while since I've posted because I'm so busy I can't even find time to be online. I'm now juggling a 5-6 days a week job, parenting a four year old, and running a household. I know I'll get used to it eventually, and it wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't so dang broke.

I'm so sick and tired of my credit card/debit card being declined. It happens every time I go to the store lately, so I've been avoiding grocery shopping. I'm eating everything that's left in the freezer, and the nights I don't have Aloka I'm eating crackers and peanut butter left over from my salad making days, which I don't think I posted about coming bitterly and abruptly to an end.
I'm sure I'll get my feet under me at some point, but for right now, it feels like everything is falling apart.

Ever since Josh moved, we had to pull all (over 100) boxes out of his basement from the house he had to leave, and go through everything. We divided stuff and I have to say I ended up with the bulk of it after he got the things he wanted for his new house. Now I have boxes filling my front porch, basement, and living room, all needing to be gone through and gotten rid of. There's really not much in there that either of us even want anymore, and a lot of it is just piles of paperwork and crap.
I had to go through 8 giant rubbermaid bins full of pantry food.
Originally, I thought we'd only be without our things for a couple months at most when we first moved, so i brought all our dry goods, thinking how expensive it would be to replace it all. Well, it turns out it was in storage for 1.5 years, so all the food went bad/stale/rancid. We had lots of jars full of flours, and grains, even boxes of crackers.

So my house has been extremely not uplifting, which is probably also why I've been so grumpy lately. I finally did some rearranging of mine and Aloka's bedrooms last night after she was in bed and it feels a little better. I am going to work all this weekend on trying to go through boxes and clean up this house.
My poor roommate. She has been amazingly tolerant through all this!

Going to bed, g'night.

Happy Thanksgiving, and blissful Autumn!

It's so dang beautiful here in the fall!! It's been warm, sunny, and there's a crisp in the air as they say. The crunchy leaves are beautiful shades of golden, red and orange. I went on a walk during lunch last week, and just right off of Baker Street (the main drag) there was a tantalizing hazelnut tree dropping hazelnuts all over the sidewalk. I crunched through the golden leaves looking at the abundant harvest on the ground.
And speaking of abundant harvest, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving up at Naomi's house with Richard, his daughters and ex-wife Naomi and her boyfriend Ralph. Aloka had so much fun with the girls, I hardly saw her for the first two hours we were there I think.

Here is a video of the feast we contributed. My roomate Andrea is also in this video preparing her own feast that she brought to a potluck as well. We love Andrea, and she is so amazing with Aloka too which is a bonus!


This photo below is of a bunch of Philo Tartlett shells I filled with two different kinds of pudding. Dark chocolate pudding, and a Hazelnut Gianduja pudding. I topped them with vanilla laced fresh whip cream and grated chocolate (respective to the flavour it was on) once we were at Naomi's. They were so addictive!

And speaking of fall harvest.... We have an enormous plum tree in our backyard. The funny thing though, is that while everyone else's plums were in full harvest season a couple weeks ago, these ones were yucky, bitter, sour and astringent. They were falling off the tree like crazy, but just tasted gross!

I had pretty much given up on them, as plum season is now coming to a close, but Andrea had a friend come over and tell us that sometimes plums just need a good chill before they become sweet. We tasted them again, and sure enough they are decadent!!
You can imagine the scene that followed! Andrea and I have now each made 10 jars of plum jam, and that was even before the massive harvest we had today!

Today, Josh came over and we pulled the tarp off of Aloka's sandbox and positioned it just right. Then Josh grabbed a branch and shook it a little and down pelted zillions of plums!
All and all we ended up with close to 50 liters of plums, just over 15 gallons!

Josh also helped me hook up the freezer in my basement and tomorrow I'm going to be pitting a whole lot of plums! I'm going to make another 20 jars of jam, some pies to freeze, some plum syrup, and I will freeze a bunch of chopped up plums for use on porridge and whatever else. Josh is going to dry about 5 litres in his dehydrator for me too.

I sent him home with about 7 litres of his own plums, 3 jars of jam AND and whole bunch of hazelnuts off our hazelnut tree! It makes complete sense to have Thanksgiving during the harvest time of year. I love autumn!

Below are the pictures and videos of our giant plum harvest. Here is the plum tree; Giant, un-pruned and pretty much ignored from an arbourists viewpoint:


















The plums!




























Aloka with a Dahlia Andrea picked on Thanksgiving Day:

I'm so tired *yawn*

I'm actually going to go to bed now, but I just wanted to post since it's been over a week now.
I started my new job last week, and it's wiping me out! I think it's because my body just isn't used to standing for 6 hours straight in one spot. This is due to me processing web orders and responding to emails, but my desk is very high, so a chair wouldn't really work.
Anyway, my back hurts, my legs hurt, my bum hurts. Yesterday I discovered that I'm having some sciatic nerve thing. Shooting pain all up and down my left side.
Today I was "on the floor" basically doing sales. Welcoming, helping, ringing people up, etc. I had to smile for 6 hours straight in other words, whilst standing the whole time. Which thing is more tiring, smiling or standing, I don't know.

This email sounds like just one big huge whine. Well, it feels good to whine sometimes. If Aloka gets to do it *all* the time, I get to do it sometimes too, like at 12:30am all alone sitting at my computer, where she will never hear me.

And don't get me wrong, I really do love this job. As far as entry level jobs that pay really bad go, this one is great! The people are awesome (I only have 3 other coworkers), I can do a little work from home (like a few hours a week or so) managing the website, and I get to sell toys and children's products! It's great training for my own website, which I'm very excited about now, and it feels even more attainable now than ever.

Tomorrow we're having Thanksgiving dinner (even though Thanksgiving is officially on Monday) with Richard and children and ex-wife and ex-wife fiance. Sounds interesting?
I'd like to have American Thanksgiving with Josh and Aloka, and maybe some American friends, especially since it's near Josh's bday.
So, this is what I'm contributing tomorrow to the feast:
Apple Pie, Pumpkin Pie, two kinds of Phylo tartlett shells filled each with Dark Chocolate Mousse or Milk Chocolate Hazelnut Mousse (Gianduja), topped with fresh whipped cream and chocolate shavings, Baked Yams with Rosemary and Olive Oil, and lastly my favourite yummy pleasure lately, Hot Artichoke Dip served with sliced vegetables and french bread. This is so dang good, words cannot describe. I'm going to post the recipe which comes from my very extremely good friend Kara:

Hot Artichoke Dip

1 14oz can Artichokes (in water), drained
1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
1 cup mayonnaise
1 Tbl green onion, finely minced
1 Tbl fresh parsley
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 tsp fresh lemon juice
sea salt to taste
1 or 2 vine ripened tomatoes, sliced thin

Combine all ingredients and place in a shallow oven-proof dish. Top with the sliced tomatoes.
Bake at 350F (180C) for 10-15 minutesor until heated through. Serve hot. Try not to drool on it.

Before I retire to my super comfy and warm bed (it's beckoning me), I must post some photos of Aloka and her block creations from a couple weeks ago. They were so cool, I had to capture it on film:

Ok, Josh actually did this one.

Yes, she really did this tall thingie. She loves going up up up.