Happy Halloween

Halloween always seems to come and go lighting fast.  The anticipation, the waiting, the decorating, the planning, then BOOM!  It's done.  But oh how I love the decorating.  It gets me every year.  I see some awesome decorations in the stores and I'm hooked all over again.
This October 31st was a good one for us Calgarians.  Usually we get to get all dressed up in our totally unique and awesome costumes, only to be covered up by snow pants and jackets.  It was beautiful outside.  No toques or mitts this year!  YAY!

My ginger princes looked fantastic.

In case you couldn't guess, the one on the right is Ray from the Ghostbusters and the one on the left is the World's Strongest Man.  Hahaha.

We had to carve some pumpkins of course!  When I say "we" I really mean "me". :)  I picked up a carving book from the grocery store that had some pretty cool designs.

My youngest prince picked this one...

Grime Reaper 

 This was my pick...

Haunted House

 And here is my oldest princes choice...

The Invisible Man

Wish I would have taken some pictures of my house.  I can tell you that I saw some neighbours snapping some pics of the place, so I think it was somewhat impressive.

Hope you all had a great Halloween!

Puppy Love.

My kids wanted a dog.  My husband wanted a dog.  Me?  Not so much.

I've had a dog before and he was CRAZY.  Like I mean bat-shit crazy.  We got him back in the day when pet stores sold dogs.  I'm pretty sure he was a puppy mill dog.  I tried like crazy to bring him over to the sane side.  Spent hundreds at the vet, and another few hundred with trainers. Nothing seemed to work.  He attacked just about everyone, including me.  After years of misfortune,  I found a great girl who owned the puppy day care I sent him to and she gladly took him and raised him as her own.  Thank goodness.  He needed a better life and I just couldn't give it to him.  I was so ill-equipped.

Fast forward 10 plus years, and our youngest ginger prince is going into grade 1.  I felt a solid tug on my heart strings but promised myself I wouldn't do anything rash for a year.  And by rash I mean begging my husband for a reversal so we could have another baby, get a job, or get a dog.  Yes, I know what you are thinking...she is bat-shit crazy.  And you would be right.

I held strong and summer was approaching.  I had made it!  Nothing crazy!  Whoo hoo!  But then the dog talks started...the ginger princes are telling me how they are going to take such good care of a dog.  They will clean up after her (almost never) and walk her (not really), and feed her (only when prompted).  I put my foot down and said no.  Then my husband is telling me how he really wants one.  Well, 3 against one, never wins.

I found a very reputable breeder in our city and luck would have it that he just had two litters of the cutest Brittany puppies.  We headed over to his place and walked into puppy playground.  He had 12 puppies!  We carefully looked at all of them.  We knew we wanted a little girl (to even out the playing field at home) and my oldest prince fell in love.  He knew her instantly and she knew him.  It was a moment that we will never forget.  We placed a collar on her and said goodbye as she was too young to come home just yet.  My prince cried.  He missed her already.

A few weeks went by and it was finally time to pick her up!  We were crazy excited!  For someone who was against it at first, you would never know it now.  I bought everything I could think of for her. We went to get her and brought her home.  She cried in her kennel, for what seemed like FOREVER, on the drive home.  Our youngest prince felt so awful for her that he cried just as much as she did!  Poor guy.

She has settled in nicely, and is a complete sweetheart.  Everyone who meets her loves her. We are still dealing with the puppy stage, namely chewing on everything, including us!  But we have enrolled in classes and I am determined to make this work.  No more bat-shit crazy stuff.  

We named her Scout after the character in my favorite book, To Kill A Mockingbird.
Puppy love.

grade one assignment...

My sweet little Ginger Prince, who is in Grade 1, had to write about his Families Responsibilities at school.
He brought this home to show me...

(My Mom is responsible for cooking dinner.  My mom is responsible for cleaning the floor.)

OOOHHH, how cute.  Wait...what?

I Am A Proud Canadian

Good-bye Sochi, thanks for the memories and congratulations to all of our hard working athletes.

I am so VERY proud to be Canadian!

Out Of The Mouths Of Babes...And Onto Paper

My youngest Ginger Prince wrote something that I just had to share...

Oh my sweet sweet prince, you will rue the day you wrote this!  ;)

buffalo chicken burgers.

Tonight we are going to try something new.  Buffalo Chicken Burgers.  Sounds like it would be right up our alley.  The Ginger Princes excluded.  They really don't like anything though...so no surprise there. They will stick to their normal cucumbers, and buns.  Could be worse.

I made up the chicken burgers last night and let them rest in the fridge over night.  Hopefully they don't fall apart on me.  This is my first time making burgers out of ground chicken.  I am challenging myself to mix it up a little with my cooking.  It's not Joy of Cooking, but it's not Easy Bake either.  Truth be told, I've been in a cooking rut.  Just can't pull myself out of the 4 o'clock scramble.  I have been trying my hand at meal planning.  Nothing crazy, just pulling stuff out of the deep freeze on Sunday so we actually have something decent to eat throughout the week.

So here goes...I found the recipe from the Allrecipes website.  An awesome website I tell you, awesome. The one I went with is the Buffalo Chicken Burgers with Blue Cheese Dressing.  Blue Cheese Dressing is not really our thing so I just opted out of going in that direction.  The recipe is here.

Here they are...let's dig in!

winter wreath.

One evening after the husband and I, and our Ginger Princes went out for dinner together, we stepped out into the parking lot to discover we had a flat.  Crap. While my husband waited for the tow truck the youngest prince and I headed to Lowes for a little distraction. Keep in mind that it is early October. You can imagine my surprise when it looked like Christmas threw up in the store.  It was wonderful! Gigantic Santa, enormous snowmen, and massive reindeer all bobbing and waving their blown up limbs at us.  I couldn't control my excitement!  I grabbed a shopping cart and pilled in a beautiful cream colored tree skirt, shatterproof Christmas ornaments in just the right shade of brown, and just for good measure, gardening gloves.  Kinda random, but they too were super cute!  I knew I wanted to transform the wreath into something a bit more, but it sure started out great. Here is the picture of the wreath I bought...

For $39.98 I thought the bones were fab.  My husband was a bit surprised to see us walking back from Lowes with packages...PACKAGES of stuff.  Thanks Lowes!  Hey cashier...try not to be a total bi**h to me when I am buying Christmas in October.

Fast forward one month and I am ready to inject some winter warm (so NOT a real thing in Calgary). I added some of the shatterproof ornaments that I had bought earlier and some additional feathers that I scored at the dollar store.

Here is what you will see now!

I like it.  I think it's pretty.  Thanks Lowes, and really more importantly...thanks flat tire!