Hodge Podge

Hi all!  I hope everyone has had a good start to the week!  I have and it’s looking like another busy one, but that’s OK.  You know what they say about keeping idle hands busy and all…LOL  I just wish I had a little more free time to enable me to get back to blogging with a little more frequency.  In time, in time, right?

I started back to Pilate’s last Tuesday which was pretty much awesome.  They had a mini session over the holidays which I was unable to sign up for and I didn’t realize how much I missed it.  Now I’m good to go until mid May.  Wednesday DS had a hockey game which they won 1-0……with 2.6 seconds left in the game.  What a rush!  Us parents were all freaking out and the boys were so excited that they nearly jumped out of their skates!  :)

Something not so fun happened to me on Thursday at the gym.  Since July a group of us have been knocking out Jillian Michael DVD’s on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  We made our way through levels 1, 2 & 3 of the 30 Day Shred (10 times at each level) and through level 1 of Shred It With Weights (again, 10x). 
Last Thursday we moved on to level 2 of SIWW which is significantly harder than level one.  Lots of swinging through the legs with the kettle bells and such.  Within the first 5 minutes I smashed my knee with the weight doing “figure 8’s”.  Grr…but the worst was that by the end I knew I‘d screwed my back up.  Right across my lower back was numb for a few hours and when I woke up Friday morning I could barely walk.  Exercise FAIL!  I’ve been nursing it with heat and A535 and it’s feeling much better today, but still too tender to consider hitting the gym.
 
Wednesday was my hubby’s birthday and we had planned for the 4 of us to do a nice dinner out Saturday night to celebrate.  DD ended up getting invited to a sleepover birthday party so I asked my parents if DS could spend the night at their place and they agreed.  So for the first time in at least 12 years my hubby and I had a night completely to ourselves.  Heck ya! We continued on with dinner plans at Einstein’s Café (yes, we love it there, plus my friend owns it with her husband and we like to support them!!)  First, we enjoyed some bruschetta which is made using their signature homemade bread:
For our mains hubby had the portabello brie stuffed chicken breast,
And I enjoyed snapper with a light sun dried tomato cream sauce:
For dessert we shared a piece of Southern Bourbon pecan pie:
The food was outstanding, the atmosphere cozy, but the best part was that we didn’t feel at all rushed to get home to the babes.  After dinner we went to see The Fighter.  GREAT movie.  If you’ve seen it too, let me know what you thought, K?!  After the show we bumped into another couple and decided to go out for a few drinks.  I felt 20 years younger rolling (not literally!) through the front door at 2am.  LOL  Usually I’ve been asleep for at least 3hrs at that point.
I’ve been busy in the kitchen, too!  After soccer Thursday night I made a batch of blueberry bran muffins: Friday night was homemade turkey soup: Tonight was homemade macaroni and cheese: My hubby and I had Thai again for lunch last Friday:
I didn’t eat it all so the rest turned into Saturday’s lunch: We decided yesterday to make our own Pad Thai at home.  So with the help of this recipe we got to it!
DS liked it so much that he declared tofu his new favourite food.  LOL It did turn out pretty amazing…
I also made a quick stir fry for lunch today seeing as I was home instead of the gym.  I cooked some chicken breast, mixed veg and bean sprouts then added some Caribbean stir fry sauce.  Delicioso!! 
Oats have made their regular morning appearance:
And some, but not enough, fruit:
So I’ve been drinking lots of water…
And getting my greens in the form of juice!
And I can’t forget about this lovely sandwich, Something that made me very excited on Saturday was finding these gems while browsing through the grocery store! Cocoa roast almonds have made it to Canada!!!  They’re dear, though, at $6.99 a container.  Ugh…we bought them anyways!!  :)

Time to wrap this post up because we’re heading out to price new living room furniture and I want to check out some modern dining room furniture.  This is the year that we rid ourselves of the “garage sale” type furniture we have and invest in some new pieces.  After all, most of our furniture is pushing 15yrs old.  YIKES! 
Bye for now!!

First Post of 2011!

Hello!  How has everyone been?  I hope that you’ve been enjoying a fun 2011 thus far.  In the past week I’ve dined on Thai, partied it up with my bestie who was in town for the holidays, cooked New Year’s Day dinner for my whole family, completed 4 extremely busy days of work and finally, we just arrived at a hotel where we will be spending the next 2 days for a hockey tournament.   The 2 hour drive here was hellish because there are blizzard like conditions out there!  Yikes!
Seeing as a lot has gone on I’ll stick to the most interesting (IMO, anyways) parts!  Let’s start with my Thai meal.  The kids both ended up a their friends houses on the 29th so my hubby and I took advantage of the free time by hitting the mall, the liquor store and dinner out.  I started off with fresh shrimp rolls: Then dove into a spicy pad thai:
I barely made a dent in that.  It was HUGE, but delicious. 
On the 30th my friend and I went out for dinner and drinks.  We ate at my favourite restaurant, Einstein’s Cafe.  White wine spritzers started us off: Oops!  They’re gone!  LOL  Here we are before we emptied them:
I ordered a goat cheese/portabello mushroom stuffed chicken which was just divine.  No picture of the original meal, but I did snap one of the leftovers I devoured the next day,
After dinner we went out for drinks with a few friends.  Loads of fun, which I happen to have photo evidence of:
 
Good times.  Such good times in fact, that the next day I *really* appreciated a grande NF gingerbread misto! LOL! 
New Year’s Eve was pretty low key.  We usually don’t go out because it’s gets WAY too expensive to pay for tickets out plus a babysitter.  Besides, I had lots of prep to do for New Year’s Day dinner.  I baked a chocolate cheese cake, prepared a new cranberry sauce recipe,  made the strawberry sauce for the cheesecake.  I also spent quite a bit of time relaxing on the couch watching movies like Eclipse and 17 Again.  Of course I loved Eclipse (I’d already seen it) but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed 17 Again!  I got a good few laughs outta that one!
On to New Years Day.  I had my parents, in laws, sister and my brother & his girlfriend over.  On the menu was a 15lb turkey, stuffing, roasted potatoes & butternut squash, string beans & buns.  This is what my meal looked like: The cheesecake was a hit and there were no leftovers to be had! And lunches have looked like this all week! Gobble Gobble!  LOL!  Here are a few of the pictures that were taken that day:
 
Now it’s time for some of the other great eats I’ve chowed down the past week.  Breakfast, as usual, as been oats: See how I snuck those waffles in there?  When I haven’t been eating leftover turkey for lunch I’ve been enjoyed farm fresh eggs: All my dinner photos are really dark, but I did make a great stir fry last night.  I snapped a better picture of the portion I took for lunch today, YUM!  Well, I think that’ll be all for tonight.  My hubby and DD just ran down to Tim Horton’s for some eats because dinner was a looong time ago!  Soon after our snacks we’ll be turning in.  It’ll be a 6am wake up call for an early game!
Bye for now!