Wonky Donkey..........

We have a couple of Wonky Donkey books and I loved reading them to the kids, this is a different take on it which I thought was neat.........

These never get old.............

 All from the Vicar of Dibley........

Emma Chambers, who played Alice has since passed...........

A Bougainvillean bamboo band

 This is so neat and very catchy.............

Doesn't make an ounce of sense to me, but......

 what do I know?

Let me explain.  If you go to a drive through restaurant or coffee shop, you generally see a timer on the wall.  The employee's are expected to get each order out and the customer through the drive through within a certain time.  I am sure many of you are familiar with this?

I went to the grocery store on Saturday morning, which is unusual for me, as I tend to avoid stores on the weekend.  Anyhow, this is a Zehrs store, which are overseen by Loblaws, which is one of the major grocery retailers here in Canada.

Fast forward to checking out, and there was a guy in front of me, who was taking advantage of some deals, exclusively posted on the store's Facebook page.  I sighed when I saw this as none of the cashiers have any idea how to put these deals in the system.  And this cashier true to form had no idea, anyhow, I told the cashier to call over the superviser, as there were two of them standing talking a little down the way.  They ignored her, so I called the supervisor over.  She had no choice but to walk on over now, and I guess she sucked on a lemon on the way over by the expression on her face...LOL  Anyhow got everything sorted out with that and the poor guy went on his merry way, and the supervisor went and sucked on some more lemons!!

Then it was my turn and I was chatting away with the cashier and she started telling me about how the till times each transaction now.  They are expected to get people's orders through in a certain time.  They are made to sign some paperwork about this.  Another cashier came over to talk to me as well about it, as I was in disbelief about this.  I even asked, "What just like a drive through?"  They said yes.  What is you have coupons?  What if you have a huge order?  What if an item is priced wrong?  What like the guy in front of me who had the Facebook pricing and no one knows how to ring in those items?

My "surrogate daughter," worked for Loblaws, so I was telling her this story and she said honestly she's not surprised.  She was saying that none of the higher end Loblaws brick and mortar stores any making any money.  The online ordering and delivery's are making money.  They are building more "lower prices," grocery stores, like No Frills, Independent, etc, as folk are shopping there more.  They are trying to reduce costs when ever they can.

Now I can almost guarantee if this chain of stores is doing this, the rest will follow suit.  It must be so demoralizing for the staff who are not that well paid to now have to make sure they keep to a strict timetable when putting people's orders through.

Thoughts?

March fruit and veggie bag............

 I picked up March fruit and veggie bag, which I paid $20 for.

The fruit was 1lb of strawberries, 3lbs Gala apples, 2 extra large naval oranges.........they were good!!

The veggies were 10lbs potatoes, 2 lbs onions (I gave them to a neighbour), 2lbs carrots, an extra large sweet potato, a green leaf lettuce, 2 heads of broccoli

Not sure if I got my money's worth this month?  I guess I did.

I will use the sweet potato to make wedges.  The carrots for soup.  The potatoes to make baked potatoes and I plan on making a couple of shepherd's pies for the freezer.  Had the lettuce, just dressed with a parmesan and basil dressing, got two meals out of it as it was a large head of lettuce.  The broccoli as a side veg with a meal.

Better than the original?

 

I think so, do you?

Pre-Birthday treat....

Hubby took me out for Afternoon Tea on Friday.  I knew all about it and it was at a British Store/Restaurant close to where we live.  We went for breakfast there the other week, and I wrote about it here.

The cost per person was $42.50 plus taxes, which worked out too around $48 each, with tip we paid a total of $110.  There was a lot of food!  The top tier included a shortbread cookie with jam in the middle, dark chocolate mousse, and Eton Mess.

Middle tier one plain and one cheese scone each.  It came with jam and clotted cream which was homemade.  We had to ask for butter for the plain scone, and she brought a container of margarine 😐

Bottom tier there were 3 Coronation chicken (cooked chicken, mayo and curry powder) sandwiches each, 3 cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches each, and 3 egg mayo and spring onion (salad onions) each. A mini broccoli and cheese quiche, and a mini bacon, egg and cheese quiche each.

Drinks was unlimited tea or coffee, we chose coffee.

As the scones and quiche's were warm we ate those.  Due to having different flour over here in Canada, the scone's were very dense, but putting the clotted cream and jam on the plain one, made that taste better.  Putting marg on the cheese scone didn't help; I suggested they supply butter in future as it had a better taste than cheap margarine.  The lady was surprised we asked for butter as she thought we would put the clotted cream and jam on the cheese scone????

The quiches were just the standard store bought quiches, or at least the pastry cases were store bought.

We had to eat the Eton Mess and the Chocolate Mousse as we couldn't take those home with us.  The Eton Mess was good, the chocolate mousse was nasty.  I love chocolate but this mousse was again very dense and bitter,  and I could taste the cocoa powder in the teaspoon I tried.  The lady said that the mousse seemed to be left most of the time.  I suggested a light lemon mousse as by the time you have worked your way through the bottom two tiers you are looking for a lighter finish.

We tried a sandwich each and they were fine.  The bread they used was really nice.

We took home the rest of the sandwiches and the cookie and had them for supper.

So all in all it covered both our lunch and supper.  The sandwiches wouldn't have lasted any longer as they were already drying out by supper time.

Overall we thoroughly enjoyed it.  It made a super nice treat and the coffee as I said before is really good.

Overall well worth the price for the amount of food we got, they just need to make a couple of adjustments in my opinion to make it even better.

P.S. I just wanted to say I loved all your comments you made about the sugar sandwiches.💖

Sugar Sandwiches.........

I was talking to my mother the other day and she was telling me how after the war and with food being rationed, how parents wanted to "fatten their children up and treat them," when more food became available.

One of the things my mother remembered eating was sugar sandwiches.  Bread was buttered and sugar sprinkled over it.  She also remembers eating sandwiches of bread and butter with condensed milk spread over the buttered bread.

Once bananas became available, they would mash up a banana, sprinkle sugar over it and pour condensed or Carnation milk over it.  They would also mash up bananas to put in sandwiches as well.

Jam sandwiches were a staple, as my Nana made jam, bramble jelly was my favourite.  

Every night before she went to bed as a child, my Nana would crumble an OXO cube into a bowl, pour boiling water over it, mix it up and crumble in a slice of bread and my mam would eat that before bed.

I had never heard of sugar sandwiches, as we were never given them.  

Is this something you have heard of?

Guaranteed to please..............

As you know I have multiple grand children between the ages of 4 through 13, yep one's a teenager already!!  Anyhow to eldest five are ages  nearly 10 to 13 years old.  They are past the easy to please with cheap chocolate and toys stage, cash is key with those guys....LOL

I will be seeing those five over the next week or so and I am not sure if I'll see them before Easter, so decided to be organized and get their Easter gifts sorted.  Of the five, four are girls and one boy.  I headed to Dollarama and this is what I got!

In each bag I placed four bags of candy and a $10 Dollarama gift card.........

I popped them into a brown bag lunch bag, and decorated it with Easter stickers, remember they are tweens and teens, so baby things are not cool!!  They will tolerate a few stickers ....just...LOL I always do seven hugs and kisses on everything of theirs, one hug and kiss per grandchild.

I realize it is not a healthy or nutritious treat bag, but they will be thrilled with it, plus they get a gift card to go and buy more sugary treats!!!

By the way I use the brown bag lunch bags, to store my mushrooms in the fridge, they last way longer when you do that!

I haven't forgotten the two youngest ones, both boys, but as they are 4 and 7 they are still okay with just a toy and candy, oh and stickers!!!  I will get them closer to the time as we live closer to them.

Two Things................

MP3 Players and Leisure Arts.

Again when I was sorting through some paperwork I came across this pattern:

I hadn't thought about MP3 players or the company Leisure Arts in years, have you?

I had a MP3 player, and loved it.  I am sure if I went through some drawers I could find it.  I used it a lot at the farmhouse when I was cutting the grass.  A lot of people had the Sony Walkman; remember when that was all the rage?

Leisure Arts was a popular company for arts and crafts back in the day.  I haven't heard of them in years?  I looked them up at www.leisurearts.com  and as they're an American company, I am not sure if they ship up to Canada anymore?

Another blast from the past, eh!

The Hobby Horse Quilt Shoppe

 While going through some papers I found the following:

It's the newsletter from the Hobby Horse Quilt Shoppe in Glen Williams, Ontario.  That is where I learned to quilt back in 2006/2007.  

I took the Beginner Class.

 Making us do everything by hand was the best thing for a first timer, as we learned so much.  I went on to make a cotton flannel quilt (machine sewn class) for hubby after that and we still have that quilt.

The neat thing about this place was it was located in a converted barn.  They had the most gorgeous stock and by looking at their website still do.  I haven't been to the store in years, as we no longer live in that area.

As you know I rarely quilt anymore, when I did though I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I am also selling some quilting supplies I found.  I had forgotten I had the following:

Someone else may as well get the use of them.

The 1980's called............

I have been having a clean out of things we stored in our basement laundry room.  We hauled everything out to  renovate it, and before putting everything back in, I have been going through things.  I have been going through a box which was marked "Sewing Stuff!!"

I found a pile of paper sewing patterns and have listed them on Facebook Marketplace.  I thought I would share a few of the photos of things we brought over with us from the UK in 1989.

I ordered the two Family Circle ones and paid  90p each for them.  I remember making our daughter one of the outfits on the bottom right pattern when she was a baby.

The ones below remind me of Princess Diana.......even the hairstyle; especially View C.

You could get away with wearing style's B & E now couldn't you?

I then went through a folder of things I cut out from magazines and here are some things I found from the 1980's.

This screams the 1980's doesn't it?  Even the colour's.

Do you remember when Cafe Curtains were all the rage?

Then finally from 1984, Hilary James' "Sew Easy Gifts for Christmas" Series from December 1984.  These came from Pebble Mill at One.  I honestly have no recollection of watching this show?  I had to look it up.

So as far as the laundry room goes, we have got some more done, but it's not quite finished yet.  We still have to buy the cupboards (kitchen units) to go in there, hopefully in the next week or so.

I hope you enjoyed my blast from the past?

Fun Sunday Morning

On Sunday we had a scheduled hydro outage from 8am until 6pm in our area.  Hubby suggested we should go to the local casino for a pre-birthday treat for me.  I will say we are not big gamblers, in fact it's not something we do very often and we do play within our limits.

As we had never been to this casino before, despite it being under 20 minutes from where we live, we "joined the casino" and got a players card, that gave us $10 in free play each.

I had a great time and tried many games, including the ones below.

This one was my favourite.  San Fa Tigers.

We used our free play, and then we had $20 each, then hubby used another $20.  So in total we put in $60 in cash.  I cashed out my ticket after just under  3 hours for around $215, so all in all we came home $150 up.  We had budgeted $200 total, so I was able to to put that $200 back and have the $150 to use to put gas in the car and spend on "useful" things!!!

We arrived at the casino before 10 am and left just after 12:30 pm and we were shocked at how many people we in the casino on a Sunday morning.  

In the Dominican there was a casino in the resort we were staying at.  I had budgeted $20 USD each per night for us to spend on the slots.  We went one night and it was so small and not enjoyable at all, that we never went for the rest of the week.  I felt it was a total waste of money, so as you see we have enough common sense to walk away.

Do you go to the casino?  Or gamble?

A toe tapper........for a Sunday!

 I hadn't heard this song in years, when it popped up in a video I was watching.  

Brought back many memories from the 80's.

Happy Sunday!

This says it all!!!

 

Fighter Jets......

I was reading this post over at Kate's and it brought back a memory from when I was a teen.

From the age of 6 until 25 we lived in the Eden Valley in Cumbria.  Due to it being a valley, it was a perfect place for the fighter jets to practice their manoeuvre's (British spelling!!)  Also there was an army camp close by with a practice range on it for the tanks, and the troops could also practice whatever they practice.

So we grew up seeing these jets flying past a ridiculous speeds.  Unless you were new to the area, you just carried on; someone new you may see them duck as they flew past....LOL  One day when I was a teen and living at home, I was either pegging out the washing or bringing it in, and a jet flew by.  I never heard it until it was basically on top of me.  It scared me so bad I was screaming my head off.  I was terrified, shaking and crying.  I must have been away in my own head day dreaming.  I still remember it to this day, as to how scared I was.

Then another memory which was funny as it made me smile.  We were at my mother-in-law's funeral, which of course was not funny.  At that point we had lived in Canada probably 15 years.  So during the funeral the vicar was speaking then all of a sudden we had fighter jets flying over.  The noise was deafening and the poor vicar had to stop speaking for a few seconds.  Again none of the congregation thought anything of it as they were so used to it.

I will say though it's when there is a sonic boom from one of these jets that can indeed frighten even those people who are used to the jets flying by.

Thanks Kate for the idea of this post.

Little House on the Prairie...............

Netflix is bringing a rebooted version of Little House on the Prairie on screen in July 2026.

I am not sure how I feel about this.  I don't think you should mess with this classic.  The same with The Waltons or Mash, they are all classic shows.  I don't think a newer version will do it justice, just my opinion.

What are your thoughts?

A good day all round, I'd say..........

Tuesday, woke up to the sun shining, so a big 👍from me!

Painted some more trim and the door in the laundry room twice, so another 👍from me!

Added more stuff to the boxes to take to the charity shop; then took said boxes to the charity shop, so another 👍from me!

Took a box of empty wine bottles to the beer store to get the deposit money back on the way to the charity shop, again 👍from me!

Called in at Zehrs to pick up some food items and picked up my free jar of pasta sauce, that I won on the spin the wheel thingie on the app, so another 👍!

Sold something on Facebook Marketplace that had been listed since last September........yes I have decided to just leave things on there, as this isn't the first time something has sold months after listed, so $45 in our pocket and another 👍!

Figured that $45 would pay for the peel and stick tiles I want to purchase for the laundry room, another 👍

Hubby, sorted took out the hard drives from three old laptops so now we can take them to the electronics disposal at the dump 👍

So all in all not huge jobs, but good jobs done and the house is looking a little tidier, so that's a win, win!!

How was your Tuesday?

What is your go too subject.....

when you run out of things to say when talking to someone?

Mine is the weather.

Price gouging at it's finest.............

On Friday we went out at just after 6pm and the price of gas/petrol was $1.24 a litre.  Hubby went out to the store on Sunday morning and the price of gas/petrol was $1.37 a litre.

Now correct me if I am wrong here, but I don't think that the oil tankers from the Middle East could have traveled over to Canada and delivered oil/gas up to our neck of the woods all before the latest lot of chaos happened, justifying a price increase????

Feel free to fill me in here. 😕

Books I read in February....

 I said I was reading books written by Jane Austen during the month of February.

I started the month with Sense and Sensibility

This is what the introduction says about Jane.

I struggled with the first third of this book, I think it was the way she wrote.  However, by the time I started the second part it started making sense and the story came together.  I do admit to skimming over some sentences, but overall I did enjoy the second and third part of the book.

Luckily on Britbox was the movie of  Sense and Sensibility, staring Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet and Hugh Grant among others, which I decided to watch after I had read the book.  I wanted to make sure I had understood the book I read.

I preferred the book over the movie despite the great cast, as I found the movie left out a lot of details that were key to the actual story.  

The Jury by Fern Michaels

The women of the Sisterhood know life isn’t fair, but that doesn’t mean they have to like it—or let it pass. Instead, these best friends share their joys, troubles, triumphs, heartaches and one collective mission: to right wrongs and bring justice where it is desperately needed. Even reeling from loss of one of their own, the Sisterhood is always prepared to rally behind a new friend.

For years, Paula Woodley has suffered the broken bones and shattered self-esteem caused by an abusive marriage. But what can she do? Her high-profile, Washington powerbroker husband is not a man to be crossed. Or so he thinks. The Sisterhood may not be an organization found in any of his memos, but he’s about to take a meeting with them—and they’ll be setting the agenda . . .

I bought this book at the dollar store for $3.  It is part of The Sisterhood series, but you can read it as a stand alone book as well.  The one thing I will say is that after reading the above synopsis on the book, I had to keep checking back to make sure it wasn't from another book, as the Paula Woodley storyline doesn't come into play until at least half way through the book.

Now not to say you weren't entertained for the first part of the book, there was plenty of things going on, I just thought it was a bit odd.  I will say when the sisterhood dishes out their style of punishment even I raised my eyebrows.  What got me was the narrative going on between the ladies while they were doing it.  It was comical in places, even I was smiling.........not that I condone violence.......but!

I will say this book made me want to read the rest of the series, so will look out for them.

Counting Lost Stars by Kim Van Alkemade

1960, New York City: College student Rita Klein is a pioneering woman in the new field of computer programming—until she unexpectedly becomes pregnant. At the Hudson Home for Unwed Mothers, social workers pressure her into surrendering her baby for adoption. Rita is struggling to get on with her life when she meets Jacob Nassy, a charming yet troubled man from the Netherlands who is traumatized by his childhood experience of being separated from his mother during the Holocaust. When Rita learns that Hitler’s Final Solution was organized using Hollerith punch-card computers, she sets out to find the answers that will help Jacob heal.

1941, The Hague: Cornelia Vogel is working as a punch-card operator at the Ministry of Information when a census of Holland’s population is ordered by the Germans. After the Ministry acquires a Hollerith computer made in America, Cornelia is tasked with translating its instructions from English into Dutch. She seeks help from her fascinating Jewish neighbor, Leah Blom, an unconventional young woman whose mother was born in New York. When Cornelia learns the census is being used to persecute Holland’s Jews, she risks everything to help Leah escape.

After Rita uncovers a connection between Cornelia Vogel and Jacob’s mother, long-buried secrets come to light. Will shocking revelations tear them apart, or will learning the truth about the past enable Rita and Jacob to face the future together?

This was a good book but, the backstory took too long to read through.  I know an author has to bring in some background to a story, but this was excessive to my mind.  One story is set in 1960, whereas the other is set in 1941, it made no sense at all why one was related to the other until you were quite a ways through the book.

Although I am neither a math whiz nor a computer whiz, I did enjoy the information on the Hollerith computer and the detail it did go into.  There were a couple of twists that I didn't see coming; one where the pit of my stomach just dropped.

The ending of the book seemed to be too clean cut.  I guess if an author wants a happy ending to a horrific story it's their book they can what they want.  Glad I read the book and I did learn something new.

"Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy: two perfectly suited lovers who, at first, find each other insufferable. Despite Elizabeth’s negative feelings about Darcy, fate seems determined to throw this pair together, and Darcy, almost in spite of himself, will make revelations that end up causing Elizabeth to question everything she believes.

Set in a time when marrying well was a woman’s only way to secure a comfortable future, Pride and Prejudice is arguably the forerunner of all romantic comedies and certainly one of the best-loved novels of all time.

I again struggled wit the first chapter of this book, but the further I got into it the more I enjoyed it.  Are Jane Austen books an easy read for me? In one word no, I find them long winded and drawn out.

I need to see if I can find the movie on one of the channels to watch to see how much it follows the story.

Onto Mansfield Park next.............