{{{SIGH}}}

Tuesday was a mixed bag type of day.

Had the appliance repair guy come again to install another circuit board in the fridge.  When hubby got up at 4:30 am the fridge wasn't working and felt a bit warm he said.  How long it had been off for, who knows.  Nothing was spoiled though.  So I guess we have another 90 days to see if it's going to work this time round?  It really is a pain in the butt though not knowing if or when the fridge might stop working?

Now I did make my fish cakes.  Ended up using three cans of salmon with the mashed potatoes.  Made enough for three meals.  Popped two meals in the freezer.  All in all took me around 90 minutes, and that included washing up and tidying the kitchen.  I also used up some crusts of bread to make my bread crumbs.  I never throw them out, I just stick them in my freezer.

I also made a quick 500 piece puzzle.  Took me just a couple of hours over a couple of days.

I got this one from the dollar store for $5....nothing is ever just a dollar at the dollar store nowadays.

Here is a photo of the Thomas Kinkade one I finished as well.

Back when I was working

outside of the house, Sunday's used to be when I cooked meals for the upcoming week.  Haven't thought about that in a while.  It made life easier for when I came in from work. 

On Sunday I prepped a few things to take us through the week.  From left to right.  Apple and strawberry sauce, garden salad, potato salad, boiled eggs and couscous and chickpea salad.

I did a rough puree of the apples and strawberries, I like a chunky sauce, we will have that in individual bowls with a tub of yogurt on the top.  I made enough of the potato and couscous salad, so hubby could take it in his lunch bag for work.  

I went to Costco on Monday as hubby really liked this bagged salad I got last week.  I was shocked as it's Dill Pickle flavour, not something he normally likes.  However for $7.99 for two bags, I thought it was yummy and great value for money.

They also had cans of salmon on for $13.99 for the six cans which is a super price.  I am going to make a big batch of fish cakes to put in the freezer.  I got a 10lb bag of potatoes in my produce bag the other week, so need to use them up.

Canned salmon is not something I buy normally, but I do like it in fish cakes.  I remember when I was a child, we would go to my aunt's house and she always made canned salmon sandwiches.  She used to mix the salmon up with salt and vinegar.  My mam never normally made them, but her sister always did.

Do you use canned salmon, and if so what do you make with it?

Crafting update.........

It's been a lot cooler this past week with even some snow.  It is melting, but its not been Spring-like that's for sure.  The temperatures are going to climb this week again; for how long who knows?  Anyhow updated my temperature cross stich for the week.

I got a puzzle from hubby as part as my birthday gift.  It's a Thomas Kinkade one and not overly easy!!  However, it is a beautiful scene, I wonder if it's based of an actual village?  I don't know much about Thomas Kinkade, do you?  He bought this at WalMart.

It's coming along though, slowly but surely.

What have you been up too craft wise?

Sunday Song

I love this song, so happy.........she is an Australian singer.

The first time I saw this song was through this video.  Do you remember this one?  Love the dad's expressions.

Craft Club - need input from you.

On Wednesday it was another craft club meeting.  This month we were making paper beads.  Now this is something I have never done, but have enjoyed looking at in stores.

We were given this instruction sheet and we were to make a book mark or a key chain.  She had the fixings for both of those things.  She also told us what to do........which helped a lot.

She supplied a variety of old books pages and scrap book paper.  Now for anyone wanting to do this, the thinner the paper, the easier it is to roll up.  If your paper is thicker, you probably need to roll it up twice to get it tight enough.  Magazine pages would work really well as well.

She supplied us with a piece of pool noodle and toothpicks to pop the beads in to dry.  I wrapped the paper around the cotton bud stem which you can see in the bottom of the photo.  She also suggested the thin end of a paintbrush.

When you have rolled up your length of paper, you attach the end with a dab of glue and then using a paint brush cover the whole bead with Mod Podge and place onto a tooth pick to dry.  They don't take very long to dry.  These are some of the ones I made.  Five were made with scrap book paper and the far right one with book pages.

We all found it quite therapeutic to make these.  I thought I would struggle with my hands, but I rolled them not in my hands but with the paper placed on the table.  A couple of the other women copied that idea and found it helpful.

So this is where I would love your input.  I neither want a book mark or a keychain, or jewelry.  Do you have any other ideas on what else I could use these for, as I really do like the look of them.

There are a number of how to videos I included a shorter one for you to look at.

Also good news, I am already registered for the April one...YEAH!!

A new friend.

I wasn't sure what to use as a title for this post.  I was thinking of, "Men just don't get it," but thought it might offend the male readers of the blog?  So I chose the friend title.

I was lucky enough to get some money for my birthday.  So while we were in Niagara on the Lake, I decided to call in at the local Outlet Mall close to there and spend my money.  I wanted a new pair of sunglasses and a belt bag/cross body bag.  I wear sunglasses all the time as I have light sensitive eyes.  I thought the bag would be useful when we go on vacation.

So we hit the usual stores, Coach, Kate Spade, Michael Kors, you know the ones.  I went back and forward between a couple of bags and types of sunglasses and ended up with these ones from Michael Kors:

I was all happy, happy with my choice and brought them home and placed my new bag next to my suede Kate Spade bag in our closet.  So now my Kate Spade bag has a friend.

So this is where the conversation with hubby starts.  He is confused as to why I need another bag, especially when I have practically the same colour bag already sitting there in my closet that I barely use.

So I pointed out to him, I only use the suede one when the weather is nice, as I don't want to get it dirty.  Also I get great pleasure in just admiring my bag when I go into our closet.

To say he was totally confused about that was an under statement.  Then I pointed out how happy he was when he went to the store and bought himself a new tool; a jack for helping lift out fence posts.

In our household, bags give me pleasure, tools do it for hubby!!!

Is it the same in your household?

Cross stich and art

Bit late this week in posting this as I wanted to do the hotel stay posts first.  The week started off warm last week and gradually cooled down.  This week is going to be a cold one with wintery weather.  I knew it was too good to be true all these warm temperatures!

I also attempted some water colour "painting."  The top one was water colour splotches of paint, and when dry I went round the colours with a sharpie.

The one underneath, I put dots of acrylic paint on the paper and dragged an old credit card over them to spread the paint out.  Neither are much good, very basic, but it's a start.

Have you been doing anything crafty this past week.

Hotel Stay - Dinner

As part of our hotel stay the kids had booked us dinner, breakfast and afternoon tea.

Here is what we ate at dinner.  Everything was spot on, just perfect.  We ordered from the Winter special menu, which was part of the hotel package stay.  Here is a link to the menu choices we had.  Ours was the first one at the Noble restaurant.

Hubby, had mushrooms on toast, of course it was fancier than that!!!  It was really good he said.

I had the soup of the day, which was roasted red pepper with goat cheese.  It was really good, rich and creamy.

Hubby had the steak and he said it was cooked perfectly.

I had salmon on a sunchoke puree.  Never had sunchoke before, tasted of nothing really very bland.  But it went well with the salmon.  That was the best piece of salmon I have ever had.

This was the dessert menu we got to choose from.

Hubby had the maple walnut tart.  He said it was okay.

I had the creme brulee, which was and is my number one choice!!  It was to die for.  The cranberry cookie, was so, so.

Everyone in the restaurant was either celebrating a birthday or anniversary it seemed.  Hubby had a glass of wine with his meal, I just had water.  They brought homemade chocolates at the end, but we were just too full and I took them to the hotel room.

Now, have you heard the expression, that your eyes are greedier than your stomach?  Well that's how we felt as we waddled back up to the room.  We were full to bursting.  We went to bed at our normal time, as hubby is not well at the moment, and it had been a busy day.

At around 11:45 pm I woke up with a terrible bad stomach.  I had the worst stomach upset, that caused me to be in the bathroom for 45 minutes.  Came back to bed and woke up again at 5am to go back to the bathroom.  Hubby slept awful because of this chest and cold issue.  We both felt like death warmed over.  We decided to go downstairs to have some breakfast.

I wanted some oatmeal to coat my stomach and hubby wanted his usual toast.  Here is the breakfast menu.  Neither of us could stomach anything on that menu.  So when we ordered what we ordered, I don't think the server was happy, but we didn't care.

Also we ended up canceling the afternoon tea, as we were so over having food.  The thought of having afternoon tea just made my stomach churn even more than it was doing.  We checked out after breakfast and drove home.

We had thought that the breakfast was included in the package, but it was extra.  If we had known that we would have called in at a Tim Hortons on the way home and not incur further costs for the kids.  But the kids had arranged for everything to be charged to them.

We got home before lunch time on Saturday and never moved from the living room, other than when I went for a nap which is something I never do, but I felt rotten.

We had the best time ever, but the food was just so rich, and our bodies aren't used to it. 

I am writing this post on Monday morning and my stomach is still iffy.  Hubby is as sick as a dog and is not at work.

It was a super treat to stay at the hotel and that dinner was perfect.

Hotel Stay

First of all thank you for all your birthday wishes.  Each and every one of them was greatly appreciated.  The kids bought me/us an overnight stay at the Prince Of Wales Hotel in Niagara on the Lake.  It included, dinner, breakfast and afternoon tea.  I will talk more about that in another post.  

The kids booked a winter special but upgraded our room to a King sized room with balcony.  It was so spacious and very comfortable. Niagara on the Lake is a good two hour drive from where we live.  It was a super day, and the afternoon was lovely and warm.  We were surprised to see Daffodils and snowdrops in bloom.  The daffodils are barely through where we live.

When we walked into the room, on the desk was a complimentary bottle of wine as a birthday gift from the hotel.  We brought it home with us.

The bed was a king size and huge.  I found it comfy, hubby found it too soft.

There was a gas fireplace in the corner of the room.  We didn't use it though.

The bathroom was just your typical hotel bathroom.  The water pressure and temperature was good.  Loved the heated towel rail.

We had a full sofa and the double doors led out to the balcony.  There were no chairs to sit on though, as although it was a nice day, it wasn't nice enough to sit outside.

While we were at dinner the housekeeping staff come by to refresh the room and they left this rose.

One of the most impressive features of the hotel is this stained glass feature in the front reception foyer.  It is stunning.

This is looking towards the front entry way.  Again very impressive and there were bouquets of fresh red roses all around the main reception areas and in the dining room.

We have been before and we had a lovely time last time as well.  I was very spoiled.

I will post about what we ate tomorrow.

Sunday Song

This is one from 1968.  I have always loved this song.  It was number one on the Canadian charts the beginning of March 1968.

Seriously I'm 60????

Not sure where the time has gone to but here I am 60.  Don't feel 60, never thought I would be 60.  

We had a get together with the kids and grandkids last weekend.  They went all out with an Afternoon Tea type of spread and a lovely cake.

The cake was lovely. It was lemon and raspberry.  

I loved the flower detail.

Then on Thursday the Brampton crew came up and gave me this lovely cake.  This one was Lemon with fresh cream, and it was yummy.

I will do most posts about my birthday over the next few days.  Suffice to say I have been very spoiled.

What happened on Wednesday..............

I have come to the conclusion it's one of "those" weeks, this week.  I got a call on Tuesday from the dentist, asking me if I wanted to change my cleaning appointment to 8am on Wednesday morning.  Said that was fine and off I went there on Wednesday morning.

The hygienist was someone I hadn't dealt with before.  Although quite nice; she was also very pushy.  As I think back to what she said about my mouth and teeth, I personally should walk into a lake and never come back out....LOL  I mean if she did "praise" anything it was followed by a negative comment about my mouth.

She did however suggest I should use a water flosser, as I refuse point blank to floss my teeth with regular floss as it feels like nails on a chalk board to me.  I will take her up on that idea, to try it out.  All in all that visit cost $140, and all she did was clean my teeth.  I do not have them polished, don't like that.  She did floss my teeth, she scraped them and poked about in my mouth.  I did not see the dentist, as it meant hanging around for another 15 minutes, as he didn't start until 9am.  So all in all a waste of time and money!!

I am back to ordering my fruit and veg bags, for $20 a month.  Here is what I got for $20.  There is only one thing we won't use and that is the celery, but I have my good friend coming up today and will give it to her.

I know I have mentioned this before but I do love my Tupperware FridgeSmart containers.  They work so good.  Here is everything put away ready to go into the fridge.

Where I pick the veggie bag up is at the north end of the city close to the mall, so had a look around there.  Plus I got a coupon in the mail for 6 free bagels from Great Canadian Bagel, as it's my birthday in March.  I have never got this before, and don't remember signing up for it?  If you click on the link and look for the birthday icon, you can sign up there.  So I picked up two sesame seed, two cheddar cheese and two everything bagels.  I also treated myself to a sesame seed bagel with veggie cream cheese and a coffee for my lunch, which cost $7.

I was also bad and picked up three books for $10 at Indigo in the mall.

I rarely go to the mall, so enjoyed my walk around it.

Another finished project........

I finally finished the second piece of cross stitch that I am putting together for a project at the end of the year.  I have been putting it off as I find the back stitch fiddly.  I am liking how they are looking though.

I also finished the latest paint by numbers.  I don't like it.  Believe me when I say I followed all the colour numbers.  It looks as though the background with the light mountains is wrong.  I may go over it again with other colours to deepen the colour there.  It may look better then?  I sound as though what I am talking about????  I don't!! 😁

I posted another book review here.  I borrowed this book from the library.  It was as good as the first in the series.

Seriously............

Not sure if you're like me, but if I know what I am talking about I will argue with you until the cows come home.  However, if I don't know what you are talking about I won't argue.

So today the appliance guy came to look at the fridge.  They had called Monday to change my appointment and it worked out better for me.  So he came in and asked me what was wrong.  I explained and despite the fact his accent was Eastern European and mine is British we managed to understand one another.

BUT, he then started on about breaker's and trying to say it was my fault/the breakers fault.  I do not know diddly squat about breakers.  So I was getting confused because, I thought if the breaker was at fault, the fridge wouldn't come back on?  I didn't know this for a fact, but thought it would.  So he kept talking, so I said this:

"My husband is an electrician, I'll call him and you can talk to him, as I know nothing about breaker's."

The look on his face at this point, made me realize that he was trying to get out of doing anything!!!  He told me that was alright I didn't have to call him; but too late I had dialed the number.

Got hubby on the phone and put him on speaker and said what was going on.  Hubby said out loud, "he's trying to get out of doing anything, there is nothing wrong with the breaker!!"

His attitude changed then, and I let hubby go as he was at work.  He took photos, and said he was going to call KitchenAid for advice to see what they say and get back to me.

I WILL NOT taken advantage of.  As I told him it keeps going off, I can't keep much in the fridge and freezer as I have no idea when it might turn off again.  When you pay over $5 thousand for a flipping fridge, it had better work!!  If it's under warranty, they have to fix it whether they like it or not.  I will be sticking to my guns on this as I am now fed up of the whole flipping thing.

Temperature cross stitch and catch up

Here is the latest update on the temperature cross stitch.  Last week was way above normal temperatures and other than on Sunday when it was cold and we had a sprinkle of snow, this week is looking warm as well.

Last week went by in a flash and honestly I don't feel I achieved a lot, other than booking our vacation.

This coming week isn't looking a lot better, as I have a busy week ahead of me.

Monday morning started out rough.  I HATE the time changes, it messes with my whole body clock.  Then when I went into the kitchen the fridge wasn't working.  I swore at that point and later on in the morning spent a delightful 45 minutes on the phone trying to get the warranty folk to sort it out.  Yes it's still under warranty, it's the circuit board that has gone again; despite the fact it was replaced just before Christmas.  The guy is coming out on Wednesday, but he won't do anything as he will have to order parts.  Meanwhile my fridge could turn off anytime, so I dare not put a lot in it.  Yes, it's bloody annoying 😡

I had to go to Walmart to the pharmacy as I thought I had "lost" 80 of hubby's pills.  I thought I was losing the plot on Friday.  Long story short they had shorted me 80 pills, as their inventory was over by 80.  I searched high and low for those bloody pills, as you begin to doubt yourself.

So here I am writing this on Monday lunchtime.  I will try and post through the week and more consistently.  I will also try and catch up with what is going on in your world.  But at this moment I just want to not do anything but read and relax as I feel stressed!!

Hope you have a relaxing week.

Sunday Song

Perfect for a funeral.

Do you have a song you want played at your funeral?

Vacation Booked..........

We have been humming and haa-ing over where to go for our vacation this year.  

Some places that came up were New York State.  Close to home and I would love to go to the Corning Museum of Glass.  We then thought we would head over to New York for a few days and then cross the border back into Canada and drive home via the lake.

We then took a look at Ocean City, Maryland.  However a condo on the beach was flipping expensive, but again it's a place we have never been and there was plenty to do it seemed.

We had the best vacation ever, other than the no-see-ums at the Isle of Palms in South Carolina.  Again for the building that we stayed in it was super expensive, but as it was in September 2008, then no doubt the price would go up.  You can see here on this post where we stayed.

We then decided to "look for a place" in the Savannah area as we have never been there before.  We checked out places in Hilton Head and Tybee Island.  I managed to narrow it down to two places one in Hilton Head and one in Tybee Island.  

We have ended up booking a condo with clear ocean views in Tybee Island for 10 days in September.  As it is a 16 1/2 hour drive from our home we will drive for around 10 hours the first day and have a shorter drive the second day.  

So have any of you been to Tybee Island?  Any places we should or should not go too?  We will of course go into Savannah, any places we should go too there?

How do you pronounce Tybee by the way?  Is it TIE-BEE, or TEE-BEE?

Are you planning on going away on vacation this year?

Redemption Day

These past few days Shopper's Drug Mart has had a bonus redemption event on.  For 100,000 points instead of getting $100 worth of free product you could get an extra $40, so you could get $140 worth of free product.  Hubby had a pile of points, and he never spends them, so I thought I would stock up on a few bits and bobs.  This is what I got:

It doesn't look at lot does it?  That little lot should have cost just over $170.  I paid out of pocket just over $30.  It boggles my mind that so little cost so much?

I will say I paid more than I should have for a couple of things, but they were things that we use, so figured if I were getting it "free," I'd rather stock up with things we use.

I did buy all the candy for the kids for Easter, so that's a good job, jobbed.  The canister on the second photo was on clearance for $5 and is air tight and will come in handy.

Regardless though the price of food, and toiletries are going through the roof.

If you're in Canada, did you cash in points at Shopper's Drug Mart this week?

Cross stitch and paint by numbers

 This week's cross stitch update, also involves the start of another month.  When you think about it, January and February went by quite fast; or at least I thought so?

We have had some warm weather, but it was interspersed with some cold days. which has resulted in hubby being as sick as a dog and me not feeling great either. I wish the weather would make up it's mind what it's doing.  We have actually had temperatures into the double digits.

As I finished that puzzle I hunted out another paint by numbers I had picked up at Dollarama.  This one doesn't need a magnifying glass to see the numbers I am pleased to say.  For under $4 this provides hours of entertainment.

I managed to get another book finished and you can read the review here and start another one.  "Daughter's of War," by Dinah Jefferies, again set in France during World War II.

Have you had a productive week with your leisure time?