I haven't made these in years.......

Thursday afternoon I pulled out a dozen cupcakes/sponge buns out of the freezer.  They were the plain vanilla ones.  I had some homemade lemon curd leftover in the fridge so cut out a chunk of the cupcake and put some lemon curd in there, replaced the cake.  Melted some chocolate and put that on top along with some snow flake sprinkles I found.

So when you bite into them you will get the lemony surprise.

I had some leftover chocolate, so I added some rice krispie cereal to it and make chocolate rice krispie buns.  I haven't made them in years.

I had a lemon jello/jelly and a fat free vanilla pudding mix in the pantry, so I decided to make wibbly wobbly pudding with raspberries and a vanilla pudding mix topping.

I used the one small bag of raspberries I picked from the garden and there is enough for us for four days.

I am trying to clean out our pantry of things that have been laying around for a while.

I'll pass again on this week's "Home of the Week."  I don't know that area but $2.4 million seems awful pricey for a semi.  Maybe that's the going price for that location?  I would love to see what the attached house looks like from the outside and what this house looks like amongst the rest of the street.  From what little I saw from the photos the other houses look like more older houses.  So no doubt this one sticks out like a sore thumb?

I WOULD NOT be lighting that fire as if it blows back on those while walls what a mess it would be.  In fact I wouldn't dare do anything in that house in case I spilt something.  Having everything white doesn't make it a home to live in, but maybe I am messy so and so?

Is anyone willing to pay $7,200 a month to rent this week's "Condo of the Week?"  The condo is nice but is it $7,200 a month nice?  Nope.  However there must be a market out there for this sort of thing, otherwise they wouldn't advertise it.

One store I love to go to when in England is Lakeland Plastics  If it wasn't for the ridiculously high fees they charge for shipping I would order from them regularly.  They do however have a great selection of recipes on there for you to try out and here is the link.

Organ Grinder, Monkey and pennies

You will have no doubt heard of this saying before:

Speak to the organ grinder not the monkey

Which translates to "Talk to the boss not the subordinate."

Well for the past couple of weeks I have been speaking to a couple of "monkey's" and yesterday I had finally had enough and decided to speak to the "Organ Grinder."  Want to know why?  Settle down with a cup of tea/coffee and I'll re-tell this sorry tale!!

Back in September of 2012 I get a flyer in the mail for a buy one get one free for a major magazine.  Now as I already subscribe to this magazine anyway, figured I would take advantage of this deal and give the free one to dd as part of her Christmas gift.  I mail it back to the magazine along with my credit card details.

Meanwhile, my credit card was compromised so the credit card company issued me with a new credit card.  I get a letter in the mail in October from the magazine letting me know they were unable to process my order as the credit card wouldn't go through.  So I mail the letter back as requested with my updated info.

At Christmas I mention to dd about the magazine and she says she hasn't received it yet?  I tell her I will follow up and to cut a long story short forgot about it until January 24th, 2013.  

I call customer service to find out what's going on, and the guy tells me they couldn't put the payment through because of my credit card.  So I tell him yes I know but I sent in new payment details and that the magazine had charged my credit card at the end of October.  So he told me to fax a copy of my credit card statement along with a cover letter telling them what's what.  I asked whom to address it too and he said Customer Service.

I waited a week and no one called me, so I called back in and spoke to a lady who told me that there was no sign of my fax and I should have addressed it to someone as no one would look at it???  So I got dh to re-fax it to this lady and called back to make sure they had received it. Lo and behold the guy who answered the phone was the guy I had talked to initially.  I made him go and pick up the fax and he said he would look into it.

I decided to call him again yesterday to see what was going on as I hadn't heard from him.  So I call him and get him on the phone and he has no idea who I am and so I have to go through the story AGAIN???  He looks up my account and tells me that my payment went through on January 31st and everything was fine?  I say what payment and make him hold on until I go online and look at my credit card account and sure enough they have charged me again?

I of course asked him why and he had no idea?  He asked me to re-fax the original paperwork along with a copy of what had been charged at the end of January so he could look into it.  I hung up the phone and then fiddled on trying to print out the transaction detail and rewriting another cover sheet for the fax.

After lunch I was doing my ironing and stewing over the conversation I had, had with this guy when all of a sudden it came to me.  If they are claiming that they didn't receive payment in October as my credit card wouldn't go through and I had told them I had a new credit card, how on earth were they able to charge my new credit card on January 31st unless they had my new number???  Also why did I have too provide more information when I had already done it twice before?

So that is when I decided enough of the monkey's now onto the Organ Grinder.  Now it took me two phone calls but I finally got to talk to the Organ Grinder who also thought it was mighty strange about my credit card and also thought there was no need for me to re fax everything through for the third time.

She told me she would get back to me by Monday of next week at the latest.........stay tuned for what happens next.

Now for the pennies.  Production of the penny ceased in May 2012 and the Royal Canadian Mint ceased the distribution of them as of February 4, 2013. However, like all discontinued currency in the Canadian monetary system, the coin remains legal tender. Once distribution of the coin ceased, though, vendors no longer were expected to return pennies as change for cash purchases, and were encouraged to round purchases to the nearest nickel. Non-cash transactions are still denominated to the penny. 

I was out and about on Wednesday morning and it seems that each store/location has their own way of dealing with this, which makes the whole thing very confusing if you ask me.  For the Canadians out there are you having trouble figuring out what each store does?

Rotten stinking headache.......

I have had a headache for the past two days.  No idea why.  I was in bed before 7pm last night to see if I could sleep it off.  Woke up around 6 am this  morning and it is feeling a bit better.  I had ran out of liquid Advil, so will head out today to get some.  They are my drug of choice when I get a headache.

Suffice to say I haven't visited anyone's blogs, so if you have anything exciting happening, please let me know as I don't think I will be on the Internet much again today, as I am still so tired from this headache.

Hopefully normal blogging will resume tomorrow!

Look at the great deal I picked up on Saturday....

Yes it does look as though someone has cut all the flowers of these plants and indeed they have as they were dead.  However these are all either tulip or hyacinth bulbs and for the price I couldn't turn them down.  I have stuck them in the basement to die back and will plant them out in the Spring when the ground is warm.  Though I was just thinking about it, for you gardeners out there, should I wait until Fall?

Thanks for all your comments yesterday.  I wasn't angry, mainly bemused that someone could come up with such a dreadful comment without fully knowing the facts?

Sunday was a great day.  We never left the house all day.  Dh finished off the trim down the basement and stairs.  Now I have to fill in all the nail holes and sand and stain the wood trim that is inserted in between the tiles and wood flooring.  

I stained the stairs last week and the smell was horrible, not helped by not being able to open the windows or doors because it was so cold.  I am going to wait to varnish the stairs until I can open the windows and doors.

We had a cheats version of cabbage rolls for supper, the recipe is here.

If you have a moment you should pop by Cindy's as Lexus has just had puppies and they are gorgeous.  Her doggies have their own blog here.  For those of you who are mad about cats, Jane's 13 cats have their own blog here.

Oh dear me some people.

Well it seems not everyone was in agreement with us taking Millie back to the shelter, check out the original post here.  It seems Abgurl in Alberta Canada thinks I am both cruel and insensitive.

This is what they had to say about me:

"What a shame- I just started to read your blog but because of what you have just disclosed regarding first adopting this poor animal( who clearly needed a loving family) and then chose to return it( akin to taking an item back to the store because of a flaw or such),I am extremely dismayed that someone would do this. Yes the animal certainly had medical issues and yet you did not see this when you first chose the animal??? How in the world did you miss some of the obvious ones that you speak of??? Had this been a child that you were choosing to adopt and once you got "it" home, it displayed a problem, would you have tried to return them???

What you did was cruel and insensitive and I hope to heavens that you never never have the opportunity to do this to another helpless animal that might be relying on us humans for care and love( and that it sounds like this poor animal never had in its prior life-you could have made a difference) And if my tirade makes you feel any type of remorse, good. Shame Shame on you

Abgurl in Alberta Canada"

Abgurl of course doesn't have a blog or an email address where I could privately let them know what's what, so I guess I will have to respond to her message here.

You wanted to know:  "How in the world did you miss some of the obvious ones that you speak of???"

So lets start at the head.

Cataracts:  I for one am not familiar with cataracts in either human or animal.  I don't know of anyone with them and had no personal experience with them.  Plus without my glasses on I can't see things clearly close up anyway, so it would have been the case of the blind leading the blind here!

Enamel missing on her teeth:  When you first bring an older dog home that you have no previous history about and even though they seem very good natured; I don't think it's very prudent to try and see what's going on in their mouth until you have formed some bond or trust with them?  Now that's just me, maybe you are comfortable with inspecting a dogs teeth/mouth when you first meet them?

Heart Murmur: This is not an obvious one, and only a qualified vet would be able to determine this one.

Hips/spine:  Now some of these issues are obvious to the naked eye, but some are not.  There were signs that something wasn't right, which included how she was sitting.  She infact squatted not actually sat on her bum.  We mentioned that to the shelter but it was dismissed as nothing.  

When we were at the shelter both times it was busy with lots of things going on, which not only distracted you, but the animal.  We didn't bring her home until the Monday night, so we didn't have too long with her before it was bed time.  On the Tuesday morning I was out and about with her and on Tuesday afternoon she slept a lot as she was tired.  By Wednesday when we had more time together it was very obvious there was something going on with her back end.  I had previously booked an appointment with our vet for the Friday but moved it up to that evening, as we were concerned.  It was at that appointment all these issues were pointed out to us.  At that point both ourselves and our vet who knows us very well thought it was in the dogs best interest to return it to the shelter.

"first adopting this poor animal( who clearly needed a loving family) and then chose to return it( akin to taking an item back to the store because of a flaw or such),I am extremely dismayed that someone would do this."

If the shelter had bothered to disclose these issues about the dog from the beginning, we would have never even considered taking her home.  Both my husband and I talked with the coordinator at the shelter at length about what we had gone through with our prior dog Molly.  If you care to read back through my blog history you will see what we did to make Molly's life as bearable as possible despite all the allergies she had.  At no time did we say we were willing to take on a animal with a lot of health issues, infact we said the exact opposite.

From what we knew the shelter takes their animals when they are brought into the shelter to their own vet for a check up to see if there are any problems.  It took our vet all of 15 minutes tops to figure out all these problems; so I am guessing their vet would have been able to do the same?  However I don't know that for a fact, so I can't assume that.  They however did confirm that the vet had looked at her, as they were not 100% sure that she had been spayed and they didn't want to open her up to see, so if she did go onto heat that we were to bring her back and they would spay her for us.  Our vet confirmed she felt as scar where it should be when a dog is spayed.

If we were not serious about adopting an animal and did this as a distraction to keep me amused for a few days (I know this is not what you wrote), why on earth would I have gone out and spent close to $100 on supplies for this animal, including two beds so she would have a comfy place to sleep, toys and other things?  Also why on earth would we spend $90 getting her checked out at our vets?  I don't think that is a sign of someone who is cruel or insensitive?

Again if you had bothered to read through the rest of my blog you will see we have adopted an animal from a shelter before and gave Molly a good life and she was loved dearly.

So before you go judging me Abgurl in Alberta Canada, try and at least get your facts right first.......

Haven't listened to these songs in a while.......

Heard this song on Friday, thought it was catchy:



Not sure I have shared this video with you.  I would have loved to be at this concert:



Finally haven't heard this song in a long while either:



Was anyone else a big fan of the tv show Ally McBeal?  Maybe you'll remember this:

Home of the week and Our little Princess

This weeks "home of the week" is not well planned out if you ask me.  Yes it's bright and airy but it's tripped of character.  I couldn't understand why they had that big fence around the front garden; then discovered the back yard is basically a place to park the car.  Notice the third floor balcony has metal mesh over it to keep the pigeons out.  Although I like the look of this house, I don't like what they have done with it.  So I'll pass AGAIN!!

If I were single and wanted to live downtown Toronto, I wouldn't say no to this week's "Condo of the Week."  It's bright and airy which is always a plus, and it is what it is and for once under $1 million!!  However as I am not single and don't want to live downtown Toronto, I'll pass on this!!!

Our little Princess  mom emailed me these photos to cheer me up.  Isn't she a little beauty.  She's wearing an outfit I bought her.

Here she is asleep on her maternal grandfather's chest, just precious.

Thanks again for all your thoughts and comments over these past few days, I really do appreciate them all.