Thank you

for all your birthday wishes yesterday.  I had a lovely day and was thoroughly spoiled.

One of the things dh bought me was a lovely bouquet of flowers.

We went down to dd and, ds and partner joined us.  We had a lasagna, Cesar salad and garlic bread for lunch.  They bought me a lovely birthday cake, white sponge cake with mini brownies on top.

Our little Munchkin had a peanut and jelly sandwich, cheese and blueberries for her lunch!!

A good day made even better by being with the family.

Our Little Munchkin........

We're going to see her today along with both kids and partners as it may or may not be someones birthday today (wink, wink!!)

Since both kids have their own houses I am pleased to say we split up hosting duties for special occasions.  Dd is hosting my birthday, I am hosting ds birthday and Easter as they are both on April 4th.  Ds is going to host Father's Day, maybe Mother's Day not sure which one, as he is a whiz with the BBQ and it should be BBQ weather by then.

So back to our little Munchkin.  She has had a cold again.  It could be due to more teeth coming in, or just because someone else at school has cold again.  This time dd was super organized and as soon as she started having signs of a cold and a cough, out came the Vicks Vapour Rub and the cold water Humidifier.  She managed not to get an ear infection or bronchitis this time so that was good.

I haven't shared any photos of her in the past couple of weeks.  I had to go back over my blog to see what I have shown you.  If you are one of my Facebook friends you will be groaning now as I often post photos of her on there.

They went to a 50's themed party at the end of February for her other Grampa.  Dd made the felt poodle and pinned it onto her skirt.

Here she is at school sitting under the table playing peek-a-boo.  Why, because she can!!  Love the highlighter pink dungarees.

It turns out she loves to do crafts; thank goodness, as you all know dd is a Martha Stewart wannabe!!!!  She loves to paint and crayon and put stickers on paper.  Must admit when I saw this photo all I could think of, is "Why didn't they put an apron on her, that's a brand new outfit she has on!!"

She loves school/daycare and gets an awful lot from it.  Her move to the toddler room has been put off for a couple of weeks; there is a reason but too long of a boring story to explain.  When she is well she is a happy camper and they love her in the baby room, as she is easy going and feeds herself.  The only issue is that if she doesn't get enough sleep, she is miserable and with some new babies arriving in the room who don't know the routine, it's been tough making sure she gets enough sleep.

Looking forward to spending time with them all today.

Oh and finally if you are at the other side of the "pond" a Happy Mother's Day to all the mother's there including mine.  Mine is a lucky duck as she gets two Mother's Day's per year, in March and in May when we celebrate Mother's Day in Canada.

If you're in Ontario you may have seen this ad on tv.........

I think that is such a funny advert, don't you?

I seem to have good expensive taste.  I really, really like this light fixture:

I need three though for my front hall, they are from here.  The price over $500 each.  Not sure what I will do about it.  I will have to think on this for a while.

Did my grocery shopping on Friday and ended up spending $91.10 with savings/coupons of $8.50.  I have updated my grocery total in the left hand column.   My best deal of the week is this packet of Bombay Mix.

I bought twelve packages in total and paid 25 cents per package and that included taxes.  What a deal.  Dh likes them and they have an expiry date in 2016; I doubt they will last that long though.

Knitting update:  Got around 9 rows knitted and discovered I had picked up an extra stitch.  So pulled a couple of rows out and then got totally confused.  So pulled the whole lot out and then cast on again {{SIGH}}  However this is a learning period and the more I do it the more I will learn.  So all is not lost.

Not as daft as I look it seems........

Had my first knitting lesson yesterday and it went okay.  Am I an expert, absolutely not but I seemed to pick it up fine.

Here I am with all my stuff at the ready.

Then she showed me where to find the start of the yarn, which in turn turned out to be all tangled up:

Once I unraveled that I made a start.  However she decided I would find it easier using circular needles, and I did.

She got me doing bits and bobs and this is what I ended up with:

Now my homework is I had to make up a pattern and practice it until I feel confident.

I have the knits down pat, but the pearls are still a struggle.  I have cast on 50 stitches and am doing a piece with the checkerboard pattern as it alternates between knit and pearl and gets me more familiar with the pearl stitches.

Once I am comfortable with that I then will make a baby blanket, probably for the little man.  My practice piece can be a dolls blanket!!

All in all very happy with how it went.  I can pop down to the store any time I want if I get frustrated or confused.

Have you ever eaten a meal that you made and said:

"Gosh that was good, I really enjoyed it?"

I said that to myself last night, I did really enjoy my supper.  It was nothing fancy just plain food but it really hit the spot as they say.

As you can see all I made was sausage rolls, coleslaw and a garden salad.  I found a package of peaches in the freezer, so I made a peach and raspberry jam crisp.  The original Apple Crisp recipe is here.  The sausage rolls are just a package of sausages with the skin taken off and put between some puff pastry.  Nothing exciting.  Cooked both things in the oven for around 40 minutes at 375 oF.

There are enough sausage rolls and peach crisp for another meal.  I am not following my menu plan to the letter this week, as I have switched days around, due to one reason or another.

Also we started to unpack those two boxes yesterday.  Here is what we took out:

The packages on the breakfast bar also came with it.

Today is my first and apparently only knitting lesson.  Wish me luck!

Bang, Bang.............

I am always behind the times, but just in case some of you haven't heard of this eight year old girl I thought I'd share this video.  In my humble opinion she has a bright future ahead of her.



I think it may be a long summer with the banging that is going on outside.  The houses are selling like hotcakes on this estate and are now moving into phase 6.  They are just waiting for the ground to thaw and then there will be more basements poured.  I have no idea what the banging has been about this last few weeks but I can hear it even though we have all the windows closed.

We brought back these to the house:

Each box is four feet high and 3 feet wide and I ordered and paid for these back in December of 2014.  So they have been a long time in coming.  I haven't even looked in the boxes yet.  More will be revealed in the next week or two!!!  We did make sure we didn't bang these boxes though, as yes what's inside is fragile.

If I haven't posted a comment on your blog recently please accept my apologies, I haven't had time to visit everyone's blogs these past couple of days.

These boots are made for.....

Splashing in puddles of course!!

I needed new wellies and so I picked up a pair for our Little Munchkin as well.  The Peppa Pig ones we got in England are too big for her.  All are Walmart specials!!!

Better later than never here is my menu plan for the week, bit heavy on the pastry side for most of the week, but lots of veggies with the salad and coleslaw.  With there being just the two of us things tend to last for more than one meal.

 Just noticed one of my daffodils are a different colour and a lot smaller?

 Picked up a pot of yellow tulips on the weekend.  We'll see how long they take to open.

Above freezing today....YEAH!!!!

And finally a Youtube Video of Nancy Sinatra about the boots........mind you I don't think she is talking about wellies (rainboots) here!!