Category Archives: Food

We Will Assimilate You

Posted on by

It feels like, in this stage of life, that every single week we think next week things will slow down over and over until we drop dead from exhaustion, but I am optimistic that this week, THIS VERY WEEK, things will indeed slow down.

Well, maybe. At the very least, it is the last week of school – and for me, work – before a few weeks off, and those weeks off will be very welcome and – hopefully – slow. I have big plans to watch movies and read books, to drink coffee with almond Bailey’s in it, and to recruit my husband in to coming with me to help with what grocery shopping will need to be done. I am strong, invincible woman, but grocery shopping – particularly in the winter, particularly when shopping for people who WILL NOT STOP EATING – is physically exhausting.

I go weekly to Superstore, and bi-weekly to Costco, and because Wednesday is my designated Errand Day, those two chores happen on the same day every two weeks. Last Wednesday it started to snow, huge fluffy thick flakes, and I had to really brace myself for the Epic Grocery Day. If you’ve ever pushed a giant cart full to the brim with groceries through a snowy, unplowed parking lot, not once but twice in a two-hour span, you will understand how physically depleted I was by the time I pulled into my garage. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have gone for a 6.5 km run BEFORE doing that, but how was I to know it would start snowing immediately before heading out for Epic Grocery Day? I am not a meteorologist.

Pushing the cart aside, the biggest problem with grocery shopping during the day is that no one is home to help unload the car and put things away; it took a solid 50 minutes of non-stop work to do this. Who needs to go to the gym when you can just provide food for teenage boys?

Oh, the life of a domestic goddess. Last Friday I was having coffee with my friend Janet (HI JANET) when I noticed that the clasp of my beloved Christmas bracelet had come undone, and my little Christmas tree was missing. I checked my clothes, the coffee shop, the car…and then came to the sad conclusion that it was gone forever, probably lost in the snow. I taught my class and sadly came home; I washed the dishes in the sink and when I took the dish gloves off there was a little clunk on the floor – my Christmas tree! Of course! I had washed the dishes immediately before leaving the house, because apparently washing dishes is a huge part of my life, and the clasp must have come undone then. I was so thankful that the little tree didn’t go down the drain, or that more charms didn’t fall off the bracelet.

Luckily the clasp didn’t come undone when I was out mailing a card. You know the scene from When Harry Met Sally, when Sally is mailing a pile of letters and checks the chute after every single one? That’s me to a tee, and my husband always laughs at me. “It’s on a slant, of course the letter is going to go down into the box.” Well. WELL. I will tell you that the following events vindicated me forever. When I went to mail the card, I opened the chute to see at least six envelopes sitting there. Someone didn’t check! The mailbox was very full, which was preventing the envelopes from going down into the mailbox, and so I did my best to force them down, hoping I wasn’t crushing important things like photos or anything. It was crammed full, and so my entire arm was in the mailbox, trying to coax the envelopes down. I hoped no one was watching me, thinking I was committing mail fraud or theft. I briefly remembered the scene in The Simpsons where Homer gets his arm stuck in the pop machine, and there is discussion of amputation, when it is revealed that the reason his arm is stuck is because he will not let go of the can of pop. What if my arm gets stuck in this mailbox. Will I have to be rescued. If so, will the fire department arrive. If so, is it worth getting my arm stuck.

Speaking of pop machines, when I was at Costco for my Epic Grocery Day, I noticed that the pop machines were all equipped with credit card readers. Does no one carry change anymore? What an age we live in.

It was another weekend of treat-making to wrap up the season. I am now DONE. I think. There was a party at the studio and so I made cupcakes:

Because it was a yoga party, I wanted the cupcakes to be vegan. In the past I’ve used coconut oil to make vegan frosting, but it is not exactly ideal. For one thing, it either seizes or melts, and there is always a residual coconut taste, unless I use refined coconut oil, in which the taste is too bland. So, I bought a hippie vegan butter (or, “butter”) and I will tell you: I had my doubts. For one thing, after I had left it on the counter, as I would with regular butter, it was so soft that I had to scrape it out of its wrapping. It also tasted a lot like I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. But I am here to tell you that it was the absolute best for frosting. I didn’t have to add any “milk,” it whipped up into perfect creaminess, and it set up nicely. It was much easier to work with than real butter, and much better tasting than coconut oil frosting, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter taste aside. I used the remainder of the decimated candy canes to make it festive.

I baked 115 gingerbread men on Thursday for Friday decorating with the boys, and it went exactly as expected.

Sometimes it’s better not to ask questions, you know?

A hammer and sickle. Note the cookie is broken, “just like Communism.” Symbolism in gingerbread decorating.

This is “Okay Boomer” cookie, which the boys say to each other, and also to me. “I’m not a Boomer!” I’ll say, to which they respond “Okay Boomer.”

Well, I think we can all read what that one says.

Self explanatory.

My army of gingerbread men. I would like everyone to note that a) mine are the only ones that actually get eaten, as no one can stand eating as much artificial icing as the boys put on their cookies, and b) I am a machine. Of the 115 cookies, the vast majority are exactly like this. We will assimilate you.

Here’s to a – maybe? – slower, quieter week. Only one week until Christmas Eve! May your days be merry and bright, friends, and cookie-filled too. xo

He just doesn’t know his own strength

Posted on by

The past few days have seen me unusually irritated and agitated about things that would not normally irritate or agitate me. I’ve been having feelings of being completely overwhelmed, and no amount of list-making has assuaged those feelings. Is it this time of year? Have I over-extended myself? Am I having a breakdown? All of those questions and more were answered when my phone buzzed with a notification that it is Almost That Time Of The Month Again! Oh! Well. I’m glad my phone knows what’s what.

Honestly, I feel like everything would be at a normal level of busyness, but for all the little things that keep popping up. Call vet to refill Barkley’s eye drops. Figure out when I can get the boys in for their dental checkups at the new, non-pediatric-but-still-convenient dentist. Take Barkley to the groomer. Reschedule last week’s wax appointment. Make an appointment with our (very hot, I’m serious, this guy is a looker) plumber to come and look at our thermostat, since the furnace is coming on but not always to the right temperature.

This last one almost broke me. Who wants to find a free afternoon to wait at home for someone to come and look at the thermostat? Well, as I said, at least he’s nice to look at, and besides, I can get a start on my gingerbread men.

My email just popped up with an article entitled Why You’re Eating The Wrong Cinnamon and I am NOT clicking on that.

Even without the furnace/ dog/ dental scheduling, the last week has been a whirlwind of activity and treat-making and teaching and just generally scurrying around. I’ve been packaging up treats for my students and playing tetris with my downstairs fridge:

Me: it will be fine once I roast the cauliflower, there will be room in the fridge.

Oops.

I spent much of Sunday making gingersnaps:

More decorative tins!

I had left the candy canes for my younger son to crush, in order for me to make peppermint bark. I wanted to have the candy cane crushing completed by Monday, so I could package them up in little bags for a different group of students. My son got out the rubber mallet and the cutting board, and asked me just how crushed I wanted them to be. Chunks? Little pieces? Decimate them! I said to him in my Fun Mom voice.

One thing you should know about my younger son is that he Follows Directions. Remember in Game of Thrones when Sam cures Jorah of greyscale, and when asked about it he said that he read the instructions in some ancient manuscript and then followed those instructions? If only more people could be like that. It is my regret that Sam was not Ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, because with that attitude, he should have been. Anyway, that is my son to a tee. He is the king of step-by-step directions, and you never have to tell him something twice. I probably should have kept this in mind when I told him I wanted the candy canes decimated.

He presented me with three bags of candy cane POWDER. Quite honestly that works really well in bark, as there are fewer tooth-chipping hunks of peppermint candy. There are a few small chunks in there too, as I had also said “a few small pieces would be nice.” As you can see:

But mostly, it’s powder.

In addition to decimating the candy canes, he also decimated my cutting board. It cracked into thirds. I can’t be mad about it, though, because he was just following directions. He is much less remorseful about the loss of my cutting board than he is impressed with his own sheer brute strength. Well, he does work out a lot, and YET I feel that perhaps a little less vigor would have yielded similar, but non-cutting-board-destroying results. I agreed with him that, Hulk-like, he just doesn’t know his own strength, while duct-taping together the cutting board for use next year. No sense breaking another cutting board next Christmas.

I went to Canadian Tire to buy a new one, and for those of you who are not Canadian, CT is one of our big national brands. Not only does it sell tires and other automobile-related things, but it also has a garden centre, household items, paint, kitchenware, and sporting goods, as well as all things Christmas-related. It is one of those stores that I love – because it frequently has incredibly good sales – and also hate, because the store itself is often a disorganized jumble. I ended up with a cutting board that was on sale for half-price, which I didn’t know until I went to pay, and if I HAD known, I probably would have bought two. Not that I’m complaining.

Before my CT trip, I put gas in the car and, due to my inability to see out the back window, washed it. There was no snow in the forecast, I swear, I checked my weather app twice, but not 30 minutes after washing the car, the snow started to fall and continued for the entire day. Did I curse the city? Possibly. The entire day, I kept looking at my weather app, which said “cloudy” but at no time did it call for snow, even when the snow was coming down. My Monday afternoon students, after I related this story, thought that perhaps the rest of the city was completely dry and that a snow cloud was just following me around, like a character in Winnie the Pooh. The long and short of it is that I had a clean car for about 30 minutes, and now I can’t see out the back window again.

Well, it’s only two weeks until Christmas, but my dear, dear, dear friend and neighbour (HI TARYN) surprised me with this beautiful gift:

Isn’t it gorgeous? I love it so much.

I hope you are all having a wonderful week; it can be stressful this time of year (THE FURNACE) but hopefully you are experiencing some joys and beauty of the season. xo

It’s Decorative Tin Season!

Posted on by

On Thursday I came home to THREE messages on my old-school landline answering machine. I have an actual, physical answering machine, you guys. Anyway. This is not a story about how I am barreling into the next decade with not only a landline and answering machine, but also an iPhone 5s that does not hold a charge and cannot be physically powered off because the power button is broken, but I don’t want to start over again with all the apps and passwords and so I hold onto it like a security blanket. This is a story about suddenly having a free afternoon.

Usually when I get messages on my answering machine it’s an automated call saying that this is the credit card company calling and I’m heading straight to jail, or similar. But on Thursday, one of the messages was from the new day spa down the street, where I had an appointment for a wax. “Had” being the operative word, since the panicked voice on the machine was telling me that the wax had to be rescheduled, and that this was the only number that they had for me, and please call them back. All of which I found strange, as I never give out my home number, only my cell, and I know for SURE that when I filled out the strange waiver you get with a new esthetician that I put my cell down for my contact. I mean, how DID they get my home number? Well, it doesn’t matter. I called and it was indeed, mysteriously, the spa, and not some scam in which people call and leave messages saying that their appointments had been cancelled. Can you imagine if that WAS a scam? It would be the strangest scam ever.

Anyway, apparently my esthetician “put her back out” and so was unable to wax my bikini line. Let’s not think too much about how that happened or the strain my bikini line might give a person. The point is, I had a free afternoon.

That never happens! I literally stood there for a solid minute, staring at my old-school landline answering machine, thinking about the hours that stretched ahead of me. What to do first? I tackled my least-liked Christmas job, which is gift wrapping. I hate gift wrapping. I am terrible at gift wrapping. I somehow lack the spatial skills that are required to cut an appropriate amount of paper for the size of the gift and then I also lack the coordination to fold and wrap without it looking like a jumble. My hair seems to fall out from the stress of it all, as there is almost always strands of my hair stuck in the tape. But in any case, it is mostly done now. After that, I tackled some of my Christmas goody jobs and took a very long dog walk.

As well as being the Season of Light, it is also the Season for Decorative Tins. Over the years, I have amassed many, many festive tins and I feel the need to fill them, always. What is sadder than an empty decorative tin, I ask you? Well, you might answer, many things. Moving on! Let’s fill those tins up!

Back in the day when I worked in natural gas options trading, we would sometimes get a really big market position that we would want to eventually reverse. My boss was famous for saying “Let’s chip away at it” because a giant options position? It’s not always possible to reverse it all at once. Small steps. And so it is with life, when faced with a big task, the best thing to do is chip away at it, a little at a time. This is my philosophy when it comes to Christmas treats. If I think about all the things I want to do, it’s overwhelming. So, chipping away.

How To Make The Maximum Amount Of Delicious Treats In Minimal Time

Sugar Cookies and Gingerbread

I have talked about this before, how the key to Holiday Happiness is making cookie dough ahead of time, and then rolling and baking when the mood strikes. Who knows, maybe you’re a person who likes being in the kitchen for fourteen straight hours? But I am not. My recipe for sugar cookies is here, and my recipe for gingerbread is here. Each dough takes ten minutes to make, maybe 15 if you find your flour canister is empty and you have to bring up a bag from the pantry. Make the dough. Freeze the dough. A couple days before you need the dough stick it in the fridge to thaw. I timed myself and it took less than thirty minutes to roll, cut out, and bake five dozen cookies. If you’re a pipe-and-flood person, then you might want to factor that into your time, but I am of the “spread some buttercream on the cookie and then put sprinkles on it” team. Or, in the case of gingerbread, I just stick some M&Ms on with those little tubes you can buy at the grocery, AND I get my kids to decorate, which is only for the people who can really let it go. I mean:

Those were from last year. Stay tuned for this year’s creation!

When in doubt, add more sprinkles.

Truffles

I have been making these truffles for YEARS, and I always kind of dread making them, as it’s super hard to dig out the hardened chocolate and make it into balls. But this year I had an epiphany, probably from seeing one of those candy making videos on Facebook. So here’s what you do: melt chopped chocolate together with coconut milk (the full-fat, canned kind) in a 4-to-1 ratio. Add some vanilla extract, or some peppermint extract, or some orange or almond extract. Whatever floats your festive boat, people! Put it in the fridge for 45 minutes or so, just to cool it slightly. It will be like thick pudding. THEN use an ice cream scoop to put little blobs on wax-paper-lined cookie sheets.

Stick it back in the fridge for another 45 minutes or so and THEN you can squish them and roll them into little balls.

THEN put them in the freezer and forget about them for a while. Days, even. I used to just roll them in cocoa powder, but NOT ANYMORE. I have stepped up the game for something that takes barely any time. When you have 15 minutes, melt say one cup of chocolate chips with a tablespoon of (REFINED) coconut oil. Then grab your frozen truffles, drop them one by one in the melted chocolate, put them back on the same messy wax-paper-lined cookie sheet, and stick it back in the freezer. It takes very little time to set, at which point you can package them up for gifties or put them IN A DECORATIVE TIN.

Don’t you wish you were in my seniors’ class? And YOU get a box of truffles, and YOU get a box of truffles…

The rest go into my tins in the freezer.

My giant container of tins that are patiently waiting to be filled.

I also made peanut butter truffles this year, which was super easy. Melt together 2 cups of peanut butter and 1/4 cup (REFINED) coconut oil. Stir in a teaspoon or two of vanilla (just pour, it will be fine) and 2 cups icing sugar. Follow the same procedure as above with making them into balls, and rolling them in chocolate coating. EASY PEASY PEANUT BUTTER SQUEEZY.

Peppermint Bark

Literally anyone – ANYONE – can make chocolate bark, and it makes the best gift. You need almost no kitchen skills and certainly no fancy fine motor skills. The only person who I could think of who couldn’t make this is my dad, who has ZERO kitchen skills (sorry, Dad, but it’s true. Don’t make this. I’ll make it for you.) Peppermint is my favourite for this time of year, but you people who dislike mint, well, you can put dried fruit and nuts in instead. I have an actual recipe for this, but honestly, you don’t need it. I mean, click on it if you like, but I don’t get paid anymore for that so who cares? Basically, take chopped chocolate or chocolate chips, any quantity. One cup? Six cups? Who cares! Just put it in a saucepan, put it on low heat, and stir until it’s melted. Or microwave it. Whatever. Melt the chocolate, then stir crushed candy canes – or fruit and nuts, whatever – into it. Spread it on a parchment-paper-lined cookie sheet, stick it in the freezer, after about 30 minutes take it out and break it into pieces. THAT IS IT END OF STORY.

The thing that is the most tedious part of this “recipe,” as it were, is to unwrap all the candy canes. That is a bitch of a job and, circling back to my original point, is one that I did last Thursday afternoon. It took a solid half-hour to unwrap all the candy canes, what with all the little pieces of plastic getting stuck to my hands and sweater. I put them in ziploc bags (I know, I hate the plastic too, but it’s only at this time of year) and then I assign my younger son the job to crush the candy canes. Believe me when I say he takes this SERIOUSLY. He uses a rubber mallet and pulverizes those minty sons of bitches.

Festively awaiting annihilation.

Gingersnaps

I saved the best for last! My grandma’s gingersnap recipe is here, and I can tell you that you will not be disappointed! Unless you don’t like ginger, in which case, why would you make these? You wouldn’t. But they are the best cookies, easy to make, and the dough should be chilled so you could theoretically freeze it and thaw when needed. Usually I make it early in the day and refrigerate, then roll into balls. I don’t find these that labour intensive, though, since there’s no rolling or decorating.

Before this gets any longer, I will close. After all, it’s time for my spin class! Which MIGHT be a good idea, given all these treats! Here’s to singing and spinning, my friends. Happy treat-making. xo

Joy, Pain, Sunshine, Rain (actually snow)

Posted on by

We had an enormous snowfall last week; look how pretty our outdoor Christmas ornaments were!

We are in full-on winter mode now, with snow and cold and traffic snarls. Despite the enormous inconvenience and physical exertion that come with such snowfalls – traffic! shovelling! taking ten minutes to put on outdoor clothing for a twenty-minute walk! – I managed to spend some time reveling in the beauty of nature. “It’s so pretty, it looks like a Christmas card!” I said over and over, as I drove the kids to school. Maybe I am going to become one of those people who Find Joy In The Snow and annoy everyone who happen to have a normal, non-joyful reaction to a crazy weather event. Well, probably not. But it has been very pretty.

I am just feeling joyful in general lately; I have made some changes to my schedule that have left me feeling light and happy. “It’s like you’re an entirely different person!” my husband said, I THINK in a good way. I’m practically radiating cheer and love from every pore, and I hope this feeling lasts, because the sheer happiness I had from wearing a sweater I like was over the top. I love this sweater! I thought to myself, I love my life! I’m probably annoying everyone around me as I channel Cheer Bear, my spirit animal.

I was loving life slightly less last week, when I came into the backyard with my younger son, after we finished shovelling. Barkley was chewing on something; often magpies will drop garbage in our yards like the rats with wings that they are, and I figured it was something like that. Reader, how wrong I was. How unprepared I was for reality, as I forced Barkley’s mouth open and started to remove the object. It was a dead and very chewed up mouse. Now, Barkley is an old dog with a digestive system to match and so leaving him to it was not an option; instead, I kept pulling it out, all the while screaming my son’s name. He ran over and looked. “Oh, MOM. Oh Mom, I’m so sorry this happened.” Yeah, me too, buddy. Me too.

Have you ever had something happen in your life that you know you will just never emotionally recover from? I have been completely traumatized, and have wondered if it’s possible to get a new hand. Is a hand transplant a thing? CAN I JUST GET A NEW HAND, LIKE LUKE SKYWALKER. Or, at the very least, a skin transplant?

This weekend my husband finished the outdoor light display and we put up the tree and indoor decorations. Friday was a PD day, and it really is incredible how much I can accomplish without the regular morning rush. I decided I was going to bring out all the boxes of decorations out of the storage room, no small feat because everything is packed in there like it’s a life-size game of Tetris. I started pulling out the boxes, and then it turned into one of those If You Give A Mouse A Cookie situations, in which I was suddenly purging and cleaning and rearranging the entire storage area. My husband came downstairs in his robe and looked at me, surrounded by dozens of boxes, silently for a few minutes. “What are you DOING?” he asked. “Do you know it’s only 7:30?” Well, yes. By 7:30 I’d already had a yoga practice, breakfast, and several cups of coffee, and so “tearing apart the storage room” did not seem at all inappropriate. My answer to his question was why do we have so many duffel bags and do you need them.

Why DO we have so many duffel bags?

In any case, the decorations are up and the storage room is clean, so all is well.

I love all Christmas trees; I love the themed ones and the single-colour ones and the eclectic ones and the tacky ones. I have many friends who have beautiful, magazine-worthy trees with all coordinated decorations and bows and what have you. I also have a friend who has a tree covered in every tacky, weird ornament he’s ever come across. The “theme” of our tree is “throw on every decoration we have ever owned” and honestly, I think it’s the best. I have some decorations from when I was a swinging single girl, and some from when my husband and I were first together. The boys have been the recipients of many ornaments from my mother, and those ornaments were things that interested them at the time. It’s fun to see the little tractors and Cars characters from when the kids were little, graduating to superheroes and Scooby Doo, alongside ones we picked up on our trips or lovely classic ornaments. We add new ornaments to our tree every year; this year the boys had brought me a moose from their Alaska trip, and I had bought them a dog ornament that looks like Barkley and a Bob Ross one.

So I’m feeling very festive, writing up my Christmas cards and playing Christmas music non-stop. I haven’t started my baking and treat-making yet, but soon.

The boys were telling me that all of their friends’ houses have “signature scents” and sometimes – particularly in the more athletic households – those scents aren’t as, shall we say, flattering as one might hope. According to their friends, OUR house always smells like baking, and I can tell you that hearing that warmed my heart. Finally I’m getting the accolades I deserve from baking something every other day! Fridays are early dismissal days and more often than not, the boys have friends over for the afternoon, and much more often than not – as I mentioned last week – I make them a “special lunch” which is almost always cinnamon waffles.

This probably biases their opinion of the “signature scent” of our house, in a good way, because these waffles smell heavenly. They taste good too. This isn’t some exciting secret recipe, it simply came in the recipe book that came with my waffle maker. I like to make them because it’s a huge recipe and can feed up to eight teen boys, including a competitive gymnast who trains many hours a week and has an appetite to match.

Cinnamon Waffles

3 cups flour

3 tablespoons cornmeal

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon cinnamon

2 1/2 cups buttermilk (I use 2 1/2 tablespoons vinegar and then fill the rest with milk, to sour)

3 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla (original recipe calls for 1, but you know me, I always double the vanilla)

2/3 cup grapeseed oil (you could use any mild-tasting oil, really)

Mix it all together, let it rest 5 minutes before pouring into the waffle maker. Enjoy!

Now YOUR house can have a signature scent of baking! xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Tiny Secret Festive Edition

Posted on by

Next week parent-teacher interviews are held at the junior high, and I had a notification from the school that booking for said conferences started today. I knew that already, of course, and had it marked on my calendar. The usual start time for booking is 7:00 am, but in the notification it said that bookings opened at 12:00 am. I thought it was probably a typo, but I opened up my computer this morning at 5:45 just to check. It was not a typo. Dear reader, there are people who are even more insane than I, because many of the bookings were already filled. Fortunately I ended up with the bookings I wanted, but still. Who is getting up at midnight to book conferences? I asked this of my husband, and he suggested that it was less likely that people were getting up at midnight; rather, they were still awake at that time, implying that not everyone has been passed out in a coma for three hours by the time the clock strikes twelve.

It’s always startling to realize that there are people for whom there is an eleven o’clock PM. I was having coffee with a friend (HI CATHRYN) and she mentioned that she had a swim class at 8:30. EIGHT THIRTY AT NIGHT? I asked, in the kind of shocked tone you might reserve for discovering that your friend of a decade is really a hard-core heroin addict and has turned to prostitution as a way to finance said addiction.

On that bizarre note, after a brief hiatus, it’s time for Nicole’s Favourite Things! As you all well know, the holidays are one of my very favourite things; even when I see strange things like Christmas trees for sale at Costco in July, I still smile. I mean, to everything there is a season, and for me July is not the season to start stockpiling Christmas decorations, but you do you, Costco people. I don’t judge when people get excited for their pumpkin spice lattes in August, and so I do find it odd how upset people get when you start talking about Christmas in November. Mention Christmas on November 1, and it’s like you admit to kicking puppies or throwing garbage out the window or driving drunk, the judgement is so strong.

I obviously don’t do any of those things, and I don’t decorate in early November, nor do I play Christmas music. However, I do have some tiny, secretly festive things that I love at this time of year. These are little things that no one except me would notice, and they make me happy. It’s like the early stages of pregnancy, when you don’t tell anyone but you walk around with a secretive smile on your face; that’s what this feels like.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Tiny Secret Festive Edition

My Christmas Bracelet

I’ve had Pandora bracelets for years, and so for years I have been given Christmas-themed charms from my parents and my guys. Last year my sons gave me a Christmas-themed bangle with a little ornament on it, and I put all my Christmas charms on it. On November 1, I swapped out my usual Pandora bangle for the Christmas one, and I plan on wearing it daily until the New Year.

Isn’t it cute? The flip side of that little house shows the inside: a tiny little tree, strings of lights, a fireplace, and two wee little gifts.

Christmas Pajamas

My husband gave me these jammies last Christmas, and they make me feel appropriately festive. Coincidentally, they match the slippers my parents gave me.

So cozy!

Festively Scented Hand Soap

As someone who spends a really excessive amount of time in the kitchen, I wash my hands a lot. I like to swap out my regular hand soap for a festive scent, and this peppermint vanilla one is perfect. Note: last year I bought the Live Clean Gingerbread scent and this was a BIG MISTAKE. It…did not smell good. I guess gingerbread, although wonderful, is not a good scent for hands. Despite the off-putting scent, I used it all up, because, well, Scottish.

Oranges

I know! I can buy oranges any time of the year! But, I don’t. There is just something lovely about Mandarin orange season; not only do I love looking at a bowl full of beautiful oranges, I also love eating them. Three out of four of us love them too, and it makes it more special because we don’t have oranges at any other time of year.

Note: since taking this photo yesterday, the bowl has been depleted by a third.

Sugar Cookie Dough

For those of you wondering what you could do to ease the pre-holiday baking stress, making and freezing dough is an excellent idea. I have done this for years as when the kids were small, the thought of making dough, chilling dough, rolling out dough, baking dough, and then waiting for the cookies to cool before decorating ALL IN THE SAME DAY was completely exhausting and overwhelming. However, if you make dough ahead of time, then it’s not too much to do the latter three. Any dough that needs to be chilled can be frozen; I make batches of gingerbread and sugar cookie dough in November. It’s so easy! Yesterday I made a batch of sugar cookie dough and it took me less than fifteen minutes from start to finish, including washing the dishes and wrapping up the dough to be frozen. If you haven’t made my mom’s sugar cookie recipe, why not? It’s right here. I make them several times a year to mark holidays, and they are the favourites of my kids and their friends. They are NO FAIL, unless you forget the baking powder, like I did once, leading to all the cookies spreading together in one big holiday mess. So don’t forget the baking powder.

Sugar cookie dough, getting friendly with the frozen Kaiser rolls we use for lunches.

Festive Notepads

As you know, I write all my lists down on paper. Very old-school. I like to swap out my usual pretty notepad for a festive one; every time I write down a needed item for my grocery list, it makes me smile.

More Favourite Things to come, when I turn fully into Nicole the Elf! What are your favourite things about this time of year? Do you have any secret festive traditions? xo

Maternal love = creepy clowns

Posted on by

Time just flies by, doesn’t it? Next week is Halloween already, and then we are into the Christmas season! I know many of you think that November 1 is too early to start thinking of Christmas, but in this world I think we should all just take joy where we can find it, and meanwhile, I’m already halfway done my Christmas shopping. I should definitely be done before the first week of November is over, at which time I can start making lists about cards and baking and various elfing duties. I was at Costco this week – when AREN’T I in Costco, really? – and I picked up a pre-built gingerbread house and two Advent calendars. If there is one thing I’ve learned about Costco over the years, it’s that if you see something seasonal that you think you might want, you should carpe the hell out of the diem and buy it, because there is no guarantee that it will be there next time.

There are no guarantees in life, are there? Shopping at Costco feels like a metaphor for life, sometimes: carpe diem, be patient in the lineup, and be a good person by taking your damn cart back to the corral. Also, you will never regret buying the strawberries, they are always delicious.

Speaking of Costco, they were selling packages of 18 full-size chocolate bars, and I seized the day and bought them, despite having already purchased 240 fun-sized chocolate bars. I have always wanted to be the fancy rich lady giving out full-size chocolate bars on Halloween, and now I will have realized this dream. The only thing is that 18 far exceeds the actual number of trick-or-treaters that we have ever had in the past, not to mention 240, but hope springs eternal. I have some pumpkin-themed bags to package up the extra treats, and who knows? I entered our address in the community association’s map of the neighbourhood’s “Spookiest Houses,” so perhaps we will have a run on treats. I hope. Even though my kids are not – for the first time ever – trick-or-treating, my mom had dropped off a box of 50 fun-sized chocolate bars for them, plus 120 Rockets for me. In other words, if we don’t get a lot of costumed kids on the 31st, we are going to have a great deal of candy in the house.

Well, what else is new. My kids have often had leftover Halloween candy sailing into Easter, so it will likely be no different this year, given our stock.

After my Costco trip I went into Michael’s, which is not something I do often. I am not a crafty person, and I find myself to have the same reaction in Michael’s as I do in Bed Bath and Beyond – a feeling of being completely overwhelmed and also inadequate. What is it about that store? So many people who are bustling around getting their yarn and their craft supplies and their really interesting things that I have no idea what to do with, and then there’s me, standing like a deer in headlights as women – they are all women – swoop around to get their melting wafers and acrylic paints.

Anyway, I went in there to buy those little tiny Chinese take-out boxes, to put treats in for a yoga event I’m hosting on the weekend, and I did obtain them. However, for whatever reason Michael’s also had 50-70% off all Halloween and fall decorations and, although our house is super-spooky as-is, I felt like, as with many but not all things in life, more is better. After all, I’m trying to get us on the literal map. Therefore, in addition to our bats and ghouls, animatronic skeleton dogs and tarantulas, graveyard and skulls, and our pair of 17-foot reapers, we now have a 5-foot ghost who looks like it’s going to climb up our house, a crazy skeleton ghoul to add to the trees, and, as a show of deep maternal affection, a scary skeleton clown.

I LOATHE clowns, but the boys think that IT – both versions – is “hilariously funny” and they were so thrilled with the acquisition that it made up, somewhat, for my extreme distaste. Look at the sacrifices I make for you people. It’s crazy enough to me that they thought The Shining was a comedy of epic proportions, but the IT quotes come several times per day. If I have to hear “Pardon me, but do you have Prince Albert in a can? Well, you better let the poor guy out!” ONE MORE TIME, well. I don’t know what I’ll do. Probably nothing. I did manage to put a stop to them crazy clown-dancing around me, but there’s no stopping the Prince Albert In A Can joke.

GAH. That thing is awful.

Well, it’s almost the weekend and in addition to my yoga event I have many dozen Halloween cookies to be made. When the kids were little, I’d send enough for their classes, as well as contribute to the inevitable bake sale. These days their friends still love those cookies (“These are the greatest cookies EVER, Nicole”) so I make enough for the boys to share with their buddies. Wow. We are going to have a LOT of sugar in this house. All hail Halloween! xo

Passionate about poinsettias

Posted on by

Every week, every single week, without exception, there is a day in which I think next week things will slow down and I won’t be so busy and even though I know it’s not true, it somehow keeps me going. I am currently in the pre-long weekend am I going to have a nervous breakdown? frame of mind. Why is there always so much to be done? Why is there a leak in one of my winter tires that is causing me to re-jig everything in my schedule so I can take the tire to the shop on the Thursday before the long weekend? Why did I think it was a good idea to add three more things to my to-do list when I should have subtracted five? Why am I the only one to care about gifts and cards for in-laws’ birthdays?

This last one I know is a bit of a sticky issue for many of my friends. Many – most? – of my friends are of the school of thought that spouses should be responsible for spouse’s family members birthday/ Christmas/ whatever kinds of cards and gifts. However, a) I do love my in-laws, and b) I like to ensure that people in my life should be celebrated on their birthdays. Putting a and b together means that c) I find myself responsible for cards and gifts, because the thought of people getting no cards and no gifts makes me sad, which is what would happen if I did not take responsibility for that task.

Marriage is all about harmoniously splitting up life tasks, isn’t it? Car things are strictly a Blue Job around here, which is why my husband put the winter tires on my car, and then realized that one of those winters has a leak in it. That tire was residing in the back of my car, waiting for me to drop it off at the tire shop, which is fortunately very close to one of the studios that I taught at today. Normally that would be a Blue Job too, but due to the long weekend and also it being Winter Tire Season, it falls to me.

Speaking of Winter Tire Season, we had a couple of very nice days around here, after the snow melted. Here is my back yard Monday at 12:30 pm (bonus Barkley shot!)

And here is my back yard Tuesday at 12:30 pm.

In other words, we are back to snow and absolutely dreadful frigid temperatures, which is depressing. Thank god for bobby pins, because a bun is the only possibility for my hair in this weather.

While I’m complaining about things, I will bring up a huge pet peeve of mine: crappy fundraisers. Last night I went to possibly THE MOST boring meeting ever for my younger son’s spring sailing trip on the west coast. Literally, all information at that meeting could have just as easily been emailed out, and would have saved me sitting in the gym listening to the principal, whose passion for this experience is both admirable and manic, talking about how the numbers have dipped and how we should all be pressuring other kids to join in. Listen, the pressure for kids to participate in this activity is insane; my older son did not participate as he went on the big Quebec trip back in eighth grade, but he was subject to constant pressure from the principal and a number of teachers. I wanted to say but did not that perhaps the reason numbers have dipped is that our province is in a recession, and has been for several years, and depending on what the next few weeks bring probably will be for years to come, and perhaps not every single parent in the school can afford to send their kids on a completely optional trip. Mystery: solved.

But the fundraising. The fundraising. I do not have a problem with fundraising using things that people actually need, want, and consume. The gift card fundraiser, for example, is fantastic. I also love the Growing Smiles campaign, which involves good prices on bedding plants, herbs, and vegetables, with quality products. The fundraiser the school has decided on, however, is my most-loathed one: the Christmas poinsettia fundraiser. I have an enormous problem with selling crap no one wants to my friends and family. I have also been pressured to buy poinsettias by all my friends for years and years. NO ONE WANTS THE POINSETTIAS. Each student is supposed to sell TWELVE POINSETTIAS AND YES, I AM YELLING.

Apologies to those of you who actually do like poinsettias. Let me know, I can hook you up with some overpriced flowers.

When it was question time, I asked how the raised funds were dispersed and if there was a fee for those “unable” (read: unwilling) to participate in said fundraiser. I received the highly unsatisfactory answer that twelve poinsettias were the minimum, and after that, the cost of the individual trip would decrease. The cost, by the way, decreases by about $5 for every poinsettia sold, after the first twelve. The principal started to move on but I felt the need to ask what would happen SHOULD a student sell less than twelve. It turns out that the school cannot actually levy a fee if one doesn’t fundraise, but they do suggest a “donation” to the tune of $150. DONE. I will be more than happy to do so if it means I don’t have to harass everyone I know to buy poinsettias.

Who knew I was so passionate about poinsettias?

Wow, I am in a MOOD. That mood was just exacerbated by the fact that I broke a nail opening up a bag of dog food. How did that happen? I’ve been taking biotin for my hair and nails and now I feel betrayed. I feel betrayed by Big Biotin.

Argh, I can’t end on such a complainy note. Oh! I know! The birthday party for my dad was a huge success; the worms and dirt were popular with the younger crowd, including my own kids who somehow managed to eat both layer cake and cupcakes, in addition to consuming about half a turkey between them. And speaking of which, Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. xo