Category Archives: I almost failed Home Ec

Happy Easter!

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“I know that Santa is not real,” Mark said ponderously, “But what about the Easter Bunny?”

I considered for a moment before replying, “What do you think, honey? Do you think a bunny will hop into our house with a basket of treats?”

Mark thought for a moment. “No. That doesn’t really make sense. How would a bunny open the door?”

Is this where I’m supposed to answer “MAGIC”?

Anyway, we have been busy, people, with various egg-colouring projects and other spring-related crafts.

We’re a talented family, no?

I took a cue from a much more imaginative friend and filled little plastic eggs with written clues about where various Easter treats were hidden in the house. My husband was puzzled by this method – “can’t they just look for the treats?” – but I was adamant about it being FUN and not only that, Mark could practice his reading. He looked at me like I just taped a Kick Me sign on my own back. There’s nothing like incorporating educational value into an Easter egg hunt. Nonetheless, the boys really did enjoy the hunt because that crazy bunny hid treats everywhere from the dryer to Jake’s underwear drawer. Fun!


Little bunny footprints leading to the basket o’ clues.

We had Easter dinner at my parents’ yesterday, with my brothers and sisters-in-law and all my nieces and nephews. My mother made ham AND turkey, so Jake was happy, and we were combining this family gathering with Mark’s birthday so our contribution to the dinner was this:

Yes, the good people at Dairy Queen made us a giant Muk-Muk cake, which was a little too much for fifteen people and so I ate a very large leftover piece this morning, which left me feeling somewhat nauseous for the rest of the day, but oh so worth it. The remainder of the day has been spent in a rather leisurely fashion, with Mark and his dad raking the lawn and Jake surreptitiously playing with Mark’s new Star Wars action figures obtained only yesterday, and then later an outdoor hard-boiled egg hunt that fortunately did not conclude with the dog consuming said eggs.

I hope that, whether or not you celebrate Easter, you have had a beautiful weekend, this lovely first weekend of April.

It’s Party Time, It’s Excellent

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Sorry about the lame title. Mike Myers, you have made a fool of us all.

Tuesday will be Mark’s sixth birthday – sixth! – and so yesterday we took the boys and a few friends bowling. The kids seemed to really enjoy it, which is something I tend to feel quite anxious about while hosting a children’s birthday party. I’m not exactly sure what I think is going to happen; like instead of a birthday party I’m going to be holding several children in a disastrous chamber of horrors which will cause them to go home scarred and crying and their mothers will all hate me and I will be infamous as the mother who cannot host a proper birthday party. Anyway. The kids had fun although in reality – rather than in my crazy head-space – kids are very likely to have fun in any situation involving cupcakes and loot bags, so my birthday party anxiety is largely unfounded.

Speaking of cupcakes, we always have a plethora of them and I end up giving them away so as to not devour them all but all of my containers are currently in use so I decided – erroneously, as it turns out – that it would be optimal to make one dozen cupcakes plus one small cake, the latter to freeze for Mark’s actual birthday. Here is the result:


Behold, the world’s flattest cake. A crepe cake, if you will.


Maybe I should have used a smaller pan.

Perhaps it will improve with frosting. Or…perhaps not. Remember my gingerbread house? I am simply not gifted in this department, people, I need to accept that.

A Christmas Meme

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Yesterday was the last day of school before winter break and the kids were appropriately excited. We spent the afternoon baking and decorating piles of cookies – gingerbread men and various shaped sugar cookies. As you know, I am extremely Type A about many things but cookie decorating (or any kind of decorating) is not one of them. I give the kids their own dough, and a dozen or so of their own cookies, and their own frosting tubes, and then not worry about the final product. So, generally what happens is that Mark very carefully decorates, and eats, several cookies. Jake piles an inch or so of frosting on each of his cookies, and eats them immediately after. The end result was two sugar high children speeding around the house until they collapsed into sobbing, hysterical heaps a few hours later. Christmas joy!

Speaking of Christmas joy, I stole this meme from the Happy Geek, so here goes:

Eggnog or Hot Chocolate? Eggnog disgusts me on so many different levels, so I guess hot chocolate by default, although I don’t really drink that either. My holiday beverage of choice is coffee with Bailey’s, or for a non-alcoholic treat, a peppermint latte.

Does Santa wrap the presents or leave them open under the tree? Oh, Santa. You’ve burned up in the chimney of our minds. However, we do fill stockings which are, supposedly, from Santa.

Coloured Lights on a tree or white? Coloured.

Do you hang Mistletoe? No, I just kiss whoever I feel like whenever.

When do you put your decorations up? Normally I wait until the first weekend of December, but this year it was late November. They go down on Boxing Day or shortly after, since by then I am tired of bumping into things in my teeny living room.

What is your favorite Holiday Dish? Hm. My mom’s butterhorns? Does a sweet bun count as a dish? They’re pretty yummy.

Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? The kids do.How do you decorate your Christmas tree? It’s a gigantic jumble of ornaments. I like the kids to decorate it however they like. It takes the pressure off.

Snow. Love it or Hate it? I like snow in the appropriate months. I wish I didn’t see snow April through September. But, I live in Calgary, so wishing ain’t getting.

Can you ice skate? I used to actually figure skate when I was a kid.

What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? .My mom’s chocolate Yule log. It’s chocolately and whipped-creamy, and eating more than one piece will leave you bloated and lethargic, like any good holiday dessert.

What is your favorite holiday tradition? In a strange way, making our crazed gingerbread house. Also watching the movie Elf. ALSO – and this is happening today – our annual overnight trip to Banff, sans kids. Only 1 1/2 hours until we leave!!! More to come on that front.

Candy Canes. Yum or Yuck? I don’t mind candy canes, but I don’t really eat them either.

Favorite Christmas Show? I have three: Elf – best movie ever, Christmas Vacation – makes my family look slightly less insane, and Charlie Brown Christmas.

This was a fun meme to do, so feel free to copy.

At least we’re not in Edmonton! Hardy har.

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That’s what we Calgarians tend to say to assuage feelings of depression due to weather-related issues. There was actually some truth to that this weekend, however, since Edmonton reached a low ambient temperature of minus 46, which is really fracking cold. It was pretty fracking cold here, around the minus 30 mark. But at least we’re not in Edmonton!

The vicious cold and my weird viral cold kept me indoors all weekend. I don’t think I even stepped foot outside. It was a red-letter weekend nonetheless. Let me recap.

1) I watched the movie Funny People. This in itself is notable as it was made in 2009. Normally I see movies years after they have been released, and when I try to discuss the movie with anyone, the response is usually, “You just saw that now?” Funny People is a really good movie, very interesting, and not at all what I expected. I mean, Adam Sandler is in it so there are many jokes of a flatulent, masturbation, and penis/testicle-related nature. In spite of that, it is quite intelligent and intriguing. Also, there is a scene with Eminem, who plays himself, which is quite hysterical.

2) My husband wrapped the Christmas gifts! This was, to put it in terms of a smarmy Christmas special, the best gift ever. I am terrible at wrapping gifts. This is probably not unrelated to my complete inability to ice cakes, create gingerbread houses, and sew buttons on clothing without ripping a hole in said clothing in an area far removed from where the button actually needs to be. Normally, when I wrap gifts, I cut the paper incorrectly, and end up with a slice of the actual gift showing or, alternately, I have so much excess paper that it all bunches up in a very un-aesthetic fashion. Grossly, I often find strands of my own hair taped to the package, which I take to mean the stress from gift-wrapping causes my hair to fall out and, because of my need to use an excessive amount of tape, become attached to the gift. Just a little piece of me in every gift! Happily, my husband wrapped all the presents (except the ones for him, of course) and the kids have been happily occupied by staring at them, piling them up, counting them, and talking about them.

3) My husband went out and bought, and then installed, a new tap for the kitchen. This may not seem like an interesting or note-worthy thing to you, but if you were a bon-bon eating housewife like myself who spends half her waking hours in the kitchen (but not, fortunately, barefoot or pregnant) and for three weeks you had been dealing with a tap that sends out either a small trickle of water or no water at all, you would be happy too. For three weeks as we waited for replacement parts, I tried to think yogic thoughts – many people don’t even have running water, I should be happy for this small trickle – but it was killing me softly. With its trickle song. However, several replacement parts and futile efforts to fix the tap later, my dear dear husband went out and bought a new tap. First gift wrapping! Then a new tap! He’s also a great lover!

So that was my weekend. How was yours?

Read this post if you want to feel better about yourself

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I woke up Sunday morning still sick and achy, so I took my own patented home remedy: Daytime Relief Sudafed washed down with a pot of coffee. If that doesn’t get one moving, nothing will. So I was feeling quite energetic in a heart-racing sort of way, and thought that yes, it would be a good day to make our gingerbread house.

Now – I have probably mentioned this a few times – I am not artistic or crafty in any way. This is not my way of being falsely modest, either. Some women I know make the most incredible things – one friend in particular regularly shows up to Staff Appreciation Day or any other holiday-related function with the most amazing edible treats, the kind of treats which are practically works of art. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she’ll say casually, “I didn’t actually come up with the idea, I just copied it from a magazine.” If I attempted to copy anything from a magazine, it would look a lot more like crumpled up, tear-stained tissue paper held together with Scotch tape than Hershey’s kisses made into a bouquet of rosebuds, but whatever. The point is that I am not artistic or crafty.

Also, if this post rambles a little, it is probably because I am on Day Two of my patented home remedy.

Now, if I were to pinpoint exactly where things went awry, I would probably guess that I did not make the icing thick enough. I’m guessing this as none of the candies would stick on the roof and also any attempts to make windows or doors were thwarted by dripping icing. However. As I said to my husband in a very Zen way, “It’s about the experience, not the final product.” To which he responded, “That’s good, because our final product looks like crap.”

What do you think?

Front view. That red thing is a wreath, which kept slipping into the gumdrop door. Notice the inadvertent drips of icing.

I tried to cover up a window attempt with icing. All those random candies? They are gravestones, Mark informed me. Because this is actually Scooby-Doo’s gingerbread house. Gravestones. Very festive.


Back view. The window is awesome. My husband made a little candy fire pit but you can’t see it as the boys essentially dumped candies all over it. As I said, it’s the experience. And they were having fun.


I made gingerbread men last week. I think this one brings up the curb appeal for the house, don’t you agree?

I actually think we could win a contest for worst decorated gingerbread house. I’d like to blame it on the children, but even if they hadn’t been helping (i.e., pelting candies at the house to see them slide down the roof) I don’t think that the house would have turned out significantly better.

It’s a good thing I don’t get hung up on appearances.

Jake’s Jack-o-Lantern is named Chachi!

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This is, I believe, directly correlated with the event of my brother and his girlfriend (very kindly) babysitting on Friday night, so that my husband and I could go out to dinner to celebrate his birthday. “I’m so excited!” I said to my yoga teacher Friday morning, “We have a date! We only have about five dates a year.” She smiled at me, somewhat sympathetically. Now that I think about it, five might be a slight over-estimate. Anyway, we had a lovely dinner and the boys enjoyed their uncle and aunt and now we have a Jack-o-Lantern named Chachi.

It snowed big, fat flakes Saturday morning so my plans to take the boys to a local market were quashed – I have a thing about not driving in snowstorms unless it is really necessary – so instead we decided to carve our pumpkins. Here’s me and the boys digging out the innards:


Okay, so it’s just me digging out the innards. Here are the finished products:


Chachi is the one on the left.

Later we made snowmen and I really should have taken a picture, as some sort of avant-garde photographic portrait. We decorated the snowman with random items in our backyard, and after I went inside to warm up I saw Mr. Snowman meeting his maker, as it were. Fortunately the boys were not urinating on him, no; instead they were merely kicking him down and laughing hysterically, a somewhat disturbing scenario. Soon all that was left was a pile of snow, a plastic fireman’s hat, and two water guns.

Dummy Jimmy Too Tall has a friend!

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Two friends, actually.

I wanted to write a nice, thoughtful post today but here is what is on my mind:

1) It’s my dad’s 60th birthday this weekend. I have to run out today and get a gift but he is a man and he is 60. He just doesn’t need anything. I guess it will be aftershave. Again.

2) I took Jake to Superstore yesterday to get frozen spinach and tziatiki. I ended up with two very large pumpkins, a decorative ghost and black cat, spiders and pretend webbing, and two more scarecrows, which he promptly named Idiot and TV. Anyone have a pet they need named? Because my children are gifted in that department.

3) When we bought the pumpkins, Jake suggested we make a pie. Ha! I can hardly stop laughing. Let’s just say I’m not one to make pastry and leave it at that.

4) I have to take the kids to my mother’s this afternoon. She is making their Halloween costumes and needs them to have a final fitting. The sewing gene completely skipped my generation. Once I sewed a button on my pants and somehow managed to cut a hole in the butt of them. Another time I tried the button thing and I ended up sewing the legs of the pants together and then completely tearing them when I tried to take the stitches out. I almost failed Home Economics in junior high. My best friend would sit at the sewing machine, making her actually-wearable t-shirt and shorts, and I would sit beside her, ripping out my stitches – again – until my t-shirt was a shredded disaster.

So, I’m off to get some aftershave, and not any more fall related decorations.