Snow on my mittens

On Wednesday it was snowing... Surprise surprise! 

It happens to be snowing again today.. another surprise :p

On Wednesday the flakes were really big, so big you could see them... well I mean look at the snowflakes on my mitten! You can see the snowflake shape of them, so pretty and intricate! The were landing like this on the car too, so huge and pretty! This picture was taken with my phone, so it's not that great, but if/when this happens again I will try to get one with the regular camera!

Wayne Gretzky's Birthday...

Is the same as Colin's birthday...

Happy Birthday to Colin :)

Procrastination Poetry

Minus Twenty-six

Frozen ears, nose, lungs, legs, toes

Cannot cope with it. 

Oh, my French source text,

Why can't you translate yourself?

Magic'ly English. 

Translation homework

needs to be done in quick time.

Make muffins instead!

Hello Winter!

Today feels like January... winter in Ottawa! 

Its currently... -17 (1pm), not bad, but it was -24 (-29 with the windchill) when I left for class at 9:30am!  brrr!

We had a snow storm on Saturday and were supposed to get 20cm. I don't know how much is actually out there, but I do know that on Saturday I shoveled (half) the driveway cause Simon was out and I thought it would be nice for him to come home to a clear drive..  I went inside when I was done and by the time I went out about half an hour later the driveway was covered and Simon wasn't going to be home for another half hour! He said that the only reason he knew I had shoveled was that there were 2 levels of snow on the driveway!

This is Sophie and I heading to Michael's through the snow. It was really funny, she kept making cracks about how nothing will keep us from scrapbooking "nor wind, nor rain, nor blizzard"

The worst part was getting our rolling items to the store, I think may have damaged the bottom of my scrapbooking tote thing! The snow just kept piling up, it was like I was shoveling the parking lot!! Anyways we made it to the "Crop night" where we got to scrapbook and use Michael's tools, like the Cricut! That's why we went... for the Cricut! We were there for 5 hours too! What better to do on a blizzardy day! 

 This is me bundled up to go outside... It is officially wear-tights-under-your-pants weather! I was bundled really well, but I find that my things and knees (between my boots and jacket) get really cold, as well as my (face) cheeks and nose! I try to duck my face into my scarf, but sometimes I need to breathe...

Okay now to do homework... I have constant guilt about not doing enough school work...

Food Snapshots

Yesterday Simon and I made the bestest dessert ever! I bought something similar to this at a Christmas craft fair and figured I could make it myself. What I bought consisted of a layer of hard candy then a layer of graham crackers and a layer of dark chocolate topped with chopped cranberries.

I wasn't sure how to do the candy part, so I tried a "toffee" recipe from Betty Crocker. Turns out that's not quite what I wanted. It did not stick to the graham crackers. We'll learn for next time... Also we made the layer of chocolate too thick. It's good, just reaallly sweet! 

For Supper tonight I wanted to try "Meatless Monday" mostly because we don't have any chicken, we had pork last night and I don't eat beef... It turned out really well! We both had a second helping!

It is a quinoa-vegetable mixture in a half an acorn squash. 

 

Thanks to Simon for the awesome picture :)

Here's my "kind-of" recipe: 

1 or 2 acorn squash

1/2 cup quinoa (uncooked)

1 cup vegetable stock

1 medium onion

1 clove garlic, minced

1 cup/can beans 

(I like kidney beans. I soaked/cooked dried beans, and added them until it looked like enough, so I'm not sure how much I actually put in)

2 cups chopped fresh spinach

salt and pepper

allspice

grated Parmesan cheese

1. Cut the acorn squash in half. Remove seeds and stringy middle stuff. Salt and pepper the sqaush. Place in a baking dish cut-side down. Put a small amount of water in the bottom of the dish. Microwave on high for 10-15 minutes. 

2. While the squash is cooking in the microwave, sauté the onion and garlic in a bit of oil in a medium pot. When soft add  the vegetable stock and quinoa. Bring to a boil then turn down and simmer for 10 minutes. When the quinoa's almost done add the beans (drained), spinach and allspice (I didn't measure, probably   1/2 tsp). Stir until blended and spinach is wilted.

3. Spoon quinoa mixture into the cooked acorn squash "bowls", sprinkle with parmesan cheese and broil in the oven for a couple minutes to melt the cheese. 

Enjoy! We each ate about 1/4 of the squash. I only made one squash, but the quinoa filling would totally fill two squash. I have lots of extra filling.

Back to "real" life

Hello!

Sorry I didn't quite finish the 31 days of pictures... I couldn't think of anything for the last one.. let's just call it 30 days of pictures then :p

Simon's back to work today. I think it was tough for him to get up this morning. I don't remember much, I was sleeping, but I noticed there's a piece of bread in the toaster on the counter, I'm not sure if he forgot it, or made too many? It's been tough for us to get back into a sleep routine since we've been back from BC, because neither of us has had anything we needed to be up for in the morning so we've stayed up late and slept in late. I've also had a cold so I use that as an excuse to sleep all the time :p I don't start school until tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to tomorrow, I have an 8:30am class, yuck! And then I have classes until 8:30 pm. Well I have my first class from 8:30-10am then 2:30-4pm and then 5:30-8:30pm. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do in those 4.5 hours between class, not sure if it's worth coming home with a 20 minute bus ride both ways. I think I might check out the gym on campus... We'll see how long that lasts, or maybe I'll just sleep in the pool area? (not in the pool) Simon and I used to do that at UBC.. well I mean we studied in the pool area seating... It's nice and warm and decently quiet, lulling sounds of water etc. It was a popular study/sleep area.

Well I have a long list of things to do today... I should get going!

Here's what I made the other day... there's lots left if anyone would like any!!! Simon had never had them before, and the neighbours loved them!

Happy New Year (cookies)! 

 

(Portzelky... Oli Bolen... New Year's Cookies)