Life is Sweet

Mar 18, 2008

Dead Bison

Today we spent a few hours at the Royal Alberta Museum. I love that place! Sam and Abigails favourite gallery was the Aboriginal Displays. Sam spent ages looking at a display showing how Native Canadians killed Bison and used all the different parts of the bison. They had speared the bison and there was blood coming from the bison's nose. Sam had so many questions and kept going back for another look and took Abigail back to point things out.

We moved on to a display showing Native Canadian Women fishing in a river and cooking the fish - feeding parts of the fish to their dogs...

Last night we watched Little People Big World. The Native American community of Oregon had built a plank house on the Roloff Farm and had held a ceremony to bless the house for the Roloff's...they had worn their amazing costumes for the ceremony and I had explained to Abigail that we would see costumes like those at the museum - I told her about a costume belonging to someone named 'Stabbed By Mistake' and how his costume was at the museum - so today we went to find his costume and Abby had her picture taken by it - you can see that above.

Jennifer!!!!!

I saw this turkey vulture and thought of you :)

Actually I saw it and thought about pretending that I took this picture of it sat on our workshop roof...but I thought maybe you'd figure out that I was lying by the fact that there is writing on the wall behind it ;)

So ok.....it's a stuffed turkey vulture......and I was just trying to impress you :)

Thank you Martha (again)

Another Martha craft.......this is from her Easter workshop she has been doing and is one of her free prinatables from her website.....aren't they cute? I may make a few of them and hide them around the house on Sunday - I think the ground is going to be far too wet for us to hide eggs outside again this year - comes from having an early Easter I guess........a few more weeks of this weather and it would have been ideal.

www.marthastewart.com:80/article/easter-bunny-box?xsc=stf_MSLO-ARTICLE

Picnic in the car wash

Oh my - we know how to spoil our kids :) Take them for a picnic in the car wash :)

Ok edited to add that yes my family think I am insane that I blog things like us going through the car wash - the things I do for my ever faithful blog readers ;)

Going too fast!

Lloyds week off is going too fast!

Yesterday we had brunch at Smittys, then went to Home Depot for supplies for the bird boxes, then did the groceries at Costco before coming home and relaxing at home.

Today we went to the Royal Alberta Museum which was lovely :)

Right now Lloyd and Chris are in town getting their hair cut...tonight I plan to curl up and watch Enchanted :) it came out on dvd today and I have been counting down the days :) I cried through the whole movie when it was in theatres - my sleeves were soggy by the end - it is just a soppy romantic silly over the top lovely funny typical fairytale :)

Mar 17, 2008

First of many......

Lloyd made the first of MANY chickadee boxes today.......we headed to Home Depot for wood and supplies....and he had a nail gun for his birthday...so he got started this evening.

He is making as many as possible.....as we want to fill the acreage with them.....chickadee boxes, bat boxes, owl boxes......but right now he is focusing on the chickadee boxes.

Yummy

They might not look like the ones in the book but they taste very yummy....Lloyd seems to keep nibbling away at them anyway :) Which is always a good sign!

Bear convicted for theft of honey!

The taste of honey was just too tempting for a bear in Macedonia, which repeatedly raided a beekeeper's hives.

Now it has a criminal record after a court found it guilty of theft and criminal damage.

But there was an empty dock in the court in the city of Bitola and no handcuffed bear, which was convicted in its absence.

The case was brought by the exasperated beekeeper after a year of trying vainly to protect his beehives.

For a while, he kept the animal away by buying a generator, lighting up the area, and playing thumping Serbian turbo-folk music.

But when the generator ran out of power and the music fell silent, the bear was back and the honey was gone once more.

"It attacked the beehives again," said beekeeper Zoran Kiseloski.

Because the animal had no owner and belonged to a protected species, the court ordered the state to pay for the damage to the hives - around $3,500 (£1,750; 2,238 euros).

The bear, meanwhile, remains at large - somewhere in Macedonia.

why?

Why do I have absolutely no bloody patience???? lol! Why can I NOT listen to Martha? She says WAIT until the cookies are cold before turning them out of the tray and cutting into exact squares. Sigh.....I don't listen....I think I know best....I am impatient so I try and turn them out hot and they crumble....

Susie shouts from the dining room "Mom...you're not Martha you know!'......thanks Susie!!!! Grrrrr

BUT OMG they are delicious! They may be odd shapes and a crumbly mess but they taste DAMN GOOD!!!!!

Hhhmmmmm what to bake next?????

Anyone else got this book? What have you baked???

Marthas new book......

Many people know that I LOVE Martha!!!! I was excited to get to Costco today and get her new Cookie recipebook - I enjoyed seeing the recipes from it each day last week and knew that the next time we went to Costco grocery shopping I would snap up a copy! Today we did just that! And this afternoon I baked my first recipe from it :)

Right now I have a tray of Brown-Butter Toffee Blondies baking in the oven :)

I will take a picture of the finished cookies later :) They were lovely and easy to make so I hope they are as yummy as they sound!

I love recipe books generally - can't wait to have a book shelf in the end of the new island JUST for my recipe books!