Tales From a “GREEN” Minivan

From the time my daughter was little she’s always been so different from myself. A friend of mine whose daughter is a few months older always used to joke we got the wrong kids! Her daughter was always so rough and tumble and Mackenzie was always super careful didn’t really enjoy sports and was a real girlie girl unlike my Tom Boyish ways growing up. Over the years I’ve always heard how much my own mother and I were alike so I just assumed that Kenz would eventually gain some similar traits.  Can you believe that it’s taken me 13 years to finally realize that that’s not going to happen.

I think many parents have so many expectations for their kids, but so often their expectations are too high and just not realistic.  I was the social butterfly, always around a group of friends, talking on the phone, having sleepovers etc. Mackenzie is just as content to be with a bound sketchbook and pen or a good novel  off in the corner by herself.  Is she lonely? Perhaps.  Do I worry about her? On a daily basis.  The thing is I need to accept her for who she is for her to grow as an individual. I can encourage her strengths like art and protect her from the things that cause anxiety.  These things are the very things I thrived off of when I was her age, organized group activities.  We’ve tried to encourage her to join Cadets and that was a bust, sports are not her thing, so our next step is finding something that she loves and that is art.

From the time she was very young I knew she had a talent. This is one of her drawings that she drew for me at age three.  Most kids at three years of age are still content to scribble on blank pages, but not Mackenzie she wanted to create art. Over the years she has continued and amazes us daily with her creations.  She’s always very modest and self critical, I think this may be the sign of a true artist?

She’s now branching out to different forms of drawing she has a computerized drawing Tablet and uses photo shop to colourize black and white sketches.  It truly amazes me on a daily basis.  Here’s a few recent things that I grabbed to scan when she wasn’t looking. She hates praise and I’m not sure if she realizes just how talented she is.

I have been extremely neglectful of my blog this summer so I though I’d recap in one post quickly what we’ve been up to over the past few weeks!

You may remember my rant about our “Green” van well  we finally got a “new to us” Toyota Sienna.  A friend of mine works at Toyota and I had him on the lookout for one and he delivered. We’ve been happy with it, and got it just in time for our road trip to New Hampshire. The cargo space is amazing and it only had 33,000 kms on it!

Just before leaving for New Hampshire I got a call from the Roofing Company I contracted to replace our roof and they had an opening!  So the roof was completely replaced and now we have one less house worry!  The crew from Dowd Roofing was great, they made certain that my yard as well as my neighbour’s yards were cleaner than when they arrived! I even made sure to compliment them with I went in to pay the invoice at the office.  I would highly recommend them!

Since we were putting hardwood floors into the second story of the house that meant we had to remove EVERYTHING from these rooms, which happen to be 3 bedrooms and a storage room.  While clearing out the storage room we realized that the majority of the stuff we had been holding onto we really did not use or need so I listed the stuff we didn’t need anymore on Kijiji and it sold immediately. We decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to move our laundry room upstairs!   Our nextdoor neighbour is a plumber and he did all of the work and installed ceramic floors in the new laundry room and also in the bathroom!  This now means I will get a proper pantry in my kitchen as this is where the laundry currently is.  I’m SOOOO excited, hopefully the work will be complete this week.  Here’s my new set of Front loaders arriving (yes they’re blue) and a shot of the boys room completed!

Liam and Ciaran’s new room together!

New Hampshire was a great escape of the CHAOS in the house. Our condo was fabulous as usual thanks to SkyAuction!  We had 3 levels, 2 bedrooms, and if you can believe it two sets of washer and dryers! The unfortunate part of the trip was our bout with the Flu.  We’re almost 90% sure it was the H1N1, but didn’t have a chance to confirm it.  We all got over it in about 3 days and tried to enjoy the time away even though the weather did not really cooperate.  On my Birthday we took the kids to Santa’s Village, in Jefferson, NH.  This is a great little park for younger kids (although I’m pretty certain Mackenzie really enjoyed her day there as well).  Finn was able to go on almost every ride with the exception of the rollercoaster and Kenz didn’t find things too “Babyish” !  It was a great way to spend my Birthday, I have some fond memories going as a child as well. Here’s some shots from this year and some from 1975 when I was 2 years old!

Front Entrance

Front Entrance in 1975

Andrew and the kids on the Bunny

My mom and I on the Bunny in 1975

After getting home the kids have been going to some day camps and spending some time at what we like to call Sarah’s Backyard Waterpark.  She made her own slip’n’slide that beats any store bought one and even did a Tutorial on her blog! I’ve also been working some early mornings to take the afternoons off to go to the beach or take the kids out to have a little fun. A new indoor play facility opened up and the boys just love it! They’ve also been playing some Summer Bingo to try and keep chores and learning fun this summer. The weather in July has been pitiful here in Saint John, it was the Wettest July on Record with nearly twice the normal rainfall and when it wasn’t raining the fog was as thick as pea soup.

The drive to Take Mackenzie to Camp

We’ve also been lucky enough to get out a little bit lately too.  We spent an evening at our friends place and got to listen to some great live music compliments of SJ’s Brent Mason.  He even made up some impromptu songs about the kids from tales we told earlier in the evening.  I recall one about Finn’s shenanigans getting into some drywall compound! It was really funny!  I tried out the new Moosehead Light Lime and I was surprisingly impressed, not only with the fact it matched my shirt that evening, but it tasted pretty good as well!

Brent doing his “thing”!

The next celebration I got to attend was my Dad’s Retirement Party!  After 37 years with Irving Pulp & Paper he has officially retired. My dad is an extremely hardworker and a bit of a perfectionist that has always taken pride in his work.  I’m extremely proud of him and very happy for him to be entering this new chapter of his life with his new wife Linda. Oh and Dad if you’re reading I promise to not keep you too busy with little projects around my house..lol

My Dad with my 3 “little” brothers and me!

The following weekend I got to catch up with my oldest friend of 31 years, Andrea!  She was home from Ontario and with the convenience of Facebook I was able to track her down and we went down to my old watering hole O’Leary’s Pub.  I was so great catching up with her and I hope to get together again while I’m in Toronto later in the month for work.

One thing that we hadn’t got to do was any camping!  I have had everything already to go, but every weekend it was raining!  Finally this past Saturday we did our first little camping trip to Sussex, NB.  We stayed at Town & Country Campground, and got to take the kids to the Drive-In Theatre to see Aliens in the Attic.  It was a lot of fun and now I can’t wait to do some more!  I took all of the camping gear out of the new van and put it in the green van, so that way the next time we got it was be so easy to get everything loaded and on the road.

I promise to be not so long winded in future entries and update a lot more often! Thanks for reading!

Apple hasn’t been very nice to Canadians as of late. First it started with iTunes, show downloads were priced much higher here and didn’t offer multi-episode discounts that our southern friends. It took a while but they listened. One other aggravation is finding something you like only to discover “Unfortunately that’s not available on he Canadian iTunes Store!”      Well why not?

I’ve been very happy with Apples products, we’ve been a multiple Mac happy family, from Nanos to iTouch things had been going smoothly. My little Mac has been great, barely crashes and I’ve been REALLY happy with my newest Apple gadget my beloved iPhone. It has enriched my life, I know that sounds corny but having the world wide web at my finger tips is an amazing benefit. It’s come in handy too many times to count. Right now I’m actually using it to write this post!

One of the things that sets iPhone’s apart from other smartphones is the Applications that are available to interact with it. Applications can be downloaded from iTunes App Store. This is where my Beef starts!

Let me first back up a little bit, I got my iPhone 3G back in September. Since then I’ve been downloading mainly free Apps I bought a couple to try as well but one of the things I really disliked was that when you make purchases on iTunes you have to charge them to your credit card there’s no options to use Paypal, but you can use iTunes gift cards… or so I thought!

I thought that iTunes cards would be the solution to these petty little credit card charges that add up, so they went on my Christmas Wishlist. Let’s just say I have a sizable amount to use. So finally last week I decided to redeem one if my $50 cards to buy a few Apps I was excited to try out some must have Apps that were not free. I input the cards code and up popped my $50 balance! I went into the App store to buy a Twitter App that I was excited to try, I selected it and up popped my credit info aski g me to confirm. I thought to myself, “That’s strange? There’s $50 credit there!” I closed iTunes and reopened it thinking there must be a glitch with the iTunes card not going in properly, so I then tried the App again and again up pops the credit card info again. I then remembered a friend from highschool Cayman Grant just had her short film “His Good Will” added to iTunes. I started the download process with no problems at all and instantly my iTunes balance Shrunk to $48.01 after my $1.99 purchase. So back to the App store to try again and again no luck!

For some reason Canadian iTunes cards will not work in the Apps Store! So now I’m stuck with all of these iTunes cards, but I can’t use them in the App store!

I’m not the only one that’s upset with this I’ve read many blogs and forums where Canadians are really peeved!

So Apple if you’re reading this please let us loyal Canadian Apple fanatics use our Canadian iTunes cards in the App Store? Pretty please ?! Oh and one more request… Please hurry up and get OS 3.0 launched I really want Copy/Paste, it will truly make my iPhone experience complete.

PS- I just wrote this entire post in bed on my iPhone, landscape mode of course! That reminds me one other request-  landscape mode for Gmail!

Thanks,

Your Macbook shopping friend,

Cara

Last weekend we took advantage of the beautiful weather here in Southern New Brunswick to get outside and do some much needed yardwork.  One of the tasks was removing some playsand from our planter that I had put in a few years ago for the boys to use as a sandbox.  The original project failed miserably as the neighbourhood cats decided it was their own supersized litterbox, so it has remained abandoned.  Luckily I had put the black fabricky stuff (not sure of it’s real name) above the soil to block any weeds from coming through so it was relatively easy to remove the sand.

We also decided to remove the giant rhubarb plant as well, as it was taking over the planter and no one we know really likes it! Here’s me trying to remove it.  The roots were so thick at the bottom they were casuing the planter to expand and come apart in one corner!

We completely filled our compost cart with it, I felt bad just hacking away at it, but I know that it really couldn’t have been removed and transplanted anywhere else.

So know we’re left with our awesome raised planter! Just waiting for planting!

I picked up some spanish onion bulbs, and seeds for pumpkin, squash, carrots and some herbs.  I’d like to do tomatoes , but I’m not sure how hard they are to do.  As well, should I be adding anything to the soil to enrich it?  The rhubarb grew beautifully every year, and it was HUGE, but anyone that tried it said it didn’t taste that great most likely due to it’s size.  Here’s a pic from 4 years ago.

I thought I’d provide a disclaimer right up front for my male followers as I’m going to be talking about periods also know as the monthly visitor Aunt Flo–or AF in boardspeak!

Last night was garbage night in our city.  We’re part of a pilot project  for the inner-city to have trash out after 6pm up until 9pm.  I’m guessing so people don’t have to see this eyesore! My neighbourhood mainly consists of multi-dwelling buildings with the occaisional single family home mixed in.  It’s a very diverse neighbourhood, that also has it’s challenges- parking, snow removal, and recycling & garbage removal are some of them. About 5-6 years ago our city adopted an every other week trash removal and compost on the off week.  It was soon noticed that the Southend could not handle this, as many had no way to compost or a place for the compost bins or a place to store the trash for 2 weeks.  It was decided that trash removal would remain weekly with compost every other week.  Since then the city has now changed to a weekly compost pick-up with trash every other week, with the exception of the Southend we have trash and compost weekly.

The problem I have with this is that people are abusing this!  In front of one single family dwelling I counted 12 large black trash bags…TWELVE!  It’s obvious that no one in that household is recycling or composting anything!   We are a family the same size as that one and we throw out 1 (ONE)trash bag a week!  So it got me thinking about some of the things I have done personally to cut back on unnecessary waste.

One thing I have started doing is using reusable feminine products.  If you would have asked me 4 years ago, I would have laughed in your face. Actually I remember sitting down with some of my friends and us joking about it, “Why on earth, would anyone want to?”.  You see that’s just it, it’s about the earth!  Until we can start thinking about all of these little things that we can personally cut back on, our landfills and oceans will continue to fill.

So you’re probably thinking, “Well, what the heck is she doing for Aunt Flo?”  Having 3 boys in 6 years along with breastfeeding into toddlerhood kept AF from making her monthly visit for a long time.  So when she returned I decided to look into alternatives. I’ve never been a fan of maxi-pads and even whilst typing the word I’m getting a little redfaced and giggly, so cloth mama-pads were out of the question (although many moms love them).  I decided to look into menstrual cups and found many CPO members raving about the Diva-Cup! You can read about this Canadian mother-daughter team at their website www.divacup.ca

image compliments of Squawkfox-Where Frugal Living is Sexy

Read more about the DivaCup here

Or discuss it with other CPO’ers here

I will never go back to disposable feminine products ever again!  I just wish I had found this sooner!  So there you have it just one way you can make a small impact and save money and embarrassment as a bonus!

Happy Earth Day!

Testing this out to see how it works! Looks like I need to go into the code area rather than from the visual text box! I tried to see if I could post a photo, but it does not look like photo browsing is functioning. I can add a photo

that has already been uploaded and hopefully when Apple launches it’s new OS 3.0 it will have copy/paste functionality and I can add photos that way! Well I’m off to publish this and see if it works!

edited to add: YAY!  It works!

are away at Disney!  Just kidding gals,  the two of you certainly deserve this after everything you’ve done for CPO over the years! Be sure to check out Helen’s and Tracy’s Blog to find out what they’re up to down there!

So I’ve been working in my second home office a lot this week (my kitchen), and testing out some Slow Cooker Club recipes!  If you haven’t joined yet, what are you waiting for?

It’s amazing how productive I have been knowing that my dinner is already thought out and slowly cooking in the background.  The delicious aromas wafting from the kitchen greeting everyone as they come near my door.  Even yesterday, I think the postman was looking for an invite to dinner!

Today I made Slow Cooker Italian Wedding Soup

I love that I’ve been stepping outside of my food comfort zone!  During my weekly grocery store flyer browsing I noticed that Organic Baby Arugula was on sale.  I’ve never been a big fan of spinach, but after doing a little research online I read that Arugula has a slight peppery flavour..perfect for a soup!

The evening before I prepped the meatballs needed for the soup, I bought a package of ground chicken, and added, breadcrumbs, a finely grated carrot, grated fresh Parmesan cheese, onion and garlic powder, and egg and salt & pepper.  I rolled them into mini meat balls and slightly baked them in the oven on a cookie sheet. I refrigerated them over night  Here’s one of the trays I made:

The next morning I diced up an onion and a little garlic and threw them in my Slow Cooker’s insert.  It can be used on the stove top (with a heat diffuser), which I think is an awesome feature to have as you don’t lose any of the flavours by transferring ingredients to another pot.

Next I added the broth and set the insert back in the Slow Cooker and set it for 8 hours.  I think you probably don’t need the full eight though!

I left it cook for about 4 hours and then added the Baby Arugula (stems removed and slightly chopped).  This next step is something I would definitely change, wait until closer to serving time to add the pasta!   I used Orzo for the first time ever and it looks like rice!  When I added it half way through it was too soon and the pasta got quite mushy and absorbed most of the soups broth. 

It was still quite tasty, and I will definitely make it again!  Here’s the final result we served it with toasted multigrain breadsticks.

(more…)

grocery aisles that is! More about that further below.

Welcome to 2009! Yes I know I’m a little late, but I just didn’t have the right topic to write about until this week!  I’ve decided to make a few changes to my blog and over the next few weeks it’ll have a whole new look and slight name change.  Why change the name? Well as a family we decided to cut back on some travel this year, I will be working a more regular schedule so my love of last minute travel just won’t work this year! :(  That said though I’m so excited to be doing a job that I love so much and I’m looking forward to contributing to CPO in a few new ways!

So it’s that time of year. A fresh new year, the time when we reflect on some goals that we’d like to achieve, or perhaps some things we’d like to change about ourselves. This year though I’m going about it completely differently, you can read about the CPO Team’s Resolutions here —> Resolutions Revealed

I’ll tell you more about the Blog Name Change a little later.  So on to this week’s adventure…grocery shopping!  Just getting there was a task!

This surprise blizzard hit us, the roads were nasty and I could’ve waited until tomorrow, but going kid-free allowed me to browse at my own pace and was well worth heading out in the winter wonderland!

I decided to hit the brand new Sobeys that opened up just a little over a month ago. Going to an unknown store with kids in tow is never a good idea, as I end up having to make a few laps of the store to pick up things I’ve missed on my list the first time around.  Going solo was pure bliss today and since the weather was so bad the place was empty!

With my meal plan list in my hand I knew what I had to pick up for the week as well as some items that were on special this week.  They are having a “Buy 1 Get 2 Free!”sale this week.  Unfortunately the sale started on Friday and this being Sunday, all of these items were sold out until their next shipment  tomorrow morning.  GRRRRR!  Looks like I will have to make a trip back with the boys in tow afterall.  I just wish they had the shopping carts that can accommodate 2 kids!

One thing I plan on doing more this year is reading labels, and trying to make healthier choices.  One of the meals on my meal plan called for some  prepared chicken broth.  I noticed that Cambell’s was on sale for the same price as the store brand, so I grabbed a box of the Campbell’s low sodium choice. Out of curiosity I took a look at it’s label to compare it to the other Campbell’s selections, the regular as well as the Organic Chicken broth.

Now I’m sure you probably will have some trouble with this next photo, but it’s the labels.  The thing that I want to point out is the Sodium content.  For each 2/3 cup (150 ml) serving here’s the results:

Campbell’s Regular-580mg

Campbell’s  Less Salt- 370mg

Campbell’s Organic- 380mg

Now normally I go for price, so my normal choice would be the store brand low salt. As seen here:

It touts 30% less salt than regular, it must be comparable to the Campbell’s right?

No…WRONG!!  The store brand low salt actually contains 670mg of sodium!  They were sold out of the regular (scary thought) so I couldn’t get the Nutrition Facts on that one, I don’t think that I’ll be buying it ever again though.  It just goes to show that reading those labels is a good idea!

After the shock of this revelation, I  kept wandering through the aisles and then found myself chuckling and mumbling to myself after seeing this:

There’s no need to adjust your monitors that TP really is pink! I thought coloured TP was not so great for the “nether region”, the dyes causing problems and what not?  So I went to my friend Google and I actually found an interesting conversation going on in Yahoo! Answers entitled, “Why don’t they make colored toilet paper anymore?”  The last answer totally cracked me up!

I finished off the rest of my shopping and decided to bite the bullet pay the $4 for a 3lb bag of apples since the ones that were Buy 1 Get 2 free were gone.  I really wanted to try out a recipe in my Slow Cooker to have for dessert.  When I arrived home Andrew and Finn were happily waiting for me in the bay window and he helped to scoop up the grocery bags (yes I remember my reusable bags!) and I proceeded to put everything away.  Last week I picked up some of those “Green Bags”meant to keep produce fresher in the fridge as I’d like to start buying bigger quantities of veggies since it’s more economical.  I broke open the  bag of apples I reluctantly and begrudgingly bought and instantly got angry! Take a look:

About 4 of the apples were completely rotten…looks like the boys and I will be making that trek back tomorrow!

Edited to add:

How ironic that this interview with the Globe and Mail would appear in today’s issue online!   I had no idea as I did the interview early last month!  LOL

Globe and Mail-How low will we go?

Can you believe it?  After two years of campaigning the US will finally have their election!  I know you’re probably saying,” But Cara you’re Canadian, what does it matter to you?”  I will admit that I find US politics much more interesting than that here north of the Border.  I’m still having a hard time coming to the realization that our federal election has come and gone within a matter of 6 weeks, and it didn’t even hit the radar at all on CNN.  I don’t think that anyone in  the US is even aware that we had a federal election.  The other thing that bothered me was the fact that our Leaders Debate was scheduled at the same time as the US Veep Debates!  I had a lot of inner turmoil over which one I was going to watch.  In the end my patriotic side one out and May, Harper, Duceppe & Layton got my undivided attention (well in between my Facebook status updates) however I was longing to play along with my US friends in a round of Palin Bingo!  I downloaded the AC360 Podcast and watched it on my iPhone the next day!  I’m a good Canadian girl!

So it will soon come to an end, I’m wondering if my evenings of CNN will also end too?  Nah…I’ll still enjoy Erica and Anderson flirting (yes I know the rumour but I refuse to believe it), Lou’s cantankerousness, and Larry’s suspenders.  Some of the things I’ll miss after the election are: Dana gritting her teeth as she reports from the McCain Trail begrudgingly, Campbell Brown’s “No Bias ,(and) No Bull” and James Carville.  There’s just something about this guy that cracks me up as soon as he speaks. One of my favourite JC moments was when he brought in an inkjetted print of Wasilla, Alaska’s City Hall.  I believe he said something like this… (now make sure you’re reading this in your thickest Southern Louisiana drawl!)

“…to tout her experience as mayor of this town of Alaska, this is a picture of the city hall. It looks like a bait shop in South Louisiana. This is executive experience to be Vice President of the United States? To be a heart beat away from the presidency? To have to take over the country when we are fighting three wars? When we have the biggest credit crisis we’ve had in this country? In the entire Republican Party, this is the best they could come up with?”

OK I think I’ve said enough…but I know you’re all out there…and I’ll leave you all with this tonight compliments of Daisys_mum.  Thanks for letting me post this.

Happy Halloween Everyone!  I’ll post our adventures in the morning. I’ll admit it, I’m too lazy to go downstairs to get my camera!

After I dropped the kids off at school, I decided that it would be a good time to vote.  So I parked the van in the driveway and strapped Finn into the Ergo and walked to the polling station and then down to the waterfront to see one of the last few cruise ships that will be using Saint John as it’s Port of Call.  This morning the Princess Cruiselines Jewel of the Sea was docked. I’ve driven by these boats all summer, but haven’t actually gotten up close and personal.  This ship was almost a whole city block long.  I’ve been on a few of the bigger vessels on vacation but I guess you really don’t realize the scale when you see them in your own city and have something you see everyday to compare it to.

Here’s a few shots I took from my iPhone (as you can see I couldn’t get the whole boat in one shot)

I finished my walk to stop and admire this  beautiful piece of historic property for sale on the corner of my street.  It’s called Caverhill Hall and it truly is a piece of Saint John history.

It was built after the Great Fire of 1877 for a brewer named Simeon Jones to replace his former estate lost in the fire.  It’s architecture is much different than most homes built at that time in Saint John, it was actually a replica of property in Montreal.  Another neat fact, in 1901 the home was loaned to the City of Saint John to serve as the royal residence for the Prince of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall during their stay in the city.  One more little piece of trivia you may not find in the history books- Caverhill Hall also was a popular nightclub/danceclub in the late 80’s early 90’s called Caper’s.  Can you believe that this 10,000 sq ft 6 bedroom, 8 bath house is on the market for only$699, 900!!

I rounded the corner back to our little house and started being grateful for it.  Can you imagine what it would cost to heat $10,000 sq ft?? I grabbed a quick shot of our place which then reminded me I need to get my Halloween decor up.!! I’m a little late this year, I normally have it up well before Thanksgiving!  I’ll get some pics later this afternoon. It’s mornings like this when I truly appreciate city living!