Tales From a “GREEN” Minivan

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!

When I told my husband I was going to be writing about his t-shirts he was less than enthused.  I then reminded him that I wrote about my underwear not that long ago and he relented a little.

I spent the day doing some crisis cleaning.  I invited Peter Walsh and his Clutter Bugs over, but they were no-shows. I girl can dream right? I find the only way I get stuff accomplished around the house lately is if I’m under pressure.  Tomorrow we have an energy advisor coming in to do  an assessment of our house to find out how we can make improvements to make our home more energy efficient.

Andrew took the boys out for the afternoon so I could work distraction free.  I am happy to say for the first time in about 4 years, my laundry is completely caught up!  In completing this milestone I also discovered that perhaps we have too many clothes.  It was tough to close the boys’ dresser drawers.  Mackenzie ran out of hangers and was complaining and when I walked into our closet I was faced with this:

One of my favourite features in our house is the walk-in closet and built-ins in it. One thing I don’t like is not being able to find a sweater or shirt when you’re looking for it, so I decided to take out the shirts and organize them.  It was a fairly easy job, I purged some things of mine I hadn’t worn for quite some time.  Then it came time to organize Andrews T-SHIRTS. I re-folded most of them and put them back neatly on the shelves.

In the end I counted up Andrew’s t-shirts and I counted 88 (EIGHTY-EIGHT!!!)  Please tell me this is not the norm?!  You see Andrew has collected these up over the years, some have come from concerts, conventions, places he’s visited and even some from his days spent in the Navy.  I will admit on occasion I’ve gone a little “Kate Gosselin” on him and ordered him to change into something a little more appropriate or into something that still fits. Here’s a few of the more unique ones I came across:

Obviously from his Bachelor Days, I don’t think this one would go over well at Parent Teacher.

From the “Star Trek”Convention he attended many years ago. Yes he’s an eternal geek.

This one fit much better in his “University/Navy Days“

So I’m wondering do your significant others have “collections“  or “memorabilia“?  How do you handle them if the get out of control, yet not seem overbearing when it’s time to purge a little?

Well the time has come to start doing some renovations on our 19 year old house.  We moved into our little uptown house in September of 2002 and it was completely move-in ready.  There was a few things that I wanted to change right away, but 3 little boys kind of got in the way of that. :)  It’s seems so long ago when Andrew, Mackenzie and I decorated her adorable little ladybug room while I was expecting Liam.

So almost 7 years have passed and one of the things that I wanted to replace right away is still lingering…the dreaded dusty rose wall to wall carpets on the second story of the house.  They are just horrible, and why anyone would choose that colour is beyond me.  The plan is to replace them with bamboo hardwood floors. Bamboo is a great eco-friendly choice as it’s considered a renewable resource as bamboo plants take only 5 - 6 years to reach maturity.  It’s also very durable and can be refinished up to 3 times.

The next project and it’s a major one is our roof. I lucked out the other day, as our nextdoor neighbours who happen to be very involved in home renos were having their roof done as well. I yelled up to their roof and they came over later to give me a quote. I’ve already called a couple of companies to get some quotes, but feel much more comfortable using this company as I know my neighbours do their homework when it comes to contractors. My neighbour is a carpenter by trade as well.

Project 3 is replacing windows.  Our house has a LOT of windows!  I love all of the natural light that we get, from our 23 windows and huge skylight, but it’s going to cost a bundle to replace all of them!  I think we may do the front of the house first, then perhaps next year start replacing some more. They are all wood-framed windows, which in our climate here of constant summer fog is not a good choice for longevity.  We will definitely be going with a vinyl framed windows.  When the contractor arrived he also filled us in on a grant we may be able to take advantage of the ecoEnergy Retrofit Program if our house qualifies.  We should know in a couple of weeks and we also taking advantage of  Efficiency NB’s -Existing Homes Energy Efficiency Upgrades Program They will subsidize the cost of an Energy Audit of your home and from the results of the Audit you may be able to take advantage of grants offered as well as interest free loans to complete the recommendations within 18 months.  This coupled with the Canadian Government’s HRTC (Home Renovation Tax Credit) it seems like 2009 is the right time to be renovating!

Here’s a shot of our place in the fall, I’m not going to risk my life trying to get a new shot from the snowbanks across the street. Yes we still have a ton of snow!  Oh and if time and money permit, we may also paint the exterior as well.  I’d like to do a totally different colour.  Many of our neighbours have chosen bright vivid colours in recent years, and I’d like to follow suite. We’re looking for colour suggestions!

During our testing  for CPO’s Slow Cooker Club I decided to make the Mother Hubbard’s Favourite Shepherds Pie recipe.  We really enjoyed it, although I kept thinking that I could modify the recipe a bit to create a similar dish with a Thai flare.

In Mother Hubbards pie it’s got a ground Chicken base with a few spices, tomato paste, corn then topped with a Squash Puree.  I kept thinking that it would taste good with a yellow Thai curry paste instead of the tomato paste.

My first step was to start getting the squash and sweet potato topping prepared .  I took one med buttercup squash,  sliced it down the centre, removed the seeds and placed it face down in the oven at 375 for 45 minutes.  I then steamed 2 medium size sweet potatoes.

Last week while out shopping at Sobey’s I noticed a small jar of Yellow Thai curry paste made by Thai Kitchen in the international foods aisle.

I took about 2 tablespoons of the curry paste and mixed it with half of a can of coconut milk.  Once the ground chicken had been sauted I added the paste mixture to it. Next a added a couple of pinches of ginger over the top then added 1.5 cups of corn niblets.

Next I combined the squash and sweet potatoes and used my stand mixer to mash them into a puree.

I then added the puree on top of the ground chicken in the Slow Cooker insert.  I then refrigerated it over night.

I cooked this on low for 7 hours, (it was finished much sooner though) and I really enjoyed it!  I think I may not have drained the ground chicken quite enough, as there was a lot of liquid, but it may also have been from the squash, as it was a really WET squash (I prefer dry ones as they are sweeter).

I think I’ll definitely make it again, and next time add some more veggies, perhaps some broccoli and carrots along with the corn.

Here’s the end result!

If you have any questions let me know!  Sorry about the quality of the photos, my iPhone was not liking the lighting in the kitchen!

Last week was Liam & Mackenzie’s March Break.  We don’t normally travel too far from home during our breaks as it’s early in March.  I wanted to do something that had a “GREEN” element to it, but also have a short getaway and see some sites.  After doing a little research I decided on Boston.  Wait a minute…Boston is an 8 hour drive or a airplane ride away!  Luckily we border the State of Maine, that has decided that passenger rail travel is still a priority!  You see here in Saint John, NB we do not have a passenger rail link.  The closest station is in Moncton, NB and there is limited places we can travel to.  So we drove to Maine and caught the Amtrak Downeaster to North Station in Boston.

For the drive down to Maine we used our new GPS, and I have to admit I’m kicking myself for not buying one sooner!  If you want to end all bickering between you and your co-pilot the GPS is the answer!   Definitely get one that way say the street names, it’s extremely helpful!

The train ride was fairly uneventful, I noticed as we got closer to Boston there were more and more people sporting Bruins attire, sure enough there was a B’s game that evening! We had to pack light as we knew we’d have a day that we’d have to carry our bags with us.  So I managed to pack everything into one backpack for the six of us! Pretty impressive and I didn’t forget anything either!

Here’s some photos from the weekend!

The boys on the Downeaster Train.

Just outside North Station

Dining at Durgin Park- Yes Ciaran is pluggin his nose, he didn’t like the smell.

Kenz, Finn and I outside Cheers!

The boys getting new Sox hats at Yawkey way.  (Their old ones got left in Florida! )

All 4 boys in their matching hats outside Fenway Park

Papa, Nanny & the Boys at the Aquarium, while Mackenzie Finn and I headed out to Natick to go to American Girl!  What a great store!

Now that I’m home I can’t wait to go back and stay even longer. Andrew and I decided that this trip would be our “trial run”for a longer stay this summer!  Even though the boys were a little under the weather, I still think it was a very successful trip!

This morning I awoke to my usual CBC Radio One Information Morning show.  I hit the snooze button as I do every morning to steal that extra 9 minutes of sleep and as I woke the second time, the story jolted me from a dead sleep almost hauntingly. As I was listening it brought tears to my eyes.  An off duty RCMP officer and his 5 year old daughter and almost 3 year old son died in a collision with a bus on NB’s Highway 7 between Fredericton and Saint John. Later one of the bus passengers was interviewed and revealed the location of the crash and this is what hit me the hardest, it was the exact same stretch of road I had an accident on almost 20 years ago.

I don’t talk about the accident a lot, and have never really written about it until now.  It tore me up inside for a long time, as I was the driver and also the only one not physically injured. I say physically, as emotionally I was a mess for a long time.  I credit my mom, with being so supportive and urging me to get behind the wheel right away and not turning her back on me.  The accident left her in limbo for many years financially while lawsuits were pending.

So it all happened on Thanksgiving Weekend 1989.  My friends, J1, D and I  decided to drive up to Fredericton to watch our boyfriends play football.  We had a great time at the game, stopped and had dinner and decided to follow one of our teachers (and coach of the team) back to SJ.  We also picked up another passenger J2, who decided at the last minute to drive with us. We all hopped in our 88 Toyota Corolla and headed back.  In 1988 shoulder seatbelts in the rear seats were just starting to emerge.  The middle seat only had a lapbelt.  I vaguely remember J2 asking where her seatbelt was and telling her it was there in the middle.

It was a fairly uneventful drive back, we listened to some music, joked about the weekend and at one point J1 decided to sit in the back with the other two.  This left me alone in the front seat.  It soon became dark and I was watching the road extra close for deer and moose.  This highway is dangerous plain and simple.  It’s a two lane highway and the only highway that connects NB’s two major cities Saint John and the capital, Fredericton. In recent years there has been a push to have deer and moose fencing installed, but the road itself is dark, and very twisty. Back in 1989 there was a few passing lane stretches (3 lanes) that you could take advantage of (there’s many more now), this is where things started to turn for the worse for us.

The Coach took advantage of one of these passing lanes to overtake a car that was driving very slow.  The driver of this car was in the passing lane so Coach had to pass him on the right hand lane. All signage posted says “Keep right except to pass” when I was quickly approaching him I tried to also pass him on the right hand side but the third lane was ending soon so I had to let off.  Most of these 3 lane passing stretches are in uphill areas of the highway.  We continued driving for a few more minutes closely following this car.  I remember it clearly it was a Hyundai Stellar, and it had seen better days.  The trunk latch was loose and bouncing a little as he drove.

I soon was given another opportunity to pass, this time though it was a dotted line on my side.  The road was clear and I down shifted to 4th gear to overtake this car.  There was a slight downgrade to the road, but I was unable to pass him.  It was almost like he was speeding up.  I was about three quarters past him when my dotted passing lane ended and turned into a double solid line.  The next thing I knew there was head lights coming at me in the lane I was in.  My first reaction was that it was a Transport Truck and I swerved quickly into the right lane and when I did my passenger side wheel hit the dirt shoulder and lost control flipping end to end and estimated seven times landing on it’s wheels.

My first reaction was to reach to the back seat to see how everyone was doing and I was horrified when the backseat was completely empty. The three girls in the back were all thrown from the vehicle as no one was wearing any seatbelts.  I was and did not move and inch, it locked the way it was supposed to and kept me seated right in the drivers seat.  Some studies were done after the crash and the results were inconclusive. It was difficult to determine if injuries would have been diminished or worse.  One thing that did come out is that if the middle lapbelt was worn it could have had a worse result that it did.

I won’t get into all of the details of their injuries, but they were all severe and have had lasting impacts on their lives to this day.  There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of them all and have made it my personal mission to be as safe as I can while driving and this includes Child Passenger Safety (Car Seats included) and why I have tried to educate myself and others on keeping our kids safe as passengers.

I don’t know all the specifics of how these two little ones were restrained in their Toyota Corolla (yes the same make as I was driving), but I’m sure that it will hopefully make us all think twice when we buckle our kids in each day.

My heart goes out to this grieving mother and wife, I can only imagine what you are going through right now. See the CBC article on Constable Porter.

Now to the Government of NB it’s time to twin Highway 7.  How many more lives need to be lost? We deserve a 4 lane link between Fredericton and Saint John. Moose and deer fencing is not enough.  It’s time to bring our province into this millennium!

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.

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