Christmas Time 2013

This year Christmas creeped up on us really fast. Last year we didn't have to get out to the malls/stores after black Friday shopping at all, and this year we were shopping until the 23rd! For the month of December, there was no shortage of Christmas movies and egg nog for us. We started buying eggnog cartons in 5's and watched some classic movies we haven't seen in forever: Charlie Brown, Frosty the Snowman, and The Polar Express. We also managed to watch Christmas Vacation twice (or maybe it was 3 times...).

Our Christmas festivities started on Dec 22nd, whe we had Al and Steph over. We thought since we had these arrangements we would invite Chels and Warren, and Andzelika and Paul too. Chels and Warren and Al and Steph ended up coming over (and little Colton).

This here is the awesomely large present we got for Colton. We thought he was a little young to be able to enjoy it, but he showed us! He saw the wrapped box and helped with opening it... with supervision because he also likes to eat paper...

We also thought that he wouldn't fully be able to enjoy his present (a John Deer dumptruck, and tractor) until the summer, but again he showed us otherwise. We took them out of the box, and he immediately played with them, turning the wheels on them. Colton is getting so big!

My Christmas tree this year! Every year I get more ornaments of the red, silver, and gold sort to add and it gets more sparkly :) This will continue to be our upstairs decorative tree, and once our basement is in use, we will have a second down there, which will be a real tree and will have ornaments that are homemade or meaningful on them. For the first 7 Christmases together, Aleksy bought me an ornament with the year on it. I have from 2005 and I think the last year I have is 2011. These will go on the tree downstairs too!

And like every year, I made a wide variety of delicious baked goodness for gifts and for Christmas desserts. This year my new additions were: rum balls (a clear hit which will be added to the usual line up), turtle cheesecake balls, chocolate meringue cookies (gluten free for my ma), and Portuguese biscuits (I made these for Kenny, Steph and Brandon and Rachel, they were really good!).

I also made the usuals: peanut butter balls, peanut butter chocolate squares, ginger snaps, Christmas sprinkle cookies, and nanaimo bars.

I made up platter like this for both Christmas Eve (hosted by my Mom), and Christmas Day (hosted by us!).

On Christmas Eve, we headed over to my Mom's about 4:30pm. When Rachel came, the first thing she did was find Emma and scope out which presents were theirs under the tree. I took this picture after supper. The girls at this point were telling everyone that we should open presents. They were way too excited to open presents to wait any longer than they had to.

Present opening for the girls: They opened the first couple for themselves, then when we told them that it was other people's turns, Rachel took a couple times to get used to that. They were so cute and excited. It was really nice to have Emma at Christmas this year, I think Rachel prefers having a friend to open presents with.

Aleksy's present time! Can't go wrong with some good ol' beer. And a variety to change it up. Everyone was interested in Aleksy's Christmas present...

After all presents were open, we got  picture in front of the tree. This was not going to happen with the girls' excitement before opening presents.
They are so big now...

Travis' girlfriend, Courtney is very creative with her baking! She made a holly and snowman topping of candy and marshmallows :)

After some wine and dessert, we headed home about 11pm on Christmas Eve. An early night from a usual dinner at Mom and Pauls because Aleksy and I were getting up early Christmas morning to go to his parents for breakfast and presents.

That night I also started preparing the egg bake that I was making for breakfast the next day.

On Christmas morning, we headed to Lambeth for 9am. At Aleksy's parents we opened presents with Aleksy's parents and sister and brother then had a big breakfast. We had the egg bake that Aleksy and I made (I would say 75% Aleksy and 25% me), and homemade muffins, and his parents picked up these spinach and cheese filled middle eastern pastries that were so good!

Aleksy's sister Alyssa lives in Ottawa and we don't gt a lot of opportunity to spend time with her so she accepted our invite to our Christmas supper on Christmas Day at out place! She agreed to assist with our supper prep, which made things very low maintenance on Christmas.

Aleksy and I exchanged stockings and gifts on Christmas afternoon too! I got lots to start up my workouts at home: 3 sets of dumbbells, an exercise ball, and a stepper! We were on the same page with our gifts apparently, because I ought him new underarmour gym shorts and an underarmour water bottle.

This was my second time making a turkey, and again it turned out great! We were a little pressed for time since we got home from Aleksy's parnets around noon and still had to make the stuffing.
We made up the stuffing, seasoned the 18 lb beast and got it in about 1pm. It was a little alter than anticipated, which made for a bit of a delay for supper (we ate around 7pm).

Capturing Aleksy and Alyssa stuffing the best with as much stuffing as we could possibly get in (everyone knows stuffing is the best part).

And everyone arrived around 4:30pm at our place :) We had my sister, Kenny, Brandon, Rachel, Alyssa, Dad, and Matt over for supper (and Aleksy and me).

We made up mashed potatoes, carrots and parsnips to go with the turkey supper and Steph made a delicious creamy, cheesy veggie dish.

Everyone in our living room just before supper. Even the cat.

Following supper, we had my grandparents, Uncle Scott, Aunt Cindy, and my cousin Laura come over to join us for dessert and opening presents!

The awesome Iron Man shirt we got for Rachel!! This good find was at the Disney Store in Great Lakes Crossing. We knew as soon as we saw it that it was definitely for Rachel!

I think everyone had a good time on Christmas day, since my grandparents and Dad stayed until 10 and my Aunt, Uncle and Steph and Kenny stayed until 12:30am!

After everyone left, Alyssa, Aleksy and I stayed up until 3am having some more wine and playing Jenga :)

And on Saturday the 28th, I went over to Brooklyn's for our Christmas exchange. Brooklyn made some yummy lemon squares and we opened gifts and had some tea before I drove her to the nursing home that she volunteers at! This is an annual picture we do every year, and its fun to look at each year and how old Brooklyn is getting...














And tonight, we have friends over for New Years!!! Love New Years parties!

Happy New Year :)

December is a Busy Birthday Month!

December is seriously busy for birthdays. We have Serena's birthday (who turned 4 on the 3rd), Al's birthday on the 7th, Trevor's birthday (who turned 15 on the 16th), Brandon's birthday (who turned 15 on the 22nd), and Emma's birthday (who turned 6 on the 22nd).

Before all our December birthdays, came little Scarlett, born November 21st! This is Zac and Sam's perfect little girl!

We celebrated Serena's 4th birthday on December 1st at an indoor adventure centre in Stoney Creek. Serena had all her friends from her class come to her party, and they all ate pizza and cake, and played in the playground.

Adult discovery: we were allowed to go on the equipment too! And so here's Aleksy and Paul going down the slide. I flew down this slide and had the time of my life... seriously. So much fun!

Another adult discovery: its fun to play "lets see if you can climb up the slide". All the adults had competitions to see who could make it to the top (obviously I made it look easy). The kids caught on, and this is what we started:
<--------.

After heading out of the indoor playground centre, we headed over to Andzelika and Pauls to watch Serena open presents. We got Serena this cute bow headband and a wooden doll dress-up set. She really liked the headband!

Chelsea and Warren got Serena a box full of dress-up clothing. The girls were so cute trying on their princess dresses.

We had a get together for Al's birthday on December 7th. We popped by their house in the afternoon to give a gift to Al and visit and we ended up crashing their family dinner (Steph's parents and sister came over for supper and brought lasagna and salad) and staying until night. Little Colton fell asleep with me.

And we celebrated my niece, Emma's 6th birthday and my nephew, Brandon's 15th birthday on Dec 21st at my sisters. I tried to explain to my sister that cheesecake is not birthday cake, but it worked out in the end because the cherry cheesecake was delic! And Rachel and Emma had their own special small princess cake.

My Arbonne Christmas Party!

On December 7th, I had a Christmas themed Arbonne Party! I was very enthusiastic about hosting a Christmas themed party, but a little uncomfortable with the idea of people feeling obligated to buy the Arbonne products. But I'm glad that I did host, because it was a lot of fun, and I got a lot of amazing host gifts! I am also a huge Arbonne fan, and I love the education that is provided during Arbonne parties about how our beauty products are filled with chemicals.

I was all over the Christmas theme with my foods. These are mini-pizzas shaped with Christmas cookie cutters. I made the dough with a gluten free pizza dough (so my Mom could eat it too) that was surprisingly easy to get at the grocery store. I got this idea from Pinterest.

This flower arrangement arrived a few days before my party and worked perfectly to spruce up my table. It was a gift from the builder.

I discovered that sparkling wine + punch is amazingness. I am always going to have sparkling wine available when I do a punch from now on! I did up a cranberry holiday punch (with cranberries in it!) along with a tree shape of tortilla pinwheels, tree shaped olives and cheese, and some of my baking: shortbread and brownies.

I got the idea of creating a veggie tray shaped like a wreath from Pinterest. I love a good festive theme!

Group shot! This one was a timed shot so everyone is in it: me, Jenny, Becca (who presented), my sista, my Mom, Chels, Lorraine, Nicole, Andzelika, and Emily.

I had requested that everyone wear festive colours (red, green, Christmas sweaters etc.) and this picture would have been way more fun if everyone had remembered!

I didn't even know if the perks I would get when I said I would do the party!! I got all these products for $65 total!!

I got a facial scrub mask, day cream, ginger citrus hand scrub, mascara, foot cooling cream, shea butter body wash and lotion, make up primer, face wash, and a foundation!! All this would have normally been over $300 but I only paid $65!

Black Friday Shopping at its Finest

We thought it was so successful last year that we'd do it again this year! Last year, we started and finished our Christmas shopping on Black Friday and this year, our intentions were the same. It's really nice to avoid the malls and stores in December.

We left our place on Thursday evening after Aleksy got home from work. I took the day off to sleep in, preparing for being up all night. We arrived on Thursday evening around 8-9pm. We had some supper first at the Toby Keith's bar & grill in Great Lakes Crossing then started the shopping.

Aleksy loves him some American football. Our shopping successes started pretty mch at the very first store we went to. We shopped in the mall from 9pm to about 5am, then headed to KOHLS and Dicks Sports for some more finds.

 After shopping all night at Great Lakes Crossing, approximately 3-4 coffees each + energy drinks, some stops at miscellaneous stores outside of the mall (Toys R Us, Kohls), we stopped for some breakfast at IHOP. This was at around 9:30am, after a brief "nap" in the car for about 30 min. On the black Friday weekend it was -10 Celsius so I couldn't sleep in a turned off car without turning into an ice cube.

This was both Aleksy and my very first time at IHOP. We tried to go last year while Black Friday shopping, but the line up was crazy so we went to Denny's. There was still a line up this time, but it was only about a 15 min wait.

So at the table, there are 4 different kinds of syrup to choose on your pancakes: original, butter pecan, blueberry, and strawberry. We sampled them each on a spoon, and they were all seriously delic. I like the strawberry one best, its like an ice cream topping for your pancake. And we discovered the best part: no matter what you order, it comes with pancakes. Aleksy got a steak omelette and it came with pancakes. Good thing we get our fat on and don't count our calories in the States (there's way too much delicious food in the States to pay attention to that).

We've stayed in Auburn Hills three times now, at 3 different hotels. They all are on the same street and seem to have the same amenities. This year we stayed at the Quality Inn which was decent. It came with free continental breakfast which is always a selling feature for us. We got to the hotel at about 1:30pm on Friday and our room wasn't ready so we had to waste some time for about an hour having some drinks and pretzels in the car. We checked in about 2:30pm and slept until the next day with a brief wake-up for some supper from Buschemi's (pizza and subs which we ate in our room) from 8pm-10pm.

And the purchases: Lots of toys for all the kids in our lives, clothes for the teenagers, and some things for ourselves (clothes and running shoes). The best purchases were prob our shoes. We each got Nike's for about $50 each. And the Disney store had some amazing deals. Everything in the store was 30% off, with lots of particular item sales!

And we have about 5 people who have December birthdays, so we bought for all December birthdays!

The only stop that we made on Saturday: the day we left was to Wal Mart. Since my co-worker and I went to the States in the summer and she introduced me to her ritual of buying stuff they don't sell in Canada, I have been doing the same. The States has all the best junk food (and salad dressing!). This PB and Chocolate Chex Mix was seriously delicious. We also bought brownie marshmallows, cinnamon sugar pringles, and cheeseburger pringles.

We had no issues at the border with our $600 worth of purchases and case of beer and bottle of wine.

A Toronto Weekend

Last weekend, Aleksy and I enjoyed our winnings from a draw at Aleksy's work. He put his name in and won: 2 tickets to the leafs game on Sat the 23rd (with awesome seats!), a hotel night at the Intercontinental hotel, and $100 spending cash!!

We arrived in T.O. at 2:30pm after being redirected off the highways twice because of accidents. It took us about 45 min to leave London that Saturday. Throw a little snow and ice on the roads, and no one moves.

We went immediately to our hotel to check in, and when we went up to our room, this is how close our hotel is to the CN tower: this is our window!!

After parking at the hotel and dumping our things in our room, we headed to the stores and of course, China town for some Dim Sum. It was a freezing freezing cold day, and although I'm usually all about trying different places, we wound up going to a restaurant that we have already been to. Too cold to search. But as always, amazing, variety of dim sum for only $25.

That sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves that's on our plates is seriously the best, along with those custard buns.

I don't know how to leave ChinaTown without going into the little pastry stores. I don't know why pastries are so darn appealing to me. They look and sound amazing (and are about $.80 each), but these ones weren't particularly delic. That coconut cream one was the only yummy one.

We did some shopping, but didn't purchase anything. I think going into the stores was more of a break from the cold than anything (because we're black Friday shopping TONIGHT and didn't need to buy anything at full price in DT T.O.). This was the closest we came to a purchase... garage decoration?

After finishing our dim sum, purchasing some pastries and new hats from the hat store in China Town, we headed back to out hotel and had a couple drinks before heading to the ACC for the game!

And our first Leafs game was friggin amazing!! It even went into overtime with a shoot out and the Leafs won!

When we left the game, we went back to our hotel and I began to read comments to a Facebook post of Aleksy's that some friends were staying in a hotel a block or two over. So we met up at a bar for one, or two, or three pitchers! We ditched the bar that had cover and went to this one.. I think loose moose?  Such a good (and amazingly spontaneous) night!

Christmas, Christmas time is here!

Only 38 days until Christmas! And all the signs of Christmas have been coming up over the past couple of weeks:

The Christmas tree went up the first weekend after Halloween! I felt a little deprived not being able to put up my tree until December last year (because we moved into our house Dec 6th of last year), so I decided to get the most of my pretty tree this year.

Watching Christmas movies just isn't the same without a lit up tree in the room!

We went to the Santa Claus parade on the 9th with my sister, brother in law and niece. She was all cute with her letter for Santa with everything she wants for Christmas. I figure Christmas season is in full swing after the Santa Claus parade. After the parade we promptly went home and watched Christmas Vacation.

I thought Santa and float looked much better this year than last year! This years parade was a little lengthy I found so by the time Santa came along, I was very happy to see him. Although this year I was prepared with my 4 extra blankets.

Another sign that Christmas season is here: we woke up to this on November 12th!! This is our backyard in the morning: bright and snowy. Too bad it melted within a couple days... Great for driving, not so great for Christmas festivity.

Yet another thing that is necessary for Christmas spirit when watching Christmas movies: candy cane oreos!! So tasty.

Now, we await egg nog. We have been searching high and low and have only found the PC kind that doesn't need to be refrigerated (which is just wrong) and the Mac's kind that is like drinking 18% cream.

And Aleksy waited for a mild weekend, and non-rainy day to put up the Christmas lights. They went up yesterday! It seems that many of the other houses on our street thought yesterday was a good day for Christmas lights too, because there are quite a few on our street now!

<--- This ladder/light situation is scary to me. Safety is not guaranteed, but it looks so much nicer with the lights at the top too!




And, Christmas shopping hopefully will be started and finished in 2 weekends when Aleksy and I brave the Black Friday in the states again this year. We plan to shop overnight Thursday the 28th just like last year!

Halloween 2013!

This post is dedicated to the exciting Halloween/Aleksy's birthday associated events!

At the beginning of October, we babysat our Rachel while my sister, Kenny and Brandon attended their friends wedding. That weekend, we harvested up our front porch with the Heemans porch package, and carved a pumpkin with Rachel!

Rachel and Aleksy unloading the pumpkin guts. Rachel told me I didn't have to because I may ruin my nails... so considerate!

We kept all the pumpkin seeds aside for a delicious snack with our Despicable Me 2 movie later that night (along with the chocolate chip cookies we made).

 We asked Rachel to design the pumpkin, and she was really into the circles. While she was ok with the job Aleksy did with carving the eyes, she informed Aleksy he did the mouth wrong (she even had a picture of her expectations for the pumpkin drawn down on paper!). Aleksy then added all these extra details like earrings and eyebrows to make up for her disappointment!

Because we carved our pumpkin the first weekend of October, by Halloween it was rotten and we had to throw it out (actually well before Halloween!).

And our costumes this year: Cruella Deville and her dalmatian, with our Joker photobomber!
This was our first Halloween party we went to: my Mom and her husband have a party each year and it was the weekend before our party (the 19th). We had our costumes all prepped for their party but the only difference is by our party the following weekend we were able to find a doggie collar that fit around Aleksy's neck!

My Cruella Deville costume: easy peasey with no sewing required and a total of about $28.

Aleksys costume: surprisingly the bigger challenge at the cost of about $25, running around to many stores looking for white pants/longjohns, and hours of sewing those damn little spots on!! Those pants (that I sewed) were thrown across our living room a few times!

This is the final products of preparations for Aleksy's birthday/halloween party at our place! I made a veggie tray look like a scary jack-o-lantern (and I got the 10 lb bag of carrots for only $1.88!), The little pumpkins are orange coloured chocolate that I melted and covered the pretzels with and picked out the green m & ms for the stem.
Unfortunately this year our good friend who makes the amazing cakes wasn't able to come, so I was left fending for myself for the creative cake. I made this pumpkin shaped cake: the face is from an icing tube and the green is melted chocolate! I dyed the icing orange with food colouring. I was quite proud of the way it turned out (its no Tabi cake, however i managed to make it look like a pumpkin!). I'm not going to lie though, the cake was from a betty crocker box, and the icing not homemade! And the last dessert in the picture with the wormies and dirt was a "puff pastry" dessert I got from a Facebook page with layers of crackers, cool whip, and pudding. We ate this for days after Aleksy's party. It has been a really unhealthy week!

All of our party people! This was the timed photo that we wanted to capture everyone and have no one left out! We decided not to re-take but clearly we should have because i see Al's hand in his face!
Here we have some b-dancers in the back (sorry zac and sam... can't see you guys past us :( ), Cruella and her dalmatian, Joker: Brandon (who was supposed to have a batman and catwoman to go with his costume but he got ditched by his parents):, Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus: Steph, Al & Colton, 2 football players: Andrew and Nicole, a monkey & a whoopie cushion: Andzelika and Paul, a ghostbuster and slimer: Kenny and my sister, the cutest little firefighter: Rachel, and 2 army people: Chelsea and Warren!

And of course, later in the evening, Aleksy blew out his 7 candles (with the help of Rachel) and we all indulged in cake (which I continued to indulge in when everyone left at 1am).