Another Memorable Happy Birthday-Halloween

We celebrated Aleksy's 26th birthday plus Halloween on Saturday night the 27th. This is our annual halloween/birthday tradition! We had about 15 people over, all our closest friends to celebrate... everyone in costume of course! Aleksy and I had our costumes planned about 3 weeks before the party... because it really is cheaper to make costumes then buy the bagged ones so we make our own with individually purchased items from the thrift store. I took off work the Friday before so I could prepare for the party by grocery shopping, lots of sewing, and some food prep (i.e. sandwich wraps, jello shooters).

 Our costumes: curious george and the man with the yellow hat! I decided this year that with our "couples costume" that I get to be the "main character" this year since previous years, Aleksy was Batman (with Batman and Robin), and Scooby Doo (with Scooby doo and Daphne). These costumes took many hours of sewing the tail (which Aleksy did most of), ears, the tummy on my shirt, and Aleksys tie. We bought a black hat for Aleksy's costume and a bottle of yellow spray paint which still didn't fully make the hat yellow!

 For Aleksys birthday cake, we had a friend make the cake. In September, we were at an engagement party for our friends and we saw her amazing work on that day that she did for the engagement party. She did an amazing job on Aleksy's cake: this is our new house all haunted up... There are graves on the left where the middle one is my grave and my little hand is popping out. On the right, that is Aleksy hiding under the leaves. The trees are made of grapevines, but otherwise everything was edible! In real life our subdivision will not have trees or fallen leaves :( One of the sacrifices of new subdivisions...

The cake was chocolate and cream cheese on the top and chocolate and peanut butter on the bottom... super tasty!

Here's a group shot with some of our friends around the beginning of the evenings endeavors. We have the basketball team and their cheerleader (with jello shooters!), a pirate, curious Gearge and the bakers.... our friends who announced their pregnancy at the party! Steph is having a baby in April!! Also present at the party were a policeman, some zombies, salt & pepper, a devil, and some bunnies (aka some people who decided not to show up in costume but we made them find one!)

By request, I made chili for Aleksys birthday. To go with the chili, I figured i'd stick with the tex-mex theme and we had chili, 7 layer dip (with refried beans, taco seasoning, cream cheese, sour cream, salsa, lettuce, tomato and cheese), pinwheels (with cream cheese, ranch dressing package, celery, black olives, red peppers), a veggie tray, spicy hummus and corn chips. And for dessert, we had an awesome cake, and our bakers brought cinnamon buns... Mmmm food

Niagara College Winery Tour

On Saturday October 20th, we had a ladies day in Niagara-on-the-lake! Andzelika had purchased a Dealfind coupon where for $60 you can enjoy a tour of the Niagara College winery and beer brewery including lunch, testing, and $20 to put toward whichever bottle(s) you buy! We bought a bottle of ice wine with this credit to share among everyone. We booked our tour originally for the ladies and our associated men (the dealfind was for up to 6 people included in the price), but since the Browns were unable to get a sitter, the men took the little girls to Niagara Falls! They later joined up with us as we were finishing our day off at the brewery, drinking some free beer samples.

The vineyard of Niagara College was absolutely beautiful! Where the multi-coloured trees are in the background is the Niagara escarpment  The tour guide informed us that depending on where you are in the Niagara region, you have different grounding that affects the taste of the wine. Near the Niagara escarpment, the limestone affects the taste. In other regions, particularly in valleys, the clay ground affects the taste.




Some other fun things I learned on the tour:

• Although typically a white wine is made from white grapes, you can also make a white from red grapes minus the skin of the grape.For blush wines, they keep the peels in for only a portion of the time that the wine is fermenting.
• The oak barrels which hold wine can only hold 300 bottles of wine, whereas the big metal barrels hold  many more which is reflected in wine bottle prices.
• A young white wine will have lighter colours whereas a darker white wine with change to yellow tones and even light orange tones.
• A young red wine is darker in colour and with an older red, the wine becomes more transparent.
• For ice wine, the grapes need to be picked at -8 degrees Celsius, however to give the winemakers wiggle room they pick them at -10 to -12 degrees. There is 1 drop of nectar in each grape which is sweet for the ice wine.
• When drinking a wine with a lot of tannins the wine tends to stick to roof and sides of the mouth. Protein couples well with the wine because the protein takes the moisture from the mouth, allowing you to better taste the wine.

This is after we had the wine tour and it was time for testing! We tested a Gerwurtztraminer white, which I'm not too much of a fan of because of the sour taste of the wine. The red we tried was a Cabernet Franc and it was by far my favourite! This is the bottle I ended up buying after trying almost everyone on the list. I tend to like wines that are bold, dry and slightly smokey (I'm a fan of the oak). The other wine we tried was a delicious ice wine which they sold for only $38/ bottle! I remember from previous tours that Aleksy and I have done (Jackson Triggs, Peller Estates) that ice wine bottles often go for upwards of $80 a bottle so $38 was an amazing price for the delicious ice wine...

After the tour, we also has many samples of almost every white and red on the menu complimentary!! They were so nice at the retail store and were so passionate about showing off their wines that they wanted us to try particular ones.

Our lunch was very tasty with a (stacked!) sandwich, a pickle, and a brownie. The brownie was scrumptious with the glass of Cabernet Franc that I ordered!

The three of us in the main area of the retail store. One of the tour guides was nice enough to take a photo. This was the tour guide who informed us that also included in our dealfind was the brewery tour and just as we were about to leave, we were reminded and guided to the brewery store down the pathway.

The boys came with the girls just as soon as we started sampling the beers. They were into the brewing process, so the employee showed us to the brewery as well. There were many different kinds of beer to try including a bourbon beer. I'm not too fond of beers other than light, non-hoppy beers but Aleksy likes to try hoppy beers. Aleksy bought a couple of the jugs which hold 6 beers each: a bitter beer, and the bourbon beer.

This was the perfect way to spend a Saturday!

Weekend is Baking time!

These past few weekends I have been baking up different goods, either for dessert or for freezing to enjoy at a later time. I really enjoy baking and I love that its way healthier because I know exactly whats in them (i.e. not like those store-bought muffins that have 500 calories and 25 grams of fat = crazy!). Last weekend I made some delicious apple crumble, the weekend before that I made some oat peanut butter chocolate chip squares. This weekend I decided to go out and purchase mini-muffin baking tray so I could make muffins with portion control. These will be perfect for the work week to garb and go, but not feel bad about what I'm eating!

These are the banana, blueberry, oat mini-muffins that I made this weekend. The recipe is very healthy with minimal sugar, yogurt instead of butter, and whole wheat flour. And its bursting with delicious blueberries! Mmmm breakfast for the week (and then some because I have about 25 frozen!)

The Amazing Race: London Style!

On the 13th, Brooklyn and I participated in the amazing race through Big Brothers Big Sisters. To be honest, I had no idea what I was signing up for because I have never seen the show but it turned out to be an amazing amount of fun! We were given a clue to start that would lead us to the next spot where there was another clue etc. We were running (literally sprinting) around the downtown to different destinations trying to make it there first. Some of the places that were hinted at were marble slab, city hall, Aroma restaurant, Covent Garden Market, Vic park, Museum London. There was a lot of back & forth since the destinations were in no way in line, but good thing I know the dt well, because most of the clues were easy! 

 This is Brooklyn at one of out "road blocks"... I guess this is in the show as well. One of the team members has to complete a task to proceed with the next clue. Here Brooklyn had to balance a potato on a spoon around the picnic tables at the Covent Garden Market.

And here we are at the end after having run all over dt all morning! We ended at Harris park by the agency building, had to build a balloon bouquet, then return to the agency three-legged. 

A good way to spend a Saturday morning!

Trying out the small town fair: Ilderton

Last weekend on September 29th, Aleksy and I had a free day to ourselves where we filled our day with a bunch of activities that were running for that weekend. One of the events that was running was Doors Open London, where we attempted to have a tour of Police Headquarters and Museum London, but there were long wait times and we ended up self-touring. We also went to tour the Palace theatre on Dundas St. downtown and we were a bit late for that as well. We did end up getting free tickets to 39 steps at the Palace Theatre later on Saturday night, which was a really good play!

Earlier on Saturday, we decided to head out to Ilderton to the fair. We decided that the Western Fair was great for concerts, but the Ilderton fair was more entertaining! We felt a little honky tonk...

 The Ilderton fair was very traditional and they had stands of competitions for things like 'best apple pie', 'best banana chocolate chip muffin', for children like 'best rock pet', and of course jams, and other canning items. They had ribbons for 1st, 2nd to 5th :) Here is Aleksy supporting the 1st prize winner of best vegetable display!

While we are mostly city people, we sure do love a good tractor and country song. Here's Aleksy checking out the display of tractors.

And our favorite part of the Ilderton fair (caution to vegetarians): smoked turkey legs!!! These were so scrumptious (and to my surprise super filling!). We coupled these up with a couple of beers for and all-round good turkey leg experience.

Other fantastic parts of the fair: deep fried mini-donuts and brought home a big tub of apple cider.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am blogging for the first time in a very long time because I was reading through my previous entries, and realizing how much I enjoy it, being able to remember what I was doing this time last year.

So I wanted to post to say Happy Thanksgiving! I like Thanksgiving because it gives an excuse for everyone to get together, catch-up and spend time together, which unfortunately doesn't happen as often as I would like. This weekend, Aleksy and I have 2 family suppers: one we had yesterday and the next with Aleksy's family is tomorrow. For tomorrows supper, my plan is to make a blackberry apple crumble... Mmmm. This is on the agenda for today: baking the crumble and purchasing pumpkin to carve. Fall weekends!

Update: My completed apple-blackberry crisp:

This is what's for dessert tonight! After our squash & burgers (not your typical thanksgiving Sunday supper!).

We Bought a HOUSE!

We bought a HOUSE! After months of saving for a down payment, we finally decided that we had enough to work with to start looking at houses. First, we went into the neighbourhood that is close to where we are living now in the Northwest end to see what the cost was for new builds. When we did this research, we came across affordable new build through fusion. This was within our price range and had many of the things we were looking for, open concept living/dining area, ensuite, walk in closet, garage. We wanted to do more research so we hired a real estate agent and started looking at other options. We looked at a bunch of 5 year old homes, but in each one there were things that we didn't prefer (i.e. layout, cabinetry etc.), and we kept keeping the fusion build in the back of our minds. It was an easy decision to go with the fusion builder - we get to choose all of our own colours for exterior/interior and build the house to our liking!

Next week we have our first colour selection appointment. We are choosing the exterior colours (the brick) and we have a few things in mind. We like the darker bricks so we're going to go for a red brick or brown. I'm really looking forward to selecting our cabinetry, ceramic floors, carpet and all the countertops! So much fun!

 On Wednesday we officially firmed up our purchase, provided our 5% cheque and it became official! The sales lady gave us the "Sold" sign to put on our lot sign because we were so excited!

The trees in the background are a great extra for a little, but an elementary school is reserved to go behind our house (which we liked so we wouldn't have neighbours all along our backyard). There is also a park going in just down the street with tennis courts, a soccer field, and lots of green space. There is a lot of development happening in this area, which is one of the reasons we chose it. 

For now, we just bought a lot of dirt, but on December 6th we will have a brand new home to move into!