I Love Free Stuff!

Everyone who knows me, knows I love me a good deal... and love to talk about good deals that others have found (and hopefully reap the same benefit!). Couponing? Redeeming a Groupon? I have no shame at all!! The only thing is... I wish I had more time so I could find coupons & sign up for the things that get me FREE (or cheap) stuff!! Well, earlier this month, I found myself with an overabundance of time as I took a week off for my birthday.. a "stay-cation", which I have not really taken since I started! I was bored. I like to occupy my time. But... while I was browsing Facebook, a couponing site came up that said time was limited but if I signed up I would be sent a bunch of free stuff through Samplesource. So.. nothing else to do at that time... signed me right up!

And this is all the freebies I got from Samplesource! My "special package" came in the mail this past week and all for free I got samples of these 9 products! They actually offered me 12, but I didn't take the ones I wouldn't use. I was so excited for my free stuff... a little present in the mail :)

Babies Become 2 Real Fast!

The weekend of April 18th, we celebrated Colton's 2nd birthday! I am learning from my friends' kids that I need to savour each stage with our baby because time just flies and then they're 2! Colton was the first born of our friends' kids and I remember the pregnancy announcement like it was yesterday.

An now there's another too with 5 month old Chase! Here's Colton with his Dad, Mom and little brother. A whole 2 candles on his awesome homemade birthday cake!

Colton opening up our present with a little help. We got him an extension track for the Thomas train track that we got him for Christmas along with an adorable summer outfit we got from Carters!

Colton had some friends over too that are pretty close to his age (Steph's friends' kids).

Little Colton is 2! This cake was multicoloured on the inside with red, green, blue rainbow colours!

Pregnancy Announcements!

So... now that word is out that we are expecting, I want to share how Aleksy and I (really excitedly) announced the news to our friends and family on a few different days!

So, when I found out I was pregnant (or maybe even before!), I went online and bought a sperm cookie cutter... it was a very specific order.

I had this brilliant idea of presenting our news to our friends with sperm cookies!!

This was our very first announcement day! It  was so nice to tell someone after keeping the secret to ourselves for 2 weeks (which I know isn't long for most people, but for us it seemed long!). At 6 weeks, we invited over our friends Chels, Warren, Al & Steph and let them in on our secret (which they had guessed already anyways).

And we also announced with some sperm cookies a few days later to our friends Nikki, Jon Jon, Tabi and Don!

I made my announcement (solo... Aleksy wasn't there for this one) on Valentines day (well the day before) to my sister, Kenny, Rachel and Brandon with Valentines day treats and a card (treats for Brandon and Rachel!). It is really hard to find an aunt and uncle Valentines Day card... guess its not so popular to give Aunts and Uncles cards on that particular occasion!

We like baking announcements... we baked cupcakes to announce to my Mom and Paul and brothers when we went to celebrate birthdays on March 21st weekend! We brought our cupcakes with the announcement written in icing but we covered it in tin foil. I gathered everyone and said that I had made something that was a creation from Pinterest and had my Mom open the tin foil!

We did the same for Aleksys parents the next day since we were also celebrating his brothers March birthday that weekend! I made a lot of cupcakes that weekend...

This was what our cupcake announcement looked like!

Aleksys parents must not have been expecting a pregnancy announcement at all because when they opened the tin foil, it took a second for the message to sink in! Then Aleksys Mom had the best reaction and tears were shed! They were so excited! First time Grandparents!

That same day at Aleksy's parents place, Aleksys Babcia had come for dinner (the very same Babcia who whispered in my ear at Christmas to get pregnant) so when she arrived we had her read the cupcakes too! Her first great-Grandchild!

Our next announcement was on Easter weekend! On Good Friday, we went to Aleksys Gran's place for an afternoon gathering with Aleksys parents, brother, Aunt & Gran! Earlier that day, we coloured some hard boiled eggs and wrote our message on the eggs!

We sent our pictures of our announcing eggs to my Dads side of the family with Easter Greetings and that concluded our family & friends announcements! Easter weekend, we were 13 weeks!

Once most of our family and friends knew the news, we were ready to announce to our friends on facebook... We took this in our backyard to share the news with everyone!

Easter 2015!

Well if I don't say so myself, this Easter was a pretty special, unique Easter for us and our family & friends. As you read on to this post, you will fully understand why (and I am the most excited to write about it!).

The week before Easter was my birthday week, so I took the short week off work! I made plans to pick my Rachel up to make some Easter treats during the week, but she got sick and so we postponed our Easter treat making until the Saturday!
Here's Rachel with her Easter carrots (rice krispies cut into triangles and dipped in orange chocolates with a green jujube candy for the leaf!).

Rachel was so good at dipping these and putting on the leaf all by herself, she didn't need me!

And our cookie birds nests: Rachel was very particular with her selection of mini eggs/jelly beans and is very colour coordinated! I did the icing on the sugar cookies and she put the jelly beans! Rachel was also very helpful with making the sugar cookies.

All of our completed treats: our Easter Carrots, sugar cookie birds nests, and chocolate birds nests (with corn flakes, peanuts, chocolate chips and butterscotch chips). We put them on a platter and Easter basket all ready to go to Grandma Ritas (my Mom) for Easter supper!

We went with Rachel directly to Easter supper after an afternoon full of baking (and a brief visit to the park before Rachel started feeling not so well).

This was our Easter egg colouring, which Aleksy and I did on Good Friday: this activity was actually without Rachel (its fun for adults too). We coloured up our eggs to bring to Aleksy's Gran's in the afternoon for an Easter get together on Aleksys side of the fam.

And we coloured the eggs so we could send a message on the eggs to Aleksy's Gran and Aunt (the rest of his family was there too, but they already received the message a couple weeks prior!). We brought the eggs to Aleky's Grans...

Our Message!!! So excited to announce that we are expecting a mini-us on October 7, 2015!!

Aleksy's Gran and Aunt were so excited! Aleksy will be the first in his family to have children (except his cousins), so his family was surprised and excited for the news!

We have now spread the word to all of our families and friends... such a fun announcement to make!

Aleksy's Mom wasted no time purchasing the first piece of baby clothing for baby! On Easter Sunday we opened this gift (which was wrapped in an old Easter egg from Aleksys childhood). In 3-6 months because we anticipate a large baby... but I 'm still crossing my fingers for a 7-8 lb er!

A Wee Outing to the Sugar Bush

This past Saturday, we made plans with the Osbornes to hit up the sugar bush (for the second year in a row... how do you say no to pancakes and maple syrup?).

We made arrangements to meet at 10am and Saturday was the foggiest day! I am usually very prepared for weather conditions, but for some reason, I forgot to wear my durable snowboots or even my rainboots (because clearly dress boots are appropriate sugar bush footwear!).

After waiting for a bit in the line for the horse wagon ride, we got on: here's steph, me and little Chase's head.

Aleksy, Al & Colton on the horse wagon... Colton loved the horsies!

And we made all of our pit stops to learn how maple syrup was made through time: from first nations to early settlers to modern times. Colton did well with patience going through the stations and Chase needing a little comforting at first (with Al singing him some Christmas songs) then fell asleep until pancake time!

My toes were a bit frozen toward the end, but I knew we had some pancakes waiting for us!

The men who volunteer at the sugar bush tried for some recruiting of Aleksy and Al to do some volunteer work (they recruited last year too!).

There was a pretty long line to get the food and most spots in the place were taken so Steph and I held some spots (the most sticky-free spots we could find) while Aleksy and Al got us pancakes, sausages and hot chocolate. So good! We were a little distracted by the super loud music + yodeling but Colton stared at the performers for a good amount of time and seemed to like them!


After the sugar bush, our weekend was filled with little people birthday celebrations.... Natalia on Saturday later in the day and Rachel's rollerskating birthday party on the Sunday!

Frozen Niagara Weekend Away

For Valentines Day, I bought Aleksy and a weekend away in Niagara! Actually, it was a groupon (We sure love us some groupons) and it was a pretty sweet Valentine's Day gift that I also reaped the benefits of. We went the last weekend of February. The Group was a sweet deal, all included in around the $100 price was a 1 night stay at the Wyndham Garden hotel, $20 off at the Outback Steakhouse, 2 free drinks in the hotel lobby, 25% off at the restaurant in the hotel, 3 wine tastings at wineries and a chocolate tour! Its nice that Groupon plans the whole weekend for you :)

We left London around 11:30am on Saturday and arrived to Niagara around 1:30pm. We popped into a store to buy some lunch to have at the hotel before heading to the falls. We were able to check in early around 2pm, had sandwiches and salads then started walking down Clifton hill to the falls! It was friggin cold (-10). But it was the first time we went to the falls in the winter: it was like a waterfall ice sculpture. I guess this year was so cold that the falls were the most frozen they have been in years. Once we got closer the the falls, our faces were frozen and we needed to de-frost in a souvenir shop.

We made a stop on Clifton hill to the wax museum of the stars (its the one with Katy Perry and Heath Ledger as the Joker in the front windows). It was about $12 per person and well worth getting out of the cold.

There were some really good wax stars... and some really really bad ones that I wouldn't have recognized if they didn't have a plaque with their names on it. Obama and Michelle weren't too bad!

The Simpsons wax figures were hilarious. These were probably some of the older sculptures in the museum (they seem to keep updating the figures since there was Katniss and Peta from the Hunger games in the museum already). Bart looked like he was on something and looked more like an old man than anything. But they did have a photo opportunity that we took advantage of!

Also, walking down Clifton hill, we owned our tourist status and bough some friggin delicous maple cookies (and some cider and hot chocolate) from one of the souvenir shops. We had most of these later that night when we returned to the hotel!

After seeing the falls, walking Clifton Hill and seeing the wax museum, we stopped in at the Niagara Casino! I put $10 into a slot machine and when it got "stuck" I had to call for help (that's when the lady showed me how to use the slot machine... such a bad gambler!) then I instantly turned by $10 into $17.25 and cashed out! Anytime i'm up some money, I take advantage! Aleksy lost his $5, but we still left with more than we came with! After the casino, we headed out to supper at the Outback Steakhouse where we had lots of ribs (and chicken for me, steak for Aleksy) then walked back to our hotel and redeemed our 2 drink vouchers in out lobby bar!

The next morning, we had breakfast at the restaurant that was in the hotel. It was such a good breakfast!! Pancakes, ham & cheese omelette and hashbrowns for me and Aleksy had some fried chicken on buttermilk biscuits. And we had 25% off with the groupon :)

After breakfast we headed to Niagara on the lake (that's where this ice sculpture picture is from). The chocolate tour was located in between Niagara falls and Niagara on the lake, but it was too early to eat lots of chocolate at 12pm, so we went to Niagara on the Lake first and strolled into the little shops to buy some jams, coffee, and baked goods.

After Niagara on the Lake, we headed back to chocolate fx for our tour at 2pm. They talked about where they get their source of chocolate from (Africa), what makes good chocolate (not dollar store chocolate that adds wax to the chocolate instead of the cocoa butter, which is more expensive), and then we got some free chocolate tastings (incl. a choc dipped strawberry!). We bought chocolate covered licorice (my fav!) then starting heading back to London!




On the way back to London, we made a pit stop to Hamilton to buy supper from one of our old favourite places: the Sana Grill! We grabbed our delicious chicken rice dish to go and enjoyed when we got back home!

New Friggin Wheels!

So... the time has come. At last. I said good-bye, so long, farewell to my ol' faithful 2005 Sunfire. That baby was the best $4000 I ever spent, lasting me well over 6 years (bought it in 2008!).

The first weekend of February, I began my test driving! I looked at a bunch of compact SUV's in the same class that passed my "aesthetically pleasing" test. These included the jeep cherokee, mazda cx5, toyota rav 4, and the volkswagen tiguan. I also had the mitsubishi rvr on my radar, but did not end up considered it due to low recommendations for mitsubishi.

After test driving the cars, I felt like I had the hardest biggest decision to make (I thought it may have been even harder than buying a house because the differences between the vehicles is so minimal!). But I kinda had my heart set on.....

My awesome new Tiguan! I officially filed the paperwork and bought it on Valentines Day (happy valentines day to me!). Picked it up the 21st!
The Sunfire to the Tiguan is night and day. Such a safer winter car that I feel way better driving in the snow in. So happy with my new wheels!