Nov. 3, 2009 - 2010 Olympic Torch Relay

With all of the excitement that has been building on the news about the 2010 Olympic Torch Relay starting in Victoria and making its way up Vancouver Island, I just had to take the kids to see it in real life :) Plus I have to admit that I really wanted to see it myself *grin*. So we made the trip to Campbell River and found ourselves a nice little spot to hang out near the 50th parallel to wait for the runners. As it neared there were tons of police vehicles monitoring the traffic and then the big red Coca Cola truck was the first thing to come into view :)

As the Coca Cola truck was passing by us they started hopping off of it and gave all 3 kids flags & these really cool coke bottles that have fibre optics in them so they randomly change colors from green to blue to red. They were a BIG hit in the car on the way home in the dark *grin*.

Next vehicle in the relay entourage was the RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) truck pumping out the tunes while they danced around on it. It was like being at a parade *grin*.

Once the sponsors had gone by we could finally see the flame! At first all we could see was fire floating above the heads of others watching ahead of us and then it finally came into full view. That baby was really burning! I think the fact that it was starting to get dark really made it look even more impressive than what we had seen on tv :)

And there it goes. It was only seconds from the time it came into view to the time it went past us but it was so worth it to see the excitement on the kids faces as it burned right in front of them :) We never made it to the new Spirit Square downtown Campbell River where the torch finally ended by lighting the cauldron on stage because the crowds were so fierce but we found a nice little spot right in front of the fireworks display *grin*. It'll be great memories for all of us as we may never get the chance to see it again :)

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Oct. 29, 2009 - Sausage & Bean Soup ~ Recipe

With the snowy cool weather upon us I thought it would be the perfect time to share a recipe for one of my favorite soups :) I actually took these photos during the summer months when I had an odd hankering for hot soup during a heat spell! LOL



Ingredients:

Roast chicken bones left after meal
1 whole head of garlic
2 or 3 ribs of celery
3 or 4 carrots
5 onions

1/2 pound of bacon
6 sausages
pepper & salt
basil

Start by grabbing a large stock or soup pot and add your chicken bones, peeled carrots & onions and the entire head of garlic. I love to cut the head of garlic horizontally across the middle so that it opens up the making it even easier for that wonderful flavor to escape. Don't worry about the skin on the garlic as you are going to strain it all out before finishing your soup :)



Once you have all of your veggies in your pot fill it until the water level is just under the rim and place it on the stove. Turn the heat on high until it comes to a boil. As soon as it boils you can put on a lid and turn it down to low so that it can gently bubble away for a couple of hours to infuse your water with all of the yummy flavors.



While you are waiting for you chicken stock to cook you can start to get your meat ready for frying. Take your half pound of bacon and slice it up. I cut mine about a 1/4 inch thick but you can do it thicker if you like. There are no rules to how chunky your bacon has to be!



I love using our homemade sausage for this soup which is a garlicky beef & pork blend but you can pick up any of your favorite flavors at your butcher. If you want a soup with a little bit of a kick you may want to find yourself some spicy Italian sausages! To prepare your sausage for frying take a sharp knife and slice through the outer casing and peel it off of each of the sausages.



So it's been a couple of hours or perhaps an entire afternoon if you got busy and forgot about your simmering stock , but now it's time to strain it. Taking your largest colander and another large soup pot, place the colander into the empty soup pot and pour the hot stock into it. Be very careful trying not to splash any of the hot liquid onto yourself. Quite often I actually wear my oven mitts when I do this to protect my hands from splashes and steam burns :) Let your colander drain a couple of extra minutes to catch the final drips of stock and then place both the stock and colander of bits to the side for later. If you have chickens the boiled veggie leftovers is a delicious treat for them :)



Now that your soup pot is empty again, return it back to the stove and add your chopped bacon and sausages to it. You are going to fry them right in your soup pot. That way you won't loose any of the good flavors. Fry until nice and brown :)



As soon as you have browned your meat you can add your homemade chicken stock and all that's left to do is to season it with salt and pepper. I LOVE adding basil and usually add about 3 tablespoons of dried basil as I don't have any fresh at this time of year, but that's not set in stone and if you hate basil just leave it out and add your favorite spices :)

Mmmm, so delicious and I think I've got some fresh Portuguese rolls that are just begging to be dipped in it *grin*.

Enjoy!

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Aug. 27, 2009 - A Special 6th Birthday Party

Oh my how the years are just flying by! My little girl turned six last week and it seems like it was just yesterday that I was holding her in my arms for the first time, gazing at her pudgy little cheeks as they spilled over the top of the white flannel blankie that the nurses had swaddled her so snugly in :)

Well those days are definitely behind us but have been replaced with a little lady in training which is oh so much fun *grin*.

And of course every young miss loves a tea party! So lucky us Omi has a lovely gazebo in her garden where she regularly serves tea and goodies to guests and was L's first choice as birthday party central!

You've just got to love summer birthdays to with yummy-o fruit kabobs...



veggies & dip galore all courtesy of the vegetable garden...



and of course the dainty little tea sandwiches, deviled eggs and summer cucumber salad *grin*. I think she's got the rest of us a tad bit jealous since we're a bunch of December/January/February babies! Nothing but snowballs and ice cream cake for us LOL.

It was such a special day for a special 6 year old.
 Happy Birthday baby :)

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Aug. 24, 2009 - Great Giveaway Blog ~ Loaded with tons of kids gear to win!

I wanted to take moment and share about a local island gal that I've come to know online that has started a fun giveaway blog... hence the Fun & Funky Mommy blog name *grin*.

As a former children's consignment store owner and a mom she's always loved children's stuff. Be it toys, clothes or neat little inventions to make daily life easier, safer or just more fun she's been searching for it and she's finding it!!

So she started her new blog earlier this year to get the word out about all of the great items that both big and small companies are making and especially to share with everyone what all of those very talented mom's out there are making. The icing on the cake though is that she's offering most of it FREE to all of you through giveaways!

A few of her current giveaways are:

         

Easy Daisies Magnetic Fridge Schedules.....  No Slippy Hair Clippy hair clips



Soft Star Shoes



Babble Baby Wear



And of course some of my RosyUndPosy cloth sandwich and snack bags :)

So make sure you hop on over and check out all of these great giveaways plus more and don't forget to check out her sidebar because there are loads of great coupon codes to use as well!

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Aug. 24, 2009 - Chocolate Zucchini Cake Recipe ~ Delicious!!

Here it is! I've finally made it back to my blog to share my Chocolate Zucchini cake recipe *grin*. I don't know how many of these we've eaten so far this summer but it definitely isn't helping me out with my quest to shrink my waistline! LOL.



Ingredients:

1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup olive oil
1 3/4 cups sugar

Cream the above ingredients together and then add:

2 eggs one at a time
1/2 cup sour milk
2 1/2 cups white flour
1/4 cup cocoa
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. cloves
1 cup walnuts (optional)
1/2 - 1 cup chocolate chips
2 cups grated zucchini



What I usually do is sift all of the dry ingredients together after I've added my two eggs to the creamed butter and then I alternate adding little bits of the dry ingredients and the sour milk so that it doesn't get to dry :) And then finally I stir in the zucchini, chocolate chips and nuts if you're using them :)

Pour it all into a well greased 9 x 13 inch baking pan and bake at 325* F for approximately 40 - 45 minutes or until your knife comes out clean.

Most of the time half of it is gone before it even has a chance to cool down properly! *grin*

Enjoy!

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Aug. 21, 2009 - SIGG Water Bottles : The Shameful Truth...They Knew They Contained BPA

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Aug. 20, 2009 - Fun Quiz Time

You Speak General American English!

50% General American English 25% Yankee 20% Dixie 5% Upper Midwestern 0% Midwestern

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Aug. 10, 2009 - Blueberry Zucchini Muffins ~ Recipe

Everyone knows that you only need one zucchini plant to provide you and usually your neighbor with a non stop supply of the delicious veggie for cakes, muffins, and baked or fried treats! This is the case for my mom and we are reaping the benefits with an abundance of delicious zucchini to eat :)

So far we've had chocolate zucchini cake, stir fried zucchini, zucchini sticks with dip, zucchini breaded & fried with dill dipping sauce and now delicious muffins. I don't know what it is but we never seem to tire of it *grin*.



While blog hopping the other night I came across this great recipe for zucchini muffins with blueberries and a delicious hint of lemon :) The kids LOVED them! I must say though it seemed to take me a good 15 minutes longer though to get mine to cook right through the middle. Just to much blueberry juice in there. LOL.

In all the hub bub of the kids watching them cook and come out of the oven I forgot to take a photo of them finished and there wasn't one left either. Oh well, next time :)

I've got another package of zucchini in the freezer that I'm going to pull out for cake tomorrow. We couldn't keep up with the last lot of them and a great way to keep your zucchini for baking at a later date is to grate it up and freeze it in ziploc bags :) Works perfectly!

How about you, do you have a favorite zucchini recipe?

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Aug. 8, 2009 - Hairstyle Fun ~ Coronet or Crown Braiding

L's hair is now past her waist and it can't be left down anymore. It's either in her food or flying in her eyes and just generally in the way *grin*. So with all of this hot weather we have been having I've been playing around with it and practicing my french braiding :)

Normally I just do a plain french braid straight down her back but I adore the old fashioned crown or coronet french braiding that braids the hair in a circle on top of the head. At first I didn't realize that there was a trick to getting a perfect circle around the top of her head so I french braided it like normal, taking hair from both sides of the braid and just making sure that I continued around the perimeter of her head to keep it pretty circular like in the top photo.

But then I did some digging around on YouTube and found some great videos on coronet braiding  and learned the secret trick! *grin*. It's called a Lace Braid. Instead of taking hair from both sides of the french braid like you normally do you only take hair from the bottom side of the braid and leave the hair in the center of the head alone. Where you would normally grab an additional chunk of hair from the center of the head you just take that strand and cross it over while trying to keep the center hair nice and smooth. As you can see in my photos above and below I need to work on the neatness factor. LOL



It creates a beautiful braid that pops up slightly and creates a perfect pocket along the inside so that when you have finished your braid you can swirl it around the original braid and tuck it nicely in underneath :) I tacked it in with a few bobby pins so that it wouldn't come loose and it held beautifully for her all day and she's pretty tough to keep looking tidy with all of the princess and fairy costume changes she makes in a day!

I've linked to a couple of the videos that I found helpful below in case you are new to lace braiding like me and you really have to check out this site called Dreamweaver Braiding!! It has some of the most gorgeous braids and instructions to :)

This one shows the difference between French Braiding & Dutch Braiding. French braids blend into your hair and Dutch braids actually pop out of the hair for an entirely different look.




This one shows how to do a Coronet Braid using the lace braid technique. She actually does it in a Dutch braid but I used the regular french braid method for the lace braid I did on L in the above photo and it helped immensely to see it in action.





And this last one is a fun one showing an Elizabethan hair taping hair style :) I'm going to try this one next as it's super cute with the ribbon wound around the braid.



Happy braiding!

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Aug. 4, 2009 - Storing Dill for Pickling

Canning season is rapidly approaching and I can't believe that it's August already!! The pickling cukes have exploded and it's time for dill pickles and my mom's fantastic green relish that I use in everything LOL. So in anticipation of bushels of cukes I've started harvesting dill so that I won't be short when I need it :)



No need to dry it or have it on hand fresh for pickling cucumbers, just pick your stalks now if they're ready and then strip off the heads and all other leafy parts leaving behind the hard stems and place inside a large glass jar. It freezes beautifully!! I've made the mistake in the past of waiting until I was ready to can and then not having enough dill and not being able to find any left at the farmers market because everyone had already snatched up the last of it :( So this is a perfect way to make sure I'm ready at all times *grin*. Make sure you store it in a glass jar though because it traps the strong dilly smell inside. If you use plastic the smell will infiltrate your entire freezer and make everything taste slightly like dill :)



Of course after all that hard work *wink* we had to have a coffee break! Shhh... don't tell my husband that I secretly eat chocolate zucchini cake when I visit my mom's house for coffee! LOL

I love having my little mommy time with my mommy *grin*. Plus by the time I've had 2 or 3 cups of coffee I've got such a caffeine infusion going on that I come home ready to tackle any job that is waiting for me! That can be a really good thing when it's time to tackle the laundry mountain! LOL

How about you? Do you have a special routine that restores your spirit and readies you to tackle your daily duties?

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