Date Night

My hunnie works shift work. Shifts that are not especially family friendly either. So once his rotation begins we don't see much of him until it finishes or is at least in the last day or so. When we were back in Ontario we took advantage of the free childcare available, grandparents, and went on a date morning/early afternoon/lunch. For lunch we went to this fantastic gourmet pizza place and had a wonderful time!

This shift rotation for my hubby I thought I'd do something special and make us up a nice dinner. I fed the kids, put them to bed got myself all prettied up (as in... changed out of my PJ's into jeans!) and we had a late dinner together.

The meal was awesome! I made up my version of the pizza he had while on our date in ON and was SOOO pleased with the outcome, I made my sister-in-law's amazing salad with rasberries and apples and pecans (instead of strawberries, mandarines and almonds), and an amazing lemon dessert. It was a wonderful evening.

Hang on to your hats, because I'm about to share how to make the best pizza in the world, but it's lots of steps and we're going to be flying all over the web to get the bits and pieces of it!

Yesterday I made some blackened chicken and apple butter, and today I made Pioneer Woman's Pizza crust (AMAZING stuff this is, I used half and froze the other half).

...I guess that's all the travelling required to get the recipes... huh, felt like more when I was making it!!

To assemble the pizza I spread the pizza crust onto the pizza pan, spread the apple butter all over the pizza dough (pretend it's the tomato sauce) caramalized some onions and scattered those over the apple butter. I then cubed the chicken and spread it over the apple butter and onions and then covered it all with cheddar cheese! baked it according to PW's instruction for the dough and until the cheese was melted to our taste.

MMM.... just writing it out again, I'm tempted to go and make it again...

SOOOOO GOOODDD!!!!

Cookies

I have been sewing most of my spare time the last little while so when my hubby asked me to bake him some cookies today I couldn't help but give in to his simple request. And I have to admit, taking a break from looking at this

to looking at this

was a more then welcome trip.

After I ate approximately my weight in cookies, I sent the left overs into work with my sweetie. It was one of the hardest decisions I've made in a long time!

The recipe I used can be found here. I added in a bag of white chocolate chips as requested though!

Fabric Shopping

In the little town I currently live in, in Newfoundland, there isn't a fabric shop. So, I think it goes without saying, this was on my top 5 list of things to do while in our home town. A new quilting shop recently opened that my mother and sister-in-law hadn't yet been to so I forced them to join me on the expedition!

It was so much fun!! I haven't yet made a quilt, but I've always been curious about them. I can't wait to get back to my quiet living in NL, hunker down by the sewing machine and work, work, work!

Best Salad EVER

My brother and sister-in-law had us over for dinner earlier this week.

They're awesome people!

She made an amazing salad that my hunnie inhaled! He took the time between mouthfuls to state quite clearly, "this is the best salad I've ever put in my mouth". Naturally I needed the recipe... the world deserves to know this recipe!!!

Strawberry Salad

8 cups greens
1 can mandarin slices
2 cups sliced strawberries
1/2 med red onion
1/2 cup carmelized almonds
poppy seed dressing

Carmelized Almonds
1/2 cup sliced almonds
3 tbsp sugar
Toss almonds in sugar and cook on med-high stirring constantly
Spread on wax paper to cool

Poppy Seed Dressing
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp dry mustard
1/4 cup wine vinegar
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup canola oil
3 tbsp Mayo
4 tsp poppy seeds

Whisk it together like a crazy person until it's proper "dressing" consistency ;o)

Day With Family

As I said before it's been about 21 months since we've been "home" to Ontario.

In that time, as can be expected, a lot has happened, new family members have been added other have changed so much you don't recognize them... today my side of our family got together and had a lovely fun filled day at a park taking pictures.

Some of us met for the first time...

Others had a good, long overdue, run together...

some of us tried to learn to fly

and others had a time of reflection...

we swung on swings

and slid on slides

It was an amazing day!

Off to Ontatio

It's been 21 months since we've been in Ontario, but we're headed there for roughly 3 weeks!!

In the Newfoundland airport there is a wonderfully fun ship for kids to play on while waiting and for 2 boys who love pirates, it was the BEST distraction!!

Happy Canada Day!!

Rag Doll

About a month or so ago I decided that I wanted to make my nieces rag dolls for Christmas this year. I found about 3 patterns and tried them out, but I wasn't really pleased with any of them. So I set out to make my own pattern, after all how hard can making a rag doll pattern be?

Over 11 test dolls later and I finally made a pattern I'm happy with!

I still have some changes that I'd like to make, to the eyes and the materials I used, but all in all, I'm so excited about the end result!