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House guests and an end of the year wedding

December 29, 2009 by Tricia

My niece is getting married tomorrow! She planned her wedding in only two months or so! I’m sure she must be relieved that the big day is almost here.

They had been planning to get married in June 2010, butt her fiance joined the Canadian Forces and as a result of his upcoming training and possible deployment they had to move the wedding date up.

So they went from a beach wedding to one in a restaurant setting. Considering that it’s in a restaurant/bar you’d think it would be a small wedding, but from what I hear I think there’s going to be about 150 guests … I also seem to remember hearing that it’s going to be catered by a company other than the restaurant … I think it’s called Syracuse catering.

Right now we’re just waiting for my brother from Vancouver and his wife to arrive. They are in the air now and should arrive at the airport at about 8 pm. We’re looking forward to their visit. They’ll be staying with us until New Years eve and with luck they’ll be home in Vancouver just before Midnight on New years.

I’m sure our Lab, Midnight, will be really excited to see them. She hasn’t met my sister in law before, but she’s met my brother several times this year and she loves him. I think my brother is her third favorite person (behind Chris and I of course).

Actually, this wedding tomorrow, will be like a mini family reunion for my family. It’ll be the first time all three of my brothers, my sister and I have been together at the same time in a few years.

I just hope that my back holds up tomorrow. I was busy last week cleaning the house and cooking – standing for hours and hours at a time, and it aggrivated my back. I have a herniated disc in my lower back and when I stand too long my back really starts to hurt and so does my tailbone.

I must have really done some damage because over the weekend my left leg, which is had been numb since last January, started getting a hot burning feeling just above the knee. If I lie down once it starts the burning sensation goes away but later it gets an itching feeling. My back is a little better today than it has been for the last four days, but I know I’ll be sitting and standing a lot tomorrow and I think my back will start to act up again.

My Crohn’s disease was also acting up in the last few days. It’s a bit better today as well … hopefully it’s even better tomorrow.

So that’s two things that could ruin my good time tomorrow … but unless the Crohn’s or my bad back are really acting up I’m going to try to make the best of it. I mean, I’m really happy for my niece and I want to enjoy her big day. I’m also excited about seeing my whole family together again too.





Filed Under: Back Pain, Canada, Chronic Pain, Family, Health Fitness and Beauty, Home and Lifestyle, Inflammatory bowel disease, Items to Try, Toronto Tagged With: bad back, brother, burning sensation, crohns, dog, end of the year, family reunion, flying, herniated disc, house guests, itching, Lab, married, new years, Niece, numb leg, sister in law, Wedding

It’s been a busy holiday season for us!

December 27, 2009 by Tricia

I’d like to take a moment to wish all of my regular readers and visitors a belated Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. I hope that you’ve been having a great time with friends and family.

We had a great Christmas. In fact, I guess getting ready for the holiday and then having house guests are the main reason why I haven’t written a new post for a while. Sorry!


Our Christmas celebrations started on December 20th! My husbands brother drove down or is it up? from Chicago with his two teenage sons. Chris and I were supposed to go to his parents house (in Brantford (an hour and a half away)) for an early family Christmas dinner, but wouldn’t you know it … our furnace started making a high pitched whining sound late Saturday night!

We quickly called our furnace repair call center services line to see if someone could come right away to fix our furnace. I mean, it was so loud we, at first, had thought our crazy neighbors had a circular saw running outside in the driveway between our houses! So we’d turned off the furnace as 1. it didn’t sound healthy, and 2. who could live with that god awful sound!

Did you know that furnace repair people won’t come out to your house on an emergency basis unless your furnace has totally stopped working? Yeah … so .. we scheduled an appointment and as it turned out I stayed home to await the furnace repairman while Chris went to his parents house for Christmas dinner. Doesn’t it just figure that my mother in law actually cooked a turkey for the first time in years and I missed it?

It also turned out that the furnace repair guy canceled on us and didn’t come until Monday! Luckily the whining sound the furnace was making was only really loud the first time it occurred and our furnace kept on running until it was repaired. (it was a bearing problem).

Chris returned home last Sunday night with his brother and our nephews (and a little care package for me full of turkey dinner, yum). Our house guests stayed for two days. Once they cleared out we started getting ready for Christmas day. My sister and her boyfriend came over to join us for Christmas.

I’m sure many of you went through the same things I did as you got ready for Christmas. By this I mean the house got a major cleaning and so did the good china and silverware that hadn’t been used for a year or so! LOL Then I had to start getting the food ready.

I decided to brine a turkey this year. It was soooooo good! It had a mildly salty taste but oh it was so very very moist! Brined turkey is the best!

I brined our turkey in an extra large ziploc bag placed inside a cooler. The brine mix consisted of Kosher salt, brown sugar, and Rosemary, Thyme and Sage spices. Unfortunately the bag started leaking in the night – luckily I checked on the turkey at 2:30 am in the morning and struggled to get it into another bag and made more brine to soak it in!

I spent most of Christmas day preparing for the big meal. I cooked candied sweet potatoes and carrots, green peas, mashed potatoes with garlic, stuffing with garlic, onion and walnuts, a pumpkin pie and of course the brined turkey. The meal was delicious and we had a great time with my sister and her boyfriend!

If anyone would like my recipe for brined turkey just let me know. I’ll make a post with the recipe if there’s enough interest.

After a busy week of cooking, cleaning and visiting with family Chris and I have spent the weekend recovering! No boxing day shopping for us! I would have loved to gone out and bought some items at great prices (ie a washing machine maybe) but we just can’t afford it right now. BTW boxing day in Canada is like Black Friday for Americans- it’s the day with the best sales!

Now I’m gearing up for more house guests. My brother from Vancouver and his wife are flying in on Tuesday evening for my nieces wedding on the 30th and they’ll be here until the 31st.

We’re looking forward to our last guests of the holiday season, but also, by the time it’s over I’m sure we’re going to be in need of a few days rest as we’ll have been going for two weeks straight with visitors and holiday prep and goings on.

I hope that you had a great holiday! What are your plans for New Years?

Filed Under: Canada, Dining and Restaurants, Family, Home and Lifestyle, Life with Chris, Toronto Tagged With: all day cooking, brined turkey, brining turkey, brother, celebrating, Christmas dinner, clean house, cleaning, cooking, Family, good china, holiday, house guests, in laws, Merry Christmas, new years, prep work, recipe, silverware, sister, tired, turkey dinner, Wedding

Toronto and it’s fickle weather

December 13, 2009 by Tricia

Wow, winter hit Toronto with a vengeance last week! We had our first snow storm and temps fell to -20 Celsius (-4 F) or lower with the windchill. The only one in our household who didn’t seem to mind going outside was our Labrador Retriever Midnight. LOL She seems to love the cold … well for a while anyway. She can definitely stay out in it longer than we can.

I was seriously wishing by Thursday that I had a free vacation to one of those spa like jamaica hotels or to some other tropical area.

It did warm up over the weekend. In fact we got some rain yesterday and as a result most of the snow is gone. That’s Toronto for you, freezing one week and tolerably warm the next.

How’s the weather in your area? Did you get snow last week too? Or are you one of my lucky readers who happens to live in a nice area that doesn’t get really cold temps or snow?

Filed Under: Canada, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, Toronto Tagged With: cold, freezing, green lawn, melted snow, odd weather, rain, snow storm, Toronto, warmer

My niece did well at her wedding shower

December 6, 2009 by Tricia

I just got back from my nieces bridal shower. Boy am I tired!

My niece did well at her shower. I think she spent close to two hours opening gifts! She got a lot of things that she’d asked for in her Wedding registry like the specific kettle, griddle, toaster, and even towels, bed sheets, dish towels and other kitchen accessories that she wanted.

It’s great that she got so much great stuff. She’s never lived on her own – she went from her parents home to her fiances home so when they move to New Brunswick in the new year she’ll be starting out with her first home. Well .. probably an army base home, but the first one that she can call her own. So she needs a lot of things to help them get off to a good start.

A group of women from her work place got together and bought her several gifts. They were the last gifts she opened and all of them – maybe 8 gift wrapped boxes of varying sizes were wrapped alike. I didn’t know at the time that all of those gifts were from her friends at work. I thought one person had really gone all out!

She seemed really happy with all of her gifts and pleased to see her relatives and friends.

My niece says she enjoys giving gifts too, so once she was finished opening her shower gifts she put all of our names in one of her new bowls and gave out four gift baskets. My sister in law, who was sitting beside me on the couch, won the first gift and then I got the second one! I think people were starting to wonder if our family was going to get all the gift baskets, but as it turned out, the last two were won by relatives on her new in laws side of the family … so it worked out. LOL She also gave a small gift to everyone who attended to party so no one left empty handed. Wasn’t that nice of the bride to be?

My gift basket contained scented tea candles, a floating candle, Chocolate pepper soap (smells great!), nail polish, a skin scrubbie, and body lotion. All very nice.

My niece still doesn’t know exactly when she and her new husband to be will be moving to New Brunswick … I suspect it will be sometime in February. If this shower was any indication, I think she’s going to get a lot of gifts for her wedding too … They’re going to need a big truck to haul all their things to their new home!

Oh and my niece was apparently just promoted at work (Pier1). She’s a manager now … unfortunately there isn’t a store located where she’ll be moving so she can’t transfer her job. I suggested that she take a look at some of the top franchises that might be located near where she’s going to be moving and start apply for jobs soon. Hopefully she’ll be able to find a job!

I have to say that I don’t usually like wedding or baby showers, but I had a good time today. Maybe they’re not so bad after all.

Filed Under: Appliances and Accessories, Canada, Family, Health Fitness and Beauty, Home and Lifestyle Tagged With: army, army base, first home, friends, Gifts, moving, Niece, relatives, shower gifts, wedding gifts, wedding shower

Autumn blooms in my garden

November 1, 2009 by Tricia

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Well it looks like Autumn is here and it won’t be long until winter arrives and the ground is covered in snow. I know … depressing isn’t it?

It’s been such a cold rainy summer and now fall that I’m not looking forward to winter at all! So I’ll look back on our fleeting summer and show you some of the beauties that will get me through winter …

This is a lovely small rose called Lavender Dreams.

It blooms regularly throughout summer, but it’s one of the few roses that I grow, that I think, looks best in the fall. It’s colours deepen and it’s beauty just shines through once the cool weather arrives:

Lavender dreams rose blooms

I can’t say farewell to summer without showing you a photo of a true summer flower! I always grow sunflowers in the planted boulevard in front of my house. In fact that’s often how people visiting our house for the first time find it … we say just look for the sunflowers and you’ll find our house.

Yellow sunflower

One rose that I know will keep blooming into December is “Bonica”. This pretty little rose is one of my best bloomers. it blooms from June through until it’s covered in snow. What a trooper!

Bonica rose bloom 4

Do you have a garden? Is it starting to shut down now that we’re well into Autumn? Are any of your flowers still blooming?

Filed Under: Canada, Gardening, Green Thumb Sunday, Photography, Toronto, Tricia's Garden Tagged With: autumn, bonica rose, colder, garden, Gardening, Green Thumb Sunday, GTS, Lavender dreams rose, planted Boulevard, Sunflowers, The Fairy rose

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