Quitting, Cupcakes, and Cuteness (in no particular order).

**Disclaimer**

This blog post was written ….probably about 2 months ago-ish.  I’m now just posting it.  So sue me.  I had a couple sentences to add, and some pictures to upload, so no I didn’t just make Halloween cupcakes, but yes I am just blogging about it now.  Deal with it.

What up!

Ok so let’s chat shall we?

1. I’ve quit Shoppers Drug Mart.
2.  I made some awesome Halloween cupcakes.
3. My friends all have babies.

1. Au Revoir ma famille de Pharmaprix! (Good-bye my Shoppers Drug Mart family!)

Sigh.

After 14+ years of service at various locations throughout southwestern Ontario, I’ve FINALLY given up my discount and polyester pants.  NO, I did not get a permanent teaching job… BUT I decided that the one or two shifts a week weren’t worth the long days and late nights, and worrying about booking off weekends, and working holidays.

What am I doing with all my extra time?  Currently, a little extra house work and a little extra baking.  Just knowing that I can come home and relax makes me feel so good though.  Yay to only having one job!! 🙂

2.  I made some super cute Halloween cupcakes, and one of my loyal followers (Hi Kristen!) requested that I blog about them!

Honestly, all they really were, were from the box chocolate cupcake mix, and creativity (and google of course!).

I just used leftover icing from other projects, moulding chocolate wafers from Micheal’s, and icing writers (the little gel tubes of icing for fine stuff).

I think if I had not left them to the very last minute they might have looked a little bit better, but for grade 4 students… they were just fine!

Scaaaaaaaaaaaarrrry!

3.  It’s about that time…

I’m surrounded by babies!  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)

I guess it’s that time in our lives where the baby clock starts ticking and reminding us that if you’d like to be a mommy or daddy, the time is upon us.  Go back a couple years, and there were wedding showers galore.  Now?  Baby showers.

Let me tell you this- my friends might have the cutest babies ever.  Just saying.  I have for real fallen in love with one in particular, possibly because I’ve been able to spend so much time with him and his mom!  This pic was taken by an awesome photographer (also a friend!) named Aunika Hinks…  if you do travel to her website (and I recommend that you do!), you will find a couple familiar faces; as I said a lot of my friends have young babies right now!

Ladies and Gentlemen,

May I present to you, my main man Cole!

He’s much bigger now!  And totally looks like a toddler instead of an infant.   So fricken cute!

Another recent baby to be welcomed to the world is Abigail, who is also on Aunika’s website!  Cute cute cute!

What is that on her head you ask?  Oh!  Why it’s a headband that I made for her!  I also made her a tutu….

I think I’m trying to make up for the fact that I’ve only met her a couple times by making her cool stuff. So far it’s working!

Anywho, that’s it for now.

New post to come soon.  For real.  I’ve been baking, and crafting, and well just enjoying life in general.  Lots of blog worthy stories to come! 🙂

Peace!

C’est L’Halloween. C’eeeest l’halloween, HEY!

Short post for tonight my blog-world friends (or real life friends too!) due to the late hour, HOWEVER I will be following this blog up in the next couple days with a major catch up blog since I do not believe I’ve written a post since the Western Fair!

I will just say this though- last week (and today as well!) I’ve had a 5 day teaching job (yes, I’m STILL on the supply list this year!) AND I had the opportunity to teach 2 classes french!  “But Erin, I didn’t know you speak French!” Oh yes my friends I do…. well enough that is to teach grade 4 and 5 French.

In honour of Halloween, and the fact I was teaching French- I taught both classes the most fantastic (and catchy) French song ever…..

C’est L’Halloween!

Yes, I know you all remember it!  I’ve been singing all weekend, and annoying everyone I’m around in the process! 😛  I can’t help it, it’s just great!

Here’s the video for you all to watch and  transport back in time to elementary school….

ENJOY!

fairFAIRfairFAIRfairFAIR

Yo yo yo yo.
So I’ve been writing about the Western Fair ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL week.  Which has led me to realize 2 things:

1.  I CAN blog a lot!  I’m on my 4th blog post…yay!
2. Blogging is a lot of work.  Ok, well actually it’s not a huge amount of work this week, since I’m writing only about one focus point, but it does take up some time to write, revise, then post.

So that being said, As soon as I finish my blogging for the fair, I shall update you on how my week went (unless you’ve been reading my posts on the Western Fair site.  Which I guess some of you are!)  If you aren’t, you can catch up on the “real serious fun blog” here!  The other 4 bloggers are great- check out their posts too!
4 more Fair Days left!

~Erin

‘Twas a Year of Firsts….

So, I started this blog just over a year ago, and my goal was to blog about making things, or doing things I’ve never done before.  I think I’ve been somewhat successful non?

Let’s look back and see shall we?

• I created this blog. (Sweet!)
• All our wedding stuff was DIY’ed and boy am I glad that is over!  (Though secretly I loved it!) 😛
• I played on a dodgeball team! (AND am going to play again!!)
• Tried Sushi for the first time. (Sooooooooooo good!)
• Traveled to New Orleans and San Francisco.
• Tried a Chip Buddy.  (If you’ve never had it, look it up.  It’s quite tasty, and yet so simple!)
• Completed my first AQ for teaching.
• Created a heck of a lot of Monday Meals! (All were recipes I’ve never tried before!)
• Held an ugly sweater party! (Which I’ve ALWAYS wanted to do!) (Which got real hot real quick)
• Walked in a 10 mile “race“.  (Race is in quotations simply because it’s clear myself, Kathy, and Eileen were not racing.)
• Created my first hair piece for someone! (And I don’t even have pictures…)
• Ate a bug.  Gross.  Does not taste like nothing.  Tastes like gross.
• Drank beer out of a glass boot.
• Got married.  (Definitely something I’ve never done before! :P)
• Took a Bollywood class (then taught the dance to about a hundred kids!)
• Took a Belly dance class.
• Chose the colours for, and painted a whole room by myself.  Nope, never done this before.  Might not be 100% finished yet, but still painted none the less!
• Went to an NKOTB concert! Woot woot! (not to mention BSB too!)

Ummmmm….I feel like I’ve done more, or made more.  It’s actually quite hard to sum up your accomplishments/actions from a whole year.

Oh yes one more for sure…

• I entered and won a blogging contest!  For real!  I am now one of five “real serious bloggers” for this year’s Western Fair!

If you’ve never been, then what are you waiting for?!?

It’s super big, full of super fun rides, super awesome fair food to eat, super neat booths to see,  it’s just super period.  And I get to blog about it!

Needless to say I’m really excited- when I started this blog it was really just to share the fun and crazy things I get up to, or talk about getting up to.  But the more I do it, the more I realize I quite enjoy writing and really enjoy reading people’s reactions to them.  I love seeing that I have an email to tell me that someone has commented -It kind of makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside!

Wow that got kinda emosh.

Anywho, I’m super excited about the contest win, and VERY flattered to be chosen!

Here’s to another year of silly projects, new experiences, and hopefully entertained readers! 🙂

PS

For your viewing pleasure, here are some pics from the last year that you might enjoy!

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Wedding Wednesday- DIY Picture Frame Seating “Chart”

All of these photos are courtesy of Jayme Van Geest.

Hey y’all!

So, I realized that there were still a bunch of DIY projects that I didn’t blog about from the wedding!  Yay!  Soooooooo, this week I will be blogging about our guest seating “chart”.  Chart is in quotations because we didn’t really have a chart.  I knew I wanted something a little different (shocking!), so I really started going crazy googling ideas. 

I ended up at a Flea Market in search of window panes for Sandra’s wedding,  so I took that time to search around for stuff that I could use.  No such luck (though Sandra found her panes!).  That’s when Sandra gave me the idea for frames.  I was already using frames for menus (I had originally wanted chalk boards, but those were too expensive), so why not continue that frame theme for the seating chart?  Great idea.  I ran with it, and made it my own.

Here’s what I did- I got tons of  different colour, and different sized picture frames.  Some I had to purchase, some I took from our house.  (We have a large mismatched picture wall in our living room!)  I tried to stay in the purpley, greeny,  and neutral families.  If you take some time you can find cheap frames everywhere!  Bouclair, Ikea, the dollar store, Homesense….EVERYWHERE!

Anywho, so I have all these frames.

Next, I started typing out the list of guest tables.  I started using all one font, and all one colour, but that was too boring for me.  Soooooooooo I changed everything up!  I changed the font- every frame had a different font, and changed up the font colour- most frames had a different font colour too. 

If I do say so myself, they looked wicked. 

All sorts of frames and fonts.

 

And they weren’t just lined up all neat, and prim and proper.  Why would they be?!  Since they were all different sizes, some were standing up, some were laying down.  Some were in front, some were in back.  I was really impressed with how they turned out.  Sooooo easy, and pretty cheap.  You really just need some good quality paper, and frames.  Oh, a printer might be helpful! 🙂

Voila!  An awesomely unique seating “chart”.

Click here to see more of Jayme’s photos.

swapity swap swap.

Yes!

I changed the look of my blog again.
Still the same goofy writer, different look.

Deal with it.

FYI- the shoes are in fact my wedding shoes.  Thought they were blog worthy.

Tuesday Meals…Mardi Gras Edition!

Mardi Gras Parade!

So as you all know (if you’ve been reading the blog!) I visited New Orleans just about a month ago.  Well, today is Mardi Gras, otherwise known as Pancake Tuesday/Shrove Tuesday/Fat Tuesday.  In honour of today, I decided to go all out and make pancakes! 

Pancakes=easy right?  Well I guess it depends on what kind of pancakes you’re making.  Since I decided to make pancakes for dinner, I tried to recreate a favourite recipe of my gramma’s (and yes I know I spelled grandma wrong, but that’s just how I spell it!)- potato pancakes.  It’s never really been a super fave of mine…I’m a texture person, and frankly pancakes in general are just a tad too mushy for me.  HOWEVER, when I was in San Fran- blog about that still to come (I’m in the process of writing it!), we went to a German restaurant/bar, and we had the BEST potato pancakes EVER!  They weren’t even really pancakes, they were more like cakes.  Super good potato cakes.  Mmmmmm!

So, I looked up some recipes, and they all basically said you have to grate potatoes, and all of them basically said that grating them sucked.

I don’t really know what kind of potatoes they were grating, but it look like 4 minutes total, and it was pretty fricken easy.  Take that potato pancake recipe writers!

Ok, so you basically grate potatoes, then…. well to be honest I didn’t really follow a recipe.  As per usual I guess!  Matt came home and got on the computer, and wouldn’t get off it, so I kind of remembered what was in most of the recipes, and just went from memory. 

Here’s what I did put in them:

• grated potato
• an egg
• about 2 table spoons of flour
• chopped onion

I think that’s it.  Oh- I did use seasoned salt.  But that’s it.  I basically just mushed them into balls, put them in a frying pan, and waited until they looked brown.  Mine didn’t really ever get brown.  In fact, while cooking I got really disappointed because they looked almost green.  I think it might have been the EVOO I used in the pan, but I can’t really be sure- I’ve never made these before!

fry 'em up!

Anywho, I only made 4 because I wasn’t sure about them, but they were actually really good, and Matt was sad I didn’t make more.

Because we were still hungry………

I ALSO MADE CREPES! 

I was very ambitious tonight!

So a little side story here…. when I was little my gramma used to make me “pancakes”.  I loved them.  She’d put apples, or blue berries in them, or just make them plain with a bit of sugar.  They were delicious!  She still makes them today and I love them.  However, she was making crepes.  I did not know this.  Then one day I slept over at a friend’s house, and her mom said she was making us pancakes for breakfast.  Well they were much different from my gramma’s, and I didn’t like how mushy they were.  Those were real pancakes.  😛  So tonight my friends, I also attempted to make apple cinnamon crepes!

I did follow a recipe.  But really it’s just all about a good balance between flour, milk, eggs and water.  Seriously.  Matt was shocked that there was nothing really special about the ingredients.

Here’s how I made them:

1. Mix 2 eggs, 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup water, and 2 tablespoons of melted butter until it’s smooth.  (Use a whisk!)
2. Whisk in 1 cup of flour until it’s smooth.
3. Cut up an apple into tiny pieces.  Add them to the mixture.
4. Add sugar and cinnamon to taste. 
5. Cook in a frying pan, or griddle like I did!!! (We got it as a wedding gift, and it was so handy and awesome!)

Gooey-appley crepey goodness!

Not sure why, but I didn't actually take a picture of the crepes cooking. None the less, here's the griddle!

Mmmmmmm!

That’s it yo.  If you want them thinner, add more liquid, if you like them thicker, do a tiny bit less water/milk.

Yay to pancake Tuesday!  Now I have pancakes for lunch tomorrow too! 🙂  Woot woot!

PS  I’ve been following a blog lately called One Wild and Precious Life.  The writer lives in NOLA, and blogs about everyday life there.  For the past couple weeks she has written about the days leading up to Mardi Gras.  It’s really pretty interesting.  Especially if you’ve never been to Mardi Gras!  Check it out fo sho!

BlogJacked!

That’s right, Erin is on vacation and I’m takin’ over! Just to set the embarrassment bar high to kick things off, I’m pretty sure right about now Erin and Sandra look something like this …

What-what?!?

For those who don’t know me, I’m known as Bai (sounds like Bay), I’m constantly scowling, listening to heavy metal, gaming and being all around jerky to most people.

As you can see in this time line, I’ve gone from being an ugly kid to an even uglier adult …

My artistic talents know no bounds in terms of photo editing!

…to being possibly down right retarded.

Maaaatttt Daaaaamon!

The Bai-Train is gearing up to go full steam ahead and I challenge you all to come on board! I’m going to blog Sun – Sun during this hijack, with my own unique (albeit flawed) perspective on life.

There is a good chance that Erin will loose readers, BUT there’s a good chance she’ll get some new ones via the hate mail I’m bound to get. I’ll also be reading and responding to comments! No holds barred! WOO WOO!

-Bai

here goes nothing!

ok, so I really like reading blogs.
i have a short list of some that i read everyday. religiously. about a month or so ago a wise person told me that anyone can write a blog- you just have to know what you’re passionate about.
hmm.
well, i am passionate about the tv show lost, but that’s over.
i’m passionate about my friends and family. but i don’t think that would be an easy thing to blog about.  i’m also passionate about inserting smiley face emoticons whenever i write on the computer.  again, not so great to blog about.
i’ve got some pretty entertaining stories about my job (supply teaching), but that might get me into trouble.

the more i thought about it, the harder this blog thing seemed.

then it hit me.

this may seem silly, but just humour me for a minute-

there are often things that i see in stores/on tv/or just around in general, that i find myself saying “i could totally make that!” usually for various reasons.
sometimes it’s because they are so ridiculously super expensive. sometimes it really just looks easy and other times these things look  like they could just be fun!

sooooooooooo, in comes the blog idea. i thought i could write about stuff that i think i could make or do…. and actually do or make some of those things.

sounds boring? lets just wait and see!

mission 1: write a blog.

so far, so good.

ps  if you have an idea that i could try, i will def. consider it!  (just make sure it’s do-able!) 🙂