Tuesday 24 January 2012

Yum.

For those of you who know me you know that I don't like to cook. Its really not that I dislike it, there are just things that I could be doing instead. Living at home for 21.5 years with a mom who always cooked really spoiled me. Now that I don't live at home and I have a husband to cook for I have been trying to do more cooking. Some weeks it goes well, some weeks we have Kraft diner.

At the beginning of last week we really needed some groceries, so I decided to look through some cook books and find some recipes that looked good, and I would be the necessary ingredients. ( I have done this before, but often don't end up making the stuff). This week I did quite well ( pat on the back). I even tried a new recipe:
I bought a cookbook called: Easy Pasta at home sense last year, and this is the first time I made something from the book.



 As the name suggests, all the recipes involve pasta and they are all easy (bonus).

I made the 
Rigatoni with Chorizo & Mushrooms:
It was delicious. Even the hubby liked it. Ours did not look quite this nice, how is it that things look so beautiful in cookbooks but never look like that we I make it.

Recipe:

4 tbsp olive oil
1 red onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, chopped
1 celery stalk, sliced
14oz/400g dried rigatoni
10oz/280g chorizo sausage, sliced
8oz/225g cremini mushrooms, halved
1 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1tbsp lime juice
salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a skillet. Add the onion, garlic, and celery and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes, until softened. 

Meanwhile, bring a large pan of slightly salted water to a boil. Add the pasta, bring back to a boil, and cook for 8-10 minutes.

While the pasta is cooking, add the chorizo to the skillet and cook, stirring occasionally for 5 minutes, until evenly browned. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring occasionally, for an additional 5 minutes. Stir in the cilantro and lime juice and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Drain the pasta and return to the pan. Add the chorizo and mushroom mixture and toss lightly.

Voila!!

I love garlic so I added 2 cloves instead of one. Also I don't like cooked celery, so I left that out. We did not have chorizo sausage so I just used the Italian sausage that we had.

Tuesday 17 January 2012

Need Warmth

Current Temperature: - 32 degrees Celsius, and with the wind chill it is much colder.

We have truly had it very easy this winter, up until Sunday. Well really it started Saturday night with a light snow fall, which had turned into this by Sunday morning:


 I had a staff meeting early Sunday morning. NONE of the roads had been grated and nothing was sanded. It was a truly terrible experience trying to drive. One nice thing, by the time I got home some wonderful neighbour had cleared our sidewalk and hubby only had to do the walkways. Sunday was chilly, but we were in for a surprise Monday morning. It was FREEZING, like literally you step outside and are intsa-frozen, and It only got worse today.

I had to make a special trip to Walmart yesterday to get these:

I do have one pair of wool socks that I "borrowed" from my mom a few years ago, but yesterday it became apparent that more were in order. I find it hard to look "good" when it is so cold out. Warmth definitely takes priority over style. There are some cute things that are also warm. Here are a few that I wish I had. Clearly I love gray.
 Need Warmth


These are not the exact mocassins I would like. Taller ones that are fur lined would be much better.

Forecast for tomorrow morning -34, but with the windchill it is supposed to feel like -47 degrees Celsius. A huge thanks to my Mom who is dropping me off at school tomorrow ( the bus didn't seem like an option).

Hope you are all staying warm!












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Friday 13 January 2012

First Attempt.

I found this website a couple of weeks ago : Polyvore. It is a neato website that has tons of clothes and other stylish things that you can use to create outfits, or whatever else you may want to do. For some one who loves clothes it is great. The best part is that most of the items tell you where you can buy them and how much they are.

This was my first attempt at an outfit. My favorite piece, and the starting point was the blazer (which is a reasonable price and I would love to own it). I will probably be posting many of these. Let me know what you think of them.First Attempt.


Under Armour black tank
€37 - nelly.com

Black and white blazer
£25 - dressrail.com

Skinny jeans
£4.99 - dressrail.com

Mid heels
180 CAD - gravitypope.com

Miss Selfridge green handbag
£32 - missselfridge.com

Marni string jewelry
$153 - thecorner.com

Chanel jewelry
£875 - stylebop.co.uk

Thursday 12 January 2012

More Celebrations - New Years Eve

I told you I would share about our new years, so here it is. We didn't really have much for plans this year. Like a day before new years eve plans were made to go to some friends house for the evening. It was a low key relaxed affair which was great. Most years there is all this hype about new years and the parties and such, and in the end it is never as good as you expected. This year we didn't hype it up and we had a great time!!

Our friend borrowed a Xbox kinect for the evening. We had never used one before, it was so much fun.  First we played wipeout. Very funny game to watch people play, and surprisingly a great workout. I missed getting pictures of it :(
Then we played dance central which was also a lot of fun. I have played DDR before and never found it to be that great. Dance central is so much better because it involves your whole body. Also a great game to watch people do. I lack any sense of rhythm, and did terrible, but it was still fun. I did get a few pictures of this:


There is Aaron, having a good time.
I also got a video of him dancing, but I am pretty sure he would hate if I posted it, so I won't.

We played some other games, ate lots of food, and all in all had a great night.

Tuesday 10 January 2012

A little of this, a little of that

We spent the better part of last week and the weekend packing and moving. My in-laws have gone south for the winter, and they asked us to house sit while they are gone. We were happy to do so as it provides us with a lot more room and saves us money. As a result I have not prepared any blog posts, so this is a little bit of randomness.

I have not worked out in waayy to long (wii fit informed me it had been 120 days). There was so little space in our last place that there was no room, and I can never seem to actually make it to a gym. So today I finally pulled out the wii fit again. Turns out all the remotes were out of batteries and by the time I got one working I was running out of time, so I only got to work out for about 15 min. But its a start right..? Hopefully I can keep going with it, and work my way up to wii active, which is a lot less fun but a lot better work out.

Has anyone ever used wii fit to weight themselves. I think that it is pretty accurate, but it tells you want it thinks is the best bmi/weight for you without finding out much about your body. It says that my ideal weight would be 59kg or 130lbs. This does not seem right for my frame.  It makes me wonder how accurate the rest of it is.

I think that with my school schedule and work and such, I won't have time to blog every day like I had originally wanted to, so my new goal is 3 times a week.



Friday 6 January 2012

Our Holidays.

This post is long overdue, but I will still share a summary of our holidays (with a picture overload). They were so much fun and I am sad they are over!

Christmas Eve
We spent Christmas Eve with Aaron's parents, starting out with a delicious steak supper. We went to a Christmas Eve service, spent some time talking, and watched miracle on 34th street. It was a low key relaxing evening, and as per usual I had my camera with me but never took it out.

Christmas Day
This was our first Christmas as a married couple and we were so excited. It was nice to wake up together and open our gifts together before we had to be anywhere. It was strange though to just have the two of us after years of being with the Fam on Christmas morning. Here are a few pictures of us opening our gifts together:
 Aaron being goofy as he begins on his stocking.
 What we had playing on the TV. I really wish we had a real one.
 Aaron very happy about his Chocolates.
 Me with me stocking.
 Trying on my new bracelet from my wonderful hubby. 
 My stack of gifts. I was a little spoiled. Most of the gifts were clothing and shoes (yah!!) I read a few blogs were the writers share what they wear. I love seeing their style. I also love to see what people get for Christmas. I decided to combine these two loves and post pictures of me wearing my Christmas gifts.
 Picture of us in front of the Tree.
My Christmas Day Look! With my new shoes, that I adore.

Next we went over to Aaron's parents house for some gift opening and brunch.
 Aaron so excited about his new gaming head set. 
 Loving the new rider gear.
 Laptop!!
Trying on her new sweater.

Then we went to my parents house for an early afternoon Christmas meal, gift opening, and Chinese gift exchange.
 My Mom, so excited about... Not sure but everyone was having a great time.
My Dad loving all the Cabela's gift cards he got.
                      My Lil Bro with the game we got him. It is a good thing he doesn't read this blog,
                      he would not be impressed with the picture.
 My cousin opening hair products during the Chinese gift exchange, my Bro clearly thinks that is funny.
Luckily someone was nice and stole it from him so that he could get something else. There were a few other funny openings, but the gifts were all nice and we had a lot of fun playing.

I still have some New Years Eve pictures, but this post is long enough so I will share them another day.

Thursday 5 January 2012

Board Games - Small World

A hobby that both Aaron and I enjoy is playing board games. We are lucky enough to have friends and family who like to play with us. For Christmas we got some money from Grandma and Aaron decided to use his to buy a new board game.

Small World


Source

It is a strategy game that is apparently a little like risk. I say apparently because I have never actually played risk. Basically at the beginning of the game each player selects a race, each race has its own special aspects that can get you more points during game play. You also get a special power with each race that benefits yourself. After you choose your race you conquer regions on the game board:


You can then re-deploy your men to protect your region, and then score your points at the end of the turn. After you have conquered as much area as you can you put your race in decline and choose a new race on your next turn. It sounds a little complicated, but it really is not to bad, and it is a lot of fun. Everyone we have played it with so far has liked it as well.

Here is a link to a review of Smallworld: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RQ9iI3ORig&noredirect=1
The review is about the first version of small world. Both versions are played the same with some small changes. He does a review of small world underground, but it assumes you already know how to play small world.

Wednesday 4 January 2012

Wedding Wednesday

Happy New Years  to everyone reading. We have had a fantastic time this holiday season. It was great to have to past few days of work, but holidays always seem to go way to fast. I took a little break from blogging because we have been so busy, but that means that I will have lots to share now. I did not really get a "Wedding Wednesday" post ready. So I will share one of my hobbies that happened to be somewhat wedding related this time.

I love to scrapbook, I don't have lot of time for it, but I love it. A few nights ago Aaron had a basketball practise and I didn't have anything urgent that needed to be done, to I decided to spend the night scrapbooking. Months (like at least 5) ago I started scrapbooking our engagement photos (see, A little bit wedding related), and I thought that I would work on them a little more.

These are the ones that I got finished that night. Sorry about the low quality photos. I don't have a scanner that will fit 12 x 12 pages and it was night so the lighting is not great, plus I forgot to turn the flash of for a couple of them to there is a glow.

It is hard to see all the little details in the pictures, but I am pleased with how they turned out.







I still have a few more pages to do. Maybe they will get done before our one year anniversary?!