Ocean to Prairie

Sorry, sorry, sorry! Time sure has got away from me these past few weeks. Oh... it's been a month? Oh dear. Since my last post we had Thanksgiving, a Royal Visit from my parents, and a huge dump of snow. Where do I start? Thanksgiving went great. Drove down to S. Alberta to Bear's folk's house for the weekend. His brothers were there so Bear reverted to a 12 year old and it was most amusing to watch. The boys, plus their dad, built an arbour to prevent the eavestrough from spilling water on the walkway and have it freeze in the winter. I am a victim of this ice, so I was pretty happy to see a resolution as well as to see the boys working together to create an awesome structure! As per Thanksgiving tradition, I ate too much still paying for it, one day my pants will fit again . The food was great, company was greater, all in all, a great weekend. The next weekend my parents made their Saskatchewan debut. First visit to the Homestead! I was excited and nervous  my co...

The 'harvest' is finished, the mornings are frosty, Thanksgiving is upon us! This is my first T'giving out in the flatlands and it seems to be just as important out here as it does back home. Bear and I are heading to his folk's house to meet up with his 'brudders' to have a great time. What are you thankful for? I am thankful for... ... a great guy lovvvvve!  who is moulding me from an Island girl to a homesteader. Its been a rough go, but I'd like to think I'm managing pretty well for now . ... new family that is not too far away that we get to celebrate the holiday with . mmm turkey. ... wonderful friends old and new who have supported me though this endeavour. ... awesome parents that are visiting next week! woo! ... a warm home thanks to a new furnace and water tank, all work of my lovely Bear. ... my family on VI who produce the cutest kids. They give me hope that I too will have adorable, wonderful children.  I could go on forever! I...

A few years back friends and I used to dub September as "Not-Sober-September". Those days are long gone, and my liver thanks me for that. What a fast month this has been! I'd like to think the reason why it flew by was because I was SO EXCITED to go back home to Victoria for a weekend. Bear and I hopped over to celebrate my nephew's first birthday. Such a fast trip with so many good times. Friday: we started the night out having dinner with my parents at The Keg. Now, every Friday we go for steak with friends at a local lounge/restaurant. Those steak nights have been forever ruined, at least, until the buttery flavour of the sirloin at The Keg vanishes from memory. That was a good steak. Meatatarian here! Wait, isn't that just saying I'm a carnivore? I like meatatarian...  I was glad to see my parents and be able to see their new house too. They recently moved back to the island from mainland BC. Although it is not as far, we shared similar longings for th...

Game of Thrones Winter is coming! Okay, maybe not as dramatic or serious as in  Game of Thrones ,   but preparations are still to be made! We got word the other day of a frost warning for last night, so we had to scramble to save what veggies were left in the garden. We've had quite a bit of luck with cucumbers as well as tomatoes. But, unfortunately, our tomatoes still were not ripening! Okay, ONE ripe tomato. Just one fully ripened tomato. Bear and I tended to the plethora of tomatoes on the three vines we had. All green. Yes, except for that one ripe tomato. She's our winner! The rest Bear layered in a cardboard box with newspaper. A tomato and newspaper parfait. Bear had the joy of doing this alone as I was at an Arbonne party. Sucker. Thank you, love you! Anywho, we've been planning on making pickles with our wee pickling cucumbers for the past week or so and a frost warning got our butts in gear! Coinciding with our winter preparations, we found ourselves a...

I. Made. Perogies. Yep, made my own perogies. Actually, Bear helped too. We made perogies. We were home from our Labour-Day long weekend camping trip, soggy from the weekend of rain, when I realized I really wanted some perogies. Sadly, we were out of perogies in the freezer. What is a girl to do?!  I thought to myself, it can't be all that hard. Just some p'taters and a pastry. I even have all the ingredients! ... I think. I begun my search for a recipe at  Allrecipes.ca  and I found this recipe to be suitable: " Grandma's Polish Perogies ". Only one glitch: I did not have baking potatoes, just red ones, and I did not have sour cream. But, I did have a container of Greek yogurt. mmmm . I figured a p'tater is a p'tater and Greek yogurt is the same consistency as sour cream. What can go wrong? Not a lot, actually. The title to this blog is rather misleading. I whipped up the dough, as the recipe suggested, and prepared my p'taters. Since the ori...

I know, I know, I'm getting lazy at blogging. Its been a busy week at work and we were away last weekend. Anywho, amongst my adventures out here I have realized a few more things: RR #8: Turn signals are optional. I don't even want to get started on this one. It's a long rant! RR #9: Being the only car at a 4-Way stop is quite intimidating. RR #10: Being the only car on the highway is intimidating! RR #11: One will pass a RTM house at least once a week on the highway. I get quite the thrill passing a massive house on my way to work.  A small post today. I'm tired...

As you know I've been tackling the job of restaining our dining set. Since I'm off for the next few days VACAAATTTIOOOONNN!  and there isn't a chance of poor weather for the next while, I thought I'd get to staining these suckers. The stain we chose has the stain and polyurethane in one:  Mixwax Polyshades  in Bombay Mahogany. Now, we should've realized with the keyword 'Mahogany' that the stain would have a hint of red. Hint of red is an understatement. The swatch we based our decision on was much much  darker. When I opened the can I laughed cause it looked like I stole a pint of O negative from  Canadian Blood Services .   Please donate blood! I thought maybe the stain was like hair dye-- the colour is scary and misleading at first, but you still get the desired outcome. Well, after a few coats, the stain is still pretty red. Since we were shooting for something more along the lines of espresso (with a hint of red), we're going to do a final coat ...