My Birthday and my 25-before-25 list

Well, today is the day! Not only is it my 24^th birthday, it’s also the start of my 25 before 25 list. Essentially I picked 25 things that I want to complete before I turn ¼ of a century old. Some of the list is complied of ideas I got from other peoples lists and some of these are unique to me. Some are simple, some are more challenging, but I have 365 days to complete them and of course write about them to share with you! I’ve been working on compiling the list for a while now (just over a month) and I’m really excited to complete it.

1. Throw a fancy dinner party

2. Get a grown up bed set

3. Try one new recipe a month

4. Spend one whole day doing nothing

5. Do something spontaneous

6. Lay in the grass and watch the stars

7. Eat a decadent dessert and be in control

8. Reconnect with an old camp friend

9. Buy $100 grocery gift card and leave it with the cashier for someone

10. Donate blood

11. Go fishing

12. Find out my credit score

13. Pick a movie series and watch them back to back

14. Go garage sailing

15. Start a retirement savings plan

16. This one is personal ;)

17. Get my belly button pierced

18. Not use my credit card for one month

19. Start, and finish editing my wedding video

20. Play in the rain

21. Go berry picking

22. Get in the car and drive with no destination planned

23. Not buy house cleaner for one year (with the exception of dish soap)

24. Pay off 100% of our debt

25. Get back to my goal weight

Today Sean made me pancakes for breakfast at my request:

That’s peanut butter and raspberry jam on them, with. They were so good! Then for lunch I had a salad, and Sean came to meet me because he has to work tonight.

After work I am going to get my hair cut, rent a movie, and then my sister is coming over for quesedillas and a home spa night (because going to a real spa is just not in the budget!).  I am quite looking forward to it!

I plan on ending the evening with a cup of tea, a mint smoothie (my favourite chocolate ever that I bought on the weekend to have on my birthday) and snuggles with my little Levi <3.

Our long weekend...a few days late

Well that was good long weekend! Saturday night we took our very long
grocery list and went to the states to do some shopping. It did take a
bit longer than expected because we were not familiar with where
everything was, and didn’t know what some of the items looked like,
but we made it out alive and without spending too much money.

The following is $88 worth of groceries:

And a few things we couldn’t find we picked up at No Frills on Sunday
for about $20:

On Sunday I decided to get started on the baking part and made 4 banana
bread loaves, 50 muffins, and 80 cookies. Sean had to do the banana part
of the banana bread for me to prevent a migraine – but once it was
poured into the tins and baking it was fine. I also made a large pot of
vegetable soup to get that out of the way as well. 

We turned in early Sunday night in preparation for a long day on
Monday. I had planned to get up around 8:30 , but managed to drag my
butt out of bed at 10 and got started right away. I made a large crock
pot of risotto, a crock pot of sloppy joe mix, 60 meatballs, and 4
meatloaves. 

It doesn’t sound like much but it amounted to this:

I had also planned to make homemade tortilla shells, but I was tired
from standing all day, so I plan on making them later this week.
Hopefully, this will last us a while. I say hopefully because my husband
likes to eat, and when he sees that there is a lot of food he just eats
more.  

Yesterday I had pancakes for breakfast and for dinner because it was
just that kind of day! I like putting a thin layer of peanut butter and
jam on top of them, almost like toast but fluffier. We took Levi to the
dog park for some exercise, came home and bathed him since he was SO
muddy, and then watched a movie in the evening and went to bed early
again.

We had no internet all weekend, and it almost killed us! Sean wasn’t
able to watch TV and I had to check e-mail on my phone (which makes it
very tough to respond).  Hopefully that will be back up and running
sometime today. I can’t believe how much we rely on technology for
everything! What did people do before TV, internet, and cell phones? 
 

Last night we had our last dog class. Of course, at PetSmart, they understand that pets are like family
and they go all out on graduation night. Levi doesn’t like anything on
his head which is perfect for us because he sits so still and we can get
a really great picture! That is it for his training; he has completed
all of the levels! 

Such a good little boy he is, and I can’t say enough nice things
about PetSmart. Their training program is excellent and they are ALWAYS
there if you have any questions. Our trainer spent so much time with us
outside of lessons when we were going through a 5 month rough patch with
Levi, and we have a very well behaved little dog because of it. She was
a wealth of knowledge and had many ideas for us to try when something
didn’t work for us. They were great with the dogs too; you could
really tell how much they loved each and every one of them. 
 
Now that Levi is well behaved we are going to start working on some
tricks with him. He can do a few, but we spent so much time on his
behaviour, that we didn’t have much time to teach him tricks. 

A long weekend

Since the last post was from the past few days, luck you, get a second post!

It's a long weekend here in Canada and both Sean and I get Monday off. I decided that the best way to spend that extra day would be to cook ahead a bunch of meals to stock up our freezer, that and do my taxes.

I worked on my taxes last night and this morning, and they are mostly done (just have to go over them and double check my numbers.

The rest of the day today I have spent figuring out what I am going to make to stock the freezer and put together a grocery list. I am going to make the following:

- 2 loaves of banana bread
- 2 loaves of meatloaf
- cranberry oat muffins
- veggie soup
- hamburger patties
- sloppy joe mix
- hamburger surprise
- meatballs
- zucchini risotto (I'm going to try this in the slow cooker since it does take a long time to make normally).
- homemade tortilla shells
- burritos
- ginger cookies

I was only planning on using Monday to cook, but I am making more than I thought I was going to, so I am going to start on Sunday afternoon.

This morning we had our usual weekend breakfast of pancakes. Sean went to mix the batter and realized that we didn't have enough pancake mix, so we got dressed and went to the grocery store. While we were there we decided to get some bacon too. When at my parents house earlier in the week I had tried bacon that had been cooked in the oven, and it was so good, so naturally I wanted to try it.

It was an epic fail, but at the same time a great success...

This part was the fail - it was on the top rack:

This part was the tasty part - it was on the bottom rack:

I think next time I will switch the top and bottom rack cookie sheets half way through to make it a little more even. But I still consider breakfast a big success. * Side tip - if you have left over pancakes put them in the fridge, then when you are ready to eat them put them in the toaster to heat them up, and they won't be soggy!

Tonight we are going to be going to the states since we need a bunch of items that we can only get there, so we might as well do all of our groceries at the same time. The list is quite long since I'm going to be doing all of the extra baking but it will cut down on cost and time over the next little bit.

Anyways, my laundry is done, so it's time to fold it and then take a short rest with Levi who is sound asleep and Patches who is snoring away (we are watching her this weekend while my parents are away - and of course using their washing machine!)

Until next time...