Happy summer solstice!

I would like to officially wish everyone a very happy summer season!

I have probably said “Now THIS is my favourite time of year” at the beginning of each different season, but there is something extra special about summer.  For me, summers are so precious. Lazy weekends with friends by the pool and warm summer evenings on patios seem to fly by so fast.  In our unpredictable climate we have to cherish those beautiful days because a cold streak or a million degree humidex could always be just around the corner.

Some of fondest memories of my grandparents (my dad’s mom and dad) are from the summers they spent at our house.  I was pretty young at the time and I think a lot of my memories stem from looking through photo albums, so I’m so grateful to have them.  One summer my Grandpa Glenn and my dad built us a huge wooden play structure in the backyard.  Complete with a teeter-totter.  We definitely had the coolest backyard on the block.  My Grandma Millie and I would dress up and go on day trips together and she would always let me wear her costume jewellery and clip-on earrings.  I was in heaven when they came to stay with us from BC.

At the end of every school year, when I was growing up, my mom would set out the calendar for the months of July and August to plan the summer ahead.  We would choose camps to participate in during the week – mostly sport camps for me, but my sister went to nerd science camp once (I shouldn’t tease, this could be the reason she is now looking into pursuing a PhD in Neuroscience).  We would also plan long-weekend family trips here and there; the finale to the summer being my sisters and I’s birthday parties at the end of August. 

I remember feeling sad when I looked at the summer months on a calendar.  8 weekends or 2 months didn’t look as long as it actually felt in my mind when I imagined “summer vacation”.  I remember wishing that my mom wouldn’t register me in so many camps so I could just “hang out” with my friends, sleep in and watch tv.  Well, that certainly wasn’t an option, and I’m thankful (now) that my parents put so much time and effort into creating a well rounded summer for all three of us.

Now that I am a grown-up (ha ha) and in a relationship of my own, I have been planning out the summer calendar for Derek and I.  This summer is a little extra busy with our move and all of the weddings, so we don’t have many commitment-free weekends.  We still plan on steeling some quiet time by the pool and taking advantage of living downtown by staying out late on patios and having picnics in the park.

A few times I’ve looked at my summer schedule and thought “Wow, I can’t wait for fall to arrive so I can relax”, but I know I need to stop myself from thinking this.  People are always talking about how it is so important to live in the present.  I need to remember to stay present this summer and appreciate every second for what it’s worth.  

I remember when I was younger and I would hear people talk about how their whole summer has been eaten up by weddings.  I would think to myself “I can’t wait until I’m older and my summer is filled with weddings!”  The time has arrived!  So even though my calendar might be full to the brim with commitments and I sometimes feel like a kid who just wants to “hang out”, sleep in and watch tv my goal this summer is to make room every day so that I can soak in as much of all the summer events as possible.

How does your summer social calendar look?  Are your weekends full of weddings?  If so, how do you squeeze in time to soak in the summer?

Some scenes from last summer...

taking in the view of the Ottawa Valley after a hike in Gatineau

zip-lining with friends

enjoying the Maxville Highland Games

Canada Day in Ottawa, and a royal visit from William and Kate

The perfect pear

How was everyone's mother's day?

Mine was lovely.  I went to my mom's choir concert.  She sings for the Village Voices and they put on their annual spring concert Saturday night.  Sunday was spent at my parents' house, enjoying breakfast (veggie omelettes made by my brother, Keenan), walking the dog, visiting the nursery and planting our new flowers, having bbq for dinner and just enjoying the day.  

The weather was beautiful - about 25 degrees and sunny.  Derek and I actually braved the freezing water temperatures and jumped in the swimming pool!

This year, for mother's day, I decided to craft a gift instead of giving her a purchased one, as I usually do.  All these weddings, new babies and moving into our new home have created a tight budget.  But I came to realize that it didn't mean my mom's gift had to suffer.

I found this idea on Pinterest:

(Sorry, I cannot locate the original source)

I had pinned it onto one of my boards a while ago, and thought this was the perfect occasion to put my rediscovered crafting skills to the test.

My girlfriend, Ashley, came over for a ladies night on Friday and we got started.

To successfully complete this craft you will need:

• light bulbs
• twine
• twigs
• a glue gun
• scissors
• wine 
• chocolate
• if you have a friend - double the wine and chocolate

The craft was super easy.  We just began gluing the twine at the bottom of the light bulbs and worked our way up.

Make sure to glue the twine as close together as possible, or else you will end up with gaps.  And once you reach the top, just snip the twine and glue your twig to cover the end.

Since we were going for the whole rustic chic look, we didn't mind if it wasn't perfect.  It just adds to the charm.

Here is the finished product!

I finished off my package by wrapping the pears in a pretty pink linen dish towel and tying it with twine.  I actually felt like a little kid, mother's day morning.  I couldn't wait to give my mom the craft I had made her!  

She loved her pears and was so impressed that I had made them!  I don't think she believed me at first.  Once she finds the perfect resting place for her gift I will post a picture from her house.

In the mean time, let's talk weddings...

I love the wedding theme "A perfect pear", and I think these handmade pears would be the perfect addition.

Someone please use this wedding theme.  Think of the amazing details it would involve

• A soft greeny/yellow and crisp white colour pallet 
• Pear and brie appetizers
• Pear seating cards
• A butter cream frosted cake with pear accents
• Bowls of pears

Has anyone else tried out a craft you've had bookmarked for a while?  I have been enjoying crafting a lot lately and am thinking of learning how to embroider.  I love the whimsical, charming look of hanging embroidering hoops in nurseries.  And I've always wanted monogrammed bedding - maybe I'll just do it myself!

Happy birthday Derek

Derek turned 31 January 17!  Since then it's been a lot of this....

• cleaning the apartment 
• buying food
• preparing food
• hosting parties
• eating
• drinking
• drinking
• dancing
• laughing
• drinking
• eating
• sleeping
• cleaning the apartment 
• dinner with mama June 
• eating
• drinking
• dinner with papa Terr and Heather
• eating 
• drinking
• ................................so much for my new year's "cleanse"....

It's never ending!  I can't blame Derek - I celebrate my birthday for the whole month of August, so one week of birthday celebrations is nothing.  

Last night we celebrated Derek's birthday with just each other and it was perfect.  We had a lovely evening enjoying some of Ottawa's restaurants and pubs and saw a great movie, The Descendants.  The weather wasn't too cold, so we walked in the softly falling snow - it was romantic.  

Happy Birthday best friend!  xoxoxo

Happy 2012!!!

I hope everyone had a lovelee Christmas Season filled with family, friends, love, food and laughter.

I have been on vacation since December 23rd and it has been amazing.  I wouldn't say things have been relaxing though.  With 3 family Christmases to fit into 2 days, plus all the other gatherings, things have been busy.  As Derek and I were grudgingly getting ready for what felt like our 10th party we stopped and reminded each other of how fortunate we are to have this many friends and family around us during the holidays.  So even though Christmas can be crazy and I'm glad it only happens once a year, I am so grateful to have such great friends and family nearby to share the season with.

So other than eating/drinking 5 times the amount of calories per day I am supposed to and driving all over the city to various parties and get-togethers we did take some time to enjoy a couple PJ days and Pizza Parties! Yes, Pizza Parties!

This past Friday afternoon I invited my brother Keenan, sister Danielle, cousin Dean, and friend Cassie over for a pizza party.  It was so much fun!  I pre-made personal size pizza dough for everyone and prepared all the toppings I could think of.  We had:

• pizza sauce
• basil pesto
• pepperoni 
• chicken
• ham
• pineapple
• green pepper
• mushroom
• sun dried tomatoes
• tomatoes
• red and white onions
• jalapeno pepper
• goat cheese
• mozzarella cheese 

I think that covers it!  The next step was shaping our dough into a Christmas shapes.  I was really impressed with everyone's creativity and pizza shaping and topping talents.  Here were our final products.  I had to snap these pictures quickly - everyone was very anxious to taste their creations!

Danielle's Hawaiian candy cane

Dean's half pizza sauce, half pesto based Christmas bell

Keenan's meaty snowman

Cassie's cheesy Christmas tree and gift

My pesto based Christmas wreath

Danielle's Christmas holy (we shared this one)

The pizza dough recipe I used was just the one on the back of the jar of yeast.

Here she is:

Combine the following ingredients in a large bowl

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 1/4 tsp yeast
• 1 1/2 tsp sugar
• 3/4 tsp salt 

Add 2/3 cup of very warm water and 3 tbsp oil.  Mix until well blended; about 1 minute.  Add enough all-purpose flour to make a soft dough (3/4 - 1 1/4 cups).  The dough should form a ball and will be slightly sticky.  

Knead on a floured surface adding additional flour if needed, until smooth and elastic; about 4 minutes.

After I had created a nice dough ball, I split it into 2 individual balls and let them rise for about 30 minutes while I waited for my guests to arrive.  

Bake at 425 on the lowest oven rack for 12-15 minutes until the cheese is bubbly and crust is browned.  I repeated the recipe 4 times and ended up with 8 individual dough balls.  I ended up freezing the unused dough and am hoping it turns out alright - I'll letcha know.

I thought the pizzas turned out really great and everyone agreed that the dough was very tasty.  I would suggest preparing your pizzas directly on parchment paper and placing the pizza and parchment paper on your baking sheet.  This makes transferring the pizzas from the prep surface to baking sheet and onto the plate much easier.  

I think we will make this a yearly Christmas time tradition.  It's super simple to make the dough ahead of time and prep all the toppings before people arrive.  I also think this is a great idea for child's birthday party.  It would be fun to think of a theme (animals, dinosaurs, flowers, trains/plains/automobiles, or even letters to create initials) and then have party guests make their own custom pizza.

Did anyone else create some new holiday traditions this year?  Any pizza toppings I forgot and need to add to my list for next year?

Happy January 1st everyone!!!

The dessert exchange

Do you guys participate in Christmas dessert exchange parties?  This is somewhat of a new concept to me.  Until a few years ago I had not heard of the "dessert exchange" and I don't remember my mom participating in them when I was growing up.

First of all, just so everyone knows - I am not a skilled baker - unlike my best friend Ashley, who is the go-to-girl for cakes and cupcakes.  See some of her talented work here...

monkey cupcakes for her sister's baby shower

safari animal cupcakes for her nephew's birthday party

a birthday cake for the biggest Bruin's (or maybe just Chara) fan I know

So, even though I am not necessarily the best baker (nor am I really a fan of baking), for the past few years I have participated in the annual Shanonna Christmas Exchange.  Hosted by my friends Shanon and Donna of course.  It's always a blast, and the dessert exchange is really secondary to all of the Christmas celebrating that is going on.  Fine by me- maybe people won't realize that my contribution is less than desirable.  

This year we are baking for 22 people.  YES, 22!!!  It's crazy.  Thankfully, my mom took pity on me (I've had a few baking disasters in the past) and invited me to spend a Saturday afternoon with her where she would basically hold my hand and walk me through baking a million 132 sugar tarts.  I was so relieved.  

My mom is an excellent baker.  This is her recipe book.  I think it's about 30 years old. One day we'll have to go through it and make sure we can preserve all our favourite recipes.  

Here's the recipe we followed.  Half English, half French.  (Just like me!)  Hardly any instructions were written down, my mom seems to just know what to do in her head.  This always impresses me.

We started with the pastry shell. 

I combined  

• 1 package Crisco
• 5 cups flour

Using a butter knife, I "cut" the Crisco into the flour.  If you don't know what I'm talking about check out this video.  The person in the video is using a pretty fancy utensil, but I found the butter knife worked out fine.  Basically, you want the end product to be sort of crumbly.

Then I added 

• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon vinegar

into a measuring cup and beet it together.  Once it's mixed together well, fill the measuring cup with cold water until it reaches the 1 cup mark.

To roll out the pastry, I made a ball which was about the size of a grapefruit and placed it on the clean and "floured" surface.  I rolled out the pastry, trying to get it as thin as possible (you don't want really doughy tarts).  Then, using a drinking glass with flour around the rim, I cut out as many circles as I could.  This was pretty fun.

After cutting my circles I filled my ungreased mini-muffin tins with the pastry shells.  They don't need to be perfect, I think the imperfections give the tarts character. 

To make the sugar filling, I combined

• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 drop vanilla
• 1 tablespoon water

After mixing the filling together really well, I used a glass measuring cup with a spout to pour the mixture into my tart shells.  I filled them about 3/4 of the way.  This amount of sugar filling only fills about 8 tarts, you can choose to double/triple the recipe if you like. 

Then you pop them in the oven for about 18-20 minutes at 375 and wait for your little tarts to turn a nice, golden brown.  I freaked out a bit when I saw the filling puffing up as they baked - I thought they were going to explode.  But once they came out of the oven and cooled down the filling settled.

mmmm, just look at that gooey sugar filling.....melts in your mouth

I'm pretty impressed!  With my tarts and the fact that I took these picture with my phone.

I packaged them up in a large winter boot box with wax paper.  They are currently stored in my freezer until Saturday when will I create 22 individual packages that hopefully look something like this: 

Apparently the tarts can stay in the freezer for a few months a be a-ok as long as they are stored well.  And don't even think about the nutritional info for these tarts.  It's basically all crisco and sugar...enough said.

This recipe makes about 8 dozen mini tarts.  And you will need to make roughly 12 batches of the filling.

Hopefully the ladies enjoy them.  I'm really looking forward to the stash I will be coming home with.  Derek might be more excited.  

Anyone else participating in these crazy dessert exchanges?  Anyone have awesome recipes they want to share?

Until next time!