first day of school

well...not for us. but when ben got up, his first priority was to find his backpack and fill it with stuff from around the house. seems appropriate for the day after labour day, hey?

everyone needs markers and a small ladder, right? (there's a tape measure in there too)

he LOVES to wear his backpack - blurry but too cute not to post.

shoot - the drill is too big...

ready for school...hmm...maybe he needs pants and couple more years.

we baked blackberry muffins instead of going to school today.

beginning the freezer meals

messing about with raw meat makes me SO paranoid. on saturday, i finally got started on my freezer meals that i've been talking about making for so long. i had bought 16lbs of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and was ready to make about 10 meals (that serve 4-6 each) from my cookbook The Big Cook. i started cutting up the chicken into chunks and separating it into bags (my T.ware freezermates are all already full of other things like berries, veggies, and mashed bananas!) and i started feeling a little panicky that i'd waited too long after buying the chicken (two days) and that it was getting warm sitting there while i cut. what if i am making meal after meal of contaminated meat that will make us sick when we eat it? so i'd cut up one package of chicken into bags then put the bags in the fridge and get the next package out of the fridge and repeat. it took awhile but i'd had enough sense to do all this chopping while sitting down.

then it was time to make the different marinades. the idea is that it takes the same amount of time to make one meal as it does to make 4 or 8. i did two recipes for 4 meals. i hadn't exactly thought about how MUCH of each ingredient i'd need for such large quantities - i'd just bought the ingredients. when you multiply everything by 4, it meant that i had barely enough honey, not enough soy sauce, i used our entire bottle of ketchup, and ran out of lemon juice. woah. i ended up not being able to make the two recipes i'd originally intended and had to switch to one that i had different ingredients. oh brother. but anyways, i got 4 meals of Cantonese Chicken, 4 meals of Maple Chicken, and 2 meals of Pasta Chicken Casserole (in which you add pasta later).

so i have other chicken frozen meals that i wanted to make but will wait a bit. i should get some beef and maybe some pork chop meals prepped first so that we don't get super sick of chicken. i browned a bunch of beef the other day as well and tonight i made one lasagna to freeze but think i might as well make the rest of the beef into lasagnas as well since i've had a bit of an aversion to red meat lately and lasagna is one of the few red meat meals i still like. oh - but i could make burritos maybe...hmm...

now if only my feet didn't hurt so much - it would make all the kitchen work so much easier.

one of the great things about being a mom is that even if you've had a frustrating day with your two year old, you go to bed at night and think of how great your kid is. it's been hours since he's been in bed and all the memories of whining, tantrums, or both that happened that day have been replaced by thoughts of his happy little face when you cheered him on in his bike riding efforts or the feeling of his little hand patting your hair as he laid his head on your shoulder. these thoughts remind you to try to play more and have patience again the next day.

back berries

ben's LOVES blackberries. i'm not sure if it's the berries themselves or if it's more the fact that you can pick them from bushes in so many places. this past weekend while we were on the sunshine coast, the short road to the beach was lined with blackberry bushes. we couldn't walk to the beach without ben scarfing berries as fast as he could pick them. his little mantra was "geen? no. wed? no." (aka. don't pick the green or red ones).

personally, i like blackberries well enough but when i pass a blackberry bush, it's rare that i stop to pick some to eat. blackberries seem so dirty. they have those little brown bits on them and the white core that you see in the middle once you've picked one kind of looks like a bug. and chances that you're going to have bugs ON them are high. i cringed at ben's picking/eating, thinking of all the weird bugs he could possibly be eating because he doesn't analyse each berry for a couple minutes like i do. ha.

the other night, tim and i went for a walk with ben on his little glider bike. we walked to a path that goes along a ravine and we discovered tons of blackberry bushes. ben started chowing down and tim was like, "we should get a pail and pick a bunch of these." last night we went for the same walk and this time took a bowl with us to put our berries in. there aren't too many low berries on these bushes so ben had to mostly rely on us to hand him berries. we sstarted by letting him hold the bowl. then we realized that he could eat much faster than we could pick - we took the bowl back. i didn't eat too many (due to the unwashed nature of the berries...) and despite the berry monster being with us, we managed to bring home at least a couple cups of blackberries.

after ben went to bed, i filled the bowl up with water to wash them and then pulled them out a handful at a time, rinsed, and put on a cookie sheet so that i could freeze them. as i was imagining the recipes i could make and thinking that we should go back and pick more, i pulled out a handful that had a huge worm on it! AUGH! i screamed, threw the handful back in, and had multiple shivering fits. i said to tim, "how did this worm get in here? were you looking carefully at the berries you were picking?" he responds, "yeah. it was probably inside a berry." INSIDE? like my kid probably ATE a bunch of worms and now he has worms? (is that how that works? ;) i finished washing the berries and stuck them in the freezer.

i think my blackberry picking day(s) are over.

the naming process...

i've had a girls' name that i've loved since i was pregnant with ben. i've thought about it for two years and since i was pregnant, i've said it's nickname and full name over and over aloud to tim. we continued to agree that it was our name. when ben started referring to my baby bump as "baby blake" because we have a friend with baby named blake, i thought maybe i'd start calling the baby by her name to ben so he could get used to hearing the name. and since we were using the name to ben, the name came out to a friend here or there in the last month. and all of a sudden, i'm like, "maybe i don't like this name!" i suggested one of our alternates to tim this past weekend and he was very agreeable. "that could be the name," he said in reference to the new name. what? how can we change now after having a name picked for 2 years? oh my goodness...naming children seems like such a big decision yet after you've done it, that's it. we don't think of it again! augh! too much thinking...

free "is time-out a waste of time?" webinar

i have mentioned Rookie Moms, a favourite blog of mine, a few times on my blog. they are hosting a free, online, one-hour class by a parenting expert, Amy McCready that will answer the question, "is time-out a waste of time?" it's for parents of children ages 2 - 15yrs and like i said, it's FREE! i've never done a webinar before but you don't need a webcam - you just watch and there's a chat feature so that you can ask your questions to Amy. read Rookie Moms' experience taking her class here and then follow the links to sign up. then you and i can discuss later! it's set up for an afternoon session and evening session on Aug. 30 and it's EST so it happens here on the westcoast at 6pm...hopefully we can drop ben off with the grandparents that night so tim and i can both watch it without disruptions.

we'd tried doing time outs with ben before he was 2 where we'd put him in his crib and leave him for a minute or so. when i'd come back in to get him, i'd say, "you're in time out because ____. can you say, "sorry" to mommy for ________." and he'd do the sign for sorry. this wasn't all that effective though.

then i tried doing logical and immediate consequences for misbehaviour. misbehaviour was usually having a tantrum and throwing something all over the floor. logical consequence: sit next to the stuff you threw and you can't leave until you've picked it up. this worked pretty well until misbehaviour was no longer as easy as this to come with the consequence.

i tried having a spot in the kitchen (in front of the pantry door) where he had to sit and wait for the timer to beep. we did this about 3 times and then ben would do something "bad" on purpose and then run to the time out spot and say, "beep, beep, beep". hmm... we immediately stopped doing that.

this past week, we've had a couple run-ins with ben over throwing sand/bark mulch at the park. we say, "stop", and he keeps going. we try to put him in a time out until he's willing to say sorry and he's all like, "bye-bye mommy. bye-bye." grr... the problem with having to say sorry is that pretty soon sorry means nothing and he knows he can just say it glibly and finish his time out. we don't want to have this happen so the other night, tim and i brainstormed as to what would be a better punishment. we decided we'd try to come back around to logical consequences again. if he's throwing bark mulch at the park, give him a warning that if he throws again, we're leaving the park. then actually LEAVE the park when he does it again. etc etc. sounds good in theory but i'm interested to see how it works.

so when i read about this webinar, i thought, "perfect!" - i'd love to get some tools and strategies that we can use right away! comment here if you're planning to register so that i know who i can chat with about it afterwards!

early mornings

when tim and i got married, i would sleep in until 11am or so on the weekend. tim would be up between 7 - 8am. if he made any noise between 7 - 11am, (before i got up) i would be choked. poor guy. after about a year of this, i started getting up earlier because it seemed like that's what grown ups did.

i was always amazed at people who were up at crazy hours (like 8am) and mowing their lawn or hammering something that seemed to need 100 nails. who WERE these people? go back to bed!

one summer, i was sleeping and it was only about 7:30am so tim was sleeping too and the doorbell rang. it didn't just ring once, it rang about 10 times quickly - like you'd ring it if you were pranking some house in the middle of the night. i was like, "what the heck?" and rolled over - i wasn't going down to open the door at 7:30am. then the person rang it again like a crazy man. i was so angry, i got up, threw on a sweatshirt, opened the door and it was the neighbour from behind our house. we'd never met before. i opened the door and said, "it's SEVEN THIRTY!" and i burst into tears. he was like, "sorry about that. i just wanted to let you know that there are some guys here to cut our tree in our backyard. some of the branches hang into your yard - could they come into your yard to cut them?" of course, that was fine with me. i went back upstairs to bed but the sound of chainsaws outside our window made it a little bit difficult to sleep. i was SO annoyed to be missing a morning of sleeping in during summer vacation.

fast forward 4 years and 7:30am is now what we consider to be sleeping in. when ben asks to go outside, he knows that my response will be "you have to wait until 8 o'clock". sometimes that means waiting 2 hours before leaving the house. once he gets outside, he's loud and often whiny. if you are my neighbour and trying to sleep in, i'd just like to apologize for now being "those people".

tool man

sporting the new tool belt - that's a "cell phone" in the front center pocket - essential.

a book nook

here i am about to blog again about ben's room being in the works - you must be thinking, "what the heck is taking you so long to finish that room?" haha. wellll, technically, we could definitely move ben in now but it's not going to look like my imagined finish product because we're going to have both the "big boy bed" AND the crib in that room for awhile. but we're okay with that. however, before we do that, i was waiting for my cousin to come visit and use ben's big boy room as her guest room. now that she headed home yesterday, ben's crib is moving in TONIGHT! after buying a train table that is huge, we put it in the room and those three items fill up the room completely. so for a few months, it will be a little crowded in there. BUT once the crib has left, we will move the train table into that space and voila! a book nook will be born.

we already have the shelves up for it with some books on them. we used IKEA Picture Ledges as shelves so that we could have the fronts of the books facing out for easy choosing.

while i'm loving how they turned out and how much ben likes putting the books on the shelves then taking them off, i found this book shelf idea where they've used IKEA spice racks. these are nice because the books have a little railing to keep them in. (coincidence that their child is also named benjamin...)

so there are a couple very cheap and space efficient book nook ideas for you! let me know if you've done something else!

super moms

today, my cousin sarah (visiting from ontario!) and i took ben to the "choo choo park" (one of the many parks around mill lake). lately, when we go to the park, i hope that ben will play on his own so that i can sit under a tree in some shade...i'm not the most mobile these days. after pushing ben on the swing for awhile, he got tired of that and headed off to the bouncy teeter-toter thing. i headed the opposite direction to the shade. sarah and i sat in the shade watching ben sit on the teeter totter until a little girl his age (and her mommy) came over and bounced with him. all seemed to be going well so i stayed put. then the mom pulled out some bubbles - ben was right in there with her daughter, wanting to blow bubbles. i'm sure the mom was thinking, "where's this neglected child's mother?" - i headed over. we chatted and she was super nice - i joked about sitting in the shade and watching ben from afar. the mom was happy to share the bubbles with ben.

after a bit, ben headed off in another direction so i followed him and bid farewell to the nice mom and daughter. once i had him playing on his own again, my stomach has just been SO achy (because it's HUGE) so i went back to the shade to sit down. minutes later, ben is back with mom and girl and the mom is pulling out two velcro-y board things that the kids put around their hands then can throw a beanbag back and forth and try to catch it. ben has one and the girl has one and they are throwing and catching like two year olds... :) the girl is quickly bored and heads off but ben is still keen to keep playing so this mom is playing with him! i jump up from my shade and head back over. i can't believe this mom has brought so many OTHER toys with her to the park! to me, the park is what it is - i'd never thought of supplementing the park play equipment!

ben and i play together with this board/bean bag game and when the girl and mom return, i have ben give back the game and say thank you. i suggest the slides and we begin to walk that way. mom and girl are walking with us and the mom says to girl, "do you want something to eat?" ben looks at me and says, "eat! eat!" uhh...sorry, ben - YOUR mom didn't bring anything to eat. the mom asks me if he'd like some fishy crackers. oh my goodness - this mom is a SUPER mom! it was pretty impressive. i declined the crackers as i knew he wasn't actually hungry and we parted ways as our kids found interest in things on opposite sides of the park.

there are some pretty cool moms out there - i hope to meet this one again one day. hopefully, i'll at least have a snack for my kid (and an extra for her kid?) on that day.

pinterest

like i've mentioned before, i read a LOT of blogs. when i find projects/activities/recipes that i want to try out, i either email myself the link so it will be SOMEWHERE in hotmail, blog about it here, OR i'll post it to my facebook wall. neither of these work that great to keep track of things.

after a couple days of friends posting facebook statues about pinterest.com, i thought i'd check it out. i wasn't sold so after setting up an account, i just left it empty. then 5 friends started "following" me. ack! i can't leave it empty now, can i? so i went back and put in a little more effort to figure it out. WELL! this site was MADE for me! when i find a blog post somewhere out there that i want to remember to check out further, i just log into pinterest and post it to one of my boards. all my boards are organized into categories. i already have a handful of toddler activities, crafts, personal DIY ideas, home organization ideas, etc! i'm loving it.

the other great thing is that cool people everywhere are posting stuff too and you can browse through your friends' boards or other peoples' boards and if you see something you like THERE, you can "repin" it to your own board. so what this means is that this is a perfect procrastination tool for anytime!

so, i thought i should warn you that now that i'm reading more and more DIY/recipes/toddler crafts, you may be seeing the word pinterest pop up on the blog a lot. now you know.

(if you're wanting to set up your own account and need an "invite", send me an email rebeccashulba@hotmail.com and i'll send you one.)

a great read

i subscribe to a blog called "dear baby" and today's post was so well-said. every mom has gotten fed up and frustrated and the author just reminded me to remember the big picture. go read it if you've ever wanted to pull your hair out because of your kids.

predictions

the other day, (actually, after the agrifair) we went to wendy's for supper. (yay!) all the ladies working were east indian and they were chatting away with each other in punjabi while we ordered our meals. after we'd ordered and were standing there waiting for our food, the cashier said, "do you know if you're having a boy or girl?" "i'm having a girl!" i replied. the couple women who were standing there looked surprised. i asked, "did you think it looks like a boy?" they all nodded. then they shouted to their coworker at the take-out window, "it's a girl!". the fry cook missed it so they repeated to the fry cook, "it's a girl!" apparently, they'd all been talking about whether it was a boy or girl in punjabi while i was ordering! haha. pretty funny. people love to predict.

agrifair

i'd never been to abbotsford's agrifair before and tim hadn't been for at least 20 years. this past weekend, we decided to check it out. we figured it would be fun for ben to see the animals and hear some live music.

we went in the morning right when it opened and walked around then went home for lunch and nap time. we came back in the afternoon and stayed until dinner. we definitely made the most of our $10 entrance fees.

ben's favourite animals - the baby chicks.

"big gacor!" - ben

checking out the old tractors too...

we watched a couple shows in the kidzone - a trampoline show which was way better than it sounds and this trails bikes show - stunts from standing still positions. pretty cool. (the pic is of a guy jumping from a 7 ft high box to a 4ft box - a distance of about 10ft.)

watching the stunts.

back to visit the chicks. see the one poking it's head through the fence? ben's staying a safe distance away from them. we also soaw lots of chickens, roosters, sheep, horses, cows, and goats.

playing.

watching some of the rodeo from a shady spot on the hill.

a fun day for all of us. i love summer stuff.

something for your slow cooker...

if you're a regular reader, you know my aversion to recipes with ridiculous ingredients. you also know that i have big plans for preparing some freezer meals pre-baby. so in preparation for this freezer meal making and sticking with my "easy ingredients meals", i've been reading a cookbook called "The Big Cook" which gives you every recipe in "one meal", "4 meals", "6 meals", and "8 meals" measurements. The concept is that you make many meals at once, separate into bags and freeze. when you want a meal, you thaw a bag, and then put in a slow cooker (or there are oven instructions too) to be ready for dinner. i'm planning on making a bunch of meals by the end of august to stock my freezer with - it's just a lot of money up front for all that meat.

anyways, i love that they have the ingredients for making just ONE meal because then you can use the book like a normal cookbook as well. the other day, i made "Saucy Chicken" which is super easy, i HAD all the ingredients on hand, AND by making it at nap time and putting it in the slow cooker, it was ready at dinner! i'm making it again today - here's the recipe if you're interested and have simple tastes like mine:

2 lbs chicken (breast or thigh)pieces (last time, I used 1 lb of chicken but the full amount of sauce - this time i'm using 2 lbs so i can have leftovers but i doubled the sauce because it's great on rice)

3 Tbsp water

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/3 ketchup

2 Tbsp. vinegar

1 Tbsp. worcestershire sauce

1 pkg or 3 Tbsp onion soup mix (i buy mine in bulk)

Cut chicken into pieces and put in slow cooker. Mix all other ingredients in bowl and pour over chicken. Cook for 4-5 hours on high OR 6-8 hours on low. Serve over rice. Can also be stir-fried with veggies.

treat receipt

have you been to starbucks lately? now that there's a starbucks in our mall, i have been there more often this summer than last. rainy days and very hot days are spent inside for this pregnant girl.

i discovered that if you buy a brewed coffee in the morning, your $1.75 tall is actually upsized to a grande. that's a lot of coffee for $1.75. THEN, if you keep your receipt and bring it back after 2pm, you can get a grande cold drink (frap, anyone?) for $2!

that's 3.75 for a grande coffee AND a grande frap! it's really a pretty great deal. unfortunately, i have not yet cashed in a treat receipt. but one of these days...

prints

how totally cute is this set? click on it to make it bigger. i bought this set of 3 8x10s to hang in our baby girl's yellow and pink room from mateo&tobias on etsy. i can't wait for them to come. i have a couple others that i'm planning to buy soon too for ben's room. LOVE this shop.

playing pretend

coming very soon is a stage that i'm looking forward to - playing pretend. i've played a little of it with ben when we go to the park and play on little train they have. i ask him to bring me soup or milk and then i pretend to eat or drink. he thinks it's so funny and i can see the wheels turning in his head while we play. we were recently at a friend's house and their 2 1/2 year old pretended that he was a dog for awhile and then a cow (complete with making himself a barn with hay). ben wasn't sure what to make of him. so we're not quite there yet. :)

the other day when ben woke up, he brought his curious george and his baby out from his crib and into the kitchen. while i made his cheerios and poured his milk, he set his two peeps on their own chairs then sat down himself. he happily looked at them for a bit and then moved to sit with baby with a concerted effort not to squish him (just hug him tightly). i know this is the just the beginning of hanging out with pretend friends. i'm a fan.

one year

june 2010

our new tree, our one year old, and the resolution to take a photo of ben with the tree every year

july 2011

our poor tree is a little worse for wear after the 2010 attack and since the main trunk was broken off at the top, it doesn't really look like the tree has grown much. but look that boy! he's definitely grown.

success!

the stripes turned out great! turns out, pressing the tape down with a metal putty knife and then painting the base colour coat first totally stops paint from seeping under the tape - even in the corners. the thin brown stripe is not at all the colour i'd thought it was from teh paint chip which is a little disappointing but it's high enough above the bedspread that it's not a big enough deal to do anything about. :)

when we originally moved into the house, the room was light pink and yellow. too bad we didn't keep that, right? but when we painted, we just left the closet light pink. we must not had had enough paint because we couldn't find the leftovers when we wanted to paint the base this time. so with half a quart left, tim finished off the closet which looks so much nicer.

my mom found the ikea trofast for FREE somewhere (side of the road, mom?) which turns out is a kids room staple! we were pretty excited about it but now that we bought a train table that we want to keep in ben's room, we moved the trofast into the closet. it will now be clothing storage which will be super handy since we hadn't thought about a dresser yet. i'm sure it will hold some toys as well. we've already filled the biggest bin full of stuffed animals.

while i'd put some shelves in for a little reading area, it's currently being taken up by the train table because we're going to move ben's crib into the spot where the table will eventually go. yes, we're moving ben's crib into the room. we just want him to be in the blue room so that we can work on the yellow room to make it more girly but we didn't want to rush him into the big bed. this is our solution for a few months until it's time to get ben into his bed. right now, i'm relishing the extra 30 - 40minutes that he'll happily stay in his crib in the morning when he wakes up too early. why would i want to lose that, right?

so we're on our way to reorganizing the rooms of our house. we just need a roller blind for ben's new room and maybe do a little shopping for some fabric to make a little valence and we'll be done!

stripes!

after posting about ben's move to his new room, we used some painter's tape to make stripes along the ceiling and i used ben's new bedding to pick a few colours for these stripes. tim painstakingly measured, leveled, and taped each stripe which led me to think that maybe i didn't need 5 stripes...i could do with 3. after taping, we began to paint the first colour on the biggest stripe: dark blue. after doing some corners, tim discovered the the paint was seeping under the tape. abort! abort! he washed the paint off with little damage done and announced that we weren't going to paint stripes. i said, "no way - people paint stripes. it's doable." i read up some more on painting stripes and one tip many people had was to first paint the stripes with the base coat colour. this may seep below the tape but it's the correct colour so it won't matter and it will seal off the crevices for the other colours. i went to home depot, bought a quart of our base (since we didn't seem to have any leftover from when we painted it the first time) but being the procrastinator that i am, we didn't do anything with it until about a month later: this weekend.

yesterday, we painted the base coat. yesterday night, after ben was in bed, we did our dark blue stripe. this morning before church, we did the much needed second coat of the dark blue stripe. right now, while ben naps, i painted the bottom green stripe and tim painted the skinny tan stripe. each colour, i say, "this doesn't look like the bedspread" and tim reassures me that it will dry darker and we can and will do second coats on them. here's where we're at right now:

i'm just desperate to peel that tape off now so we can see if it worked! we didn't check ANY of our tape yet so this could be a total washout and we'll be painting over it all with the original blue. eep. hopefully not. the dark blue needs one more coat for good measure and we'll do one more coat on the other two as well just because we have SO much paint leftover.

we'll keep you posted!

signs of summer

huge raspberries!

corn on the cob - ben almost ate that whole ear

confession

i'm pretty happy about the weather we've had this summer. sorry to all you sad folk who are wishing for your sunshine to return. but i'm huge and very warm on the cool days. when you're shaking your fist at the clouds, maybe it will make you feel better to think of me appreciating the cool? or maybe you'll just be shaking your fist at me now...either way - i thought i should let you know that it's me behind this rain. ;)

photo from here

make bread?

i'm almost tempted to try this it sounds so easy...

berry season

i'm not the greatest produce shopper. sometimes i just buy that red pepper at $3.69/lb at the store because i'm THERE and don't want to go somewhere else. the fruit that really gets me and makes me wonder, "is this a good price?" is berries. i think it's because they're not around all year long for me to get used to seeing their prices. but come berry season, i'm looking at the prices and can never be sure whether i'm getting a good one or not. in the past, the fear of buying overpriced berries has made it so that i completely miss berry season altogether and barely get any! after a couple summers like that, it occurred to me that i better just indulge in fresh berries while i can - whatever the price.

i drive by this produce place everyday that had a sign out a couple weeks ago saying cherries were $2.99/lb. it didn't sound like a particularly good price so i drove by many times. after i'd had a look around the grocery stores and saw cherries at $3.49/lb, i thought, "i love cherries. i'm going to get some for $2.99/lb." and i did. pat on the back. while i was there, i bought a small container of raspberries too for who knows how much. the next day, the paper came with the flyers in it. all three of the main grocery stores had cherries on for less that $2.99! one even as low as $1.99! so i guess i didn't do that great.

but now it seems that the local strawberries may have passed me by. i looked at all the stands at the berry festival and they just didn't seem to be that great in price. so i left them. and now, i'm regretting it. and raspberries! are they gone too? augh!

i did make one batch of raspberry muffins this weekend and they were great. fairly low in sugar and butter, i thought. here's the recipe if you find yourself some berries:

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 brown sugar (packed)
2 small to medium size apples (any type), peeled, cored, chopped or grated
1 cup fresh raspberries (or blackberries)
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup butter, melted

Line a muffin tray with muffin papers.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and the brown sugar and mix by hand, to combine.

Lightly beat the milk and eggs (with a fork).

Add the melted butter, and then add the fresh raspberries and the apples, just to combine.

Mix the fruit mixture gently into the dried ingredients, just until combined. Do not over mix! The batter will look "lumpy".

Spoon the batter into the muffin cups.

Bake at 400° F for 10 - 12 minutes, or until golden brown, and when a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Makes about 12 muffins.

baby moves

i don't know if i just don't remember my pregnancy with ben very well (which is highly likely) but this baby is so unbelievably active. it feels like she's right up against my skin (even though i know she's not) and she just goes crazy all evening before i go to bed. so much moving that tim can see my stomach going crazy from across the room. no need to feel for the baby kicking here! just watch it! augh! it's pretty weird. and really, it shouldn't be that weird because it's my second. this should feel normal.

oh man. i gotta go lie down.

"summertime and the livin's easy"

after hitting up the abbotsford berry festival in the morning, i drove out to vancouver to meet alyssa, go for an early dinner, and then make our way to stanley park. all weekend, there were free concerts in the park in celebration of vancouver's 125th birthday. it was quite the trek for a couple of pregnant girls who needed frequent bathroom breaks and had to walk barefoot on the grass to cool down swollen, hot feet. but we were pretty proud of ourselves for getting out, enjoying the sun, and taking in some great music. a big thanks to sharelle who inspired me to get out there with her enthusiasm for free, outdoor concerts.

happy start to summer!

sharing popcorn curbside at the Berry Festival in Abbotsford today...loving the sunshine.

freezer meals

speaking of meal planning, here's some inspiration for you: this woman make 46 meals at a time and freezes them. it lasts them months. i don't think we could get the same meat deals in canada as she does in the US ($1 for a pack of bacon?) but even if you spent more, this is still a pretty awesome way to have low stress when it comes to meal prep. i could see myself putting in the time once a month in order to have so many meals made ahead of time. though that's a lot of plastic bags...i'll be putting mine in my tupperware freezermates...

what's for dinner?

i know that lots and lots of people (many of you included) plan out their meals ahead of time and then only have to do one shop a week/two weeks. it's a stellar plan and i knew that in my mind but for some reason, i couldn't pull it together to make it work for me. or i wasn't motivated enough. i don't know. anyways, we're attempting a mega-budgeting month this month so i thought i'd attempt the meal planning in hopes of spending less on groceries.

WELL! how great is this meal planning thing, hey? like i said, i knew all along it would be stellar. and it is. why couldn't i do this before? the bonus to saving money by only doing one shop is that by knowing what i am making for dinner, there's no standing in front of the pantry, fridge, or freezer thinking, "augh - what am i going to make for dinner? how can i have nothing in here to make?" i have this list of meals and if i decide to switch one day for another, it's no biggie because i have all the ingredients already. so great. last night we barbequed cod, potatoes, and peppers and tonight we ate quiche. tomorrow is chicken & broccoli with rice. lovely.

this could be the beginning of a whole new "bec the homemaker"...umm...or at least "bec the dinner maker".

t-shirt quilt?

how cool is this idea? take all your old t-shirts and have them make into a quilt here at 3 Stitch Creations! i really want to do this for ben's t-shirts that i have loved over the last 2 years but it seems like such a waste to ruin all those clothes! i'm torn. but would it be fun to have them in a quilt form to remember them? i love this idea! what would you do?

"camping" with intentional quotation marks

some scenery on our drive up

last year, we attempted camping with our 13 month old. this year, being pregnant, we decided to rent a cabin instead for our summer camping experience. as i figured it would be, camping in a cabin is much nicer. here's the place we stayed if you ever find yourself wanting to rent an affordable but great cabin on a lake.

we made the trip with our friends, alyssa and james. they stayed in a suite in the main house so that they were close, could have all their meals over in our kitchen, but didn't have to be woken up at 6am by our kiddo. it was a great set up.

we knew that going north to 100 Mile in the last week of june would probably not provide the best, beachy weather but for scheduling purposes, this was the week that worked for us 4. we brought our hoodies and fleece pants in preparation. i can't speak for a&j but i was pleasantly surprised at the weather. i guess that's what happens when you expect the worst. we had mostly cloudy days, a little sun here and there with only one full day of rain. the problem with the cooler, wet weather, however, was the mosquitoes and flies that it attracted. i asked tim if the bugs would have been better if it was later in the summer and sunny and he wasn't sure it would have been much better (though i bet in august there's no way it wouldn't be better). so i'm glad it was cooler and we could wear our long sleeves and pants (doused in bug repellent) to help ward off those little menaces. if you've ever been outdoors with me, you know that i'm a crazy anti-bug person. sure, no one is a pro-bug person but they probably don't complain as much as me. but with many afternoons of breeze and some sunny mornings, they really weren't that bad or else i wouldn't have been outside at all. and the last few days were the best.

our beach - with ben at the water's edge

at the beach, we spent a lot of time reading and ben spent quite a bit of time digging. he was deterred from constant beach-dwelling because the owners of the cabin had a dog that barked. it was a lovely dog and very obedient but the loud and sometimes unwarranted barking seemed to get ben pretty scared. some days he'd just be playing happily and the dog would be 20 feet away doing her own thing and ben would just decide he wanted to go back to the "bagin" aka. cabin. that was unfortunate. though, we were glad that ben liked the cabin, the handful of toys we brought, and of course, the curious george dvds that we could watch on tim's computer.

the craziest withdrawl that i had was from internet! i thought i'd at least be able to touch base with the world via tim's iphone but no such luck! there was no cell service this far away from 100 Mile. it was quite the detoxing experience for me. by the end of the week, we had made a couple trips into town for something to do and i logged in then but it seemed less important than at the beginning of the week. it was a good practice for me.

the greatest thing about doing this trip with friends was that after dinner, when we had put ben to bed, instead of feeling stuck in the cabin, we got to hang out, play games, eat snacks, and chat with a&j. it was lovely. i ate waaay too many Munchies. we finally mastered a difficult game that we could never get the hang of when we only played it once in a while which was fun. we had the option of satellite tv (a nice perk to cabinning instead of camping) but we never turned on the tv once.

tim and alyssa with our BBQ-ed salmon & grilled veggies

i'm sure tim's highlight was all the fishing he did with james. they went out for about 8 hours total - an hour or two at a time. they rented the canoe for $5/hr and caught fish everytime they were out. tim was excited to get ben in the boat for his first canoeing experience but after getting in the boat (while on land) and finding it to be tippy - ben was not going to set in foot in that canoe again. we got one token photo and about two minutes of our money's worth out of the that lifejacket that we purchased for the trip. haha. maybe when he's three...

it was great to have a couple fires on the beach as well. one evening that the weather couldn't decide what it was doing, we made pizza in the cabin and the boys made a fire under the protection of some trees on the beach. we ate our pizza by the lake and enjoyed the gorgeous scenery. then we made s'mores, of course. another afternoon, we had a fire for some hotdog roasting and smores again.

overall, it was a good trip - lots of great memories and the potential to be an annual event. a fantastic kick-off to the summer!