Ready To Be Sewn Up

I've been working through the patterns in the Knitted Toy Tales book, having totally finished a fish and finished the knitting for a teddy bear and an elephant.

This new pile of finished knitting is going to be a cute little penguin.

Now that I have my giant bag of stuffing, I am going to spend some time this summer putting all these toys together.

Ontario Strawberries #FoodPicFriday

Picked up some fresh Ontario strawberries from the local fruit market. These are fresh and tasty and super easy to eat.

Cabinet Cat

Trudy kind of blends with this house, which makes her hard to find sometimes. Her dark fur matches the dark carpet, and if it wasn't for her beautiful gold eyes giving her away, at times she would seem invisible.

The other day I was looking for her and did a sweep of a few rooms but couldn't find her. Then those gold eyes found me, at a height I wasn't expecting, and I snapped a photo of her lounging in the corner cabinet. She is really something. :)

First Trail Ride of the Season

I suffered a back injury last summer that kept me off my bike for the entire season. For that reason, I've been taking it really slowly this year on my bike, even though I want to go-go-go. My most recent ride was 6.5km, riding on the trail on a beautiful day.

Father's Day Fun #FoodPicFriday

We celebrated an early Father's Day yesterday with Mom and Dad, enjoying some wonderful (as always) Chinese food from our favourite take out place. Mom also picked up doughnuts from Zerhs Bakery (my favourite grocery store doughnut), and a yummy time was had by all.

Happy Father's Day, Dad!!

Bear Report

There have been a few reports of Bear sightings this spring in my neck of the woods. About a month ago, a neighbour was driving by and saw a bear run into the woods along the far side of Grandma's house (next door to us). Last week one of John's friends said he drove past a bear running into the woods on the next concession over. So it sounds like one or more bears are traveling through the woods around here. I haven't been on any walks in the woods this season, as I've been sticking to the well travelled road. The road seems like a safer bet this time of year, but I keep aware of my surroundings anyway, just in case.

A few years ago we saw a bear on a drive up to Bala. This is a photo of him running from our car.

Have you seen or heard of any bear sightings where you are?
 

Deal Report: Cheese Replacement Vouchers

A few months ago, I opened a package of blue cheese and something just didn't seem right about it. But how can you tell if blue cheese is bad, right? I wasn't sure if I should eat it, so I put it back in the fridge and phoned the company for advice. The cheese was Castello brand from a company called Arla Foods. They advised me not to eat the cheese and said they would send me some cheese vouchers so I could replace the product.

About a week later I got $8.00 worth of replacement vouchers for their entire line of products, not just the blue cheese brand. The brands I could use the vouchers on were Tre Stelle, Dofino, or Castello, so I had a lot of options. Plus sending me $8.00 was really generous, as the original blue cheese purchase had been bought on sale for $2.99. Obviously, I am very impressed with their customer service!

I held onto the coupons and wasn't sure what I was going to get with them. More blue cheese? Fresh mozzarella ball? Some wonderful feta? Fresh grated Parmesan? I had a lot of options.

I noticed in the weekly grocery flyers that a Dofino Havarti (800g) was on sale for $10.99. It normally sells for $13.99, so $10.99 was a good deal. I decided to use my vouchers, and got another $8.00 off, which made this beautiful chunk of Havarti $2.99. DEAL!

So the original blue cheese purchase ($2.99) plus the out of pocket money I spent on the Havarti ($2.99), got me this $13.99 block of cheese for $5.98. Amazing.

Plus Havarti is amazing. So far we've had it melted on burgers, in grilled cheeses, in an omelette, on sandwiches, and I even melted some on nachos (it tastes so good melted). It will not take us long to eat this 800g block and we are definitely having a great time doing it!

Beholder Cake #FoodPicFriday

My favourite thing about gaming with my D&D group is making and sharing treats. In the past I've made some themed D20 dice cookies, along with an variety of other baking experiments that were thoroughly enjoyed while we battled monsters and solved mysteries during various campaigns. 

I am not the only baker in our group, and recently our friend Colleen made a Beholder monster cake for her husband's birthday. Nothing says happy birthday quite like a D&D monster.

Minion Toy - Finished Object

I have gotten into knitting toys lately, and one of my favourite things to do is search through the endless amounts of patterns on Ravelry for something cool to knit. I could spend hours on there just looking...so many patterns, so little time. I found a pattern for a Minion toy, which would make a perfect gift for my Mom (her kids are all grown up - she needs Minions!). The pattern included a photo tutorial, so it was a great project to start and complete pretty quickly.

The pattern can be found here.

For this pattern I had to 'pick up stitches' to make the Minion's overalls, something I had never done before. I found a video that showed me how to do it, and marveled at how amazing the internet is. I love that there are so many teachers out there who are happy to share their knowledge. It is the best!

This was a fun toy to make and Mom just loves it. I'm going to make a two-eyed Minion as well, so this one will have a buddy. So much fun!

(Light) Sky Rainbow

There was a pretty rainbow effect in the sky on my walk the other day. It was far more vibrant in real life, so this photo doesn't really do it justice. But if you look closely you can (sort of) see the colours.

Big Pile of Taco Fries #FoodPicFriday

INGREDIENTS:

A big pile of homemade french fries.

Taco meat (made with ground turkey, black beans, mushrooms, and diced tomatoes).

Shredded cheese.

Diced purple onion.

Salsa

Plain yogurt.

Happiness.

Extra Stuffing

I started making some knitted toys earlier this year, then got delayed because I didn't have any stuffing to complete them. There was a bag of it around here somewhere, but after much searching I declared it officially lost.

Thanks to my Mom I am no longer stuffing free. She surprised me on a recent visit with a giant bag of it. I'm not kidding when I say giant, it is GIANT. It weighs 4lbs, and stuffing is pretty light, so that is a lot of stuffing. I will have trouble losing this one. haha!

I put the fish toy I made on the bag to showcase just how much stuffing there is and how many toys I could potentially make with it. I better get knitting!

Side of the Road Stories

I happened on these two separate side of the road finds and I'm not entirely sure what I've found.

A different shade of green, hanging in the trees caught my eye. Is it a kite? Or maybe just a random green object that was placed in the tree? If it's a kite, sorry to the kid who lost it.

Along the side of the road I spotted this bag of goodies: Pool noodles in a garbage bag. I can't decide if a family lost their noodles on the way to the beach/cottage/etc., or if someone just chucked out their unwanted pool noodles on the side of the road. I think it's a safe bet that one might store pool noodles in a garbage bag (they get wet, right?), so I'm leaning towards them being lost by accident. If so, sorry to the kids who lost them.