We Have a Winner

Thanks to Suzie the Foodie, I won a Magic Bullet! The prize was part of a giveaway for the sixth birthday of Suzie the Foodie's blog. I also won five coupons to try So Good Soy Milk for free. Excited to make some awesome smoothies. Many thanks to Suzie and So Good for the awesome prize pack! :)

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Free Comic Book Day 2015

Yesterday I went to Jacks on Queen in Elmvale, Ontario and scored some free comic books during Free Comic Book Day. I'm still really new to comics and don't really know what I like, so picked up all the ones that I thought might interest me. And because I'm spending lots of time in nature this month, I read some of them outside in the sunshine. Wonderful.

Let's Go Blue Jays!

I got pretty interested in Major League Baseball this year. My hometown team is The Toronto Blue Jays and I had a lot of fun watching them this season. Even though they didn't make the playoffs, they had a lot of great games and moments and I was happy to be watching. I also got into live-tweeting games (which I'm still doing for the postseason), as it adds an extra element of fun and community to the game.

My awesome friend Bryan is also really into baseball and he recently found some Blue Jays items in his closet that he thought would fit me. It was such a wonderful surprise and I absolutely love them.

Bryan awesomely gave me two jerseys:

And two t-shirts:

Even though the Jays season is over, I'm going to be wearing these all winter long. I already had some Jays talk with a nice old man in a waiting room last week, who looked at my jersey and said "I like your shirt - but what happened?" Our conversation ended with hopes that 2015 will be a postseason year.

A million thanks to Bryan for these awesome additions to my wardrobe!

Cheater Baked Beans

Summer BBQ's are great for catching up with friends and family, but they are even better for all the amazing food! We went to an over-the-top BBQ at Bryan and Betony's last weekend that went beyond typical hamburgers and hot dogs (though we ate those too). There were also crab legs, lobster, shrimp, corn bread, and some home cooked baked beans. All the food was delicious and I took my hamburger up a notch by topping it with baked beans. Yum! Betony shared the baked bean recipe, which turned out to be made with canned beans instead of dry. I had two cans of beans on hand so I made some up at home. They are easy and delicious (although they do take some time in the oven).

The recipe is Simple Baked Beans from allrecipes.com.

In a large bowl, mix together two cans baked beans,1/4 cup molasses, 1/4 cup chopped onion, 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1 tbs mustard, and 2 tbs ketchup. That's it.

Put mixture into well greased baking dish (I used an 8x8 disposable one). Cover and bake at 350°F for 3 hours.

The beans thicken up beautifully and have a really sweet and smoky flavour. They are also a bit sticky and little chewy which gives them a stick-to-your-ribs feel. I served them with a bacon and egg bagel for an epic breakfast-for-dinner. So good!

At some point I still want to try making these with dry beans, but this was a fun and easy first try at this yummy dish.

Long Weekend Photo Round Up

It's a holiday Monday here in Ontario and I've been having a great weekend! Lots of friends, food, fun, and activities - it is what summer is made for.

The weather has been fabulous - really hot and sunny. I started the weekend catching up with my favourite Wizard Detective, Harry Dresden. I'm about half way through and enjoying it so far.

On breaks from reading on Saturday I baked some gingerbread cookies. Always nice to have treats around on a long weekend.

Yesterday my parents came up and we went on a short visit to the beach and walked around the Elmvale Sales Barn looking for deals.

We picked up lunch at Perky's Fish and Fries, which never disappoints. I got the haddock and chips, Mom got a burger and onion rings. MMMMmmmmm....

After Mom and Dad left, my sisters in law came over on their way to the beach, dropping off garden beans and romaine. The. Best.

Adding to our fun filled day, we hosted gaming night and played a little HarnMaster style RPG and enjoyed some treats.

I made caramel corn which was a big hit.

Our friend Bryan brought some treats to share that he brought back from a trip to Ohio. I don't think you can get this stuff here, so it was neat to try.

The remainder of the weekend will be spent reading and relaxing and probably eating a lot of garden beans. Perfect!

Tweeting with Kelly Gruber

A few weeks ago I had a fun experience on Twitter with 1992 World Series Champion and Blue Jays alumnus Kelly Gruber.

The Official Blue Jays Twitter feed participated in something they called #ChirpChairs. Basically, selected people (some former players and broadcasters) took over the Blue Jays twitter feed for about 20 minutes each, answering fans tweeted questions. I didn't pay too much attention to the other guest tweeters, as all my excitement was focused on tweeting with Kelly Gruber.

Kelly Gruber was my favourite Blue Jay as a kid. I had two different Kelly Gruber posters (not including the 1992 World Series team poster). He was on a t-shirt I wore frequently, and he was my favourite player to watch when I watched Blue Jays baseball with my Dad. He was so much my favourite, that when I played little league, my Dad always announced my trips to the plate with an enthusiastic: "Kelly....Gruuuuuber!" So I was super excited to send him a tweet to say hello and I really hoped he would see it.

Kelly Gruber doesn't actually have his own Twitter account, so this may have been his first time tweeting, which could explain how our interaction went.

Here is a picture of Kelly Gruber tweeting. Spoiler Alert: he is tweeting at me!

Thanks to @BlueJays alumnus Kelly Gruber for taking part in tonight's #ChirpChairs! pic.twitter.com/tsmlpzVm3u
— Blue Jays-Official (@BlueJays) June 25, 2014

When it was Gruber's turn to tweet, Blue Jays Official announced he was there and I sent him a welcome/you are the best tweet:

@BlueJays Welcome Kelly Gruber! You were my favourite player when I was a kid. Had two posters on my wall! All the best! #chirpchairs
— Jen B (@myadorableblog) June 25, 2014

To my complete joy and surprise he tweeted back to me. Ten year old me was over the moon that I got a response.

@myadorableblog thats cool, thank you
— Blue Jays-Official (@BlueJays) June 25, 2014

But then I got another tweet from him - and I knew instantly that it wasn't meant for me.

@myadorableblog he definantly is right now. too old right now. lol
— Blue Jays-Official (@BlueJays) June 25, 2014

And then another one came. Again, not for me. Twitter is tricky and it was his first time, so instead of replying to the fans who asked the questions, he kept replying to my twitter handle. I didn't mind.

@myadorableblog i have and made him admit it. hes a great sport
— Blue Jays-Official (@BlueJays) June 25, 2014

It was a lot of fun, actually, and a reminder of how magic Twitter can be. But I felt bad that the other fans weren't getting their responses so I tried to let him know what was up.

@BlueJays I love getting all these tweets from Kelly Gruber, but I think these replies are for other people. Just so you know. :)
— Jen B (@myadorableblog) June 25, 2014

But I got one more tweet, which is actually my favourite one from him, and it seems to go with my original tweet, so me (and ten year old me) think this was the tweet that was actually meant for me.

@myadorableblog thank you sweetie. im honored. go jays!
— Blue Jays-Official (@BlueJays) June 25, 2014

Isn't that the best?

I summed up my Kelly Gruber encounter that night with the following tweet, which is still how I feel about the whole experience:

Kelly Gruber tweeted me on purpose and then maybe by accident a few times and it was the BEST. THING. EVER! @BlueJays #LoveThisTeam
— Jen B (@myadorableblog) June 25, 2014

B + B Tacos

A few weeks ago we went to Bryan and Betony's for taco night. An invitation for dinner with friends is always welcome, and if that dinner is tacos, I am all the happier. I have it bad for tacos.

An adorable thing I do while eating tacos is exclaim: "I think these are the best tacos I've ever had." The tacos are always the same, always equally good, but I just love them so much that I think every taco is the best taco I've ever had. Having said that, it is quite possible that the tacos we had at B + B's, might have actually been the best tacos I've ever had.

Here were the highlights:

• Taco beef cooked with taco seasoning, a jar of salsa, and a squirt of 1000 Islands dressing
• Hard tacos wrapped in soft tacos using refried beans as the glue
• Delicious homemade guacomole
• Thick, amazing sour cream
• Giant tacos loaded with awesomeness - I could only eat two but wanted ALL of them

Best tacos I ever had.

I thought about those tacos for days after, and then had to recreate them at home. We have re-done our meal plan to include two nights of these amazing tacos (leftovers for the win!) and we are looking into recipes to make our own refried beans. I might even have a go at soft tacos again, especially if I'm going to eat these every week...because obvioulsy I'm going to.

Here are the ones we tried at home. Forever thanks to B+B for their extensive knowledge of all that is delicious.

Refried beans on a soft taco (tortilla)

Soft tacos wrapped around hard tacos -- the best!

My filled tacos. This was day 2, so the guacamole was already all eaten

Holy crap these are so good! I want to eat them every day!

Twitter and pi Day

I have been on Twitter for about a year now and a new thing happened for me on Friday: I got a bunch of retweets. I'm pretty sure it all had to do with the magic combination of posting the right thing, at the right time, with the right hashtags, and having a cool photo. The tweet was for pi day and my blog post about it. I posted it around noon on Friday (pi day) and was really excited by the response it got.

Throughout the afternoon I got 37 Retweets and 21 Favourites. This was a new record for me to say the least. My biggest amount of RTs previously was 5. So even though the pi retweets wasn't quite an Ellen Oscar selfie, getting as many as 37 was pretty cool for me.

The RTs also had an effect on my Blogger stats, as I linked to my blog in my tweet. In six hours, I got more page views on the pi day post than most of my other posts get in a few weeks. So cross posting to social media made a huge difference for me on pi day.

UPDATE: (March 22, 2014): Last night I got an email from the Twitter team with my weekly stats. I've never gotten an email like that before, so maybe it had to do with all the action around this tweet. Not only did the tweet get all the retweets I previously mentioned, but the photo itself got almost 15,000 views. Holy shit!!

 

Snickers Bar Squares

One of my favourite aspects of being part of a RPG group, is that I get to bake and share treats with my gaming friends. I love making sweet things for this particular group of people as they all genuinely enjoy yummy treats. My friends are also very open about how much they appreciate the goodies too - which always makes me feel great. I was raised to see food as love so I am happy to have so many wonderful people to share my baking experiments with. This is the good life! :)

Our most recent get together I made Snickers Bar Squares. This recipe is slighly adapted from the amazing yoyomax12. Definitely check out her YouTube Channel. Her videos are awesome.

This is a no bake recipe that has four layers, each of which has to set in the fridge before you can start the next layer. I was marathoning Breaking Bad when I made these, so each layer was made between an episode, or about every 45 minutes.

Line an 8x8 pan with parchment paper and set aside.

Layer One: Chocolate
Ingredients:
2/3 cup milk chocolate chips
3 tbs butterscotch chips
3 tbs peanut butter

Add ingredients to microwave safe bowl. Melt in microwave, stirring every 15 seconds, for 1 minute.

Pour into prepared pan and place in fridge to set.

 

Layer Two: Nougat
Ingredients:
3 tbs margarine
2/3 cup white granulated sugar
3 tbs cream
1 cup marshmallow fluff
3 tbs peanut butter
2/3 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped salted peanuts

Add the margarine, sugar, and cream to medium saucepan on medium heat. Stir and cook until it begins to boil. Continue to boil for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Remove from heat and stir in peanut butter, vanilla, and marshmallow fluff. Stir in chopped peanuts.

Spread nougat over the chocolate layer and place in the fridge to set.

Layer Three: Caramel
Ingredients:
200g caramels (about 28)
2 tbs cream

Unwrap the caramels (*note: unwrapping them is the worst*), and place in small saucepan with cream over low heat. Stir until completely melted and smooth.

Spread over nougat layer and place in the fridge to set.

Layer Four: More Chocolate
This layer is the exact same as layer one.

Ingredients:
2/3 cup milk chocolate chips
3 tbs butterscotch chips
3 tbs peanut butter

Add ingredients to microwave safe bowl. Melt in microwave, stirring every 15 seconds, for 1 minute. Spread over caramel layer and leave in the fridge to set.

Once hardened, cut into delicious squares.

Share with friends and enjoy!

I cut these a few hours before taking them to gaming night and found the caramel got a little unruly, and oozed a little out of the squares. Next time I might add a little less cream to the caramel layer to make it a little firmer.

1st Year Gryffindor Scarf: Finished Object

I remembered that I loved knitting, so in January I picked up my needles and started working on some projects. I finished a winter hat for John and have now finished a scarf for me. And not just any scarf, this is a 1st year Gryffindor scarf that allows me to show off my Harry Potter love in public. I have a long black coat which easily doubles as wizards robes, so I am not kidding around when I wear this scarf.

I recently wore it to my local library, and I planned my visit for when my favourite librarians were working. They are fun and sassy and are sometimes loud in the library, which makes them even more fun. We always find time to chat while I'm checking out books and they often compliment my coats (which are pretty much all hand me downs, but it still feels good). I walked in and they said:

"So what cool coat do you have today?"

"No new coat, but I made myself this Harry Potter scarf."

"On purpose?"

"Yep" and we all laughed.

I had my normal winter hat on and she said:

"Well I'm glad you have just a regular hat on..."

To which I finished: "Because otherwise I'd just be an adult in a Harry Potter outfit?" Pretty much.

We all had big smiles and then discussed how great it is to be fun and weird and to not have to conform to what "others" might think is cool. It is definitely very freeing.

I''m currently doing a re-read of the Harry Potter series and am halfway through book 7. I have taken to wearing my scarf indoors while I'm reading it (or outdoors while listening to the audiobook). Feels festive and good.

Twitterversary

I got an email from Twitter this morning wishing me a Happy Twitterversary.

I didn't really start using it actively until March and I'm happy for all the friends I have made on there. A year later and I'm still pretty into it. Lots of fun and things to see and opinions to share in 140 characters or less.

If you have been thinking about joining, go for it! Then we could have the same Twitterversary!

@myadorableblog stats at 1 year:
Tweets:  2101 (and counting)

Following: 434

Followers: 326

Time spent on there daily: hours and hours and hours...

Mom's 65th Birthday!

We had a celebration for Mom's 65th birthday on the weekend. We ordered a tonne of Chinese food and I brought the cake.

The Food:
We ordered take out from Mom's (and our) favourite place, Canton Restaurant in Midhurst. Because 65 is a big deal, and because it's the holidays, we went over the top and ordered about $20 more than we normally do. It was basically the equivalent of having 3 extra dishes of awesome food. Canton Restaurant seriously has the best Chinese food, and it is always super delicious. Even though we had all the extra food, we still ended up with the same amount of leftovers. Funny how that happened. No one had room for cake (I had mine the next day). If food's on the table, we eat it!

The Cake:
Last month I practiced decorating a 65th birthday cake to try out some ideas. I'm so glad I did. It encouraged me to pick up a few more Wilton decorating tips (I got Star #21 for the borders, and Round #3 to make the cake toppers), and I decided to go with a chocolate on chocolate cake. The cake was very chocolate, and even had some icy squares on top (in triangles and as crumble).

For the "6 and 5" cake toppers, I used my Round tip to pipe melted chocolate chips onto parchment paper that had a number stencil taped underneath. I printed the numbers backwards, so that the side that faced out would be flat and smooth. It was super easy to make them and they stuck in the cake perfectly.

The festivities for the 65th continue, as I'm heading to Barrie this morning to have lunch with Mom, my Aunt, and my Grandma. I'm finding it hard to believe Mom is actually 65 (and so is she), but the more we celebrate the more it'll sink in. Plus when she starts getting the sweet seniors discount at certain retailers, she might just be happy to be 65.

Happy Birthday Mommy!!! I love you!!! 

 

In the Mail

I finally got all my holiday cards sent out yesterday. I am hand delivering some of them over

the next few days, so hopefully everyone has theirs by the end of next week. I was going to mail them on Thursday, but I couldn't complete the 20 minute walk to the store. I turned around at the 12 minute mark as the 35km/hr (22mph) wind was blowing -17°C (1°F) cold in my face. I had sunglasses on, and even so, tears formed in my eyes. Luckily yesterday was wind free, though it was -20°C (-4°F) and felt like -27°C (-16°F). It was a really lovely walk, actually, as the sun was out and it almost felt warm on the way home.**


**Calling -27°C warm in any respect, proves that I am indeed Canadian.

Happier

At the start of 2013, a few friends posted about happiness jars. Happy moments are collected throughout the year in a jar and at the end of the year, it is opened up and you remember all the nice things that happened.

I thought it was a pretty good idea so I put a jar by my desk and started filling it with happy little notes.

I was pretty good about adding to the jar until May, when my friend Jen let me know about an even better idea for collecting happy moments: an App called Happier (now available on the web too). Happier is a similar concept to the happy jar, except it also involves a social network. Not only are you thinking about and collecting your own happy moments, but you get to look through other people's happy moments too. This is one of the best features of Happier, as it often makes me happier to read about the day to day things that make others smile. Things like "I got 8 hours of sleep!" or "The sun was out all day" are just really nice to read about.

The app has expanded a lot since I joined in May, and each new version is better than the last. In the current version when you post three happy moments in a day, you're rewarded with an image that says "You're Awesome". There is also confetti that rains down on the screen after you post a happy moment, which is both fun and encouraging. They even celebrate user milestones, as I recently reached my 200th moment and was rewarded with this appearing on my screen:

On the social side, you can "smile" at moments, comment on moments, share them, follow other people's moments, and search for happy moments by category. For example: "eating awesome food" and "animals" are both categories to browse. Scrolling through these categories, you'll find hundreds of posts of people just loving on their pets or being overjoyed by the food they've just eaten. It's really a lot of fun.

If you want to check out the happy moments I've posted, you can find them by clicking here.

Thinking about the little things and being part of the Happier community has been a very positive addition to my year. If I'm having a bad day, Happier is a great place to go to be reminded of all the little things that make life fun. And refreshingly, for a social network, it is a very positive space to be. Most of the comments I get on my moments are variations of "Me too!" or "I love that!" or "I should do that too!" Obviously not everyone is made happy by the same things, but if you see something that doesn't appeal to you, you can just scroll past it and find twenty other moments that will make you smile.

Hundreds of little things made me happier in 2013, and I'm looking forward to going over my Happier posts and reading through my happiness jar so I can remember all the moments that made me smile.

Doughnut Muffins (Are Amazing)

I have a Twitter account, and one of the neat things about following other bloggers on there is your Twitter feed often becomes a waterfall of amazing recipes and craft ideas. Recently Kelly over at Just a Sliver posted a recipe for Cinnamon Sugar Doughnut Muffins, and with a name like that I couldn't stop myself from making them.

I'm normally a cake mix kind of person, but I easily made these from scratch and they turned out great. I only had enough butter to make half a batch, but that was probably a good thing, as these were rather delicious. You want to know what makes them so delicious? Once baked, they are dipped drenched in butter and then coated with cinnamon sugar. So much yum!

Getting ready to dip

Soaking up the butter

Roll in ALL the sugar

So fricken' good!

For the complete recipe, click over to Just a Sliver.