Happy Birthday, Baby!

This is a sort of reverse ag.gray.gate post wherein I created a cake pop collage for the blog, forgot to post it here, and this past week posted it to Pinterest instead! Sacrilege, I know. What can I say? Pinterest has swept me away...for the moment at least!

For Jack's birthday we made Ice Cream Cake Pops as per his request. They turned out fantastic and were really simple. The poppets were thrilled!

A little about the pops...
-The pics don't show us mixing the buttercream icing into the crumbled cake. The texture should be that of raw cookie dough. Roll and chill.
-Having access to american style Almond candy bark makes all the difference in the world. Anything else will ruin your day. Trust me.
-Melt the bark in a double boiler. Dip cones and place on chilled balls. Chill again before final coating.
-I was lucky enough to find mini cones with flat bottoms, which meant I didn't have to fashion or find some sort of mini ice cream cone holder.
-Sophie Wong took the gorgeous inset photo. Mad skillz, that woman.

Ta da. Birthday magic.

Happy Birthday

Today is my Mom's birthday! Happy Birthday Woman!!!!! I wanted to take this time to share just how incredibly blessed I am to have this wonderful woman in my life. My mother is strong beyond compare, hysterically funny, humble, gorgeous, amazingly personable, spicy, selfless and brilliant.
Now as many things as I could say I found the following quotes, all of which made me a little verkelpt,  to be so accurate and succinct I could do no better. These excerpts are so true about my Mom I think they really must have been written as an homage to her alone.

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born.  She never existed before.  The woman existed, but the mother, never.  A mother is something absolutely new.  ~Rajneesh  


A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.  ~Washington Irving 



One good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters.  ~George Herbert


Who fed me from her gentle breast
And hushed me in her arms to rest,
And on my cheek sweet kisses prest?
My Mother.
~Anne Taylor


A daughter is a mother's gender partner, her closest ally in the family confederacy, an extension of her self.  And mothers are their daughters' role model, their biological and emotional road map, the arbiter of all their relationships.  ~Victoria Secunda


A mom reads you like a book, and wherever she goes, people read you like a glowing book review.  ~Robert Brault


Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds.  Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins, comrades and friends - but only one mother in the whole world.  ~Kate Douglas Wiggin
I love you Mom - Happy Birthday xoxo.

Cuppy Cups...

I rip all sorts of stuff out of magazines, but I think that this is actually one of the very first things I have ever actually followed through with. When I was racking my brain as to how best serve Aly's Vegetarian Chilli (from Aly Dahl Designs) at my and my husbands 8th Annual Oscar Party I thought I would give these a go. Of course by then I had lost the torn out page when I was cleaning. So this is what I best imagine the recipe would have gone like...and the best part was not having to wash or toss 24 dirty bowls!

1. I sprayed 24 Medium-sized flour Tortillas with Olive Oil. Next time I would also sprinkle with Garlic Salt at this point. Or Chipotle.
2. Put them into a warm frying pan on uber low and covered them briefly (so they would be more pliable)
3. Then I placed the warm and slimy rounds into large muffin tins and baked at 375 F till they became golden Cuppy Cups.
4. Fill with something delicious!
5. Enjoy your accolades :)

Wordless Wednesday - Does This Count?

Again with the Hair?

I have this little precious vial of cream. As you may remember I am having an ongoing facial acne crisis where my zits think I am 16 and my wrinkles think I am 70. Awesomesauce. A fugly, humiliating combination. But there are people starving so get some perspective right?! Ughhhhhhhh....

Just so you know who we are dealing with here.

Anyhoo this precious little vial has silver in it. Whatever that means. So every night I have been putting the concoction onto my face and it seems to be helping. Or I respond well to sugar pills. I am easily persuaded and have a penchant for carpet baggers and psychosomatic tendencies.

I digress, the silver potion is working. That is, it was working until my almost three year old daughter found it and squeezed the entire contents of the precious little vial into her hair. My only precious little vial. That was a gift. So its not like I can just run out and grab another. It has to be shipped from Never-Never Land.

After having a ridiculous ugly-cry overreaction to the situation I snuggled my gross, cream-covered, sticky-headed little Bean till she slept. And in the morning I brushed her dry, matted little mess. I could have washed it out I suppose, but I brushed it anyway. And it felt good.

Somethings Gotta Give...

I have some fantastic news...wait for it...wait for it... I am officially enrolled in the Self-Employment Program here in Rossland (well, Greater Trail I guess)! Now I have kept fairly mum on this whole subject but with this latest development the cat is out of the bag. This is the news we have been waiting for!

Both my husband and myself have long dreamt of owning our own business, we just never knew what that was going to look like. Then just over six months ago, in the few days between putting an offer on a house here in town, but before listing/selling our Vancouver home, we decided to start a brewery in Rossland. Then we packed up our old life in Vancouver and began our new life here.

Here is how the idyllic dream looks: We (me funded through Community Futures and Michael as my unpaid man servant) establish Rossland's first brewery since prohibition put the Le Roi Brewery out of business at the turn of the century. Then we are on our own. We have a smallish store-front, on-site craft-brewing, retail and tasting room on Columbia (Main Street). Our little Company begins to support and sponsor all the fabulous events that the wonderful people of Rossland create, host and attend. Investors come out of the woodwork to throw money at such a fabulous idea enabling us to grow and prosper. We build an entirely green, zero waste, incredibly efficient brewery which truly reflects Rossland and our communal values. We even employ some local farmers to grow our hops which is mutually beneficial. The Brewery garnishes heaps of local support, and because it is easily one of the best beers anyone has tasted word spreads like wildfire and our Brewery becomes a tourist attraction as well. From there it is all up.

Currently I find myself writing, researching and developing a business plan under the tutelage of the Program. Michael is in Vancouver again this week, (hopefully he'll have and audition and book a another part before Christmas!) which means in addition to business planning I am the sole parent here for a week. YAY! Sarcasm, that was sarcasm. Which brings me to the point where I ask your understanding and allegiance. Please bear with me if I miss a day here and there over the next few months, keep coming back - I will not be going anywhere!

Thank you all so much for your love and support, for your readership and comments. Oh, and if you have a half million kicking around, I know just the place for you to invest it :)

(not so) Wordless Wednesday - Awesome