Teevee or Not Teevee ...Netflix and Cable

Ughhhhh... so Netflix turned out to be a bust. Boo. Terrible selection at a great price. In Canada at least. And then there was that threatened bandwidth cap. Good gravy. If the selection improves on Netflix though, I am not entirely opposed to give it another go.

When our little family moved to Rossland last summer we made the big decision to get rid of our cable . It was only at the time the choice seemed so monumental. In retrospect it hasn't really been missed, really everything that we would watch on cable is available online. Even CBC Kids.

We ended up getting cable back though, so that we might host our annual Oscar Party. This Deal-with-the-Devil includes a 3 month promotion and HD channels at a low, low price. Which ends up still being ridiculously expensive. Ridiculously expensive. I thought, "man, it will be H to the ARD prying the PVR from my daily life schedule once again.". However, I find myself checking the calendar regularly to see if our cable promotion is over yet so we can get rid of it. I am frugal not stupid.

Shocking, I know. I never thought I would prefer a life sans television, but I do. I am amazed at how quickly it has turned the poppets into tiny marketing machines. Isla, who has never been to, or even seen, a Red Lobster, now professes her undying love for the company. Egads. Jack begs for all manner of toys and is quickly developing an unhealthy perspective about germs.

Just the other day I caught myself singing the five dollar footlong jingle.  Isla shouts "skunk" whenever someone farts. Classy. Incorporating as always, and this might have been the straw that broke the cable's back, Isla called me a "five-dollar-skunk". A tidy, albeit unfortunate, amalgamation of pop culture.

The love affair is over.

A Cake for Isla

I have not a clue as to how a little girl who has virtually no exposure to the Wonderful World of Disney has such an enormous affection for all things Tinkerbell, but she does. Isla's heart on for the tiny beast appeared one day out of the blue and here it has stayed.

So, of course, for Isla's birthday I endeavoured to make a Tinkerbell cake. I had seen the photos online. I might have shown them to Isla, and now her mind was made up. It looked really difficult. The combined potential brutal honesty of two preschoolers sent shivers up my spine. It was gonna have to not suck. I was scared.

Now being cable-less has left me at a disadvantage. As far as gleaning useless information from TLC to be recalled at convenient moments I am now at a loss. Internet to the rescue! I Googled how-to videos on 5 different kinds of fondant and how to apply it. The term 'crumb coat' kept coming up...so I Googled that too. Down the rabbit hole I went.

I really wanted to make marshmallow fondant from scratch. It tastes better and doesn't have as much crap in it...then went and bought Wilton pre-made and added food colouring. The Wilton site itself was a wealth of information and I used their butter cake recipe in the end. And despite cautionary cries in chat rooms everywhere, I used my Kitchen Aid mixing bowl as a cake pan. It worked like a chizzarm!!!!

Ice Cream Cake Pops by Bakerella

Long story short, the cake did not suck...it was all kinds of awesome, nowhere near as difficult as it looks, but every bit as pretentious! Fondant is absolutely my new favourite thing! Oh, and my three year old :)

For Jack's Birthday I plan on successfully trying my hand at these Cake Pops...

Freaky Friday

I spent the entirety of yesterday driving to Vancouver. For whatever reason I was feeling a little car sick. Being carsick as a backseat passenger is something I have never really been able to grow out of, but it usually seems to be abated by sitting in the front seat.  Anyway, Thursdays all day ride sent me reeling down memory lane.

I have always had a heightened sense of smell. I am not allergic to anything per se but I am often at the whims of my nose. I must choose my perfume (which I use sparingly and only on occasion) not only based on whether or not I enjoy the fragrance, but whether or not the scent gives me a migraine and makes me violently ill.

When I was pregnant with Jack I had the perma-heaves. It was gross. I was tossing my cookies up to twelve times a day. I constantly craved whatever, but when I had secured the whatever in my chubby pregnant hands, two bites in, I found the whatever wholly unsatisfying and promptly suffered through whatever being ejected from my body. I was miserable. Despite having reservations I resorted to medication. To my dismay/delight the tiny pills simply dulled the constant nausea and did little in the way of preventing chunder, making the decision not to take them easier.

Now some smells were worse than others and even thinking about onions or coffee brought on a bought of the barfs, which lasted well beyond the "normal" 16 week mark. In fact it took months after Jack was born for my onion aversion to ebb. The strangest thing (or so I thought at the time) was that it wasn't just the smell of food that made me ill, but the smell of places. The office where I worked was one such place, which, at the time, made me think this affliction was purely psychosomatic.

Round two: Isla. Second verse, same as the first. SOOOOO sick, but now I have a curious toddler pawing at me as I hang over the commode. Oh, and this time around I manage to break blood vessels around my eyes whenever I retch. We are in a small rented apartment in Indiana while we film a movie and the smell of our living quarters makes me ill. Then a new, unexpected side effect takes hold. This is the actual strangest thing - I develop a visual/aural aversion. Not just to a food commercial, which was old hat, but to jingles. The Elder Beerman ads were the worst. They ran frequently and muting the catchy/annoying tune wasn't enough (due to my aforementioned phonic aversion having intertwined itself with the images of insidious plug) bringing me to my knees.

Fast forward three years to yesterdays motion sickness. I am rarely sick, which is why I probably haven't noticed the kryptonite to my lingering pregnancy super powers. Aside from wider feet and heightened sense of smell and mommy intuition, it would appear that when under the weather I am still affronted by musical compositions. Good to know I guess.

Netflix

My husband and I are movie aficionados - some might say snobs - but we enjoy great films and then discussing them with equally snobby friends! Maybe it is a theatre thing. Stick us in a room with a screen or a stage as actors or audience and we are two immensely happy people!

In this season of our lives though we don't get out to see nearly as many plays or movies as we would like. In fact we have patronized far too many animated movies in the last two years then I would care to recount here! With one exception. The Fantastic Mr. Fox was one of the all time family faves of 2009. With great film snob friends in tow we went to the theatre for Isla's 2nd birthday and I was filled with pride knowing that my two small children enjoyed their first Wes Anderson film as much as I remember enjoying mine.

To remedy this situation in part, for Michael's last birthday I gifted him (and myself!) a mammoth plasma and surround sound system. We LOVE watching movies at home. Put the kids to bed, close the door, turn down the lights, turn up the volume and we are ready for our best viewing experience! In Vancouver I had recently discovered the $2 movie machine at Safeway. I think we are almost caught up on the new releases from the past few years - finally.

There is no such magical movie machine here in Rossland and I am having a hard time reconciling myself  to spending $6 to rent. We are falling behind again. My computer lacks the room and I lack the computer prowess to procure movies any other way...until now.

Netflix is coming to Canada. I am so stoked!!!!!

G. Michael

Michael has gone back to Vancouver again for two weeks in order to put food on the table. He is a worker that one - a fine combination of Italian workhorse, Scottish determination and Little House on the Prairie work ethic. He makes me proud.

In an earlier post I mentioned that in between dream jobs Mike works as a mover. Aside from owning a business with yours truly, Mike's other dream job is acting and he does it very well. He dons the more prestigious moniker G. Michael Gray and has quite the resume to show for himself.

G. Michael in the Feature 'Silk Trees'

In fact at the beginning of next week he will be adding to said resume as he tucks a Guest Star on 'Psych' under his belt. After a dry spell that felt as though it would never end this is very exciting news. I adore seeing Mr. Gray up there on screen - it never gets old, but then again he has never had to film a roll in the hay!

Baby Jack and his Poppa on 'Supernatural'.

It is awesome that moving here to Rossland has not meant the end of Mike's auditioning and acting for film and television. I guess the only real obstacle to the whole thing is when and how we will be able to watch the shows he is in given that we have successfully avoided resuming our cable tv subscription thus far!