CIBC Run for the Cure

This morning Lenny and I participated in our second Run for the Cure together. It was very cold -- 4 degrees -- but we both moved really quickly. I really enjoyed visiting with one of Lenny's scientist friends, Valeria, and practicing my Italian on the walk. She just turned... Awesome... on Sept. 30, so we've decided that we'll get together for a festa di compleanno (birthday party) this coming Friday evening. It also works out because Friday is my last day at work, so we'll have two things to celebrate!

After the run, we walked back home and Lenny made his Pumpkin Spice Lattes to assist in the warming up process. He's asked me to share the recipe with you all so consider yourselves lucky... this is amazing:

Ingredients to serve 2 cups:

Espresso - 4 fl. oz. (1/2 cup)

Milk - 1.5 cups

Vanilla - 1 tsp.

Cinnamon - 3/4 tsp.

Ginger - 1/2 tsp.

Nutmeg - 1/4 tsp.

All-spice - 1/4 tsp.

Cloves - 1/8 tsp.

Maple syrup - 1 tbsp.

How do you brew this wonderfully spicy drink?

1) Set up stove-top espresso machine ove medium heat. It should take about 8 minutes to brew 1/2 cup.

2) In a small saucepan, whisk all spices, vanilla and maple syrup into the milk. Treat this like risotto and don't walk away, always stirring. Keep heat medium to medium-low to avoid burning the milk or curdling.

3) When steam starts to rise from the milk, turn heat off but continue stirring.

Optional: if you have a frother, now's the time to froth up your milk.

4) When espresso is brewed, pour milk mixture into mugs, and add espresso overtop.

5) Drink that heavenly mix.

This afternoon after we were all warmed up, I headed out to the Superstore to get some groceries and check out any discounted fall decorations while Len worked on his computer. I didn't end up finding any fall decorations that I wanted (but they did have some nice Christmas stuff I had to pry myself away from) but I did find a few good deals on some things we needed, saving a whopping $4 total!


Dove Soap Bars -- 2 @ 3.29/each = $6.58 - $2 coupon when you buy two = $4.58
Egg Whites -- $2.79 - $0.50 coupon = $2.29
Dawn Dish Soaps -- 2 @ 1.99/each = $3.98 - $1 coupon when you buy two = $2.98

Well that's all the excitement for today. This week's goal is to only eat out (Starbucks included!) twice or less this week. Let's see how I do!!

Heather Does Coupons

I've been following this website, Mrs. January, for a few weeks now after hearing about in on the radio. After discovering this coupon for $10 off a multivitamin and realizing that this $30 product was on sale for $13.99 this week at Shoppers Drug-mart, I decided to make a worthwhile trip out of it. I have to take multivitamins because of my inability to digest most fruit and veggies. Paying a lot of money for them really irks me, so yay for only $4 vitamins for 2 months worth!

Lenny and I walked over this afternoon because the weather was so nice. We saved $38.30 off of our purchase between coupons and sales they were having. Here's what we ended up getting:

Scope mouthwash -- on sale for $2.99
2 Multibionta Adult Multivitamins -- on sale for  $13.99 -  $10 coupons = $7.98
Benadryl -- on sale for $8.69 - $2.50 coupon = $6.19
Pantene shampoo -- on sale for $3.99 - $1.00 coupon = $2.99
2 Old spice deoderants -- on sale for $4.99
Blistex -- on sale for $1.99

Total Saved: $38.30
Total Paid: $39.35

The nice thing is that we'll actually use all of these thing sup within good time. What a successful shopping trip!

Family Hunting

This weekend Lenny and I did some visiting of Toronto-area cemeteries to assist in my family tree searching. Here's a bit of what we found:

My great-great grandmother: 

Her grave all cleaned up (well as much as you can with a cup of water and some McDonald's napkins):

The general area where we found her grave:

My great-grandmother & great-grandfather:

Their brass grave stone all cleaned up.

Where one of Marion & George C's children, Lorraine Annie, is buried. This grave was unmarked.

All in all it was kind of fun. It was a bit unfortunate that nothing new was determined by it, but it was nice to visit and actually find nearly all that we were looking for!

Sicky poo

Not too much to report today. Upon Lenny's urging, I made an appointment with the doctor today. Turns out my illness is bad enough to warrant some antibiotics. Hurrah. The doc also took a swab for further testing and said that I need to wait at least 3 days on the drugs before I go back to work. As long as I get better and don't infect anyone else, that's all that counts.

During my bed rest today, I applied for another job, and spent a lot of time searching through various job boards. Its very slim picking right now though -- so few jobs, and the ones that are there are minimum wage, and non-contract at that. I'm nervous about not being able to find a job in London and about being out of work for any extended period of time once the person I'm filling in for returns.

I've spent a lot of time on Kijiji in the past few days too, and even bought a new living room chair. I've posted our blue sofa bed couch up for sale too, as has been the intention for about 3 months. We never got around to it because we've both been working full-time but I figure now is a perfect opportunity. Hopefully someone picks it up soon as having two sofa beds and a chair in one small living room is a bit much.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to feel up to taking the car in for an oil change and do some vacuuming on the main floor. If I'm still awake and breathing well enough in the evening, I might even go to one of the free Yoga Shack classes. I might still be super sucky at it, but I do appreciate how relaxed I feel afterwards. Tata for now mama!

Saturday!

So I slept a lot today. I slept from about 3-7 yesterday and then 8-7 last night. I ended up making it until 11 before I fell asleep until 1. After a delicious lunch at the Pickle Barrel with Lenny's family and a brief tour around the mall, we came home where I napped until dinner, and promptly returned to sleep after dinner until now, 11 pm.

While I don't feel super tired any more, I'm still under the weather. To boot, I had some onion rings with lunch that I'm now paying the price for with a super swollen throat. What can I say? I'm a bit of a walking mess right now.

Tomorrow we'll have a birthday lunch to celebrate the five birthdays this month: Zac, Mark, Meg, John, and Nonna. Silvana has ordered spaducci, Zac's favourite, so that should be a lot of fun. I've only had it once here before, but there's nothing quite like bbq-ed meat on a stick. Nom nom!

Well I'm not too sure there's anything else exciting to report. Back to Sex and the City - The Movie!

Lazy Sunday

Today was a really lazy day. Guess I had to make up for all the productiveness of yesterday.

For breakfast, we were really at a loss with no eggs, milk, or coffee... So we went out to Ritchie's -- a favourite London greasy spoon. I had two eggs, two breakfast sausages, two pieces of bacon, a pancake, and 2 1/2 pieces of toast. Not surprisingly this resulted in a food coma and we sleepily went to Loblaws afterwards. Once we got home, I had a *ahem* two hour nap, and then spent the rest of the day laying on the couch trying to figure out  how to wake up.

I eventually did get the energy to make some cookies, vacuum & dust the upstairs, and fold the remnants of yesterday's three loads of laundry. Here's how the cookies turned out:

They ended up morphing into a giant cookie, but broke apart easily enough and were nice and tasty. The pick above also showcases my/Lenny's dear espresso maker... oh what a lovely sight.

This evening Lenny cooked up a storm and made marinated pork tenderloin, potatoes, broccoli, carrots, and cheese sauce. Delicious. Also had some red wine to top everything off. Afterwards we went for a walk around the block and checked out the various crumbling foundations of houses in our neighbourhood -- we are just that cool.

Tonight I spent some time working on the family geneology and then checked out the deals on amazon.ca. This was my favourite one of the whole night:

It is titled 'the little stinker.' Lol.

Well that's it for now. This week I imagine will be crazy busy again, but this weekend we're heading to Toronto for another much needed break. 

Picture Update

So it has been a little while since the last blog. I don't really feel like sharing much when things are super stressful at work and I don't have anything positive to report.

For now, I'll post some pics from the last little bit.

Last Saturday, Len & I got up early to go to a market outside of town and we got some Amazingly fresh local vegetables for very reasonable prices. Here's some homemade red pepper tomato sauce that Lenny made. Probably THE best sauce I have ever had in my entire life; this guy is so talented with spices.

This is one of the AMAZINGLY delicious items we made with the sauce. We also got a fresh basil plant that was like 2 feet high and had just been picked in the morning. Top that off with some fresh mozzarella and whole wheat pizza dough from the newly reopened Angelo's and it made for one hell of a dinner.

Lenny drizzling the pizza with olive oil. The final step before going in the oven.

Lenny's pizza with the cheese cut a bit differently.

Fresh romano beans. I'd never seen them like this before and I don't think Len had either.

I made some apple carrot muffins and thoroughly enjoyed them for about 15 minutes at which point my lips started tingling and my throat started closing, and I remembered that apples had done this once before about a week prior... so Lenny enjoyed the last 10!

These next two pictures are for my mumsy. She's going to help me decide how to organize my newly purchased things for the front hall.

Option 1

 And option 2, which I think I prefer.

Well there you go -- Pictures! Updates! Oh my!  Grazie per l'attesa (thanks for waiting)!