I can do pretty much anything.  None of it well, but I’ll do it.  That said, I can throw down the gauntlet when it comes to birthday parties.

I never had birthday parties when I was a kid.  At least I don’t remember having any.  So I tend to go a bit over the top for my kids. I consider it cheap therapy.

Whatever theme they want I find a way to do it.  A few years ago Evan wanted a Survivor party.  I made buffs, we chose teams, they made camps out of tarps and duck tape, did challenges, and even ate chocolate covered broccoli.  Every kid ate it.  Last year Colin was into G. I. Joe.  We did a 10 station boot camp and I stayed up until 2am making camouflage  duo-rags.

This year Colin wanted a WWE birthday party.  Yuck! FYI- I HATE wrestling!  Just thought I’d throw that out there!

So….I found the most sparkly, goddy fabric and foam and made knee pads…

Colin put together the treat bags…

And as the kids arrived I turned them into little wrestlers, with tacky tattoos and face painting.  They looked like little drag queens.  I also painted 6-pack abs on them.  You better believe I’ll be doing that this summer!  Colin took his character, Gold Bird, very seriously.  It was quite disturbing!

Other kids had fun with it too.  Then the kids did their ring entrance.  That was priceless!

For the food we had DDT hot dogs…

And paralyzer pizza balls…

A DDT, I’m told, is when you’re strangled, so I wrapped puff pastry around wieners in the shape of a person.  The pizza balls were to be dunked in pizza sauce which was to symbolize blood. How wholesome!

And here is Colin making a wish before blowing out the candles.  I’m sure he’s dreaming up his next birthday party, which I can assure you, aren’t getting any less complicated.

At the end of hockey season, Colin’s hockey coaches gave him and the rest of the team a Sidney Crosby puzzle, which was perfect, because (a) we love Sidney Crosby, (b) we don’t own a puzzle that isn’t missing that one piece, and (c) that meant that we didn’t have to get him anything for his birthday. lol

As soon as we got home he went right to work putting it together.

David’s a big kid when it comes to putting together puzzles or lego.  You should see him with a model car.

Yes, David grabbed his jug of fruit punch, displayed the final picture as a guide and was determined to finish Colin’s Sidney Crosby puzzle before bedtime.

But regardless of who did it, the satisfaction was felt my many.

And then we could all sleep soundly.

We spent a few days of March break involved in a hockey tournament.  Both Colin and Evan played.  We stayed at the Quality Inn on Karney Lake Road.

Almost Evan’s entire team stayed.  We played a few hockey games, did a bit of shopping, meet up at the teams hospitality suite, ordered a whack of pizzas, drink a whack of beers, played mini-sticks, sent the kids to bed, and then met up at the hospitality suite again.  The parents talked about life, hockey, kids, more hockey, work, health care, and more about life.  In the middle we solved all of the worlds problems.

And the last night, we had a cake to celebrate the end of a great season, and gave gifts to the coaching staff: mugs from the kids and Liquor Store gift certificates from the parents.  I know both were appreciated, thou one got them slightly more excited.

While we were at the hotel I barely saw my kids.  They went swimming, played games or visited their friends on our floor.  I just trusted they were looked after, and they were, by other parents and older siblings, which was great because I really just cramped their style.

I will miss our hockey family.

On the way to a game I told the kids how proud I was of them this season.  They played well, firm, but fair.  They made lasting friendships, they were as happy when their team mates scored as when they did, and they were respectful to their competitors.  Evan said, “I’m proud of you too, Mamma.”  I asked why.  ”Well, you started out as probably the suckiest hockey parents and now you’re not half bad.”  True story!

Evans’s last game left me feeling mixed emotions.  Relief and sadness.  It’s hard to believe that I’d feel this way after writing this post a few sort years ago. Now, I love it!   And I’ll share with you my thoughts on imalgamation in some other post.  But for now I have a favor to ask.  I need you to do something for me, well really not for me, but for 15 adorable hockey kids, and their dedicated coaches.  I need you to go here every hour and vote for our team to bring home the Stanley Cup.  It’s ok if you won’t go every hour, but once a day would really be great.    I’m asking you here so that I can be redeemed for spelling Stanley Cup wrong in our write up.  I mean, I’m learning ok!  I’m the same girl who, when a player walked in the dressing room and said, “We went to shoot-outs,” I asked “Where’s Shoot-Outs” thinking it was a sports bar.  Evan just shook his head in embarrassment.

Please vote, send to your friends and ask them to vote too.

Thanks.

My boy Colin, my baby, turned 7 this weekend.  More on his party later.  Back to Colin.  He and I have a special bond.  Well of course we do, he’s my boy.  We all have a special bond with our children.

He and I have always had a big connection to food and cooking.  Even when he was a toddler, he’d insist on cooking with me, or cracking an egg, or adding the flour.  He spent much of his toddler years sitting on the stove.  Yes, that’s me, mother of the year.

And he was always a joy to feed and still is!  He’d try anything, and love almost everything.  I remember trying to communicate with a 2 year old how to spit the pit out of the olive.

And the proper way to crack the burnt sugar on creme brule.  He was always very dignified.

I have never had to tell him to finish his plate or his bowl of  squash and curry soup.

He’s always helpful in the kitchen.

And he’s very crafty.

And now my baby boy is 7.

Now he’s decided that he is big enough to sleep in the basement.  He went to the liberty of turning our sauna into his bedroom.

We have a sauna that we don’t really use.  Well I think we used it twice, and then the power bill came.  I decided it would be a better wine cellar.  But Colin, he has other plans.

When I went in his “room” to tuck him in, he showed me all the “features”.  Including his snack station.

I suspect he’ll last down there until the nachos are done.

My kids are great eaters, but it didn’t just happen- trust me!  It was a lot of work, many failed recipes, and much name calling.  I distinctly recall being called ‘the worst mamma in da world’ because I refused to make Kraft dinner and instead made then try my cabbage rolls.  Now they love my cabbage rolls BTW.

So I thought I’d post 2 broccoli recipes that your kids will love, and so will adults.  They’re both really good and easy and broccoli was 2 heads for $4 so it was perfect.

Cheesy Broccoli and Cauliflower

A head of broccoli and cauliflower

2 Tbsp butter

2 Tbsp flour

2 cups of milk

2 cups graded cheddar cheese

salt and pepper

Blanch the veggies for just a few minutes, until soft but still firm.  Drain.

Melt butter, add flour, stir and cook for a few minutes.  Add milk.  Cook until thick.  Strain and add cheese, season to taste.  Pour over the veggies and bake for 30 minutes at 350.

This is my kids eating it.  That white stuff on Evan’s plate is horseradish.  They won’t eat steak without it.

‘

Creamy and Broccoli casserole

8 chicken thighs

1/2 cup flour

1 Tbsp summer savory

2 Tbsp olive oil

2 cups chicken stock

4 carrots

2 chopped celery stocks

1 onion

1 head of brocolli

1/2 cup cream cheese

1/2 cup long grain rice

salt and pepper

Trim chicken of it’s fat.  Mix the herbs with the flour and dredge the chicken in the flour and then brown in the olive oil.  Remove to a plate.  Repeat all the chicken.  Add the onion to the pot.  Scrape the brown bits from the pot.  Add the carrots, celery and cook for a few minutes.  Add the chicken, rice chicken stock and the broccoli to the pot.  Cook for 30 minutes.  Add the cream cheese and stir.  Season and serve.

So I thought I’d show what David and I have been up to.  I’ll show pitures of the rooms that are finished and clean enough to put on the internet, or as my mother calls it, the world wide web.

Oh how I wish I would have taken before pictures but sadly I did not.  Thankfully however, I’m always snapping shots and found some in my enormous library.

Here is the entry way on Colin’s first day of school, after Evan gave himself a haircut and we had to shave his head, just in time for school pictures.  I’m a puddle on the floor. Where has the time gone!

Here is the completed entry way:

I love the colours.  The white is Fuzzy Mitten and the oatmeal yellowy colour is Crown Point Sand.

Note to self: put on that light switch plate.

This is the boys playroom before, when me and my buds were playing Rock Star after a night of dinner and red wine:

And this is the after, we kept Rock Star!

I asked Colin what colour he’d like me to paint his play room and he said “Camouflage.”  I feel this is a good compromise, don’t you?

That column was once a poll that we had covered because if looked a little too much like a stripper poll.

To my friends with daughters…you’re welcome.

And I have to show you this.  It’s a weird awkward wall that I can’t hang anything on it because there is a chimney behind it and there aren’t studs.  So I opted for this poster that I bought and had mounted at Lighthouse.

I didn’t buy this poster right away, even thou it was only $10.  I just couldn’t stop thinking about it and went back to buy it later in the day.  I just love it.  I don’t know why.  I’ve never been to Paris.  But I think if I ever go, I’ll skip just like her.

Lately I’ve been nervous, thinking that a camera crew from A&E will show up at my doorstep to shoot for an episode of Hoarders.

This is one of my closets.  I know, bad right?  It’s a catch all and I’m embarrassed to open it.  So why show it here?  I spent about 20 minutes and $12, yes, at the dollar store on these plastic baskets, and we have ourselves a transformed closet, one that I am not embarrassed to open in front of strangers.

Each basket holds something different.  One for craft supplies; one for tools; one for chords.

And I discovered that David has a crazy light bulb dependancy.  All different shapes, sized and voltage.  If you ever need a lightbulb, come and see us.

I too have a dependance to linen napkin.

So David… there is no judgement from me.

Being a good letter writer is a good virtue, I believe.

During parent teacher, Evan’s teacher told me that Evan is a great writer.  That came as no surprise to me.  He’s always been able to articulate his thoughts well, and for much of his life written in a journal.  I love that about him.

I was surprised to learn that he has two pen pals at school because of his letter writing ability.  Then I read one of his letters and I thought it was wonderful.

He’s given me permission to publish it for you to read.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’m going to sit down and put pen to paper and write a letter.

After the plaster and sanding, I had to go through all my kitchen cupboards.  My God, what a mess.  The dust made my already disastrous cupboards much worse.   While dusting them, I took everything out and evaluated whether or not I should keep it.  I have lots of serving platter and vases that I haven’t used in years.  I left them out and try to decide how I discard them.

But then I noticed the shape of all the odd glass vases that I have, and while I didn’t like them like this….

I knew that with a $7 can of semi-gloss black spray paint from Gow’s Home Hardware, I’d have an interesting and contemporary display…

Turning this…

Into this….

Every room, regardless of how small it is, needs some black, or at least that’s my philosophy.  And while they’re not perfect, it’s not bad for $7 and 20 minutes.

So by now you’re all aware that we did some reno’s that turned bad, right?  Well they’re done, for the most part, with the exception of some painting, picture hanging, lots of dusting and even more family counseling.

I painted our tiny downstairs powder room a chocolate brown despite that fact that everyone says you can’t paint a small room a dark colour.  I’m all…no colour will make it look big.  It’s a small room.  I’m ok with that.  Once it was painted, Colin walked in and said it look like his poop.  And now that he said it, it kind of did, and just the thought made you need to do a number two.  Probably not a bad choice of colour for this house.

Anyway, with the new paint colour I really didn’t want to put up the same pictures as I had hung there previous.  I wanted it to look like a new room.  Of course, I had no money to go out and buy new pictures, remember, the reno’s turned bad.  So that brings me to this post, because I know all of you appreciate my frugalness, I thought I’d share this with you.

First of all, have you heard of post secrets?  They changed my life!  I love reading other peoples secrets.  We all have one… or 23.  This is a website where people make post cards of their secret and send it in and this guy posts them.  He tours the country telling peoples secrets and is now a published author.

I love post secrets, so I framed them.

This is the view from the seat.  I love how now one has  something to read while they’re on the John and something to do while they wash their hands.

These are some of my favourites.  SOme secrets are hilarious, others are heart-breaking, and some are shocking.  I tried to keep it tame for my bathroom.

The best part is that I can change them after I get tired of them, and put newer secrets in them.

No actually, that isn’t the best part.  The best part is that these lovely shadow box type frames came from the Dollar store and were $1.25 each, which was great, because I broke one.

And I laughed.

If I spent $30 on each frame, I would not have laughed.  In fact, this one little project would have cost…help me out now…$270.  Instead, it cost $11.25, well $12.50 if you count the broken one that I will have to replace.  Oh…and of course the $30 for the cost of the book, Post Secrets, because if I didn’t buy the book and just printed them off of the internet, that would be a copy write infringement, and I would never do that;)

Just wait until you see what I did above my sink for only $7! You’ll love it!