Colin got his first trophy a few weeks ago after spending his first winter as a Lunenburg Falcon.  It reminded me of the most adorable story that I don’t think I have told you yet. Imagine, an untold story.

Evan has tons of trophies.  It’s his type A personality.  And because of Colin’s personality, very destructive, a fly by the seat of his pants, no commitment  kind-a-guy, Colin had none and we were having issues where Colin was stealing Evan’s trophies.

Of course because of Evan’s type A personality, he’d line up all his trophies, according to date received,  and having someone continuously mess with his system became an issue.  He wanted a safe.  That only seemed fair.

We bought him a safe for his room that had a key.  And all was right with the world.  He’d safely store his trophies and occasionally we’d open it and just look at them with pride.

I think 2 years ago, at our Church Boys League banquet, Colin finally got a badge to start off his collection.  Then, Evan was called up to accept yet another trophy and the image of Evan’s trophy collection expanding once again, while all Colin had was an unimpressive badge, was far too much for him to bare, and the poor guy had a melt down.  He cried the most gigantic crocodile tears as we sat in the audience as his brother accepted the trophy.  It was all very dysfunctional.

Evan came back to the table and proudly showed off his latest addition to the collection and to console his brother, and as a consolation, he gave Colin the box that his trophy was presented in.

Colin put the badge in the box and while I thought it was the most pathetic sight, according to Colin, this was his first trophy.

Back to the Lunenburg Falcons end of season banquet, he walked off the stage and ran to us proudly showing off his first real trophy, and in his eagerness he tripped and the trophy went flying in the air and broke in two pieces on the floor.  He ran to his dad and buried his head in David’s chest.  He had those same crocodile tears as he did years ago at the CBL banquet.

I explained to Colin that many trophies are proudly displayed on shelves today because of the help of a dab of crazy glue.

Every year our fire department does a fundraiser where they sell big trays of lasagna. Twenty bucks I think.  I don’t care who you are, it’s hard to make a decent lasagna for under 20 bucks unless you’re doing a bunch of them.  So every year, we buy one, toss a salad and buy a baguette and dinner is served.

One of the ladies group at the church does a chili fundraiser.  We got 2 containers and stuck them in the freezer for a rainy day.

I guess my point is this:  We support all kinds of fundraisers, but do one where we both win, you get money,  I don’t have to cook dinner, AND I’m supporting my local fire department.  That’s the kind of thing that I’ll not only give to, but I’ll be excited to give to and I’ll look forward to it year after year!

Oh- and the lasagna was delicious!

Remember awhile back I wrote about the reno turned ugly, and that we had to do a little more than expected?  Well this is why:

The wood on the left is good wood, the wood on the right is rotten.  It was so rotten that the exterior wall was removed by hand, and not difficultly.   Oh, and did I mentioned that we did this in January?  It was a cold few nights.

After we found the rot, I was rather…pissed!  Our home is only 20 years old.  We moved from a home that was 200 years old, and it was rock solid.  My advice?  Don’t go to see a house a contractor just built.  See one that he built 30 years ago, and talk to those homeowners.  We expect issues when we buy a house.  New shingles, cracked tiles, but not rot, not this bad.

Not to mention that there was evidence that a past home owner tried to hide it by putting up a fake wall.  I asked our contractor if he would kindly do the same.  Fortunately (or unfortunately) we have one of those contractors with a conscious who refused to entertain that thought, even though I was sorta kidding.

But here’s the thing, I really love this house.  And while the rot made me angry and it made me feel less safe, both physically and financially, I love entertaining here, I love raising the kids here, and I picture them coming home here with their girlfriends.  And we have much more living to do here, despite the fact that David has big plans of building a house on a patch of land in Indian Point, this is our home, for at least the next few years, and were determined to make it wonderful again.

We found all that was wrong, and made it right, made it better actually.  Where the turret had rot, we removed and expanded the kitchen into much needed pantry.

It gives me more room to cook, more storage, and a place for the kids to do homework and for me to spy.

Plus I love that there is now a convenient walk through to where they are from the kitchen.  And I can yell at them more effectively. That wall to the left, yeah, we are unsure of what we’re going to do there, probably shelving, but I wanted to live with it first to see what I wanted.

So there you have it.  Why our tiny simple reno took 2 1/2 months and 3 times the budget.  But..we love it.  We really love it!!

So let me ask you…do your kids fight?  Because mine do.

I remember fighting with my sister, and I remember my mothers ugly voice.  Looking back, I think we were very close to breaking her.   And maybe we did.  I remember my sister once locked herself in the bathroom because I was going to kill her.  I remember pulling her across the living room by her feet in a fit of rage and she got carpet burn along her entire spine.  I think if you looked, she still has a scar.

Now, it wasn’t just me.  She did her fair share of damage.  Like the time she broke a bottle over my head and I got stitches.  I have a bald spot to prove it.  I remember when she ran over my head with a toboggan, and I remember her pulling me back to the house pleading with me not to tell mom and dad, while I all-but held my eyeball in my hand.  I still have a funky eyebrow.  And I remember spending a few days in the hospital and being so excited to go home and see my sister…my abuser.  I remember coming home with all the peanut butter packages I stole from the hospital and I gave them to her.  My mother taught me well.  To this day the woman doesn’t leave behind a package of sugar.  I’m not lying.

And my kids fight, like cats and dogs sometimes.  And then the other day, Colin was at a friends house for a few hours and I think Evan was lost.  He couldn’t wait for him to get home.  He talked about how bored he was and asked if I could go get him.  And then almost as soon as I did, they fought over control of the remote.

And then, I walked down to the basement to see what they were up to, or what they were bidding on Ebay, when I saw this:

The buggers.

And all was forgiven.

By now, if you’ve read me for awhile, you know that Colin is a wonderful little lad who is continuously surprising up with his ism’s. He likes wrestling, hockey, he wears pajamas that are disguised as soft pants every day to school, he only brushes his teeth after we’ve bribed him, he can be charming, and difficult, he  struggles in school but is smart.  Smart enough to know that when he wakes up in the morning and wraps his arms around my neck and say “Good morning beautiful” it’s going to be a good day for him.

And as you all may be aware, Colin loves to cook.  So much so that I’ve stopped fighting it and I’ve showed him the proper way to chop an onion, turn on the stove and how to whisk an egg.  And I knew he was serious when, after his first burn from the stove element, he grabbed a bag of frozen peas from the freezer and went right back to his pan to saute his chopped onion.

He is his mothers son.  Because anyone who has eaten at my house a time or two knows that it’s not uncommon to see me eating dinner with my hand in a pitcher of ice water.  Getting burned is just part of cooking.

After signing Evan up for spring hockey, and getting a sense that my poor Colin is falling through the cracks, I asked him, “Colin, what would you like to do this spring?  Horse back ride?  Golf with Dad?  Spring Soccer?  Tell me!”  And his responce.  ”I have to think about it.”  Fair enough.  And after he thought about it for a day, I asked him if he had a chance to think about it, and he said in disappear, ” All I want to do is cook.”

So cook it is.

Colin and I have set on a new adventure and will be doing a cookbook of the food he likes.  Honestly, this won’t be influenced by me.  I’m merely the food photographer, the food purchaser, and the recipe-writer-downer.  Oh- and the payer for the printing, but fortunately, I know some people.

Some recipes will include:

Blueberry Chicken, which is made with blueberry jam and is surprisingly delicious!  I drew the line at adding peanut butter!

Fish and chip wrap- with the taste of dill and wonderful crunch.

I’m hoping it will be ready in time to give as end of the year gifts at school.

What did you do for Earth Hour?  Me?  David and I went to friends for dinner, and we ate food from Nova Scotia by candle light.  It was the least we could do to save the world.

Included in our menu: Nova Scotia potatoes stuffed with Fox Hill Cheese from Apple Berry Farm; a salad with Terra Beta Cranberries in Lunenburg, Jost wine, and these awesome Lemon Kiss cups made with local eggs from Sarsam Farms in Upper Branch.  They were so good and so easy I thought I’d share the recipe.  They were such a hit, I made them for Easter dinner but doubled the recipe.  Be ye not so stupid.  Because of all the eggs, you can’t double this recipe.

They were cakey on the top and custardy on the bottom.

Lemon Kiss Cups

3 large eggs seperated

1/2  cup sugar

2 Tbsp flour

1/4 cup lemon juice plus rind from one lemon

1 cup milk

1/4 tsp salt

Whisk the sugar and the yolks together until light and fluffy.

Gently add flour, lemon juice and rind, and milk.

In a separate bowl, whisk the the egg whites and the salt until it reaches the soft peaks  stage.

Gently fold the white mixture into the lemon mixture.  Add 1/2 cup to 6 buttered ramekins.  The batter will be runny.

Put the ramekins in a baking tray lined with a dish cloth and prepare a water bath (add boiling water to the baking tray)  Bake in a 350 preheated oven for 20 minutes.  The top will be set, the bottom will be soft and custard like.

Top with some berries and powdered sugar.

Then, perhaps the most fun of the night occurred after dinner when David and Nadia noticed a game on the coffee table, and their competitive nature didn’t care that it was one of Jen’s kids Bee game which is recommended for kids under 8.  It just goes to show you, it doesn’t matter what I do with them, we have fun.

Oh, how I will miss my Nadia.

We all have them.  You know, a few odd, mish-mashed candles laying around that you don’t know what to do with, or you bring them out at Christmas.  Me…I have 4.

So instead of throw them away, I decided that we needed some ambient lighting outside on our back patio.

I took these old candles

Then I took some cool paper…

and more paper

Paper that I thought would coordinate with our outdoor decor.

And I simply covered the glass candle holders with the paper.

And then I loved the result so much, I found more glass candle holders.

And I covered them with paper.

And I think they look great outside on our back patio.

And all for a cost of $10 for the paper and 10 minutes of my time.  Bring on outdoor entertaining.

Our renovation started with the idea to remove the grouse carpet from the stairs and lay hardwood.  It ended up being the last thing to be complete.

It started out like this:

We decided that as well as remove the carpet we’d paint the spindles.  We lost some friends over that decision.  Some people are all ‘wood sacred.’  And I get that, I do.  I mean, don’t paint nice wood.   My sister-in-law has solid cherry stairs, and if she were to paint them there’d be a line up of people wanted to do her harm, and I’d be at the front of the line.  But these aren’t nice.  There crap actually.  And don’t they look much nicer painted?

and this:

The art that is hanging features all local artists.

This is our old house painted by Leslee Morgan.  My friends gave it to me as a wedding gift.  There are golf clubs and our cats on the porch.  Lovely isn’t it?

This one is J’anna Jaqulyn’s, my old water colour teacher (old as in past, not as in age).

This one was painted by Buzz Baker, it’s of the 3 churches.

This one is mine..

And these little jewels were painted by the boys, and I love them.

This wall of local art is a great way to counteract the mass produced piece that is hanging in my dining room that I have literally been attacked in the grocery store by people insisting that I tell them where I bought it.

No, I didn’t make it, thou with a tube of Gorilla glue, a few cans of spray paint and a day of yard saleing, I’m sure I could.

This, I got at Pier 1 in Halifax for $85.