Pancake Breakfast Sandwich

It's Earth Hour today.  So at 8.30 pm we are being asked worldwide to turn all our lights off and not to use any electricity where possible.

So have you ever had a pancake breakfast sandwich? A local gas station had a coupon offering these for free with the purchase of a coffee, so I dropped by there one morning. It was pretty good and so was the coffee. They have these restaurants on premises called 'Neighbours'. I thought I might as well gas up while I was there, so I guess it did bring people in for a good reason!  It's a sandwich, but instead of bread, they use pancakes as pictured.

Pancake Breakfast Sandwich

Paint Party Friday - The View

It's time for Paint Party Friday! Please visit some of the other participants in this fun art co-op!  Can you believe it's almost the end of March?

This acrylic ACEO is called 'The View'.  I had to paint over this one so many times, until I was finally happy with the look. 

A Walk

I went for a morning walk this past weekend. Here are a few photos I took on this overcast morning.  It seems the willow trees are the first to start sprouting new leaves. The sun came out in the afternoon.  I plucked a few weeds out of the garden, those are early too!

At The Pond

The Forsythias are one of the first flowering shrubs.  The pretty yellow colour doesn't last very long, sort of like  cherry blossoms.

Forsythia

Brown Rice Crisps

I bought these brown rice crisps recently and we loved them. They would be especially good for people with wheat allergies. We had them with salsa sauce as they tasted very much like tortilla chips but they were crisp and delicious eaten plain.

L saw the new movie 'The Hunger Games' with her boyfriend on the weekend.  She loved it.  I don't think it's my kind of movie, it sounds very stressful. Although my sister says it has a strong female lead, so I might see it.  Are you going to see it? It sounds like a hit movie.

This article was in the newspaper a few days ago and I subscribed to this man's newsletter:

Cape Breton man’s daily sunrise photos emailed around world

Creative Tuesdays - April Showers

Welcome to MMm's Creative Tuesdays' 'April Showers' theme!

Here is my 'April showers' interpretation in an acrylic ACEO. Please stop by the other talented participants and join in the fun!

And I happened upon PJ's blog last night and she had found a marriage test from the 1950's. Times have changed for sure!

Spam Adventures

This past Saturday morning, I decided it was time to use my can of Spam Light. The English Kitchen posted a warm potato salad with ham recipe and it inspired me to make something similar.  I think she mentioned the mustard dressing being lighter than using mayonnaise.  Here's my recipe and some photos.

Warm Potato Salad with  Mustard Dressing

2 cups of  new potatoes

1/2 to 1 cup of chopped ham (or spam light)

2 cups of frozen mixed vegetables

Mustard dressing 

2 tbs apple cider vinegar

1 tsp dijon mustard

2 tbs olive oil

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp onion powder

Bring potatoes to a boil in lightly salted water.

After about 10 minutes, add frozen vegetables.

Once it has come to a boil, simmer for a further 3 to 5 minutes and drain

Meanwhile, mix dressing and then combine it with the drained vegetables in a bowl.

Mustard Dressing, chopped Spam, frozen vegetables

boiled new potatoes and mixed vegetables

add mustard dressing

Warm Potato Salad

I then mixed a couple of chopped spam slices into a scrambled egg mixture
and made Spam Light with Scrambled Eggs.  It would've also made a good omelette.

Spam Scrambled Eggs

Finally, I pan fried the remaining spam slices in a few tablespoons of olive oil and these were the best of all!

Pan Fried Spam

Here is my brunch platter!

spam brunch

Sunday Sketches - Spider Chrysanthemum

It's time for Sunday Sketches! Please stop by and visit everyone in this fun art co-op!

This acrylic ACEO is of a spider chrysanthemum flower. I love these, they make me think of 'bad hair days', wild and untamed but somehow appealing. I had a bit of trouble getting the proportions right, then I ended up lightening the green shade of the flower until it finally looked 'presentable'.  The beauty of acrylics is that you just paint over what you don't like and keep trying!

Pretty Flowers

Here are some pretty flowers I saw at the supermarket recently. I love those spider chrysanthemums (the green ones):

I received a free copy of a new magazine called 'Good Times' which is a retirement magazine. I enjoyed reading it and am thinking about subscribing. There was at least one interesting article saying that people in their fifties should start planning their retirement. It said retirement is not something passive, it should be thought of in almost the same way as planning a future career based on your hopes and dreams and what you love doing. At least that is what I got out of the article. I never thought about it like that. It profiled a couple ages 59 and 61 living happily.

Then I thought, those savvy marketers must have targeted me to receive this free magazine! Yes, it's a very unsettling feeling.

Included with this magazine was a flyer recommending us to ask our doctors for our shingles vaccine. This seems to make a lot of sense. It says one in three people will develop shingles especially if you've had chicken pox (which most people have had). So have you had your shingles vaccine and/or do you think you'll get one?

Paint Party Friday - Cherry Blossoms

Welcome to another Paint Party Friday!  This fun (year old)  co-op is very popular, do visit some of the talented participants!  I had some leftover yellow paint from squeezing too much out for a previous work, so I used it as the background and starting point to this acrylic ACEO.  Then I decided pink cherry blossoms would go well with it and of course, they are so spring-like and cheerful!  Hope you like this one.

Pretty Clouds and Sunset

I spotted these pretty clouds on the weekend. It was a gorgeous, warm day, almost T-shirt weather.

Pretty Clouds

A few hours later, I caught this pretty sunset in the same spot:

City Sunset

Yesterday in my aerobics class our instructor asked us what we wanted for Easter. She's funny, after a pause, she said she wants Diamonds! Didn't think about that one, sounds good to me! It seems everyone has an Ipad these days, she did. In fact, she played her songs on it, as she had misplaced her regular CD.

After that, the weather was great, so I took my mom to McDonald's to try their new McBistro Chicken Sandwich. They have a 50% off special this week, so I got 2 grilled chicken ones with bacon. The bacon made all the difference, and probably the generous helping of mayonnaise that goes with it! Well, it was whole-grain bread.

While I was in line, this older woman was loudly pushing her way to the front of the line. Her son and daughter were with her. Her son put his arm on her shoulder and she yelled 'don't touch me!' I asked the daughter if it was Alzheimer's and she said 'yes'. Apparently her mom had walked out of her nursing home and they were contacted. She said she wanted to go to Walmart. They gave her some lunch and I noticed everytime the daughter tried to offer her a bite of sandwich, she re-coiled as if being attacked until she eventually decided to take a bite. It's a difficult time of life.

Digital X-Rays

Here is some purple crocus blooming in my garden. Everything is starting to bud in the warm weather.  Those are some lavender plants above them, leftover from last year, I trim them back slightly.

Purple Crocus

Yesterday I went to the dentist for a check-up. I see my cousin. He has trained another cousin as his dental assistant. It's neat, all 3 cousins in the same room. My dental assistant cousin was asked to take digital x-rays this time. They have done away with the conventional machine. This time she plugged some apparatus into a computer and took her images. The computer prompted her by voice when it was ready to take the next image. It's supposed to be a lot less radiation. She made sure to put the protective cape all the way up my neck. I've been reading that this is the correct way to do this. We also had a nice chat (when I could) and caught up with each other. It was a lovely 'summery' spring day.

Spam Light

Jen at Sadie Inspired is having a wonderful giveaway to celebrate her 100th post.  Hop on over and enter before March 22, lovely prizes!

We have been having summery weather the past week. M loves it but I can't help but feel uneasy that this is not natural for the time of year. Anyway, my friend S and I went to a lovely Asian supermarket on the weekend and we bought some cans of Spam Light. I didn't realize there was such a thing. Mind you, it may be 25% less fat, but 1/6 of the can is 20% of your day's fat and 25% of your day's sodium! Ok, I shouldn't have bought it, but I suppose the idea is to use just a bit of it for flavour with say, eggs. I remember having Spam as a child but it's been a long time.

The supermarket was also giving out a lot of free food samples, so we tasted savoury green onion pancakes, ginseng tea and ginseng candy, meusli porridge (tasted like oatmeal), steamed spareribs with squash, curried lamb dumplings, seafood dumplings, and I forget what else. Suffice to say it was so much fun, it felt like we had made a trip to Asia. I'm also happy not to have any serious food allergies so I could freely taste everything.

Cabbage, Green Bean, New Potato boil

I was walking a few days ago and thought that I simply must use up my batch of new potatoes, and that half  cabbage in the fridge.   I remembered I also had some slices of low-sodium Montreal smoked meat (similar to pastrami I guess). So when I returned home, I filled my dutch pot with:

 2 cups of low-sodium chicken stock
 2 cups of water
1/2 cabbage, sliced
10 Montreal smoked meat slices, chopped (can use any smoked meat)
 2 cloves of minced garlic
 1 chopped onion
 1 1/2 tsp of dried basil
 2 cups of frozen green beans

I brought the pot to a boil and simmered everything, partially covered,  for about half an hour. It was delicious!  M said it looked like a flower arrangement!  It's great the next day for a 'leftovers' lunch.

Sunday Sketches - Reflection

For Sunday Sketches, this acrylic ACEO is called 'Reflection'. I was inspired by Charles Pachter's 'Red Barn Reflected', shown below.

Charles Pachter "Red Barn Reflected"

Shamrock

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  We're having record breaking, summery, t-shirt weather, not normal for this time of year.  The plants must be confused.

I saw these shamrock plants at the grocery store earlier this week.  Enjoy!

Irish Blessing
May you always walk in sunshine.
May you never want for more.
May Irish angels rest their wings right beside your door.

Paint Party Friday - Seashore

Welcome to Paint Party Friday! This one is entitled 'Seashore'. I was inspired by a travel photo in the newspaper, but couldn't quite capture the turquoise water. I like this shade as well, though. It still has the calming effect! Please stop by the others and join us!

Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think.
Robert Henri

Brown Tomatoes

Brown Tomatoes

I saw these brown tomatoes from Mexico while I was shopping at Costco early this week. I didn't buy them as I thought they likely just taste like tomatoes. Have you ever seen or had these before? My friend bought some and says they taste sweeter than the regular ones, so maybe I'll try them another time.

I was out walking with my friend S  when she ran into an acquaintance biking in the neighbourhood.  Their kids used to play baseball together years ago.  It turns out the gentleman is newly retired and still deciding what to do to keep himself busy.  His daughters are in university and his wife will decide whether she herself will retire later this year.  He said I looked familiar and wondered if I was ever involved in baseball.  I told him there was no chance of that, as I have never been the least interested in the sport.  I doubted whether I really did look familiar to him, and thought he was just saying that in a polite way.

A few minutes after we bid him goodbye, I remembered his daughters used to go to the same dance school as my daughter L for many years.  It was interesting catching up after the fact!  Maybe he remembered who I was later on as well.  His wife used to take the girls to class more often, so I would've had a better memory of her.  When I mentioned the story to L, she said his daughters are really good friends with mutual friends of ours as they are their neighbours!  Small world anyway.

My Floral Arrangments

I don't often sit down to do floral arrangements. This project started when I saw this simple inspiration arrangement while out shopping:

My Inspiration

I was able to find some large roses at the dollar store and had these vases for years, also from the dollar store.

My vases and roses

I also had these styrofoam balls and they fit into the  vases perfectly.  I used a knife to make the top of the foam level with the vase.  Depending on the arrangement, sometimes you have the foam a bit higher than the vase.

Materials Used

The next step was to secure the styrofoam to the vase using green duct tape.

Securing the styrofoam

I stripped most of the leaves off the artificial rose stem and glued them (with a glue gun) to the top of the foam to cover the base (completely). 

cover the base with leaves

Then I cut the rose off the stem with a wire cutter, leaving a few inches to be able to poke it through the styrofoam.  I put a bit of warm glue on the spot where I poked the rose through.  Here is the first vase completed!  I was happy with it.

first arrangement completed

How do you think it compares with the Inspiration arrangement?

The Inspiration Arrangement

The finished look

I had so much fun with this and I don't think this project  took me more than an hour!  It wasn't very messy either.  Using the glue gun is actually quite fun and it's so fast!

Creative Tuesdays - Thumbprints

It's time for Creative Tuesdays' Thumbprints theme today!

I hope you like my acrylic ACEO interpretation!  Here's looking at Spring and Summer!

Crocus

Last Wednesday the temperatures hit record highs for the season and I noticed the first signs of spring peeking out in my garden:

There was an interesting article in the newpaper yesterday about the Artists group fighting for re-sale rights.

  'In 2003, Charles Pachter painted a vibrant, poppy-red double image of a barn, as seen after the springtime thaw had turned the fields near his rural studio into sodden slicks of melted snow. It was called “Red Barn Reflected,” '  Here is that beautiful painting:

Anyway ' a CARFAC-proposed amendment to the Canadian Copyright Act that would give living artists a five per cent royalty on all sales of their work after its original sale' is under review by a government committee.

Sunday Sketches - Spring Flowers

Welcome to Sunday Sketches.

I did some spring flowers for this week (acrylic ACEO).

And I now have my very own Sunday Sketches mug, which arrived last week, it's so cute:

Whoever Blinks

Whoever blinks first loses....Go!

Hope you're having a happy Saturday! I went for a walk yesterday morning to meet my friend S at the local McDonald's. It was colder than we thought, and the weather was very unstable. It was sunny when I left the house, cloudy by the time I got to McDonald's then it started snowing heavily while we had our coffee. I was covered in the powdery white stuff by the time I got back home, thankful I had decided to wear my boots. Then it stopped snowing for awhile and then started again. By the afternoon it was clear and sunny again, you wouldn't know it had snowed!

L Skyped us briefly in the evening.  They are having friends visit from out of town this weekend and were about to have a big party at home.  Likely St. Patrick's Day celebrations. Well, I'm happy she was able to think of us in the middle of all that excitement!

And did you notice the beautiful full moon last night?  It was so bright!

Paint Party Friday - Spring Flowers

Welcome to PPF's one year Anniversary!

It's only fitting that I did a bunch of Spring Flowers (acrylic ACEO) to celebrate! It was a bit of a coincidence, it must have been in the back of my mind!  Actually, I had the flowers blooming on my dining table and notice how the tulips are almost spent?  Still beautiful, and all the more interesting I thought.

Flower Arrangement Inspiration

I've been inspired to create some simple floral arrangements based on something I saw in the stores recently. I found these pretty red roses at the dollar store and had these 3 vases for quite a few years also from the dollar store. Stay tuned and hopefully I can get this done pretty soon!

I took a dramatic tumble in my aerobics class at the gym yesterday.  Fortunately it looked a lot worse than it was.  I must've tripped and then lost my balance, landed on my bum with one hand helping to break the fall.   The nice ladies next to me were very warm and sympathetic but I was able to get up quickly and resume activities.

The March break spring holiday starts this weekend, for many with elementary and secondary school kids.  K will be doing a lot of tennis.

Cloudy Morning

This was the sun trying to peek out of the clouds yesterday morning. It was a cold -5C. It warmed up to about 5C later that afternoon.  I just have some trivia for you today:

 I was at the gym and saw the cutest pair of polka dot winter boots lying on the floor.  The multi-coloured dots were imprinted on a camel-coloured suede material if I remember correctly.  I was tempted to take a photo of them for you, but then I decided it wasn't appropriate to be taking photos inside the ladies change room!

 I heard on the radio that Oreo cookies was celebrating its 100th anniversary with a special edition cookie.  'To celebrate, Oreo’s parent company, Nabisco (a division of Kraft Foods), has released a limited edition “Birthday Cake” Oreo. It features a simpler cookie design that hearkens back to the original, early 20^th -century Oreo logo, as well as that iconic vanilla frosting mixed with rainbow sprinkles.'

Earth Hour will be celebrated this March 31 at 8:30 p.m. Will you be switching off lights and major appliances for one hour?  I remember one year I was on vacation and I think I just lost track of it the next year.

Senior Role Model

Kay had this wonderful post yesterday about her 82 year old mom's typical day and I told her that her mom is a senior role model.  If we could all hope to live such a full life at that age!  Surely it must be the secret to a long, happy life.

And here is a car I saw yesterday in a parking lot.  It's not quite to my taste but interesting nonetheless!

In this same plaza, I noticed a security guard patrolling outside the local bank there. Then I remembered it must have been the one that was recently robbed in the past week. It used to be such a safe, quiet area. So I was speaking to a cashier in one of the stores and I asked her if she was scared. She said, 'not really...and she added...they didn't get much money as the tellers ensure they don't have that much on hand anymore'. It was good to know that nobody was hurt either.

I'm Wary

I'm learning about marketing as K is taking a marketing course at school this year. It makes me a bit uncomfortable going into the stores lately, knowing what I know now. I didn't realize marketers target their customers in such detail, they know so much about each age group and what their tastes are. I feel as if I can't trust them, as if I'm being manipulated. And I'm paying closer attention to the products, trying to discern the quality and whether it's in my best interest to buy the product.

A friend of mine told me she avoids shopping in Walmart because they don't have a good record of treating their employees well. They hire mostly part time workers to avoid paying too many benefits. It's not the only place that does that. Apparently Costco has a really good record. Their business is run as a non-profit (I think she said that) and the employees have a lot of benefits.

Last Friday morning we woke up to the fact that our internet connection wasn't working. It turned out to be a broken cable modem, it likely died from old age. I had a kind of panic, in fact I ended up at the library later that morning so I could log on and do a few things. I had to postpone an online bill payment, and hoped I wouldn't need to use Google for anything! Fortunately M was able to get a new cable modem by end of day. It seems the cable company is always short of these, but some happened to be delivered that afternoon. We also got new digital TV boxes as apparently the cable company is going completely digital and we would lose some channels otherwise. The cable company is always short of these as well because a lot of people need to upgrade.

Anyway, this is just some food for thought today!

Sunday Sketches - Pink

Welcome to Sunday Sketches! It's a fun art co-op, please visit the other participants!

My acrylic ACEO this week is entitled 'Pink'. Hope you like it.

Cute Florals

Here are some cute floral arrangements I noticed in a  store recently. I have 3 vases of a similar size,  I think I may search for some large flowers and try a similar single flower in them.  Not that I need any more flowers in my house!

Large Flower

And here is an interesting and pretty hanging topiary ball, perfect for spring!

Hanging Topiary Ball

Paint Party Friday - Silver Leaf

It's time for Paint Party Friday!  Please visit the other wonderful participants in this fun art co-op.

My acrylic ACEO this week is entitled 'Silver Leaf' as I was inspired to use silver and orange in my colour scheme.

Migrating Landscapes

Welcome to March!

We were downtown recently and happened upon this Migrating Landscapes Exhibition. You can read more about it here.

In this national project, young Canadian architects ages 45 and under were invited to  build models of dwellings that address their own unique experiences of migration.  Winners will go to the Venice Biennale 2012. 'The Venice Biennale in Architecture is the single most important and prestigious international event in contemporary architecture; it is to architecture what the Olympics are to sports.'

Well, you learn something new every day!