Pat-A-Cake, Pat-A-Cake, Baker Joanne

Wednesday I was in a baking mood. Actually, the mood started when my overly proud husband told his co-workers of his wife's great homemade baking and I was volunteered to make some goodies for the night crew. Luckily for Scott I have a passion for mixing it up with the dough and love to share my pastries and sweets with all who will enjoy them. So I pulled out some recipes I have been wanting to try and jumped right into the flour bin.
Since having Jackson, I have found that I have a harder time getting a full batch of baking complete. But that day I had a very good baby who was just content to sit in his bouncy chair and watch Mommy make a mess around the kitchen. And with the help of my multitude of favourite kitchen appliances, I was able to create three different goodies in record time.



As I told Scott that day, I love my Kitchen Aid Professional Mixer. It's been a while since I last pulled it out of the pantry cupboard to assist me in making my yummy treats. Of course me being pregnant most of last year and not being able to move that mixer around on my own was probably the main reason. Wow! I forgot how heavy that thing is! But worth it's weight in time-saving and wrist-saving gold.



Scott was also making his own delicious creations for this month's firehall meeting. He had three crockpots going with fixings for pulled pork sandwiches. Which means he had three electrical outlets occupied in the kitchen. So I had to get creative in order to find outlets for my breadmaker and mixer. And of course the laptop too! That's where most of the recipes I drool over are stored until I can find time to make them. Here are the recipes I made...
-Pink Icing Cookies(inspired by the Cakespy)
-Best, Big, Fat, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
-Clone of a Cinnabon (Scott's sister Susan gave me this recipe)
They are super yummy and come highly recommended. And not just from Scott & my tummies! Don't worry though, all this baking is not just for us. I plan to share a lot with friends and family. So if you see us heading towards you with a cookie tin, lucky you! If not, sorry maybe next time but the recipes are here for you to try making them yourself. Enjoy!



Oh, here's another quick and easy recipe I made last week for homemade granola bars. Scott usually gets a granola bar in his lunches for work. And I decided that I would try to make my own just for the heck of it. You can switch up the fruit/nuts/fillings to your own taste. I use a combo of these two recipes after searching through so many on the internet. But they're both so simple to adapt to your liking and you can usually find all the ingredients at home if you have a pantry with the basic baking staples.
S'more Granola Bars
Quickie Granola Bars

5, 6, Pick Up Sticks

It's that time of year again when the buds are starting to peek out of the branches on the cherry trees and we wait for the wind to be just right for orchard bonfires. Today was one of those 'just right' days when the prunings were gathered from the previous years harvested trees to burn in order to make room for the coming year's fruit.


It was a family affair with three generations pitching in and lending a hand to get the work done. From the littlest hands picking up the twigs and leaves to the more experienced farmers using the rakes to move the large branches. All efforts are needed and appreciated to keep this family run orchard running smoothly.

You Gotta Wear Shades

Living in the beautiful sunny south, one must be prepared for the bright shiny days of sun. So with all the excursions we have been taking with the little J-Man, we have noticed that he has been getting a lot of glare during both our walks outside and his favourite rides in the car. The solution to our solar stickler was the search for sunglasses for daddy’s little dude.

Now it's not like you can walk into any store and find baby sized shades at any time of year and of course it has to be the right colour according to dad, purple just won't do... Black is always the colour of choice, but we found one better than your basic primary while on our most recent trip to K-town. As soon as the sales associate led us to their display of baby shades, Scott was instantly drawn to the first pair I picked up. It didn’t matter if they fit quite yet or what the price because they were camo print and that was enough for daddy. Search over sunglasses found! We ended up getting two pairs of shades because they were on sale and I know we will end up losing or breaking a pair before the summer is over. The second pair are also adjustable with a Velcro band to hold them in place so more room to grow for the little potato head. And so today we tried out the new camo shades complete with matching sweater and blanket during our afternoon walk. And as Daddy says, “Jackson looks bad a**!”

Literary Wednesdays

On Saturday Jackson & I went to the "Family Fair for Kids" at the local recreation centre. It was sponsored by Communities with Heart to inform families of the programs offered in their local areas for young children. While we were there we visited the regional library booth, actually mommy was drawn to the books as she always is whenever we go anywhere. We discovered that a library program for 2 yrs and under was starting that same week, so we signed up!
We arrived at the library yesterday at 10:30am right at the start time as Mommy still hasn't quite mastered arriving with a little one at least 10-15min before schedule as she used to do B.J. (before Jackson). I was relieved to see that it hadn't started yet and others were just settling into place. We met some great new little friends and their mommies while we listened to stories about bears. Then there was a little singing and puppet play. As I sat there and listened to the very patient librarian try to keep the attention of 6 little ones under the age of 3, I thought to myself that we must be very loud and disruptive for the others in the library. But my worries were put to rest as the librarian told us that we would have time to look for books for our children & ourselves before they opened for regular business hours. Wow! Special treatment in one of my most favourite places. Jackson & I picked out a few titles to read for the week before we finished up for the morning and put them into our new library bag. And we can't wait to go back and see everyone again next week and pick out more books.
As you can see from the picture, Jackson and I have been enjoying our new reads during today's storytime. We picked out a great board book about animal jobs, a cute little fun one that caught Mama's eye called 'Urban Babies Wear Black' that we are sure Daddy and Aunty Sheri would love. We even had a new friend recommend a great book for babies Jackson's age that has a lot of big black & white illustrations that mesmerize the little literary lover. And yes Grandpa & Grandma P, those are two french storybooks in our collection. Can't start them too young...

Puppy Demo Company for Hire

I had to share this funny story with you that happened to our crazy dogs, Kali & Logan. We have two medium sized dogs that have their own side yard, note the chain link fence, and their own houses courtesy of Scott's parents who built them. And our dogs love to chase each other around their yard and especially like to play 'King of the Dog House' as Scott calls it. This consists of one of them standing on the dog house roofs while the other barks from the ground below. Once they have barked at each other for awhile or we tell then 'Enough!', they start their chase around the houses, over the houses and all over the yard. There is a lot of jumping and pouncing and frenzied activity to this game. But today the game got a little too out of hand as you can tell from the photos. We didn't witness exactly what happened but we suspect that a little too much bouncing was happening on the overhang of the bigger house and the result is what you see. But what you can't really see too well is that Logan (he's the chewer) decided that it was time to do a little renovations to his house plans or just the insulation in general. So if you look carefully you can see chunks of styrofoam strewn about the yard from his quick demo work. But I think the funniest thing (yes we can laugh about this now that the initial shock of what they actually did has sunk in) was when we first looked outside to find this mess, Logan was calmly sitting on top of the still intact house looking at us with such an innocent look, much like the one in the picture, as if nothing were out of the ordinary and their roof was not sitting in their water dish. Ah yes, someone's got to love them and that would be us. So that was our day...how was yours?

Look at My Boos Boos

Today my baby received his first immunization shots. Little did my innocent child know where I was leading him to when we went for our little car ride this morning. I know for certain that I was more anxious about it than he was, mainly because he has no concept of what I was going to subject him to. And let me tell you that getting two shots in each thigh is something that you should not be ashamed of crying about. But being the little warrior that he was named for, he only had a single burst of crying when each needle went into his chubby little leg. Then it was over and he was happily nursing as if nothing even happened. I am so proud of my little trouper for his calm and collected demeanor. Sometimes I wonder who's child this really is...and then I thank God for the greatest gift He has given us...

Nap Times Treasured

When I first had Jackson, I was given the advice to sleep when the baby sleeps. Easier said than done. There are still a million and one things to get done during the day or night depending on your little sleeper. But I have also learned that they will still be there when you get up and look at the memory that you get to preserve when you take the time to nap.