Can't Contain The Excitement

I'm super excited for this Saturday. I finally get a Saturday off from work (been here for 2 years and this will be my first Saturday that I haven't had to use vacation time to take off). But that's not why I'm excited.

I decided last weekend while Justin and I were driving over mountains (literly. I will make a post about this later as I'm again posting at work) that we should head up to Sloquet Hot Springs and camp in the truck over night.

This is going to be a totally different experience for me. We would tent it, but we live in the Wet Coast so it's constantly raining. Not the best weather to be in a tent in. So we are going to pack as little as needed, and then when we get to the site fold the seats down in the Xterra and blow up the air mattress in the back. I've been reading about sleeping in the back of the X on one of the forums that I read. Everyone seems to really enjoy it. And I am super stoked to do it. Hopefully this first attempt goes well. Then I'll want to do it all the time.

And of course I will make a post about our trip to the Hot Springs. So that's two posts that I am going to be writing now. I'll probably do the mountain one tomorrow, since I have the day off. Although I do have planing and packing for the trip to do. I will try to fit it in.

Ta ta for now :-)

Shout Outs To Other Blogs That I Read

I'm writing another post at work, as it is slower today and my boss isn't going to be in today so I figured I'd quickly make a post. Which will have to be even quicker as one of my salesmen is going to be giving me items to bag and tag.

I have mentioned in my first blog that I am an avid reader of other blogs. So I thought I would share with you the list of blogs that I read regularily (when they update, as some of them haven't been updating lately). And as checking the addresses for all the blogs, I noticed that one of them has updated. Now I'm excited :-)

So I'm going to start with the cooking blogs. These are the four blogs that I print off recipes the most. Once I start doing more recipe posts, I will link back to these pages if I used one of their recipes. The blogs are not listed in any particular order, just how I got them off my blog list.

Cooking Blogs

Curry And Comfort

Eat Yourself Skinny
And here is her button:















The Farm Girl Recipes
And her button:


Skinny Taste


Travel/Overlander Blogs

Home On The Highway I came across this blog while lerking through a 4x4ing website.

Drive Nacho Drive I got linked to this blog from Home On The Highway. I now read both of them religiously.



Life / Everything Else

Barnes Daily Circus I started reading this blog after seeing her address in a comment on this blog.

Filing Jointly...Finally I can't remember how I came across Lauren's blog, but I read it from the beginning over the course of a month.
And Lauren's button:

Happy Endingz: Confessions of An Erotic Masseuse This is the first blog that I ever started reading. I don't remember how I got to it, all I know is that I love reading CJ's stories.

Naptime Is For Drinking This is one of the ladies who I have "met" through a forum that I frequent quite often. The potty training stories are the best.

Don't Encourage Me This is one of my Uncles. That's all the introduction that this one needs.

So those are the blogs that I read. I want a button now. But I have no idea how to go about making one. Maybe once I get more readers, I will create myself a button. I hope you check out these other blogs and maybe you'll find a new favorite within them.

I Was Bored, So I Made Cookies

I’m an avid printer of different recipes from the many different blogs that I read. So I decided to take some photos of the cookies that I made yesterday and share it with my currently non-existent readers.

This is a cookie recipe that I got in high school. It’s not my normal chocolate chip cookie recipe, but I made a comment that it was yummy so I decided to try it out again. With some modifications. I’m a fan of the “lets add bacon to everything” era that is going on currently. I have made bacon chocolate chip cookies before but I wasn’t happy with the result so I had to try making them again. Although it was a different recipe this time and I changed my method of making the bacon.

Hopefully I can figure out how to make a printable version of the recipe. But for now I will just type it in normally. The pictures may seem kind of in coherent, but this is my first recipe post so bear with me.

  I started off by frying up my bacon. I only had 3 stripes of bacon left in the fridge, so I just used them. Normally I would put about 5 or 6 strips in the mix. I pre cut up the bacon into smaller pieces and then cooked them until they were golden brown.

This is after I have mixed my butter, sugar and other wet ingrediants together.

Everything is all mixed together, excpet for the bacon. You can see the nice golden crispy-ness of the bacon in this picture. There was not nearly enough bacon added to this recipe when I made it. I love me some bacon-y goodness.

Cookies are all mixed and scooped. This is the second sheet of cookies waiting to go into the oven. You can slightly see some of the bacon-y goodness in the dough. Mmmm cookie dough.

Here is all the cookies that the recipe made. The paper originally said that it made one dozen, but then I crossed that out and put down 3.5 dozen. However when I made the recipe this time it only made 2.5 dozen. They were an average size cookie when I made them this time, so I’m going to say that the recipe makes 2.5 dozen, so feel free to double as you please.

I did have a close up of a cookie, but I just looked at it again and it’s really blurry so I’m not including it in this post. That’s what you get when you decide at the spur of the moment to take photos of yourself making cookies and the batteries in your camera are dead, so you’re left taking photos with your Blackberry.  Anyways, here is the recipe for my Bacon Chocolate Chunk Cookies. I hope you enjoy them :-)

Bacon Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Yield: 2.5 dozen
Oven Temperature: 350º F
Baking Time: 14 minutes

½ cup + 2 TBSP butter
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg
½ tsp vanilla extract
1 TBSP yogurt or sour cream (I used vanilla greek yogurt)
1¼ cup flour
1¼ cup quick cooking oatmeal
¼ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
3/4 cup chopped pecans or ½ cup walnuts
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
5-6 strips bacon finely chopped, cooked to golden brown

1. Cream butter
2. Add sugar and cream until light and fluffy
3. Add eggs and vanilla extract and beat well.
4. Add sour cream and beat until mixed.
5. In a large bowl combine flour, oatmeal, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
6. Add gradually to creamed mixture and beat until blended.
7. Stir in nuts, chocolate chips and bacon.
8. Using an ice cream scoop or two tablespoons, form cookies and drop onto cookie sheets that have parchment paper on them.
  *** The parchment makes it easy to slide the cookies right off the cookie sheet once baked, and saves on clean up time. You can also use the sheets multiple times before having to throw them away.
9. Bake for 14 minutes or until golden brown.

Little Ones Are Cute When Auntie Gets Hurt

So this past week I have been sicker than a dog. It started last Monday with a sore throat, progressed to me losing my voice completely on Friday and Saturday, and then moved into my sinuses and became a head cold.

On Sunday night it's my night to cook. So I was going crazy because I was trying to watch The Walking Dead on TV downstairs, while keeping an eye on the stove for my water to boil for Sidekicks. Well a commercial had come on so I'm walking up the stairs and somehow catch my toe on the top step. I go down like a sack of potatoes, thankfully not hitting the dryer. I start saying "ow" because it really hurt and mom comes over with my niece Emma (soon to be three) to make sure I'm alright. I tell mom to put the pasta in the water because it's probably boiling and Emma asks me if I'm okay. She then goes back to see Nana at the stove and I switch my position so that I'm sitting half cross legged with one foot on the floor. Emma comes back over and bends down to kiss my knee better. I tell her that I didn't hurt my knee and I would like a hug instead. Nope. No hug for Auntie. She instead gives my knee another kiss.

She is so adorable. I love my little ones. There are six little ones in total. I'll have to post about them sometime.

When the boss is away, the mouse will play (or blog)

I'm currently at work as I post this. It is incredibly slow, and since I have already updated myself on all the other blogs that I read, I figured I would do a little bit of an update on my own blog. And hopefully keep it up to more than one post per month as I am currently doing.

There hasn't really been much of an update with my foot at all. I hate my compression stockings. They make my foot hurt more now than it did before I got them. The foot still swells up a bit with them on, which is rather annoying. After work is usually when it is at its worst. I'm talking barely able to walk because I'm in so much pain. Not fun at all. I try not to let it affect my life too much, but sometimes it's really unbareable.

Along with my physio sessions, I have also started doing aqua spinning. I love being in the water, and I have gotten my mom involved too so I have someone to do it with. I'm currently doing three spinning classes a week. I go Monday and Wednesday evening with my mom, and then I go Friday morning before I start work. I might be adding Thursday morning also, followed by hopefully a Zumba class.

Before I hurt my foot, I took dance classes and did Zumba every week at one of the local recreation centres. I have been doing little bits of Zumba on the Wii. So I want to try to do a Zumba class and see if I am able to do it without causing too much pain to my foot. I would either have to do it in my sandals, or bare foot as I unable to put my hurt foot into an actual shoe yet. It puts too much pressure on the top of my foot. I attempted to put a runner on the other day and my foot pretty much screamed at me to take the damn thing off. So for the time being I am stuck with the lovely fashion statement of a runner and a sandal (at least at work).

Well that is all for me today. This weekend is Thanksgiving up here in the Great White North, so I get the ever popular two days off in a row (normally my days off are staggered).

Most stories start at the beginning, so lets start there

This is my second attempt at keeping a blog. Hopefully this one lasts longer than the 5 or so posts that my other blog managed to have. The main reason why I'm starting a new blog is that there is alot going on in my life currently, and since I can't always take photos of everything and my memory can be rather goldfishy at times, I figured a blog would be a good way to keep track of everything. Plus I have been addicted to some other blogs recently (I shall post links to the ones that I read most often in a later post) and am drawing inspiration off of them.

I have to give a bit of background story right now, so that when I make future postings you guys aren't wondering what the heck I'm talking about. So bare with me for this lovely drawn out story.



One of my favorite Partylite pieces

Back in December 2011, I was a Partylite consultant.
I was done at my clients house and was carrying one of my bins of products down her stairs so that I could leave. Well this client has carpeted, curved stairs and I managed to miss the bottom step altogether. I land really funny on my right foot, hear it go "pop" and it instantly swells up like a grapefruit. All I can really say is 'ow' as really, I'm more worried that I broke some of my product (if you know Partylite at all, you know that stuff isn't cheap at all). So I call my mom tell her what happened and she drives over with Justin (the boyfriend) so that he can drive me to the emergency room. 3.5 hours later, I have had x-rays done and the ER doctor tell me that nothing is broken, rest your foot, keep it elevated and take some Tylenol for pain. So we drive home under the impression that my foot is just sprained. Thankfully this was a Saturday night and I don't have to work Sundays.

At this point I cannot put any weight on my foot at all without being in a lot of pain. On Sunday my parents buy me a set of crutches from Value Village so that I can get around easier than hopping on my good foot or crawling. I never could use the crutches to go up or down the stairs, so I resorted to scooching up and down the stairs on my butt. I ended up taking that Monday off work, as the doctor did tell me to rest. That was the only day off that I took.

Fast forward to February. My foot is still the size of a grapefruit, I'm still in a lot of pain. This isn't a normal sprain (not that I would know as this is my first major injury in 26 years).  I'm in a lot of pain and don't know what to do, so I head to the ER, they run a blood test and then tell me that the ortho has just gone into surgery, but my blood results have come back positive for a blood clot. Well crap. So they inject me with a blood thinner and tell me to get an ultrasound done on my leg to determine where the clot is. I go for my ultrasound and they find a clot in my calf. I do not receive any drugs for it, however I did end up going back about 4 different times to get ultrasounds done. Today there is no clot, thankfully.

I finally get to see the orthopedic surgeon in March. He can't tell what is wrong with my foot because it's in too much pain. He sticks me on drugs to calm down my nerves and tells me to stop using the crutches and start walking on the foot as much as I can. So that night Justin and I head to our friend Glen's place (as he makes canes as a hobby) and he gives me a funky cane. At the end of May, I finally get back in to see the orthopedic surgeon again for my follow up appointment and he tells me that he thinks that I may of torn the main ligament in my foot and as it heals it is actually getting worse. He then refers me to an orthopedic surgeon who specialises in feet and I wait until July to see her.

She tells me to start swimming at least three times a week, start physio, and to get a compression stocking. She also sent me to a different hospital to get bone scans done, and I am currently waiting on those results. In the meantime I have done all the other items on her list. Since starting physio, my swelling has gone down quite a bit. I only got my compression stocking today so not sure how that is going to work out. The first test will be tomorrow at work.

So that is the story of my foot, so in any future postings if you're wondering about the foot, I will be sure to send a link back to this story.

Anyways, if you lasted through that post, congrats to you. I promise future postings won't be as boring or drawn out. :-)