New Endeavors

So in my last post, I mentioned that I bought myself a new DSLR camera and that I'm going to be showcasing my photos on this blog. Well, I have changed my mind just in a bit in that regard. Instead of showcasing my photos here, I'm going to be having a secoundary blog, as I going to start doing freelance work for my photography. My main focus will be events and outdoors. I am not interested in doing straight on portrait sessions (such as engagements, maternity, kids, wedding). I have never been the one to tell people to go into such and such pose. Having people in their natural states is more interesting, and only really having to tell people to pose when I ask them if I can take their photos. Photographing corporate events, sports, reunions and the like is more what I want to do.

If you are interested in checking out this new branch of my life, you can reach my photography blog here. At the time that I am making this post, I haven't done anything with the new blog as of yet, except create a simple page. Don't even have anything posted. Hopefully I will have some more on it in the coming week, as I already have one photo session that I want to showcase on there.

Hope you check out my new blog, and if you ever have an event that you would like photographed, please consider me.

TIme Goes By....

So 2018 is already half way over. How is that even possible?  It only feels like we just celebrated Christmas. Now we are on to Canada Day and summertime. And like always, I'm back to only posting in this blog twice a year. Nothing new there, I see. Although I do happen to think often about posting on here, however nothing ever transpires from it.

Being that we are half way through the year, I'm going to do a recap on what has happened so far.
1 - Had another successful (haha) year at the tax place. Although being back this year, I realized again why I stopped working there in the first place. So this year, will definitely be the last year that I am there. It is too much of a headache, and in this year in particular, it wasn't worth my time. Majority of my time was spent on my phone, playing games and not helping clients.

2 - I bought a motorcycle! Specifically I bought a 2018 Honda CRF 250 Rally. Awesome fact about this bike (who will from this point on be referred to as Girlie). She has the limited edition black paint scheme, and her serial number is #1 in the edition. So that is pretty cool. I haven't put many km's on her yet. I have decided to take riding lessons, as I figured I'd get a better handle of how to ride it as opposed to having Justin teach me. He did try teaching me, but I ended up getting more frustrated than anything, which wasn't a good thing. Today, I passed the Motorcycle Skills Assessment (which removes the restriction of having someone supervise me while I ride). So in two weeks I will be doing the traffic portion, learning about riding in traffic. Then in mid-August I will be taking my motorcycle road test. So that gives me lots of time to practice between when I do the traffic course, to when I do my road test.

3 - In September, I will be going back to school part time (online) at Capilano University. I will be taking the Legal Administrative Assistant program. It's only been 14 years since I graduated high school. It is about time that I figured out what I want to do career wise. I am super excited for this program. It will take three years to complete (seeing as it is online and part time, as I will be continuing to work full time). Once I successfully complete this program, and have the grades, I can move onto their Paralegal position. Which I am also excited to do.

Other than those three big things, it has just been minor things. Competed in a couple archery tournaments (although we've really been slack on that lately), bought myself a new DSLR camera, went to Calgary to buy a new dirt bike (Mini Me) for Justin, been on a few fishing trips (some together, a couple solo ones), and have been working. Oh, and I also just completed my Occupational First Aid Level 2 for work. So I'm certified in that now.

I will attempt to try to post more here. I really want to start getting into photography more (hence the new camera) and I think here would be a good place to showcase my pictures. Although that would also require having more traffic come to the site. Otherwise I'm just doing it for my own enjoyment. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Until next time, lovelies!!

New Year, New Recipes

Hello everyone out there in internet land!!

So with the new year and changing up the blog and that jazz, I am also going to start trying out some new recipes. Tonight was day 1 of new things.

Todays recipe is brought to you by: https://thesaltymarshmallow.com/crockpot-bourbon-bacon-pulled-pork/

The main reason as to why I chose this recipe was because while buying ingrediants for dinner last night, I discovered that Superstore has a scoocum deal on whole pork loins. So being the one that loves to have pulled pork, plus I just bought this
 from Bass Pro Shop and cannot wait to try it out.

This was technically a two day recipe as I have to wake up at 4am to go to work. I did the majority of the prep work the night before. There were some minor changes that I made to the recipe, that actually worked out well in my 'flavour'. (Ha! See what I did there?)
My night before prep included the following: I premade the sauce that the pork would be made in. For this recipe I used my whiskey of choice, Jack Daniels, 

for the bourbon that they called for. Along with the sauce, I also rubbed my pork roast and then used my vacuum sealer to seal in the flavour over night.

Bright and early in the morning (okay not really bright seeing as it was 4am and it's winter so the sun rarely comes out), I put my roast in the slow cooker, stirred up my sauce again and dumped it on top. You could definatly smell the whiskey in the mixture. Then I set my slow cooker on low and let it do its thing. 

When I got home, the house was filled with the wonderous smell of whiskey (my drink of choice). It was at this point that the recipe confused me. 

Whenever I normally make pulled pork (venison, etc), I always dump out the liquid that the meat was cooked in. Well with this recipe, from the sounds of it, the author wants you to add the meat back to the liquid. So after texting my best friend, Tara, and discussing pulled pork and how we normally make it, I came to the conclusion that I would reserve some of the liquid and then dumping the rest out. 

So after dumping out the liquid, I shred my pork, put it back in the pot and added the reserved liquid plus my bbq sauce and the bacon. I then let it heat up for a bit longer. Made up some coleslaw, sliced my buns and wham-bam thank you ma'am dinner is served. 

Needless to say it was different from my usual pulled pork recipe. Even Justin figured that out, as he immediately started asking what I did differently (he likes how I usually make my pulled pork). I never did get a response as to whether or not he liked it. He didn't say he didn't like it, so that's a plus. 

So I say give this one a try. You won't be disappointed. 

New Beginnings

Greetings and Salutations this fine 2018 day!

Well, the time has come for me to retire this blog. I haven't posted in here nearly as much as I was hoping that I would have throughout the time that I did have it. Plus I no longer have an Xterra, so the name is no longer relevant.
I am however going to be starting up a new blog. I am going to attempt (haha) to post in it everyday. We'll see how long that actually lasts. I will include a link at the bottom of this post once I think up a new name for my blog.

See ya'll on the other side!!

PSYCH!!! 

So it turns out that I can just change the name of my blog willy-nilly, so I do not need to create a  new one. I can just redesign and change up the one that I currently have. That is so much easier than thinking of a new name, and domain and theme. Yay for short cuts!!

Anywho... I will get to the redesigning later. For now I will finish up this post and start up a new one on what will hopefully happen with this blog.

Ta ta!

Making plans

Hello blogging world!

Oh look I'm back to my twice a year postings again. Definitely a step backwards.

There really hasn't been a lot going on lately. From the date of my last post there has been fishing and hunting. I can see that in the future there are going to be some changes. I'm not sure as to when these changes will come about, but I know they are coming.
Yes, I do realize that that was extremely vague. But for now being vague will have to do. I'm pretty sure that no one I know actually reads my blog, but if for some unknown reason someone I do know does read it, I'd rather be vague and have them wondering than throw my suspicions around the internet for all to read. If my suspicions end up being true, then I'll write a post about it. If not, then no one will be ever the wiser...

That seems good for now. I was going to write more but I think I'll save it for later.

One Never Truely Leaves

I had started this post on February 16, 2016 on my phone. It is now December and hopefully I can finish writing it...

My grandma passed away on Saturday morning (February 13). 

I knew it was going to happen soon. Let me tell you a bit of a back story first.

A couple weeks ago, my parents had gone to Edmonton at Grandma's request. She was tired and knew she wasn't going to be around much longer and wanted to see my mom before she passed. 

[this is where I had left off originally. I'm going to fast forward a bit as I don't remember where I was going with that.]

I had put off calling Grandma, as I wasn't ready to say goodbye yet. She was getting regular blood transfusions and I was scared. I finally called her from my parents house on Friday, Feb 12. It was in the afternoon (after I got off work), but she was sleeping when I called. However Mom's  cousin was there and we left a message a message with him to let Grandma know that I called and that I loved her.  It was the best that I could do. 

I worked the next day at 7am. Saturday mornings are fairly slow at the gas station until about 9:30-10:00am. So I usually spend the morning stocking and then wasting time on Facebook. I went onto Facebook at about 8:30, and had seen that one of my cousins had changed her profile picture to one of Grandma with her mom, her son and herself. As soon as I saw that picture I knew that Grandma had passed away. I then had to close my phone as there were guests coming into the store. About 15 minutes after I saw that picture, my parents showed up. They hadn't even come in the store and I knew that they were going to confirm what I had already known. 

I am glad that I was able to say goodbye to her before she left, even though it wasn't directly to her. It was almost as if she was waiting for me. 

I found out later from my mom that Grandma approved of the tattoo that I had gotten of Grandpa. 

One of Mom's other cousins, Janice, was visiting with Grandma and Janice had asked Grandma if she had seen the tattoo that I had gotten of Grandpa. Grandma didn't even know I had a tattoo. So Janice logged onto Facebook and found a picture of it. Grandma loved it. I'm very glad that Grandma approved of my memorial tattoo for Grandpa (my Uncle Doug also said that even though Grandpa didn't approve of tattoos, he would have approved of mine.) 

I already have my memorial tattoo for Grandma planned out. It is now a matter of throwing the design into the computer, printing it to match the size of Grandpa's, and then going out to Chilliwack to book my appointment to get it done. It'll be about a year before I'll have it done (that is how popular my tattoo artist is. After I had gotten Grandpa done (Oct 2015), I found he was completely booked for 2016.) I know that waiting that long will be worth it. He will make Grandma's tattoo just as great as Grandpa's.

I don't do well...

I don't do well at taking criticism. I made rabbit stew in the slow cooker with baking powder bisquits today for dinner. This was my first time ever making stew. Needless to say, I have some work to do to create a good stew. (And biscuits for that matter.)

What went wrong? The veggies were not cooked, the meat did not fall off the bones as it was supposed to, and my bisquits were semi hockey pucks. Other than that, I thought it tasted good. It was flavourful and had the right amount of spice. Did I get any recognition for even cooking dinner? No. All I got was criticism. This was wrong, this was wrong, this was wrong...

I'm sorry my 1st attempt at stew was not up to your standards. Mistakes will be made while trying to traverse in the realm of wild meats. Wild meats have to be prepared differently. I was trying to go an easier route for my first stew attempt, rather than royally screwing something up trying to make it on our extremely finicky stove that doesn't like working half the time. At this rate I don't want to attempt stew again. Either in the slow cooker or on the stove. But you know what? I will try it again. And if I get the same results again, I will find a different way to cook rabbit. Although that may be the end of my stew making, as I'm not that huge a fan of beef stew. I'll eat it, but it isn't my favourite.

As for the bisquits. That was the result of bad baking powder. That powder has now been dumped out and has been added to the grocery list. They will be made again. It is a tried and true recipe that my mom has been using for years. I just have bad luck with baking powder. That recipe will eventually be posted, as I want a permanent pin for it on Pinterest. Then I don't have to keep taking a photo of it every time I want to make them.