Four more Cedars!

Another gardening weekend. Not as nice as last Saturday, but we decided to plant 4 more cedars on the other side of the yard where we are right next to the neighbour's deck.

Our house sits higher than the neighbours' but their 2nd floor deck is the same level as our back yard. Do you know what I mean? Anyway, for a little privacy, we decided to plant just 4 trees (didn't want to cover it entirely and be unfriendly...). See the yellow arrows in the picture below.

We also straightened our Tamarack tree. Due to the strong winds during all the storms we had recently, we noticed the tree was leaning back. We tied a rope around the tree and nailed some tent pegs into the ground to keep it straight. Not sure what else to do. Hope it will grow back straight up!

Update for the wine lovers. Our grape vines have roots now! Yay! They will be transferred to a pot and will be kept in the warm house until Spring finally comes.

★We decided to post today's blog early to participate the Earth House from 8:30pm. Hope you are all turning off the lights in the house to save energy!★

Happy Birthday Amy

We caught Snoop trying to sneak out to wish Amy a Happy Birthday!

Amy, I tried... :(  Happy Birthday anyway.

Crazy Cake

We have been getting mixed weather here, sunny and warm one day, and next day is cold wind and rain. Our new 21 trees are doing fine so far. We think they are a few inches taller already... or maybe we are just hoping too much!

I had a craving for a chocolate cake. This has been my usual "go to" chocolate cake since my mother-in-law told me about it a few years ago. Good things about this cake is low fat, easy to bake and Vegan (for you Amy!). We had this with plain yogourt & maple syrup and fresh strawberry sauce. Yum :)  I always notice sweets with chocolate (i.e. cakes or cookies) taste better next day. I once baked this for my friend's birthday (doubled the recipe), sliced the cake in half, added Nutella in between and finished with raspberry sauce & vanilla ice cream. That was great too!

Crazy Cake Recipe: (from Prevention Magazine)

Ingredients:
1.5C   Flour
1/2C   Brown Sugar
3tbsp  Coco Powder
1tsp    Baking soda
1/2tsp salt
3tbsp  vegetable oil
1tbsp  white vinegar
1tsp    vanilla extract
1C      cold water

1) Preheat oven to 350F.
2) Sift the first 5 ingredients together. Make a well in the mixture, and add oil, vinegar and water. Mix thoroughly with a fork to moisten all the dry ingredients.
3) Pour it into 8x8 baking dish. Bake for 30 min or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Oh, by the way, Snoop really needs a hair cut!

Cedar Hedge Project - Day 2

Done! 21 cedar trees are in. 
We just need some Advil, a few glasses of wine and good night sleep.

Done, done and done!

Some of the rocks we found when we dug the trench for the hedge.

Cedar Hedge Project Day 1

Beautiful Saturday. Perfect day for gardening!

Although my husband had to do more field work after the overnight trip and I had a choir lesson in the afternoon, we managed to start the cedar hedge project.

Today's big task was to remove the gravel and grass and start to dig the trench for the hedges. It was a hard job.... Around 4 in the afternoon, we started digging. There were so many rocks including some huge ones and we realized it will take longer than we thought to complete this project... to be continued...

Snoop, you are so NOT helpful! Snoozing in the sun...

End of Day 1...lots more to do...

Flavour of Hawaii?

I was invited to visit my Japanese friend's place for dinner last night as my husband was away for an overnight trip to North West Coast of Vancouver Island. She said she will have "Nabe" for dinner. It's a Japanese hot pot which has a mixture of meat, seafood, vegetables and noodles cooked in the broth. I decided to bring some Salad rolls that have Miso flavoured meat and assorted vegetables wrapped in rice paper and served with spicy peanut sauce to dip.

When I opened the pantry, I saw a blue tin sitting in the very back of the cabinet. It was my father's in law's SPAM...! 

Long story short, we gave him a tin of SPAM in his Christmas stocking for a joke when he, Mrs. and my sister-in-law were here for the Christmas. He 'unfortunately' had to leave the SPAM behind as they 'worried about the weight of Christmas luggage' back home.

What to do with this... I searched on the internet and found, "Ah, flavours of Hawaii!" It's called SPAM Musubi, and surprisingly there is a Wikipedia page for this, click HERE. When we were in Hawaii five years ago, we saw this in every convenience store and gift shop. It's a combination of Teriyaki flavoured SPAM with rice wrapped in Nori, seaweed, a very Japanese dish!

I made these for a joke and bought them over to my friend's place and... They liked the SPAM Musubi, specially their teen aged high school boy!

   

Turkey leftovers

The turkey dinner was on Saturday night. Since then we have been trying to finish a 14lbs bird with only two people. We thought we would share some with our spoiled son, Snoop, but his belly didn't like the idea. Poor guy...

Left overs became a huge pot of Turkey Soup and we froze two containers of it, of course there were some hot turkey sandwiches and some cold turkey sandwiches to take to work... 

The last portion of turkey leftovers became an easy turkey pot pie last night. After the Birthday turkey dinner and lunch, then another dinner and lunch we had it again, I think we are turkeyed out for a while!

Cedar Trees

A nice warm Sunday. Today, we went to visit some garden centres in town and discussed what kind of projects we need to do in the back & front yard. There is a list of things we want to do including building vegetable boxes, planting hedges, building a retaining wall in front of the entrance, planting fruit trees, weeding, mowing the lawn, re-doing the back yard gate etc....

Today, we started the hedges project. First things first. We need to get shrubs, not 7 or 8, but 23! We borrowed a friend's truck and went to the local store where they have the 7 ft cedar trees on sale for $15/each! It took us a while to load them in the truck as they are really heavy. We managed to put all 23 in the back of the truck and drove very slow home.

We will need to dig 23 big holes along the fence, so it will probably take a while to show the finished product...

 

Happy Birthday

March 16 was my husband's birthday.  On the actual day we were both busy, so we decided to do a nice meal at home on the weekend.

There was a 14lbs turkey sitting in the deep freeze since Christmas and we decided to cook that big bird! Didn't we eat Turkey on Christmas? Yes, we did have an 18lbs turkey with my in-laws, sister in-law and us.... I bought the 14 lbs turkey first, but didn't think it was big enough, so I bought another one ... Silly me... Anyway, everyone enjoyed the biggest bird at Christmas, and we ended up with the other turkey, so we are all happy :)

Forgot to take a picture of the birthday dinner as we were too busy eating, so I thought I should share the shocking moment of Snoop's encounter with the Big Bird at Christmas. My dog is 18 lbs too!

Attic DIY

It was another stormy night... Really stormy!  It kept us awake plus it took more shingles from our roof... The roofers showed up in the afternoon again to do more patch jobs ... sure hope this will be good enough for a while... They warned us that there might be another storm coming next week, so we asked them to seal the shingles well to prevent them from lifting again.

While the roofers were here, I asked them to change the vent on the roof for the bathroom as it was making a rattling noise. They replaced it but told me we need to go in the attic to tape the vent and the pipe as the pipe is not long enough.

...The Attic... dark, tight space where no one wants to go... I know it is a tight space so I need to do the job.

I opened the entrance to the attic and climbed up with a head light. Should have had a mask too, but it was too late... It was not comfortable, but see, I can do it too? 

This pic was brightened, so it seems light, but it was pitch dark!