Aanii means business

When I found Aanii as a six week old kitten abandoned on the outside gates of a conservation area what drew attention to her was her insistent meow. It wasnimpossible to ignore that loud, constant cry coming from the forest around me. Since that time she has become a true member of our family. Every morning my heart is warmed with the memories of the day we found each other when she cries for her food as I get it ready on the counter. Check out this video to see for yourself. Love her!!

- Posted by Jilly
using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Fairview Ave W,Essex,Canada

New sheets

When we bought our house just under two years ago I bought a a classic white on white striped douvet cover. It served its purpose, but as I was vetting ready to change over from our winter douvet cover, whichnis much heavier and warmer and break out the spring linens, we were ready for an update that matched the feel of the room more closely. Ok, I felt this. Adriano probably had no idea that I had even bought new bedding, but that's ok. I went to My favourite home store, Home Sense, which is always dangerous for my bank account, and found a perfect light weight, grey patterned douvet cover. I have to admit that I was quite pleased with myself as I was able to pick out some bed pillows that complemented the pattern of the douvet cover well, without being too matchy-matchy.
I was lucky enough to have sone help from Aanii cat, who insisted on playing under the sheet set.



Overall, I think that she wa quite pleased with how things turned out. As was I.


Posted by Jilly
using BlogPress from my iPhone

First BBQ

For our wedding shower we received an awesome BBQ. Well, technically we received two really awesome BBQs, but that's another story for another day. In the end we ended up with one that uses natural gas, so we had to wait for Adriano's dad to hook it up for us. This of course meant that we were not doing it during the winter, as it was way too cold to be out there. Instead, the BBQ sat in our garage all winter, essentially taking up my parking spot. But eventually, as the weather began to warm up, the gas line was put in, the BBQ was finally roles out of the garage and onto the deck! Thankfully my father-in-law is very handy, and had everything set up in no time.
For our inaugeral meal on the grill, we cooked up a storm.
We made steak (well Adriano did) chicken breasts in a hoisen BBQ glaze that I made up, tomatoes and peppers stuffed with quinoia and grilled onions and corn on the cob. As you will note from the corn, we did not soak the corn long enough. Hey, we're still learning.

Wedding Shower and other plans

One of my close friends is getting married this summer in a lovely outdoor wedding at her in-law's home on the lake. It will surely be a beautiful backdrop for an amazing day. As one of her bridesmaids, I drove up to attend her first (of three) wedding showers. Despite being out of town for just a day and a half, it was so nice to reconnect with my friends. There is nothing quite like seeing old friends, talking, bouncing ideas off of each other and having a listening ear, or two, that you know will tell you the truth. Not what you want to hear. Thanks for such a lovely weekend together ladies!

However, now that I am finally back home. An accident on the highway made my 2.5-3 hour trip into a 3.5 hour trip, I realize how hard it is to go away for the weekend and take care of everything at home. I feel like I could be up all evening preparing things for work (didn't mark a single thing this weekend), cleaning or organizing. I did make an emergency stop to pick up some crafting wire. For Mother's Day my class is going to make bracelets out of buttons. I envision them turning out really well. But I suppose I will find out tomorrow. I will be sure to post a picture to show you.

-Jilly

Pizza

I do like to cook. But, the truth is that we are so rarely home together during the week for dinner, it usually ends up that I cook, once, max twice, a week for dinner. This past week I made up some home made pizza dough and we had ourselves a nice little veggie pizza with fresh mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. You can never have enough cheese.  The only problem, that fancy pizza stone that we received at our wedding shower seems to make the crust stick way worse than my cheap pizza tray ever did. If any of you out there, is there anyone out there??, have any good tips to get the dough to keep from sticking, let me know!!

The delicious pizza, right out of our oven.

-Jilly

Pie for Easter

Yesterday my mom had us over for Easter dinner. I started making apple pies when I was in high school after waking up early one morning around thanksgiving and seeing someone on City Line make an apple pie. I thought it looked easy enough, and before my family had woken up, I had was pulling my first pie out of the oven.
Now it has become a tradition that I bake an apple pie for family holidays. I decided to add a little Easter touch with the bunnies on top. Yummy!

-Jilly

Welcome Back to Blogging

When I first started University, dare I say almost 10 years ago, I was an avid blogger. Hey, I had to do something to distract me from the hours of reading and piles of papers that I was pumping out. So, I found myself typing out posts about all of the things so important to me in my late teen years.(Riveting reading, I know.) Slowly, as my undergrad came to end, so did my passion for blogging.

Since then I have dabbled in blogging here and there. For a while I kept a blog about teaching, but I found that with the importance of keeping everything anonymous for safety and personal privacy, it wasn't much fun to read. My husband and his sister keep a food blog on their popular local website, which I occasionally will write up a little something for. But that has been the extent of my dedicated blogging for a long while now.
Fast forward to today. Why, after all this time am I sitting down and re-establishing a blog you ask? Well, a friend from high school has started a beautiful wedding blog and I am hooked on reading it. I ran into her and she was asking if I still blogged. I thought you know, why not?


This blog doesn't have one specific theme. It's not going to be a go-to for weddings or babies or food or books or crafts, or for that matter any of the other very popular blog genres out there. It will just be a mix of the things I do.

So, here I am, on Easter Sunday, my husband still sleeping, no Easter Egg hunt to set up or participate in and not a whole lot of chocolate to eat. It was this or clean.

This is my cat Aanii, who found a way to get into a little trouble this morning. Happy Easter!




-Jilly