How does your garden grow?

I’ve been planting a garden for a few years now, but it’s always been a struggle to reap much of a harvest from it.  Between the kids, dogs, and my horrible weeding habits, it’s been very hit or miss.  This year, things have changed! Last fall, my dad helped me build two more garden boxes to finish off the terrace of boxes in the west end of my yard.  Then this spring, he and I built a fence to block the garden from the rest of the yard.  Finally I can keep the vegi’s safe from unwanted attention from both the kids and dogs!

My baby is 3!!!

My youngest daughter Olivia turned 3 this past weekend.  She is my very charming, opinionated, loving and spunky one.  She also loves all things pink, or rather is obsessed with all things pink.  Olivia also loves puppies.  So when I asked her what she wanted for her birthday cake, she requested a pink puppy, or rather a toy pink puppy.  

No Cook Freezer Meals Winner!! Plus a review and some tips…

Sorry I didn’t have a chance to post yesterday, but we have a winner of the e-book No Cook Freezer Meals!! The winner is: Carly!  I’ll get Kelly to email you with a copy of her book 🙂

Freezer Meal Swap Night! AND a Giveaway :)

In the past I’ve done all my freezer meal creation on my own, but a couple friends and I have been talking for a while about getting together to do a meal swap.  Lindsay had her second baby last year and is due to head back to work in a week, so she was eager to get some meals in the freezer to get ready for the busyness of working full time and having two kiddo’s at home.  Laura is just a couple weeks from her due date with her second baby and is equally eager to get some meals in the freezer in anticipation of the craziness of having a newborn at home (plus her VERY active almost 2 year old).  We decided to each bring the ingredients for 4 meals (x 3 batches), which would be 36 meals in total (12 each to bring home).  Not only would we go home with 12 meals, but we’d get to try out some new recipes – WIN-WIN!

The making of The Wizard of Oz cake

We celebrated my oldest daughter’s birthday yesterday.  It’s hard to believe that she is turning 4 this week!!  It’s been a tradition for me to make and decorate a cake for my kids.  Last year Maiya was completely obsessed with the Big Bad Wolf, and I made a Big Bad Wolf cake, with Little Piggie cupcakes.  It was my first effort at a fancy, decorated type cake, and it came out really well I think.  This year when I asked Maiya what she anted, she was at first still very obsessed with the Big Bad Wolf and was still stuck on that topic, but just in the last few weeks, she’s seen and fallen in love with The Wizard of Oz. 

The Evolution of a Mother-Runner

I’m often asked how I have time for running or how my running has changed since I’ve had kids. I always tell people that having kids has made running more important and more of a priority for me. It might seem backwards that I run more now than ever because I have less time now than before kids. Why is running more important than ever, some thoughts and some practical tips:

A review of 2013 in numbers (and pictures)…

I can’t help it, I’ve got a form of OCD that requires me keep track of numbers.  I allow myself to go crazy with the numbers in my running, and it helps me to let go in other areas of my life.  Here are some numbers (with some of my favorite pictures from the year) to summarize 2013.

Out with the old!

Christmas usually involves a lot of new things coming into our homes. While it’s great to get some new items, it can get out of control and it’s easy for things to get cluttered. A friend of mine recently blogged about her efforts to clean and purge. Her blog 4 is More is awesome, and you should all check it out. Her latest post on decluttering inspired me to tackle just one area of my house today. My linen closet.

October in Review!

Wow, November already!  That means big things to me in my running life… mainly that I just have one more big week of training, and then I’m tapering for the Seattle marathon!

October was a record setting month, and little did I know that September was too!  My October mileage ended up at 302 km’s ish.., September was 256 km’s and before that, I think my biggest month was around 237 km’s.  I exported all my Dailymile logs into an Excel spreadsheet one day this week, and was having fun playing with the data, making some graphs 🙂

The most exciting thing, as I keep repeating on here, is that I’m not injured! YAY!!

This past week has been a cutback week, which is a good thing, because we’ve had a stomach flu going around our house.  My oldest daughter had it last week, and this week both my younger daughter and myself have fallen to it.  I haven’t missed any runs, but have had some not so great ones, and have dropped my mileage a bit.

Today’s was my long run for the week, and I was super happy to get to do it with my hubby!  We have run together since we very first became friends, but don’t get to do it very often anymore, so when we do it’s a huge treat.  It was a crazy day out there, weather wise.  Calgary had a snowfall warning and was supposed to get 10-25cm’s of snow.  By the time we started the snow was falling pretty hard.

Just as we are starting, it’s already a white out almost!

I originally had 21km’s on my schedule but had already decided, based on my flu, and level of energy, that I was ok with going shorter.  We ended up running just 15 km’s (and walking an extra km).  I’m totally good with that number, and was just happy it was a cutback week, as I would not have wanted to do 32 km’s (20 miles) in these conditions!  The worse part was that it was so warm that the snow was sticking to the bottoms of my shoes, and I kept having to kick it off.

FINISHED! Phew 🙂

Oh and the other exciting thing that happened…?  I got my marathon shoes!!!

Aren’t they pretty??

This week was also halloween, and I’ll include one last picture of my kids, because I think they were completely adorable!  Maiya was the big bad wolf (she has been totally obsessed with the big bad wolf for almost 2 years now), and Olivia a little piggie.

ROOOAAAAAR says the Big Bad Wolf!!

 

Freezer to slow cooker meal 2 – Orange Beef

We tried the second meal of the frozen crockpot dinners tonight, Orange Beef. The recipe is on a blog post from a few weeks ago when I prepped these meals.

I took the zip lock out of the freezer last night and defrosted it over night. Then this morning I popped it into my slow cooker and let it cook on low for the day. I was home today, working on cleaning and organizing the house, and it smelled divine!! I also ran tonight, and don’t like to eat dinner before my evening runs, so had to wait even longer to try it. It looked great bubbling away in the slow cooker.

My run tonight was cold, it was raining and barely above freezing. I could hardly feel my hands when I got home, so this bowl of piping hot stew totally hit the spot!

My kids also loved it. Olivia gobbled it up, but really she gobbles everything up these days. The real test is Maiya, she’s not picky for 3.5, but she’s much pickier than she used to be. She wasn’t excited for dinner until I told her that supper had juice in it! Kids are funny, she loves juice and it’s the biggest treat for her so the suggestion of juice totally had her hooked! I was out running but my hubby reports that she ate her whole bowlful of dinner. Victory!!