Newest Blog- Peach :: Pear :: Plum

My sweet sweet friend Stephanie and I have started a new blog- peach :: pear :: plum - all about our adventures with delicious food, handmade parties and new creative ideas in crafting! Have a peek and check back from time to time as we update our way through some wonderful adventures!

Lions and Tigers and Bears!

We had a wonderful trip to the zoo yesterday with sweet Jackson. What a wonderful, kind, polite and friendly little boy. We had so many funny moments with him (hilarious listening to all the amazing things that come out of the three year olds mouth!) and it was fun to see what having two kids would be like, though only for a few hours (which was plenty for me!)
Thanks for the wonderful day, my dear Jackson! We cant wait to see you again soon! (When Jackson left us, he asked if next time he could come play at our house- I asked him what his favourite meal was to which he replied "spaghetti and meatballs" so a promise was made that when he came over, spaghetti and (veggie) meatballs will be had!)

Jackson the Penguin

Instant buds

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rushing from the baby giraffe to the hipos- Jackson is too fast!

fishies

Finn being such a good little monkey

Sharing bunny crackers

bottomless pit! He ate SO much of the lunch we brought, popcorn being his fav!

Carousel- He didn't want to ride any of the animals, just sit in his "favourite kind of chair"

Taking time to smell all the flowers

Tired little legs, watching the elephants while still popcorn eating

 

Finn's Birthday Book

For Finn's 1st Birthday, I wanted to make him something special. We aren't much for unnecessary things, which often encompasses gifts, but I did want to get him something meaningful to have as a special keepsake as he grows older, so I thought a storybook all about Finn would be just that perfect meaningful thing. I spent a Sunday afternoon writing the story- a sweet tale of Finn checking on his garden and finding a surprise that he didn't know was there. The only problem with this plan is that I am not much of an artist! I wanted the book to be perfect, and knew that if I ended up drawing it out, it would not be all that I had envisioned. So I thought to ask a few of our close and most artistic friends to help out. Each were assigned two pages, given very loose instructions to maintain a little bit of consistency, and asked to send us either an original piece of art that we could scan, or a JPEG image to add to the book. The final product was more than i could have ever dreamed of! They are all so vastly different, but so uniquely perfect! Such wonderful and true expressions of all the special people that created them, and the best possible result for a special birthday present for Finn. Thanks so much, Kelsy, James, Sean, Stephanie and Paula- you are all amazing, talented and so wonderful to us! 

To view the book in its entirety, click HERE or scroll to the bottom of the page.

Stephanie Nigh

James Boettcher

Paula Blundell

Sean MacAlister

Kelsy Norman

Jeff Thorburn

Untitled | Make Your Own Book

Finn's Photographs

For Finn's birthday party, we wanted to have lots of photographs of him from the last year. Every day since he was born, we have taken and emailed out a photo of him to our trusty email contact list-  Grandmas, Grandpas, Aunts, Uncles and special loved ones all over the country. Just a nice way to keep everyone updated and close by, even if they may be far away. So needless to say, we have TONS of pictures of Finn! I thought of making a slideshow, but we do not have a television, and somehow having it play on the computer just didnt seem like a personal choice, so I came up with a photo clothesline. I am loving wooden clothespins lately, so this project allowed us to display lots of photos around the house and incorporate some rustic touches with the clothespins. We will have a couple more in different places around the house (like I said, we have TONS of pictures!) but this is what the first one looks like.

Food fit for a little Prince!

We are taking Finn and Jeff's cousins little guy, Jackson (the sweet little boy talked about in this post here) to the zoo tomorrow. The zoo was another thing on my small list of adventures I wanted to go on before heading back to work, and being that Shaun and Shannon surely have their hands full with baby Scott, (and we absolutely adore Jackson) we figured why not see if he would be up for the adventure too!

Inspired by the adorable website Another Lunch (how completely excited would you be to open your lunch box and find these!?) I eagerly started planning a feast for our zoo day picnic.

 

  

On our Menu:

Peanut Butter and Banana Pinwheels

Cheese Tortilla "Tree Tops"

Skewers of Grapes with Organic Marshmallows

Rainbow Carrot Sticks

Marble Cheese Stars with Whole Grain Crackers

Apple Cubes with Raisins

Popcorn and Chocolate Chips*

Kiju Organic Lemonade (My most favourite juice ever!!)

*Because we have to have something treat-like to make sure he wants to hang out with us again!

More Birthday Surprises!

My sweet, amazing, wonderful and absolutely beautiful friend Stacey made me the most lovely and delicious chocolate birthday cake and had my most favourite sushi rolls for us for lunch today! It's special kindred spirits like hers that makes life worth living! I am so grateful to have such wonderful and meaningful friendships in life, but in particular, on days like today, to feel so incredibly loved! Thank you, Stacey! Please know how much we truly love you guys! Always~xoxo

Birthday Surprises

My birthday is coming up on Thursday, so Jeff planned a sweet birthday surprise for me on Saturday. I woke up bright and early with instructions to dress for the weather. We drove to my parents house to drop of Finn for the day, and then hit the road. We stopped for a quick breakfast and then ventured down the cowboy trail down to the Trans Canada highway. The whole time I was quizzing Jeff as to where we were going, but he wouldn't give any hints. We finally arrived at a sweet little ranch called Rafter Six. We headed to the main log house where we were sweetly greeted by two big old dogs and a kind lady working at the front desk. Jeff had planned for us to go horseback ridding! We were scheduled for a half hour lesson and one hour trail ride! We were a little early, so we went to the lounge and sat by a giant fireplace and enjoyed some warm beverages before we headed out. Our instructor and trail guide was a very kind man named Rob. We quickly learned how to lead our horses (mine, a mellow old man named Ace, and Jeff's a slightly more eager fellow named Callebaut), and then set out into the woods for our trail ride. Rob's dog, Marley, tagged along, hopping through the snow banks but always keeping close by, as well as a funny little donkey (named Donkey) from the ranch who followed behind me for the entire ride- I guess he just felt like going for a walk! Rob told us amazing stories of the history of the ranch, the land and the natives in the area, as well as some great personal anecdotes (like how he proposed to his girlfriend a few weeks earlier and she was so surprised, she fell off her horse.) We came back from the ride and had some delicious potato chowder and hot chocolate in the restaurant while we warmed up and then headed back to Calgary. It was such a great time and something I never would have expected or thought about doing otherwise. I would highly recommend Rafter Six to everyone and hope we can head back again sometime soon. It was such a fun time and a memory I will cherish for years to come!

Flags

I am flag obsessed! I have made so many little flags, big flags and large and small rows of bunting flags that I now feel like they are taking over my life! It stemmed from the idea of having flags as a decoration for Finn's birthday, then we stumbled upon some beautiful paper that became the inspiration for the baby shower Steph and I just did, and behold, flags became the theme for that party too!

So, I will share with you a few pictures. A tiny little sneakpeek of the mini flags Stephanie and I made for the baby shower- We made SO many of them, all different patterns and colours and used them as lables for the food we made. We also made some more generic ones with monogrammed letters on them ("E" for baby Emma), hearts and other sweet shapes so we could tuck them in with little things like the cutlery, random jars of candy and any other items that popped up flag-free, and then pass them on to Mama and babe to have as a sweet keepsake from their special day.

Also, a small seleciton of the flags I am making for Finn's birthday party! The idea being to COVER his birthday cake in all kinds of different flags! (Inspiration taken from these two amazing pictures below from Herriott Grace! I LOVE these cakes so much)

I also made this miniature bunting banner that was originally made for use on his birthday cake, but I think it adds a little bit of much needed life to our rough looking little plant.

Like a fish

I'm starting back to work next Friday, and Jeff is done working, so we have a few final days off together to spend as a family. There were a couple of things I really wanted to do together before my maternity leave is up, one of which was to go swimming. Finn and I (and a few of his good baby buddies) took several swimming classes through the YMCA starting when he was about 5 months old, and he quickly began to LOVE being in the water! It's cute because he never really smiles or laughs when we are swimming, but he has no fear and gets so excited to splash like a maniac, float on his back and get water dumped on him. So the other day we went over to the Southland leisure centre- mostly because Jeff had been bugging me to get to go on waterslides for a really long time, but also because I knew we would all have a lot of fun. All the waves and slides and contraptions spraying water everywhere at first seemed too chaotic for my little "baby" boy, but to my surprise, he couldn't get enough. Jeff took him on a few of the smaller slides and we all played in the shallow end of the wave pool and Finn was loving every minute of it. Definitely something we will have to do more of in the future. I also cant wait for summer and finally being able to splash around at the outdoor pool in Riley Park with Theo and his Mama! Summertime is going to be filled with all things wonderful!

First Swim Class, Sept 2010

This Moment - 2011.03.25

{this moment} - a friday ritual. a single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. a simple, special, extraordinary moment. a moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Bearded Bath Gnome

Colour coded and ready to be read!

Inspired by the above youtube video, Jeff and I reorganized all of our books by colour. Definitely a much needed boost to our often sloppy and chaotic looking bookshelves!

Muffins

I have had a wonderful recipe for muffins for the last few years. I dont know where it came from and you can pretty much add anything to them that your heart fancies. The recipe is a perfect muffin base to mix in just about any special ingredients you can think of. I have added mixed berries (one of my favourites!), lemon and cranberry, apricots and almonds, plain old blueberries, chocolate chips and oatmeal... the possibilities are endless.

This morning we woke up to more snow which put me in the mood for some warm yummy mixed berry muffins. Once I started to mix them up, I thought why not try baking them in a cake pan. Make it more of a coffee cake instead of individual muffins. The results were pretty good- yummy, moist and mostly nice to look at, but i think in the future i would stick with muffin tins- they fluff up so nicely, that the muffins really look beautiful once complete.


Mixed Berry Muffins
Ingredients:
2 cups of flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cups milk
1.5 - 2 cups of desired yuumies (today I used frozen mixed berries- raspberries, blueberries, strawberries and blackberries)
Sprinkling of brown sugar

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375F
In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt
In a seperate bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Mix in eggs one at a time.
Slowly stir in milk to the liquid mixture (It will look a little bit like it has curdled)
Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredents and pour in the liquid
Stir until just moise. gently fold in fruit
Spoon mixture into well greased and lightly floured muffin tins
(I greased the pan with coconut oil and dusted it with flour. You can use just about any kind of oil or butter, but I just went with what we had. )
Top with a sprinkling of brown sugar
Bake for 25 - 30 minutes
*Note: Jeff has a SERIOUS sweet tooth and originally asked if i could make icing for the coffee cake. When I said no, he took it upon himself to (generously!) dust the cake with icing sugar- probably a step I would normally skip as these are nice and sweet (and full of sugar) as is! :)

Cabin in the Woods

Jeff headed off to Vancouver on Wednesday and wont be home until tomorrow night, so I figured this weekend was the perfect time to head with my parents out to their cabin in BC. It's about a three hour drive from Calgary and is always a nice relaxing get away- just perfect for what Finn and I were in the mood for. Oh- and Chapeau too! Lots of good food, cuddles, movie watching and rest. Well, hypothetically- Finn had a rough couple of sleeping nights out there (I would assume it's hard being away from the comforts of our home and his bed) so one of us didn't get too much rest, but it was good to veg out and not have much to worry about much.

Watching movies with Grandma

Found ANOTHER remote!

Lots of snow!