Budget smudget

What to compare a budget to. Hmmmm....that's me pondering for a minute or two. "Fun mountain" on a hot summer day.  I haven't been to this outdoors water park in 20 years, but this is how I remember it.  Very exciting at first. Running up the hill full tilt, waiting in line fidgeting with anticipation of the speed and delight and then finally sliding down with a permanent grin. Well, this would equal to my first job. Excited at first, putting my all into it, then waiting for my first paycheck with the anticipation of spending it, to buying the CD of my choice with a great big smile. Well, the initial fun lasts a few rides, then you start losing anticipation. By mid-after noon, your feet are blistering on the hot dark rugged pavement. The lines are getting long and boring. You lean on the fence catching your breath. While the sliding part remains fun, which is what I compare to spending, the climbing part becomes more and more tedious and painful. This obviously is being compared to getting out of debt. To make matters worse, getting up the hill (saving) takes longer and longer but spending is very quickly done.
All this mumbo jumbo is to say i have blisters on my feet. My husband and I have been riding this wave for many years and now the so called "hill" feels like Mount Logan. The blisters aren't healing as quick as they used to since I've became a mother of two and therefore work half time. So, to better the situation, we are now spending less, a lot less. It's not easy. Summer is here, we are in our new "old house".  We would love to landscape our yard, paint the house, build a front patio, a backyard deck and a fence. We love camping and would like to purchase a nice camper trailer and a truck to pull it. All this will have to wait since we blew the home budget on extensive and modern renovations. People who know us are certainly not shedding a pitty tear since we have a beautiful home in great neighbourhood. We have a very comfortable life.  We just don't want to spend money we don't have.  It is hard to get comfortable by making due with what we have even if it's great. But when we take a step back, we realize how good we have it. We are a healthy and loving family. We have lots of fun, we make delicious meals and enjoy life.  I had my heart set on taking a trip with friends to Wisconsin Dells. After deciding it will have to wait 'till next year, i had to change my mind frame. I stopped pouting and tried to find something that can replace this supposed trip. Then, i came face to face with the perfect advertisement. "FUN MOUNTAIN". Why not. My kids have never been and don`t know any different. That will be my Wisconsin this summer and I am oober excited about it. The best part is that it won`t get me further into debt. Long live the simplicities of restricted funds and airing out that tent. Back to basics. I love it.
M.

Every penny counts!

A couple Christmas` ago, i waited until the last minute to do my gift shopping. Feeling overwhelmed with a baby and a two year old,  I had absolutely no ambition to confront a mall. I also was thriving to follow a minimalist lifestyle. Picking up dozens of little toys each day that had been touched for half a second was severely getting on my nerves. I don`t keep books I've read, extra pictures, knickknacks, candles etc... My house is bare of plants cause i can`t seem to keep them alive. Fake plants or decorative dried flowers are not welcomed in my home since they are usually layered in dust and spell out dead energy.   I cringe at goody bags, McDonald's toys, Dollorama crap and my kids daily arts and crafts . They have a life span of 24 hours max before I chuck them out. Purging is therapeutic to me. My husband and i have moved 5 times in 10 years. I can't say i have an emotional attachment to anything except maybe a small amount of pictures. Even at that, i just threw out 80% of my pictures if not more. Getting rid of "things" makes you appreciate what you've got. I love that less is more. Anyways, all this to say, i was out of gift ideas for my father and my in laws. They are doing great and have everything they need. So when i tossed the mail on the counter, a certain pamphlet caught my eye. It read "Great gift ideas". To my surprise, these were the best gift ideas. It was from an organization named Plan Canada.  Through them you can buy  goats, pigs, chicken's etc... to help a person, family, school or community in  a developing country.  How ideal!  I was going to buy these for everyone on my gift list in their name. However, when my dear husband came home, unlike me, he was in the spirit of the season and wanted to do the traditional gift buying. I shrank a bit but agreed that we could postpone this great idea for the next year. Well, a few years have come and gone since the great idea was put on the back burner. Then it dawned on me, at my daughters daycare, there was a penny fund raiser being held since it has just been announced that the penny is no longer being manufactured.  That's when it clicked. This idea was never going to excite my husband but it sure would excite my forth grade students.  I could barely sleep that night knowing how thrilled they would be to by goats or hens or pigs for people in need. I started this project a week ago and we have already raised 300$ in pennies. That means we could buy lots of annimals, or a well for a school, mango trees, a birth certificate or a healthy birth for mother and child, a scolarship or a motorcycle ambulance. Now that is awesome. Talk about making every penny count. I love it.
M

Fridays

Today's post is not my usual style. The style is more like those lame forwards that take up two minutes of your life that you will never get back and delete as quickly as possible. I simply caught myself comparing my present life to my pre-married life yesterday while running a Home Depot errend and felt like putting it down in words.

Friday at 20 years of age VS 30 some years of age:


6:45 am
                                    
-Wake up excited to find out what the best evening plans are going to be
                                          VS
-Roll out of bed motivated solely by the fact that you can hit the sack in 14 hours     


10:00 am
-Are giddy throughout the day cause plans are getting better and better
                                          VS
-Are yawning 

5:00 pm
-Go home to take a quick nap before supper to recharge for a late night
                                          VS
- Put a frozen pizza in the oven and pour yourself a stiff drink



7:00 pm
- taking a shower followed by hair and makeup
                                          VS
- At home depot picking up rental tools and materials for the next days renovations or yard work



8:30 pm
Try 5 different outfits and high heels
                                           VS
Slip into your pyjamas


11:00 pm
flirting
                                            VS
Crying over a sappy movie wich you now have feelings for the main character and are covered in chip crumbs


2:30 am
awake in someone's arms
                                            VS
asleep in someone's arm

                                                                                             TGIF

Cappuccino part 2, Go Jets Go

Go Jets Go!!! 

  Friends of ours that we travel well with planned us a family trip in March.  We were to spend February long weekend in Minneapolis to watch an NHL hockey game and do some shopping.  Talk about good times. We started off with a full shopping day in Albertville. That was awesome. I found a modern mid-length jacket, fun aqua colored jeans, shoes, dresses, runners and the list goes on and on.  By mid afternoon, my hubby started the usual groanning. This quickly escalated to standing near the exit doors of the shops to pacing on the sidewalk, to sitting in the car with his forehead on the stearing wheel. Being sympathetic, i gathered my mountain of shopping bags and the girls to the car to end my husbands agony.  On the way to the hotel, E(my husband) stopped in front of a Happy Cooker type shop. With the girls asleep in their chairs, i decided to wait in the car. Half an hour later, E walks out with not one but TWO expresso machines. One of them being wheeled out by an employee. OMG. Before even entering the car, he starts telling me what a great deal these machines were at 400$ a pop. He even got a bag of free coffee beans.
  Once in the car, we rushed to the hotel to get ready for the hockey game. Being canadian, we were cheering for the new steller and totally rocking Winnipeg Jets. The atmosphere was buzzing all the way down the district. The fans of both teams we're so numorous and pumped. It turns out, half the arena was filled with Jets hardcore fans. It was a tight game. The cheers went like this "LETS GO WILDS ! GO JETS GO! The girls got lots of attention and high fives with their KANE and BYFUGLIEN shirts. The Jets finally won in the shoot out. Exhausted from our travels, shopping and hockey game, bedtime was short and sweat. I slept like a baby. I woke up fully rejuvanated, while E leaped out of bed complaining that the wonderful odor of the unopened bag of coffee beans kept him up all night. That's right, the bag was sealed. E excitedly gets the machine working pronto and in no time flat, he is transported back to heaven with his cup of expresso. Our friends popped by our room and Millie's jaw drops. She takes a jab at her husband and says« How come our cappucinno machine that you wanted and got «free» with airmiles is still sitting in our basement from a year ago unopened?»
It so happens that many of our friends own these machines but store them in their basements.
   After a cup of Joe and a buffet breakfast we were off to great start to a day at the Mall and the Nickelodeon park. The next day was the long ride home. We arrived late at night. With our brains in a fog, E forgot that one of the expresso machine boxes got soggy from being placed on wet bathing suits and towels. Two feet from our back door, the bottom of the box gives and smash goes our machine on the concrete. Thankfully, the corner foamy things saved it. That machine made it to E's office. All this said and done, i have come to love and rely on our homemade cappuccinos. Our favorite is when we add pumpkin spice syrup and a dash of cinnamon. Gracias Esteban for your delicious, aroma filled cup of goodness.  xox Love you very much.

I shall name her ...???

Cappuccino part 1

My husband loves coffee. He was always trying different beans, grinds, brands, slow drip, fast drip, percolated, strong, weak, sweat, creamy, black etc... Then came christmas time, we had an awesome family get together with uncles and cousins as always. We are a meat and potatoes type family. Very plain but full of life and love.  My dad and his three brothers, former school principles, don't leave the kids behind. Many short but fun coordination games were organized with a points chart, stickers and prizes. We also had to endure a very long power point of our belgian ancestors and the story about how they settled in Canada. Good thing one of my cousin's husband added a new ritual to the family Christmas party. The cappuccino machine. Just what we needed for a pick me up after learning that one of my great, great aunts had a few husbands, even quite possibly at once. Cappuccino is foreign to my dad and his bros. They don't like trying new things. Heck, one of my uncle's doesn't eat vegetables, not even ketchup. He still eats hamburgers meat and bun only. He has sworn off peas since the age of three due to being forced to eat them. The only spice in their diet is salt and pepper. I could just imagine the queer look, expression on my dad's face when cappuccino was being passed around.   Anyways, my husband was thrilled. He was like a kid in a candy shop. He watched attentively B push buttons, froth milk and pour into mugs.  Salivating, he took his first sip, and was transported to heaven. Now, for anyone who knows my husband, he's an interrogator. He asked every possible question on this machine.  When we finally left the party, my hubby had a twinkle in his eye and a bounce in his step.  I knew what this meant.  Intense research on google cappuccino makers for the next month.

Glood

So much personnality, one little person xox

I am a french canadian with two little girls to whom i speak solely french since they are slowly learning english through osmosis with the help of our modern and anglophone world. There is nothing cuter then a francophone child trying to speak english with its strong accent. More and more, my daughters come up with english sayings.  This morning happens to be one of those times. It happens about two minutes before crunch time to leave. Somehow my picky eater got a sneak peak of her lunch and withen seconds, her entire mood changed to foul. How dare her mother give her a craft single cheese slice sandwich. I now had to make a quick decision. 1) Raise my daughter properly and tell her she shouldn't complain especially when there are soo many starving children in the world and hope that she will learn to accept her lunches "as is" in the futur (but deal with a very time consuming tantrum) or 2) take the "chose my battles route" and be suckered into this situation time and time again for not being consistant with my decision. Well of course i took the i don't have time for this sh** route when I have to be in the car with child in 2 minutes. So i resentfully openned the fridge, my only quick choices were honey or jam. She swapped back and forth and finally opted for jam. As I am trying to stay calm, as to not set her off in a fit, she starts giggling and tells me the children at day care call jam glood. Did I hear correctly, glood? Are they creative or just annoying? As she repeats it a few times, I realize she is probably mispronouncing the word they are saying. I wrack my brain until it dawns on me, blood, they call jam blood.

M

Poodle nonsense

As you know, if you read my previous post, I recently adopted a poodle from the humane society.  Being a dog lover, the dogs i have been most drawn to were all breeds except the ones that have the misfortune of having a bad reputation ex: Rottweiler, doberman, pitbull and of course the poodle. That's right, the poodle with it's funny do and its yappiness was to me, a nuissence to all man kind. Being an allergy sufferer, the only types of dogs i limitted myself to adopting were the non-shedding breeds such as Bishons, Yorkies, shih tzu, maltese and the list goes on. Lots to chose from but expensive. So when i adopted a toy poodle from the humane society i thought i could "learn" to love her. She was a bundle of cuteness with her untuched shag. Maybe i could disguise her as a mutt.  When i got home, i started doing some research on the toy poodle breed since i new nothing about it.  Well, low and behold, there are growth charts, and weight charts putting lots of importance on size and color. It so happens, my appricot poodle is a saught after color that is hard to find because it skips generations. Who cares right. She is a sweethart, she loves my girls, she is docile and miraculously rarely makes a sound. I should be greatful to have what seems to be a gift from destiny, wich i am but this other side of me is wrapped up in poodle non-sense.  I started weighing her and measuring her. The humane society could only give an estimated date of birth of December 28. ESTIMATED date of birth. Not good enough. I need precise. These charts are intimidating. What if my dog is not what they said it was, a "toy".  She is on the higher end of the charts. Could i still be as proud or will i always give an explanation when people ask what type of dog she is. Maybe i will just lie and say she is a toy even if she outgrows the charts.  What ridiculousness. I love her, the way her ears flop around, how she runs in circles trying to grab her stub of a tail, her smell, how she likes to burrow before she settles into a ball to nap with me. Toy or not, i love her to bits. That's right. I love my Poodle.

M.

Cannelle 16 weeks, 9inches ( but not counting)