A Milestone Birthday

 

Daughter L celebrated her 30th birthday recently.  Her fiance got her this amazing cookie dough cake with so many delicious layers.  It was deliciously decadent!

We celebrated by going to The Keg Steakhouse for dinner.  I ordered a Sangria and an iceberg wedge salad  with blue cheese dressing to start.  Then I had a prime rib dinner.  It is a favourite meal of mine.

Earlier in the day her fiance's parents sent a surprise edible fruit gift basket with balloons and a box of yummy small cheesecakes.  

Daughter L had a great day!  

Friday Art - Leaf Girl

 These are my leaf girl ACEOs (2 1/2" x 3 1/2") inspired by an amaryllis plant I am trying to get to flower again later this year.  I have been watering the leaves to strengthen the bulb in the pot.  They look just like the leaves atop the girl's head right now.  The plan is to move the pot outside after the danger of frost is past, say May 21st.  I will continue to water it and bring it inside in early September, assuming it is still surviving.  At this point I will trim the leaves and pack the bulb inside a brown paper bag to lay dormant until mid November.  At this time I will re pot the bulb if it is still viable and water it until it starts to shoot and hopefully flower.  That is the plan anyway!

Linking to Gillena's Art Fun.

 

Rain's Thursday Art Date - Leaves and Branches

 Welcome to Rain's Thursday Art Date!  The theme is 'leaves and branches'.  Here is my ACEO (2 1/2" x 3 1/2"), a lady wearing a fascinator hat with leaves and branches.  I was happy with the way this turned out!

Rain's art challenge is anything goes now, you do not have to go with her suggested themes,  they are optional.  

Meme Wednesday

 

Got the creative meme above from Pam.

Valerie posted a version of the above meme which is hilarious.

A Chinese Dim Sum lunch and trouble commenting on some blogs

(l to r) seafood chow mein, vegetarian platter, chicken feet, rice congee, squid tentacles, shrimp and green onion pancakes,  har gow, (centre:) beef cheung fun, turnip cakes

pig trotters with eggs

beef tendons

My approximately 85 year old aunt was in town and invited me to a wonderful dim sum lunch.  There were 8 of us.  I haven't had dim sum in a restaurant since covid began.  This restaurant had delicious dishes as pictured above.  Well some of the dishes are exotic and not to everyone's taste.  It is interesting, I enjoy beef tendons and the pig trotters weren't bad, but my aunt ate all of the chicken feet as those have never appealed to me or the rest of our party.  Maybe it is because the pig trotters don't look like feet even though they are.  The vegetarian platter was delicious, we had a vegetarian in our party.  It had snow peas, 3 kinds of mushrooms, and crunchy water chestnut slices. 

The restaurant was very crowded, I wore my mask to get back and forth from my table.

Have you ever been to Chinese dim sum?

Linking to Kathy's Food Wednesdays.

I have been having trouble leaving comments on some blogs lately, apologies if they have not gone through or if they went through several times.
 

On Easter Eggers

 A little over a week ago I posted some interesting facts about polar bears, zebras and chickens.  It resulted in me receiving a few more interesting comments on 'Easter Eggers', bluebirds and blue jays. 

MaryP said the Easter Egger chicken variety lays pink blue and green eggs.  Here is more information.  

Then Lorraine said bluebirds and blue jays aren't actually blue they are brown but appear blue because of the way the light interacts with their feathers.

Have you heard of the Easter Egger variety of chickens?

Birthday Cupcakes

 Son K celebrated his birthday a few weeks ago and daughter L ordered these surprise cupcakes for him.  They were delicious.  He had the sprinkle cupcake first.  The other flavours were red velvet with cream cheese icing, strawberry with strawberry icing, nutella, chocolate and oreo.

The Scarborough Bluffs

 My sister shared these photos of the Scarborough Bluffs where they went for a hike/walk on a nice day last week.  It has been awhile since I was in that area.  It is prone to soil erosion and can be dangerous if/when people ignore warning signs.

Friday Art - Cherry Tree Splatter Painting

 It's time for Friday Art! This is my Cherry Tree splatter painting in acrylic (8 1/2" x 11 ") on cardstock.

Also linking to  Gillena's Art for Fun Friday.

Here are some progress photos:

Rain's Thursday Art Date - Aviary

 Welcome to Rain's Thursday Art Date!  Her theme is 'Aviary' this week.  Here is my ACEO (2 1/2" x 3 1/2")   based on a dome shaped Aviary in Indonesia that I googled.  I added some birds inside of course.

Meme Wednesday and Kathy's Food Wednesday

 

For Kathy's Food Wednesday I am sharing my takeout fish and chips platter that I had this past Good Friday.  This place has the best cole slaw, I think it has vinegar and sugar and the cabbage is so crunchy.

Also, I added some photos of my sister's egg bites to last week's food post.  Some people seemed interested in making it.

Hockey Game

 Husband M went downtown to a Maple Leaf Hockey game recently with a friend who had tickets.  He sent us this photo.  People are not wearing masks much anymore but I believe he wore his.  They had a nice dinner before the game.  It is nice to get out a bit more these days although Covid is still rampant.

I watched a bit of the game on TV since M was there, however the ads were so boring.  Mostly car type ads and gambling casino ads.  There were a few family oriented ads to be fair.  I have no business watching a sports channel haha.

Serendipity

 This is a heartwarming story I read in the newspaper recently.  'Youth without shelter' charity needed 3 million dollars to finalize a deal on a property to house youth at risk. Last minute funding came in from the city just in time in what the charity is calling 'serendipity'.  They had all but given up hope. 

Lake George 1869 and Easter Sunday

This painting by John Frederik Kensett came up on my screen saver recently and it made an impression on me because I thought it was a photo!  What amazing detail.  Apparently it sits in the Metropolitan Museum of modern art in New York City.  Here is a link with more information.

Have a Wonderful Easter Sunday!

 

On Zebras, Polar Bears and Chickens

 Adam recently posted a fun fact that made me curious to know more.  I found this article that explains more about zebras having black skin and white stripes and not the other way around.

Then my sister told me she learned that Polar Bears have black skin but appear white due to light reflections on its hollow hairs.  

The next revelation is that  you can determine the colour of a chicken's egg by the colour of its earlobe. A white earlobe means white eggs, a dark earlobe means brown eggs.

I love interesting stuff like this!

Friday Art - Puffin

 This is my puffin ACEO (2 1/2" x 3 1/2") for Friday Art.  It is inspired by BBC Earth on free preview one weekend.  I caught a fascinating episode showing these puffins going about daily life.  They fly hundreds of metres over the water and dive deep down to catch fish for their young.   Wouldn't you know they have predator fish that often steal this precious catch. 

It is Good Friday, many Catholics eat fish today as opposed to meat.

Rain's Thursday Art Date - A Fond Memory

 

Welcome to Rain's Thursday Art Date's 'A Fond Memory' theme.  I chose  'The Arc De Triomphe' in Paris as my fond memory. 

 In March 2007 I spent 5 memorable days in Paris with my husband and kids.  Daughter L was 14 son K was 11.  We got a great deal on the flight from then Zoom airlines which went out of business months later.  I did so much research and planning for this trip.  I used a Rick Steves travel book and even used Google Earth to look at the area.  Google is a lot easier to use these days.

We stayed in an old apartment right next to the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs Elysees.  It was similar to booking an airbnb although that company had not yet started up.  It even had a view of the Eiffel Tower from a window.  We took a train to visit the Palace of Versailles.  We took a boat ride on the Seine at night with the Eiffel Tower twinkling away. We visited the Louvre and saw many other sights.

Fond memories indeed, I wished it had been 7 days instead of 5.  Being chilly March, the city was not yet overrun with tourists but as always one had to be wary of pickpockets.  It did mean that the fountains of Versailles were not yet turned on.

Meme Wednesday

 I got the above meme from Grannie Annie.

The above meme speaks to me, I am a victim of feeling overwhelmed on occasion.

Black Bean Quinoa Casserole and Egg Bites

Linking to Kathy's Food Wednesdays. 

One of my sisters shared this Quinoa Bean Casserole recipe with us and she has made it several times now.  So I tried it, it was really good!

My other sister shared this egg bite recipe with me, she said it is a knockoff of the Starbuck egg bites.  So this is another recipe I mean to try.

Anyway, maybe you will get to this one before I do!  

These are my sister's egg bite photos.  She likes sous vide cooking so instead of baking her eggs she did them in that water bath manner.  Her version contained ham, gruyere, cottage cheese, spinach, sausage and eggs.