Nanaimo bars

Tomorrow is Canada day! I miss Canada very much and for so many reasons. My family is (mostly) there, I miss the weather, the food, friends, the food, water....lots of things! I made these yummy Canadian treats for a party Saturday (so much fun Linda!!) and another tomorrow evening (can't wait Kimmy!!) and they were SUPER yummy!
I'm thinking of doing a giveaway tomorrow in honor of Canada so check back then!













The Original Nanaimo Bar

Ingredients:

***Bottom Layer ***

* 1/2 cup unsalted butter (European style cultured)
* 1/4 cup sugar
* 5 tablespoons cocoa
* 1 egg beaten
* 1 1/4 cup graham wafer crumbs
* 1/2 cup finely chopped almonds
* 1 cup coconut

***Second Layer ****

* 1/2 cup unsalted butter
* 2 tablespoons cream PLUS
* 2 teaspoons cream
* 2 tablespoons vanilla custard powder
* 2 cups icing sugar

***Third Layer ***

* 4 squares semi-sweet chocolate (1 oz. each)
* 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

Directions:

Bottom Layer

Melt first 3 ingredients in top of double boiler. Add egg and stir to cook and thicken. Remove from heat. Stir in crumbs, coconut, and nuts. Press firmly into an ungreased 8" x 8" pan.

Second Layer

Cream butter, cream, custard powder, and icing sugar together well. Beat until light. Spread over bottom layer.

Third Layer

Melt chocolate and butter overlow heat. Cool. Once cool, but still liquid, pour over second layer and chill in refrigerator.

This recipe for Nanaimo Bar (Official) serves/makes 24 bars.

big read

I lifted this from Kimmy. As you know I am a big reader and going through this list has made me want to read a bunch of these on the list that I haven't. I ordered some from www.paperbackswsap.com so here's to classics.

Today was a really fun day. Kimmy and I went to a card class (i'll post pictures later) and then with Eldon on to a Canada Day party at my Canadian friend Linda's house. SO much fun! She had Canadian trivia questions (some were REALLY HARD) nummy food and the company was awesome. I'll post pics later on that too. It's not very often that I have a totally picture free post but I guess that is what this is!

Night!

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (reading it RIGHT now)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Sewing Love

I have been looking over the past few years for a sewing basket...but by and large have never found something that I really really liked. Some were too small...most were too cutesy.
Sewing is fun! Sewing is familiar. My mother is an awesome seamstress (she even made my wedding dress) so growing up she taught us to sew and I really enjoy making things. This has led to a collection of thread, hook & eyes, bobbins, pins, measuring tapes, and other notions.
Before yesterday those items were scattered around my craft room....in no particular order. But then, Christa, who is a rockstar! Gave me this:













Yes there may have been some begging involved ;) But all in all I think it was worth it!













See how the pins look so happy on the upper level with the measuring tapes? See how the rotary cutter no longer lives in a basket with all my yarn just waiting to cut me!? It's a thing of beauty.













I haven't quite figured out the lower compartment yet. I think I need to re-think how I'm storing my spools of thread. They have outgrown their box. Suggestions?
So long story short, Christa = ROCKSTAR Amy = Grateful for having great friends.

Bad Office Etiquette

Work. I spend so much time here at my desk. Surrounded by any attempt at happiness. ;) My friend Pam gave me this dish that I use to hold paperclips. It says "Canadian Nightcrawlers. Our worms will catch fish or die trying!" LOVE IT!














Always have to have water, ipod, lotion, pens, notepad, fan...all that jazz. I'm thinking a scrapbook page is in order.
















And in a fit last week I came up with this highly resoursceful lise. Just FYI everyone! Comment and share your biggest workplace annoyance!

Bad Office Etiquette
• Always use speakerphone in a cubicle.
• Always transfer calls that belong to you because you did not take time to check.
• When the shredder stops while you are using it, do NOT empty the bag.
• Never ever fill a copier or printer with paper.
• Remove other people’s faxes from the fax machine and place them in a completely random spot where they will never find them.
• When you use the last of something DO NOT put it on the list for a supply order.
• A week after you start your new job spend all of your time on the phone and the internet and none of it working.
• Eat smelly obnoxious food at your desk. Such as, Corn Nuts, Sardines, Tuna.
• Cook fish in the office microwave.
• Leave your kombucha in the fridge.
• Jam the only heavy duty stapler in the office and do not fix it.
• Never volunteer. For anything.
• Come in late, leave early, take long lunches.
• Send every forward that you receive to everyone on the e-mail server.
• Eat other people’s food from the fridge.
• Always volunteer and never follow through.
• E-mail someone and then call regarding the same issue 2 minutes later.

bowling with Kaitee!

So today we went bowling as part of E's 10 year highschool reunion. The best part is that our neice was there! She's a rockstar and we had tons of fun.
Eldon had a really good time and it was fun for him to catch up with all his peeps.

Eldon Blogging!!!! (and all about me)

ELDON IS NOW BLOGGING. Check him out and give him some love Eldon's Blog



Yanked from Kimmy! You know how sometimes people on your friend's list post about stuff going on in their life, and all of a sudden you think "Wait a minute? Since when are they working THERE? Since when are they dating HIM/HER? since when???" And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow you feel too ashamed to ask for clarification because it seems like info you *should* already know? It happens to all of us sometimes.

Please copy mine below, erase my answers putting yours in their place then post it in your journal! Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration! One-Word-Answers seldom help anyone out.

1. First name: Amy
2. Age: 27 (I totally had to think about that....am I 27 or 28....yup 27 still)
3. Location: Arizona
4. Hometown: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
5. Occupation: Slave AKA legal assistant
6. Partner: Eldon (Who is now bloggin' check the link to the right)
7. Kids: None.
8. Brothers/Sisters: 5 sisters (Crystal living it up in South Korea teaching English, Angela recently visited and living it up in Thorold, Kathleen ROCKSTAR living and working and being happy, Rebekah living and working and planning to go to Katimivick, Kendra still in Highschool (damn I feel old) and being a ROCKSTAR)and ONE ROCKING BROTHER (Nathan, Living it up in Suds and soon to move to Ottawa ROCKSTAR and go to Carleton University!)
9. List the 3-5 biggest things going on in your life:
~Eldon being off for the summer.
~Planning an anniversary trip for us, almost married 5 years.
~Scrapbooking: Pimpin oput for pay and maybe setting up etsy shop.
10. Parents: Ken & Mary
11. Who are some of your closest friends?: Eldon, Nicole, Kimmy, my work girlies & my family. I struggle with being lonely.
12. Do you drink/smoke?: Nope.
13. Tattoos/Piercings: Ears. I've always wanted a tattoo though.

Random Scrap love!

Just a little random scrappage from this weekend. I made a grad card for a friend's niece. Scraplifted from an old card creations but it ended up looking very different.








A page that I have had in my head for quite awhile....the journaling is kind of personal but it talkes about how I will never be the girl with the perfect hair, flawless skin, who can wear white and not spill etc. and I can't feel bad about that. I remember hearing Carrie on Sex & the City saying something along those lines and I just really really agree.
















And last but not least a page expressing the deep love we have for all things potter. We are wearing shirts I made in those pictures, also our book collection, and a picture of us at midnight when we bought the last book.

Sorry i'm not more spirited today but I am not feeling so hot. I'm actually not at work i'm laying around feeling super sick. Lovely!

Daddy-O!

I think that one of the greatest blessings you can have as a person is growing up in a loving household. I feel so blessed to have grown up with loving supportive parents who loved us and loved each other. I posed about my mom a few months ago and here is time for daddy!
My dad always took up outside, fishing, hiking, camping....anything to get us out and active. Growing up in Northern Ontario we had no shortage of lakes and woods to explore. I think this beach is on Lake Huron, on Manitoulin Island (largest fresh water island in the world).











He was my driving buddy a bunch in college. I went to school from 8:00 am - 3:00 pm and then worked from 3:30 pm to Midnight at the office where he worked. I can't count the number of times I would come in and he had left me lunch on my desk (I came straight from school) or the Fridays that we would order Chinese and eat together. I had some of the very best talks with my dad driving home from work in the middle of the night. (Mom and dad at the grand canyon when they were visiting us in Arizona)











He LOVES Mexican food and other hot spicy fun food. He has us send him El Pato from here in Arizona and would add it to everything if my mom would let him. (mom and dad dancing at my wedding, hard to believe that was almost 5 years ago!)

















Dad had this great tradition of taking his kids on daddy daughter dates when we were growing up. Having 5 sisters and a brother (daddy son days too) it was really fun to get to go fishing just one on one, spend time going to a movie or out to eat one on one. I also totally get my music mania from my dad....my mother likes music but would be hard pressed to "name that tune" so to say...my dad and I can both hear a song and start talking about the band that recorded it, what other songs they have etc.

















I pulled together some of my fave pics of my dad last night and made this scrapbook page. Dad, thanks so much for my childhood. I couldn't be more thankful or wish I grew up any other way. I love you!

(This song is the song that dad and I danced to at my wedding)

Reuse!

SIGG!
Pros:

• adorable
• reusable
• recycylable
• light
• non-leaching aluminum
• no nasty plastic taste, or any unpleasant taste
• can hold juice or whatever without imparting and flavor
• saves money in the long run by not buying bottled water
• they have kids ones too
• different cap options
• lots of design choices
• durable
• Swiss made AKA not made in China!

Cons:

• expensive initially
• does not keep water ice cold
• water will heat up if left in the car
• super popular right now so designs come out and sell out very quickly
• can not find them in stores very often, however my access to stores is somewhat limited
• only comes with a screw cap, you have to buy other options
• I only had one until this week

And then this baby came to live with us....

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  It's a lot bigger, 1 litre, and I bought a kids cap to go with it. I'm loving it!! Then Eldon was feeling a little neglected (although I did pick this one out with him in mind...much more masculine than my bottle with flowers on it....it was not specifically for his use all the time) So last night I bought him this:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I couldn't find a bigger picture but it's a dragon design and the new active top. The bottom line is that I really feel healthier when i drink a lot of water. And I'm not home all that often, being on the go makes a bottle really nessecary. And why have anything in your life that is not NESSECARY, BEAUTIFUL or LOVED.
  
  Here are some links that I have ordered from:
  Reusable Bags
  Swiss Bottle
  Sigg's US Website
  

Missing you!

We are seriously missing Angela around these parts. She's such a fun girl and it was great to have her visit. Toward the end of her time here we were able to do lots of fun stuff. We hit up Sedona and Talapaque....such a pretty area in Arizona.


















We had a chance to go to this super yummy place for dinner. So delish! The Cope's were able to join us and it was a really fun night.
We spent most of the rest of our vacay showing A around all of the fun places we love in Phoenix and were SO sad to see her go!

















Living so far from all of my family it was a real treat to have Angela come and stay.I've been super bummed and missing her since she left!

So yoga started back up last night. So good to get a practice in. I slept like a baby and feel great today.
Bigger post coming about the end my A's trip. I'm still too blue to write about it! I miss my sista!
1. Yoga morning in Ojai, 2. indra does yoga., 3. 'Y' for Yoga, 4. Hatha Yoga Video Lunge Pose - Hanurasana, 5. Yoga Video Tree Pose - Vrksasana, 6. Crow Pose (yoga thing), 7. Upward Dog (yoga thing), 8. [019|365] morning yoga., 9. .Yoga., 10. Yoga (#49), 11. Yoga, 12. The radiance of yoga