Some helpful hints! (if you try them let me know if they work)

1. Peel a banana from the bottom and you won't have to pick the little 'stringy things' off of it. That's how the primates do it.
2. Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.
3. Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and not mold!
4. Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating. Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking.
5. Add a teaspoon of water when frying ground beef. It will help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking.
6. For a cool brownie treat, make brownies as directed. Melt Andes mints in double broiler and pour over warm brownies. Let set for a wonderful minty frosting.
7. Leftover snickers bars from Halloween make a delicious dessert. Simple chop them up with the food chopper. Peel, core and slice a few apples. Place them in a baking dish and sprinkle the chopped candy bars over the apples. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes!!! Serve alone or with vanilla ice cream.
8. Newspaper weeds away. Start putting in your plants, work the nutrients in your soil. Wet newspapers put layers around the plants overlapping as you go cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic they will not get through wet newspapers.
9. No More Mosquitoes! Place a dryer sheet in your pocket. It will keep the mosquitoes away.
Reducing Static Cling. Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not have a clingy skirt or dress. Same thing works with slacks that cling when wearing panty hose. Place pin in seam of slacks and -- tada! static is gone.
10. Measuring Cups, Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don't dry cup. Next, add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out.
11.Get Rid of Ants. Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it 'home,' can't digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains, but it works & you don't have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!

Bowling with the family..............

Sorry about my rude husband! But this is

generally what I get when I try to take a

picutre of him:(.

Just some things I've been working on

Today I went out to my friend Melissa's house for a scrapbooking day. And from 12-4 this is all I came up with. I think that we were doing more visiting than scrapbooking. Thanks Melissa for the fun day!

Just posting these pics to show all of you who didn't believe that I could quilt..........tada! I am excited, I am giving this quilt to my Dad for his 50th birthday on Sunday.

Snowshoeing not as easy as it looks!

I went snowshoeing for the first time on Saturday with from left to right, Laurie, Mo, Bree and Sarah. It was actually everyone's first time. We rented our snowshoes from a place in Calgary. Mo and Bree rented there's the night before and got the cool new sleek model as you can see. When Laurie, Sarah and I got there all they had left was the old school snowshoes! Which would have been fine if we were just trapsing around in a meadow but......................no we were doing a trek up to Chester Lake in k-country. And what Mo failed to mention was that the first 2.5 km of the 8.5 km trek was all up hill!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now let me give you a little lesson about snow shoes, the newer models have spikes on the bottom that dig into the snow and prevent you from sliding backwards. The older models are pretty much like big tennis rackets. Needless to say my hips are still hurting! But I would definitly do it again. It was so pretty up in the mountains.

Since Janay's not going to do it..................

Ok so here is the scoop, this blog was started against my will by Janay. Who promised she would update it for me. But as you all can see she did not do that so now I have a delema.....to blog or not to blog? I thought since I am sitting here doing nothing else I will give it a try! Now what to blog about hmmmm.

I guess I will just start with what is going on in my life right now. Still hanging out with Doug and the dogs in Strathmore. No kids yet, I thought that I would just put that out there so everyone will stop asking me!!! I am really excited because Doug and I are leaving to Mexico in 11 days. We are staying at the Holiday Inn resort in Puerto Vallarta, just sort of a last minute thing that we decided to do, when it was -40 degrees outside. And besides that we haven't been on a holiday out side of Canada since our honeymoon approx 4 years ago. So check back for pictures.

So I am just about finished painting! Just 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms left. I really want to get it done but can't bring myself to pick up the paint brush, so if any of you out there love painting you know where to find me :). Our basement is almost done but yet we (or should i say Doug) just can't seem to find the motivation to finish it. And hopefully fingers crossed Doug is out cleaning up the garage right now. Although I am not going to get my hope up that we will be able to park in there before winter is over.

Other than that not to much else going on in my life right now. I have started making Quilts and love it!! I know it seems odd but there is something about cutting up the material and sewing it all back together that I love. Anyways sorry for the boring post, hopefully next time I will have some pics up.