NaBloPoMo – Page 22 – a hippie with a minivan

along the way…

Yesterday, just as I got the muffins out of the oven I got a call from a friend to go over to her place… So I quickly made a baba ganoush with the eggplants that I already had cooked and waiting in the fridge, got the kids ready and left…

Though it was cold yesterday it was gorgeous… and on the way I decided to take a few pictures…
I was surprised to see a goose still here… it was alone on the river…

My friend lives about an hour away… near Mont St-Hilaire and just near where Simon grew up…
The light is strange in this pic but here is the mountain…

and up close, nearing my friends house…

and along the way from my house to hers, is mostly flat farmland… many of the farms are old and there are so many old barns just waiting to be photographed.. and Yesterday the gold colours of the harvests just stood out…

mmmm… muffins…

This morning I woke up knowing that I had to use my new mixer… So I decided to make some banana-oat chocolate chip muffins for breakfast…

Isn’t it a beauty?

The batter turned out perfectly of course…

3/4 cups flour
3/4 cup oats
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 cup apple sauce
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 cup butter, melted
chocolate chips (or raisins, nuts etc)

mix wet ingredients in bowl, mix dry ingredients and then add to the wet
bake at 375 for about 20 min

shopping day…

I have been wondering what to get Khéna for his second birthday for a while now…

we have enough toys… I have been wanting to purge toys, not have more…

yesterday I thought of the perfect thing…

Simon agreed…

so this morning I decided to head to IKEA…

I packed the boys into the car and we headed out… we got there at about 10:40 and the boys wanted to go to the playland… but it was only opening at 11… se we waited around a bit and they went in and Khéna and I went shopping a bit.. I don’t go to IKEA much but there is so much cool stuff there and the kids loved the playland…

I got the chair and few more things and we put the things in the car and then headed back in to eat…

Just as we were leaving IKEA I saw that Homesense was right next to it and my pizza stone broke a while back so I thought that since we were there I should pick up a new one… Just across the Aisle from the pizza stones were the mixers so I checked out the one that I have been waiting for (still on backorder) and saw that it was on special at the same price and in stock… so I called Annie for her to look up the number for Sears, called them and cancelled my order and picked up the one that was there… omg… I can’t wait to use it!!! It is now sitting on my counter and just calling for me to bake something!

oh… and Khéna loves his chair…

warning: do not click if hungry…

I shared this site with Annie yesterday and I couldn’t believe that she didn’t already know it…

Foodgawker.com

She couldn’t believe that I hadn’t shared it with her before yesterday… so I thought I would share it with everyone…

It features food pictures from blogs…

good looking food… yummy looking food… and food that will make you drool…

you can also put it by category… (at the bottom of the page if you can reach it) I always seem to get lost somewhere between the top and the bottom of the first page… clicking on a picture that brings me to cool foodie blogs with amazing recipes and then just following links from there…

made a decision this morning…

Soon… we will have no more cable…

Though I watch a few shows…I more often use it at background noise in the evenings while on the computer.. however, the boys watch pretty much everyday… it isn’t really a struggle in general but I have to admit that since the boys interests are changing and they want to watch shows that I don’t like very much on channels with tons of commercials directed toward kids I have been feeling more uncomfortable about their watching habits…

We also have decided that we are buying a Wii for a family gift, so the money that we save in about 6 months will pay for that expense…

I do think that it will be weird not having TV, but I also think that it will be a good thing for the family… what I find scary though is realizing that it was a bit of a hard decision to make.. we are so used to having TV and having cable that even of we don’t really watch it, it has become such a habit that we keep paying for it….

So on Dec 4th we will be TV free…