We are having friends over on the 22nd for dinner and good conversation.  It's been a while since we've had anyone over...and it's the first time these 2 couples will be coming over to our house.  I think this Dinner Party is part of the reason while I have been so diligently purging and flinging for the past couple weeks.  I want our house to look lovely when they are here.

I've also been thinking a lot about the menu for the evening.  Last time (and I guess the first time all 6 of us got together) we had Greek type foods (souvlaki, greek salad, lemon potatoes, grilled veggies).  It was all kinds of wonderful heavenly goodness.  I want to make something equally as wonderful, but not spend eleventy hours in the ktichen preparing it.  At first I was leaning towards doing a fondue...but The Husband is not that fond of fondues and they are a ton of prep work and I am not ready to dig my fondues out of the basement yet.  Then I was thinking of doing some kind of Mexican or Tex-Mex dish.  Something like burritos and refried beans and dirty rice.  But, I think one of the couples are not very adventurous eaters and are watching what they are eating.  I've had my brainstorming hat on for ages now.

So, in the end I think I've put together a nice menu....

Snacks
Veggies with Dip OR a cheese tray with crackers
Hot Artichoke Dip with Chips

Starter
French Onion Soup with really crusty French Bread and Gruyere Cheese

Meal
Lasagne
Ceaser Salad and Garlic Cheese Toast


Desert
Some kind of Apple Crumble with Ice Cream

It's definitely not a meal that is outside of my comfort zone.  Lasagne is something I like to make.  Same with French Onion Soup.  I've made apple crumble before.

I was thinking about doing just appy's with some cold cut sandwiches (There is a wonderful wonderful wonderful little German butcher by my work that has the best sandwich meats I have ever tasted in my life) but the grown-upness of a sit down dinner kind of lured me away from appetizers and sandwiches.

So, my dear readers, please tell me which meal should I go for?

1.  snacks, soup, and lasagne with desert
OR
2.  appy's with cold cut sandwiches

I take a lot of pictures with plans of making brilliant blog posts with wonderful pictures. Generally, those pictures just sit on my camera.

Here's a sample of some of my pictures that were meant to be blogged.

Playing outside at Nana's. It was soooo cold that day. The thermometer in the background reads about -23 or -24, but that doesn't include the windchill. If you factored in the wind chill it was something like -35 that day. We took the picture from inside. :P

This is Husband on his way to vote for the very first time. I was so proud of him and so excited that he's now a Canadian Citizen and can take part in elections.

Don't you love how Andrew is wearing only a hoodie and Husband is decked out in a winter coat and toque?

In the bath a few weeks back. I can't remember what I was trying to get him to do in the bath, but it was going to be something that would have made a fabulous blog post. But, alas all he would do was grin and laugh hysterically at the camera.

We'd had a turkey in the freezer for months (like since October?) and I'd been waiting for an opportunity to cook it up. We've been trying to have my Mom over for Sunday dinners since my Dad died. I think she must be lonely, not having anyone to share meals with now. I cooked this up a few weeks back. I hadn't cooked a bird in years and years. I was amazed how golden I got the outside and how good the inside was. I made turkey pot pies and turkey soup with the leftovers. It was good. :)

This is our salad that we had with it. It was good. My mom likes regular salads.

These were my attempt at yam fries. They were fun to cut, season, and coat with oil. They were fun to pop into the oven. It wasn't fun, however, to have forgotten about them in the oven and have them burn quite quickly. :( We bought a yam today when we go grocery shopping and we will attempt to make yam fries again sometime this week.

I think that takes care of my back log of pictures. Cheers!

Voila! We all cooked together. Me, Andrew, and Husband. Husband did the filling and the prep work. I did the circles and pinching. Andrew put them on the baking sheet and basted with the egg.

It was quite good fun and pretty easy to make. You don't even make the dough. You get frozen pie crusts, let them thaw to room temperature, take them out of the pan and cut the circles out of that. Ingenius!

When I worked at elementary schools the children often did these every Friday--This Week At School. It was always a fun thing for them to do and I loved reading what they wrote.

So, This Week At LIfe....

1. I ate not one but two chocolate bars on secretary's day. The problem is that they didn't even taste that good, but I still kept eating them. :(

2. We might be buying a house. We're going to put an offer in tonight.

3. I had a bad day at work yesterday. The other secretary wasn't there so I was on my own and for most of the morning it was standing room only in the office and there is nothing that gives me The Rage like teenagers that don't shut the fuck up when they've been sent to the office for misbehaving. GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I'd say the high point was when I put one girl in the corner b/c she would not stop talking and then from the corner, a mere 2 feet from me, said quite loudly in a whiny whiny voice 'you guys suck, and I wish I could backhand you all' and then later on as I'm trying to explain to the vice what she said 'You don't know the whole fucking story why don't you just shut the fuck up'. (hmmm, the more I think about it the more I think it might have been 'why don't you just shut your mouth). Anyways, regardles, I don't like being sworn at especially in that whiny whiny voice. Ugh.

4. Needless to say b/c of standing room only morning I gorged on Rally Burgers at lunch.

5. I did exercise quite a bit this week. Twice at the gym and two times(maybe 3?) at home while watching the Biggest Loser.

6. I have to look at revamping my strength training. I am just not sore the next day. It hurts while I am lifting my 5 pound weights, but the next day--nada. Maybe it's time to move to 8 pounders?

7. My house is messy but I just seem to not be able to clean it. It's summer and my anxiety is definitely returning. I am afraid to clean because I am afraid I will find bugs. It's a vicious circle and it generally ends up with me screaming at my husband. :( Fuck I hate being like this. I wish that damn anxiety clinic would phone. I've been on the wait list for one year now. :(

8. We had tacos last night. They were yummy. I wish we had gone to Mongos though, but I had taken the beef out a couple days and I really wanted to make sure we used it.

9. Last night we went to our apartment buildings sauna for the first time. Yes folks, we've lived here 9 months and this is the first time. It was nice, nicer then I was expecting. We also sat out on our balcony for the firs time too. We picked this place largely b/c it had a balcony and we were all keen about sitting outside on it. It was chilly but nice.

10. We are having one of Steve's friends over tonight probably. I hope there will be more sauna and more sitting on the balcony, consuming the beverages. We will either be celebrating or comiserating.

Just a thought--I wonder how many people I can get to help move this time? It will be the sixth move in 5 years. I can't wait to tell my friends that there will be another moving day. HAH!

All you can eat sushi is not a good thing the day before you're going to weigh in to start your weight loss challenge.

I feel like I could explode.

That is all.

MMMMM...we're having tacos tonight. I'm so excited...I'm drooling already.

Last night we had salsa chicken which sound like such a complicated dish, but really it was one of the easiest things I've ever made. Here's the recipe.

Salsa Chicken

3 chicken breasts
1 tin of diced tomatoes
1/2 cup of medium spicy salsa
some cheddar cheese

Lay chicken on a baking dish. Add diced tomatoes and salsa. Bake in the oven at like 400 degrees until it's done. Add some grated cheddar cheese and serve with spaghetti.

MMMM...it was delish. I will definitely make it again. Thanks Chelle. :)

I've been feeling really 'out there' on the internet this past week. There's been a big flooding mess at my school and we've been having furniture problems and for some reason posting about them on my message boards has made me....uncomfortable...although that's so not the right word?

I've found a Winnipeg Forum which is even weirder b/c now I'm worried that these people are parents of our kids or relatives to the damn futon guy, etc...and that my little internet bubble is going to be broken?

Anyways on the weight loss front....

I'm going to say I'm gaining this week. This is based on the following:

Tuesday I ate about 9 cookies and a cinnamon bun when I was at my inservice.
This was followed by Thai food for lunch (it was soooo damn yummy)
Followed by a huge assed frittata for supper.

Wednesday I ate a whole bag of pretzels.

Thursday I had McDonalds for lunch b/c....well I'm not really sure why I had McDonalds. I just did.

Friday I went to Carlos and Murphys for lunch and then we went for Ribs for Supper b/c it was my Dad's and Grandpas birthdays.

& now today (Saturday) is a bithday party where there will be yummy treats I'm sure and then supper tonight with a friend.

Couple that eating with zero exercise and that scale is going to be movin' on up.

Fifteen and a half points. 15.5.

That's what a Sausage n Egger from A&W are. That combined with the Hashbrown I also had were 19.5 points. Ugh. How gross is that?

I ate over half my points in 5 minutes. Double ugh.

I felt sick all day and then felt disgustingly & horribly sick all afternoon. So much so that I left work early and came home.

aaah...the beauty of hummus.


3 tablespoons for 2 points. Mmmmmmm. We had roasted garlic hummus with Canapes for supper tonight (7 canapes for 1 point).

It was super de duper yummy. I figure I probably ate about 14 points worth of hu

On the non-food side of life we bought a futon today. Our couch is on it's last leg, and Steve's parents are going to need something to sleep on when they're visiting so we thought a futon would be the best option. We picked the one in the picture.
mmus and canapes.

We picked this futon with a nice deep purple print called Anjou as the cover. We're picking up the frame tomorrow and the cover should here in a week. I'm tres excited.