Hello Spring

The entrance of Spring came in like a lion. Its been so cold and crappy out! We have had maybe one nice day so far and when I say nice I mean no snow, no wind but still cold enough for me to wear my winter coat, hat and mitts when going on dog walks. All of our snow is gone, but weather is calling for snow for the next 3 days :( 

Can't wait for the real Spring to arrive so I can crack out all my cute Spring dresses and shoes. What is your favourite part of Spring? 

D

Flea Control

With spring around the corner, flea season is coming too. Flea control was a conversation I would have at least once every day when I worked in regular practise. Now that I am in emergency medicine its not something we talk about too often. I saw someone post this image below with the following article about how bad Hartz flea products are with captions and comments such as: "OMG this happened to my dog." "I can't believe they would sell this" "why didn't anyone warn me?" ETC.... and I am thinking to myself  "That's what I have been trying to tell you". So exhausting how people tend to not listen to their vet's advice. 

So anyways, the image below is a picture of a dogs skin between the shoulder blades were this person had been applying the OTC flea product. Ouch! 

If you must buy from the pet store be careful when choosing a product. Most sales persons just push to sell what they are told to sell. They usually don;t have an extended knowledge about the product. If you were to come ask me about the flea products I sell I could talk all day and answer probably any question, pet stores cannot. Another thing to be cautious about is dosing. Most flea treatments (@ pet stores) for dogs are toxic to cats, and are to be dosed by weight class. Make sure you know your pet's weight. 

Majority of people out there will get pet store products and I know this because its a bit cheaper and much more convenient. But I also know that 80% of the clients who use pet store brands come in and say flea medicine doesn't work. Vet brand flea control isn't even that expensive though. You will pay roughly 20$/month. To me, its worth it because trying to get rid of fleas once you have them sucks a whole lot more. 

Talk to your vet about what product is best for your pet. My favourites are Advantage and Revolution. Both simple and easy to use, plus provide great results are protection from a number of other parasites. 

D

S'mores Stuffed Cookies

This weekend I had a sweet tooth! But it wasn't something a simple chocolate bar could fix. So I started looking around at my pinterest food board for some dessert inspiration and decided to make...

S'mores Stuffed Cookies

Ingredients: 

-Marshmellows

-Graham Crackers

-Chocolate Chips or a Milk Chocolate Bar

-Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough 

Step 1 - Create 12 cookie sized pieces of dough. This will make 6 cookies. One piece of bottom, and one for the top.

Step 2 - Create a mini s'more on top of each cookie base. ex: Cookie, graham cracker, marsh mellow, chocolate, and finally cookie again (as pictured above.) 

Step 3 - Cook on 350 for about 15 minutes.

**Best served fresh from oven.

Warning: These come out huge, and are super delicious but terrible for your health.

D

American Goulash

Tonight I made a quick and easy dinner before bed so I would actually have something to take with me to work. I made:

American Goulash

Ingredients:

elbow pasta

1 lb ground beef

1 can diced tomatoes

1 can tomato sauce

onion powder

garlic powder

1 cup water

salt 

Step 1 - brown ground beef and drain fat. meanwhile boil your pasta

Step 2 - Add all other ingredients to the drained ground beef to make the sauce. Add powders and salt to taste. I usually don't add the salt until its actually on my plate. 

** this dish is better after it has been chilled in the fridge for a day.

A healthy pasta dish with no cheese! Haha I look so cheap with my plain disposable plates.

D

Yard Sales

Good Afternoon

On Saturday me and Anthony went to an indoor yard sale at the Ancaster Fair Grounds. It was a gathering of 44 different "vendors" who were looking to sell their spring cleaning.

I took a few photos of some of the neat stuff I found, but only ended up buying one item. Which was a small jar of home made raspberry jam.

This one older lady had a whole booth set up with just her homemade jams. There was so many flavours and sizes to choose from. I haven't tried this one yet because we don't have any bread, but I've smelt it and it smells amazing, I can't wait to try it out. I am hoping we can find more sales like this, or farmers/flea markets in the spring/summer so I can try more jams. There were a few more flavours I would like to try, such as: peach, bumbleberry, mixed berry, red pepper, and of course strawberry and blueberry. I will be keeping my ears/eyes open for upcoming markets since the weather is getting nicer!

The next booth that I loved was dedicated to Barbie's. A mother and her young daughter were working the booth and everything was home made as well. All the barbie's clothing and accessories were all knitted! So cool.

This picture just shows some accessories that they had in a box for display. As you can see: underwear, purses, slippers and hats. Tons of colours and designs to choose from. Apart from this box they had cute mini clothing racks set up with different knit outfits. They even had "look books" which showed the owners sketches of the outfits and the plans so you could order more or customize. Such an awesome idea! The little girl was having fun in the background just dressing up her barbies. She must have the largest barbie clothing collection! They even had special items like hand made BBQ sets, garden tools and lawn chairs. 

The next images caught my eye and immediately I told Anthony that my mother wold love one of these. Then I started thinking about Anthony's mother and grandmother, and these would make awesome Christmas gifts...and where was this a few months ago?!

So basically, you chose your scarf and you chose a pendant! So many different pendants to choose from! I took a photo of a few displays and some samples. Each one costs $15. Such a cute idea! I like the white one in the middle on the bottom row the best. Some of the pendants were just awesome though, the possibilities are endless. 

D

Date Night: Anniversary

Good Morning! 

On Wednesday March 6th it was myself & Anthony's 4 year anniversary! I cannot believe it has been 4 years. We didn't do anything too special as we are ever trying to save our money and yet again, both had to work the overnight. We ended up just going out for a very casual lunch date which I am not against. I'd rather go a nice meal and spend under $50 then go all out and spend nearly $200 on a date then feel broke afterwards. I'd rather save that $200 for the most important date of all, if it ever comes. But in the mean time we will be using our saved money to pay off all our student debt. 

So anyways, we went to Montana's cookhouse again as we still had $25 on the gift card from last time, and a coupon for a free appetizer. So by the end of it, we only owed them $2 plus tip. It was probably the cheapest date ever!

I didn't take many images of our meals, which I should have. We had oven-baked antojitos as our appetizer.  They were spicy but delicious and warm. Below is a photo I took from the internet that someone else took while at Montana's. I also found the recipe if you are interested. So good! As the main meal Anthony of course got another burger and fries. That is his go-to dish. I think he has probably tried every restaurants signature burgers. This one had a thick slice of peameal (sp?) bacon on it as well. I just got a boring old classic poutine as I was nearly full from appetizers. A delicious snippet of poutine pictured above!

Antojitos

Ingredients:

2 lbs cream cheese

4 oz jalapeño peppers

4 oz bread crumbs

1 oz green peppers

4 oz red peppers

½ oz chopped parsley

10 tortillas

1 fl oz hot sauce

10 oz shredded cheddar (mixed)

Preparation:

1. Chop up vegetables (japs, peppers and parsley).

2. Mix chopped vegetables together.

3. Mix ¾ of chopped vegetables with cream cheese, salt, bread crumbs and hot sauce.

4. Spread cream cheese mixture on tortillas.

5. Sprinkle remaining chopped vegetables and shredded cheddar over the tortillas.

6. Roll the tortillas.

7. Cut 5 or 6 perpendicular lines in the top of the wraps.

8. Store or bake.

Baking:

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. Spread garlic butter on top of the wraps for a golden colour (I've done just plain butter before, as well as sprayed the tops with Pam before throwing them in the oven).

3. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown and crisp on top.

Outift of the Day

Top: Sirens

Jeans: Guess

Boots: Go Jane

Jacket: Urban Behavior

Necklace: Forever21

My necklace was the main reason I put this outfit together. It is a new purchase! Two weeks ago when Anthony's sister visited us she wanted to go shopping at Forever21. Of course I could not resist going there! I had to limit myself or I would have bought the whole store..my wishlist is three pages long. So I tried to stick myself to the jewelry section to not even tempt myself with clothes. I left with three new necklaces and spent around $30. I will show you the other two soon.  The shirt I am wearing was originally bought to be tucked into high waisted skirts and my pants just weren't cutting it. The shirt was a bit too short to be tucked in, but I worked with it anyways!

D

Goal Milestone

Good Night Everyone! 

I know I haven't spoken about fitness/health in a while since my rant about being healthy this year as a resolution. And no I did not fail or quit - yet. A while ago I was finally able to run without dying. When I started the gym in February I couldn't run longer than 2 minutes without being completely lost for breath. Well that quickly changed about half way through the month. I was finally able to run for 5 minutes without being too uncomfortable. Well now that it is march I am able to run 10 minutes! I just did it for the first time this morning. 

Goal Milestone: Run for 10 minutes comfortably!

To some of you, you are probably thinking that's nothing because you can run for hours without a care. I have never really ever ran before. I never played sports in school ,wasn't very active except for my paper route! Being able to run for 10 minutes is an accomplishment for me. I am so excited to be able to hit my next milestone, the 15 minutes. 

Originally, I had wanted to be able to run with Anthony in our neighbourhood in the spring. I feel like this might be possible,but he is getting better too! I might be able to go as long as him by then, but he runs a lot faster so we might start next to each other but he will probably get more distance so eventually we won;t be running together. I had some other goals....go to the gym 5X a week. This is a hit and a miss. Sometimes we do, sometime we don't. Its slacking I know but I don't want to force myself and turn the gym into something I dread. The other goal was to lose 15 lbs by June 1st. That won't happen. Its been a month, I haven't budged. I'm still obviously going to try to lose it, but its not getting me down. People keep telling me I am healthy weight and what not so I am not too concerned. I just wanted to do it for myself to feel better. I feel better just achieving my running goals, so if I lose it, awesome...if not oh well. My attitude will likely change more once bikini season rolls around! 

D