Games Night is Always Lots of Fun.

A new Easter flag to welcome our friends to Games Night!

Well, Games Night has come and gone for another year and I think it was a great success despite the fact that I was suffering with a miserable cold. Luckily, I had made most of the preparations and gathered all the games and prizes the previous week so all that was left to do was clean the house and prepare the meal. This being Easter weekend there were bunnies everywhere.Everything was done nice and early, and because it was such a beautiful day outside, Hubby washed Black Beauty (again!) so that he could show it off to our friends. It does look great when it is clean and the sun is shining on it.

Every one arrived shortly after 3:00 and Hubby took the guys out for a spin around the block in the new truck (so much for it being clean, sigh). When they got back we put out some snacks and got everyone a drink and the we got right into the games!

It was a beautiful day so Hubby decided to
wash Black Beauty, (AGAIN!).

It is a pretty truck, especially when it's
gleaming in the sunlight!

The first game was the Elimination Game. Last week I mailed each of the four guests ten playing cards and I gave Hubby his own set of ten right before the game. There were two cards left over in case anyone wanted to trade. I had a matching set of cards in a bag and, one by one, I pulled out each card and the corresponding card was eliminated. After each group of ten cards there was a small consolation prize and the person with the final card got to select a prize from the Prize Basket. All the prizes were wrapped so that nobody knew what they were getting but these guys have all been here before so the knew to go right for the packages that felt like boxes of chocolates! Everyone loves chocolates, right? The other prizes included shower gel, packs of Kleenex, a novel, a puzzle book, lottery tickets, etc. There wasn't anything really expensive, it was all just for a laugh. The winner of the Elimination game, not surprisingly, managed to find the biggest box of chocolates!

The Easter Bunny Girls.

The dining room / games table is all
set for a night of fun!

A close-up of my beautiful birthday orchid.

Home-made butter tarts were just part of the dessert menu.

Here are the games and the prize basket.

The Elimination game is under way!

The winner of the Elimination game gets to select the
first prize from the basket.

The next game was trivia contest. I found a great and timely quiz on the CBC website about the recent demise of the penny. The quiz is just below and I'll put the answers at the end of this post if you want to play.

PENNY TRIVIA
1. Four of the five designs that have appeared on the reverse side of the penny have included maple leaves. What was the fifth design?
A portrait of a rock dove
A rendering of the Atlantic puffin
A view of the St. Lawrence River
A sketch of the Canadian Rockies

2. About 35 billion pennies have been minted since 1908. If they were stacked on top of each other, this would be the equivalent height of this many CN Towers:
100
1,000
100,000
1,000,000

3.The federal government announced plans to withdraw the penny, owing to production costs. How much did it cost to make one penny?
1.6 cents
2 cents
3.1 cents
5 cents

4. The net cost of redeeming the six billion pennies expected to be turned in over the next six years will cost the federal government:
$10,500
$125,000
$3,000,000
$38,300,000

5.How many pennies can you cram into a four-litre pickle jar?
344 pennies, or $3.44
4,992 pennies or $49.92
12,280 pennies or $122.80
175,333 pennies or $1,753.33

6.This country has also eliminated the single-unit coin from circulation:
New Zealand
France
Spain
All of the above

7.The last penny was produced in May 4, 2012 in which city?
London, England
Ottawa, Ont.
Winnipeg, Man.
Calgary, Alta.

8.A rare Canadian penny sold for $402,500 US at auction in January 2010. The penny, one of three ever made, bears this unique feature:
A misspelling of the word "Canada"
A small dot below the year
Renderings of both King George V and Edward VII
A hexagon shape

9.The letters KG appear on the penny below the maple leaf. This stands for:
King George, in honour of the monarch who preceded Queen Elizabeth
Kingston and Gatineau, to mark Canada's bilingual tradition
George Edward Kruger Gray, the artist who designed the maple leaf twig design for the penny
Kilogram, a reference to the metric unit of measurement standard in Canada

10.Pennies produced from 1982 to 1996 were unique in this respect:
They were made of copper-plated zinc
They were no longer round but rather had 12 sides
They didn't have "Canada" printed on them
They were extra lucky

After that we tried playing a game called "Don't Fall" but Larry got a perfect score of eleven on his first try so we stopped there and moved on to the Memory Test. This proved to be a lot harder. Everyone got to study a plate that held 13 items for 30 seconds and then the plate was taken away. The most anyone could remember was 11 of the 13. More surprisingly, when we we repeated the test later in the evening with the same items, most people did even worse!

Larry played this winning entry in the "Don't Fall" game
in his first try!

This is the Memory Test Game. The best anyone
could do was 11 of 13 items.

We stopped for supper at that point. We had Cabernet Beef Stew and Home-made Cheese Biscuits for the meal and pumpkin pie with whipped cream, key lime tarts and butter tarts (all home-made as well) for dessert. Nobody went away hungry!

Freddy was the King of backgammon and,
 of course, crokinole!

The only game I won all night was Blockus!

After supper we went back to the games. We had a game of Yahtzee with everyone and then we broke up into  a couple of groups and played crokinole and Blockus. Blockus was the only game I won all night but by then all the prizes had been given out. Oh, well. It probably wouldn't have looked good if I awarded myself a prize! We had great fun even though I didn't feel well and I'm looking forward to the next time we have Games Night, maybe it should be a semi-annual event!

(answers to the penny quiz - (1) A portrait of a rock dove, (2) 100,000, (3) 1.6 cents, (4) $38,300,000, (5) 4,992 pennies or $49.92, (6) All of the above, (7) Winnipeg, Man., (8) A small dot below the year, (9) George Edward Kruger Gray, the artist who designed the maple leaf twig design for the penny, (10) They were no longer round but rather had 12 sides)

Let's Catch Up.

So you may have noticed that I haven’t written many posts lately. That’s just me being lazy, I guess, sorry. I’ve been keeping myself busy this winter with other things so let’s catch up.

I finally got around to working on a craft project Hubby made for me as one of my presents last Christmas, that’s as in 2010, by the way. It is a set of snowmen and snowflakes for my hangar. You might remember that I posted about “All in a Row” back in that year. The original design was made by Julie Hardy at Country Feelin’. She has lots of other projects, too, but I like this one the best. You can see the “All in a Row” sets by clicking here.

Anyway, the snowmen had been gathering dust on my craft table so I decided that I would wipe them off and finish them up. I really enjoyed painting and decorating them, I was just savouring the moments till they were finished off just right. All they need now is some wire and they are ready to go.

Here is a close-up of three of the snowmen.

All the pieces have finally been painted and assembled.

All they need now is some wire to attach them to the hangar.

Hmmm… Looks like someone has been busy in the craft room.

My new iPod with its accessories.

For Christmas this year Hubby got me an iPod Touch with a beautiful orange case to replace the mp3 player I had been using. I had given him an iPod the previous year and he had spent the entire year raving about it and all the things it could do. I doubt I’ll ever use half the features it has but as soon as I charged it up I immediately wanted to download a game called Angry Birds which I have been hearing so much about that I just had to see what all the buzz was really about.

BIG MISTAKE!!!

I’m hooked and honestly can’t stop thinking about breaking levels and achieving the high scores. I have even purchased stickers for the inside of my professional notebook so I can have a laugh while sitting around important meeting which are truly boring. I’ve gone bird crazy looking for t-shirts and any cool stuff I can get my hands on relating towards this game. Oh and I’m not the only one who is infatuated with this game. I have talked some of my co-workers into down-loading the game and they are hooked, too.

We don’t really know the names of the birds so I have devised names of my own for them. Speeder bird, splitter bird, bomber birds, fat ass balloon bird, big red boss, little fart red bird and boomerang bird to name a few. I bet you’ll look into angry birds to see what I’m talking about, maybe get a copy for yourself. Don’t worry you won’t be alone. With over 10 billion downloads the Rovio guys have done something right.

Big Red Boss Bird

I have also been trying new recipes lately and made a fantastic supper for Superbowl Sunday that just so happened to exactly match a suggested meal written about in a local newspaper. Slow roasted BBQ back ribs, homemade baked beans and coleslaw, mmm.

The local paper had an article suggesting the exact supper we had planned.

The coleslaw was a new recipe that included carrots, celery and green onions.

Ribs and beans and coleslaw, yummy.

I also made a turkey pot pie from a recipe I found in a Canadian Living magazine. It was the first time I had ever cooked anything using leeks and it turned out great. We'll definitely be doing this one again.

Turkey Pot Pie

And then there was Valentine’s Day where we had our beef stew and fresh biscuits and I made Hubby a pecan pie from a recipe that I found on the Pioneer Woman’s site. The pie turned out great and was super easy to make. He loved it and he was kind enough to give me a small piece but, at 10,000 calories per slice, I didn’t really want too much anyway.

We always make beef stew in a large economy size. It lasts for several meals.

The perfect side dish for stew is fresh biscuits and butter.

Hubby's Valentine gift, my first pecan pie.

Don't stare at this picture, it will make you fat just by looking at it.

So that's how I'm filling up my days. Working and baking and gaming and waiting for winter to fade away so that I can get out to my garden. It can't come soon enough.

Halloween Is Tomorrow, Time To Make Some Bloody Fingers!

Yeah, that's right. Tomorrow is my favourite day of the year. The day when all the ghouls and ghosts come out. Maybe some kids, too. At least they might if this storm eases up. Right now the wind is pounding the house with a hard-driven rain. An hour ago it picked up a plastic lawn chair and threw it from one side of the back deck 40 feet to the other side just missing the kitchen window. We're just feeling lucky though because we aren't getting snow and because we've still got our power on. So with a nice pot roast cooking away in the oven I thought maybe I could share my Witch's Finger cookie recipe with you.

Those are the Witch Finger Cookies under the dome of my cake plate.

Witch’s Fingers
(adapted from a recipe in Canadian Living magazine)
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup icing sugar
1 egg
1.5 tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla
2 ¾ cup flour
1 cup almond, whole and blanched
1 tube red cake gel
7 or 8 drops green food colouring


Preparation:
In bowl, beat together butter, sugar, egg, almond extract, vanilla and the green food colouring; beat in flour, baking powder and salt. Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Working with one quarter of the dough at a time and keeping remaining dough refrigerated, roll into a long snake of dough and then cut into 3 or 4 inch pieces. Squeeze the pieces just enough to form the knuckles of the finger shape for each cookie. Using a fork, press the back of the tines lightly onto the top of the knuckle to simulate natural creases. Press almond firmly into end for nail.
Place on lightly greased baking sheets; bake in 325°F (160°C) oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until pale golden. Let cool for 3 minutes. Lift up almond; squeeze red decorator gel onto nail bed and press almond back into place, so gel oozes out from underneath. Remove from baking sheets; let cool on racks. Repeat with remaining dough.
Makes 3 or 4 dozen creepy and delicious cookies (the number will vary depending on how big you make them)
I usually pass these out to the adults who accompany their kiddies to the door if I can keep Hubby from eating them all! I hope you have time to make some, they’re worth the effort!

Never let a witch play with your hammer, they always seem to manage to hit their poor fingernails.

Here is this year’s crew warming up in the garage before their debuts tomorrow.

You would never believe just how bad it is outside today after seeing how nice it was yesterday.

Spring Sure Is A Busy Time!

Well, it’s been over a month since I sat down to write a post and, while I have been feeling guilty, I just couldn’t seem to find the time required. So while my cakes are in the oven and because the rain is pouring down outside this afternoon and the wind is pounding the house I guess that my outside chores will have to wait. Let’s catch up.

In my last post I was looking forward to the imminent arrival of spring but winter was still hanging around. We took a drive to the beach to go for a walk and passed this fox out doing the same thing. Well, the walking part that is, a fox would look silly driving don’t you think? We saw him coming towards us as we drove up the road so we pulled off to the side and grabbed the camera. The fox came right over and sat down 10 feet from the car and let us shoot as many pictures as we wanted. After a few minutes he got bored and walked away but we had a nice visit until then.

This red fox walked over to see if we had any interesting snacks to eat.

He came right over to the middle of the road. I’m glad there was no other traffic.

Here, get my good profile!

Well, if you haven’t got anything to eat I’m not even going to look at you.

And then he was gone.

After the fox left we continued on to the beach but it was very cold and windy. Too cold really to enjoy ourselves so after watching the waves crash onto the shore for a couple of minutes we turned around and went back to the car. The only beach-combing find was this happy looking ball I discovered rolling along the dune. It cheered me right up!

My new happy sunflower beach ball.

A couple of weeks ago we finally held the twice-deferred Games Night and it was a big success. It took me a few days to get the food and the treats ready but it was worth the effort in the end. We had lasagna and Caesar salad for dinner and butter tarts for dessert. We played crokinole, Uno and cribbage and of course I had my trivia/brain teaser contest. The winner of each game got to select a gift package from the “Basket of Goodies”. Some of the prizes were boxes of chocolates, tubes of body wash, a small flashlight, packs of Kleenex, first-aid kits and home-made pickles and relish. They were inexpensive, small items but they were unexpected and a big hit. Surprisingly, the winners were evenly distributed and everybody went home with goodies. I think everyone had a good time, I know I did!

The day of Games Night was spent baking up a storm. We had the butter tarts for dessert.

Only the best is good enough for our guests. Crown Royal and butter tarts, mmm…

Game boards, check. Basket of Goodies, check. Let’s play!

After Games Night came my birthday. Yes, the Witch is another year older and closer to retirement, yahoo! I took the day off work as a present to myself (it was Friday so I got a long weekend) and Hubby surprised me by doing the same thing. We went down to the big city where he took me out to a fancy restaurant for wine and dinner. We both had great meals and then we went home for cake and presents. The best ones were a pair of ceramic toad houses shaped like mushrooms from Hubby and a pair of cowboy boots from my Mom.

Don’t you just love that moment before you rip into a big pile of presents?

Toadstool-shaped toad houses.

My new boots. All I need now are the spurs!

The weather has been improving by leaps and bounds this past couple of weeks and we have been getting outside to do the yard cleanup in the areas where the snow has melted. It really went down much quicker than I expected and now there are only a few places under the trees where any remains. It left behind the usual mess in the yard. Mouse tracks in the grass, flattened pumpkins in the garden, driveway stones thrown out by the snow blower, leaves, branches and cones from the trees, even the eyes and buttons from our snowman. It all needed to be picked up. Luckily Hubby was able to collect most of it with the tractor and the lawn sweeper but it took 4 hours to do it.

If you look closely you can see the remains of the snowman laying on the grass.

This is all that is left of last year’s pumpkins.

We’ve also started working in the gardens. Hubby took the rotiller out of the shed to see if it would start and it fired on the second attempt. While it was running he took it over to the veggie patch to see how dry the soil was and he found that it was in good shape so he gave it a little rip. It sure looks better with the ground freshly turned but now I’m getting anxious to get my starters planted. Yesterday we went to Vesey's and spent over $50 on seeds and starter trays. We bought way more than we need but if you’re a gardener and you see what they have on offer you would probably buy extra, too.

This year the rotiller started right up and ran strongly.

The garden soil looks so rich when it is freshly turned.

We went seed shopping on Saturday!

We got:
• Rutabaga; York
• Cucumber; Raider
• Tomato; Tomande, ApplauseTiny Tim and Bobcat
• Swiss Chard; Burpee’s Rhubarb
• Radish; Cherry Belle
• Carrots; Neptune
• Thyme; German Winter Thyme
• Beets; First Crop, Rodina and Detroit Dark Red
• Beans; Lewis, Gold Rush and Royal Burgandy
• And Moonflowers!

I think we may need to expand the garden again this year!

Anyway that’s what we have been doing lately. So consider yourself all caught up. Here’s a few more pictures including some busy bees happily pollinating the first flowers to show up in the front garden. Enjoy.

The gazebo survived its first winter in good shape. Maybe we’ll get it finished this year.

The front garden is finally out from underneath the snow and the perennials are starting to regrow.

My new toadhouses are outside and ready for tenants.

This bee was busy working on an early arrival in the front garden.

This little patch of flowers was just swarming with bees and flies.