Let Me Eat Cake!

Today is my birthday. For most people that means cake, but for me, being both gluten and lactose intolerant, cake is not part of my diet. This year, I really wanted to have a chocolate cake with icing for my birthday. This is a tall order, but Homer was bound and determined to deliver.

We have found a great bakery in Cochrane that makes the best gluten free baked goods that I have ever had. The GF Patiserserie was started by mother and daughter and it is the only bakery I know of where it is safe for celiacs to enter and smell the freshly baked goods. Without a doubt their products are better than the non-gluten free baked goods at most bakeries. You would have no idea that their products are gluten free. Many of GF's products are also lactose free, but not many of their cakes. They do have a vanilla one, but I wanted chocolate.

GF does sell a gluten free flour mix, so Homer picked some up the last time we were in. He also found gluten free icing sugar, and treated milk and butter with lactaid drops. He picked up fresh vanilla bean and Bernard Callebaut cocoa. Yesterday, he spent the day in the kitchen making mini cakes until he found just the right mixture to make a fat and sugar free vanilla / chocolate double layer cake. He then added a chocolate icing (it contained the butter and the icing sugar, so not fat or sugar free, but it's my birthday so calories don't count today). The result was amazing!

He also made me two incredible vegetarian curries for dinner last night. I am so fortunate to have a husband who wants to ensure, that despite my intolerances, I can still enjoy a fabulous meal for my birthday.

Celebrate your

Bright Star Dreams

Spring?

Nothing says spring in Calgary like a fresh layer of snow.

I actually like it - it adds moisture to the ground for my garden to grow, it covers up the brown we usually have due to the chinooks and because it is spring it doesn't actually last that long.

And it gives me an excuse to curl up on the couch with Homer and the dogs and do absolutely nothing.

Bright Star Dreams

Windows and Floors and Boards, Oh My!

The first load of building materials arrived on Monday, so I thought I would do a "what are you doing on your vacation?" post.


Above is the "before" picture of the basement windows. Oh how I loved my lilies.

Here is the "after" picture - I guess I have some gardening to do in the spring. Homer moved the lilies to a safe place in the late fall, so we should be able to have a lily garden again, just not here. We may have to give the ones in the middle some TLC after the trauma of the digging around them. We also have to replace all the "drip guards" and "flashing" on the siding and put in permanent window wells. (Hey aren't I just sounding like a contractor now! Holmes on Homes beware. LOL!)

Here is a view of one of the windows from the inside - It lets in way more light than the original windows and I am pretty sure a fireman can fit through it with all his gear. That was one of my criteria for selecting a window. The stacks of 2' x 2' "tiles" are for the subfloor. These tiles come with 1" OVRX foam insulation on the bottom (according to Homer - heck it just looks styrofoam to me), so the floor will stay nice and toasty warm.

Here are all the 2x4 boards that will (hopefully) soon become the walls around the furnace room. The stuff behind it, is what is left of all the junk from our basement after the great purge. We thought we might use our old king size head and foot board in the new bedroom, but I think king size is going to be too big. If anyone is in the market for a king size head and foot board, let me know. Oh and we have the old basement windows too, but they are no longer code for a basement bedroom. Although, I am hoping to build a playhouse in our back yard and maybe they could be put to use in that. (OK, I know I am getting a little ahead of myself and who am I kidding - Homer would be doing the building, I would just be doing the "design" and quality control jobs)

The wood has to acclimatize for about a week, so the work will likely start on Saturday. Three more days of freedom!

Build your
Bright Star Dreams

Happy St. Paddy's Day

Green is my favorite colour. My childhood bedroom was green and I think it is something I will pass along to my children. To me it symbolizes spring, nature, growth, and birth. Green is the feng shui colour of renewal, fresh energy and new beginnings. My spirit always lifts in spring and when I see the colour green.

Here is a picture of my favorite print and not surprisingly it is green. This print by Robert Bateman named Tsitika and Her Son is hanging beside my bed and I have the companion print, Potlatch Village, on the other side of the bed. I go to bed and get up each day seeing these calm, peaceful images.

Tsitika and Her Son
By Robert Bateman

"We heard the orcas before we saw them. On the boat's hydrophone their squeals, squeaks, whistles and sighs sounded as if they were echoing in a cavernous space. Finally the mist lifted a little and we saw a phalanx of black dorsal fins not too far off - a family pod. Then the mist swallowed them up again. Perhaps one of the pods we glimpsed on that magical day of whale watching belonged to a whale that researchers have named Tsitika, an orca matriarch whose life history has given me a glimpse into the orca world. Tsitika and her family belong to the northern resident population of British Columbia killer whales. They have a remarkable social system that we are just beginning to understand."

- Robert Bateman

Potlatch Village
By Robert Bateman

"A few years ago, I had the privilege of visiting a now empty village on an island off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island. Because it was a foggy summer day, we were navigating by compass and radar over the glassy water, occasionally glimpsing the gray-green shoreline, barely aware of the muffled purring of the motor of our big, old wooden boat. First the houses on the village outskirts materialized from the mist, then the lonely outline of a frontal pole. It was all that remained of a traditional native house where a noble family would have lived and held its potlatch feasts, a ceremonial festival accompanied by ritual dancing and lavish gift-giving which the guests would later attempt to surpass.

Of all the aboriginal inhabitants of the northwest Pacific coast, the tribes of this area clung most tenaciously to the potlatch even after it was banned in 1885 by the Canadian government. Despite repeated attempts by local Indian agents to eliminate potlatching, which was regarded as immoral and wasteful, these feasts continued to be held quite openly into the second decade of the twentieth century. One of the biggest potlatches on the central coast took place in the winter of 1921-22 at this now-deserted village. By that time, however, the Indian government had decided to crack down hard on the potlatch using newly granted summary powers that enabled the Indian agent to act as both judge and jury. But the potlatch simply went underground.

As we explored the village that day, I thought of this wrong-headed attempt to suppress native culture and lamented how much had been irretrievably lost. In the mist, the deserted, decaying buildings seemed to echo with voices from a time when this was a vibrant community with ancient roots.

In addition to the two totem poles still standing (they have since fallen), three smaller poles lay close together in various stages of returning to nature. One of these - the least decayed - displayed a magnificent wolf carving, representing a mythical ancestor of the pole's owner. Interestingly, one west coast native group regards the wolf as the land equivalent of the orca, claiming that the first killer whale was a supernatural white wolf who transformed himself into a sea creature."

-Robert Bateman

My green dream would be to visit the spots depicted in these prints.

Bright Star Dreams

Spring Break

I am taking a much earned break from work for a week. I worked more than a week in overtime to get this week. So I am really going to make the most of it.

My plans: sleep in, visit with friends that I've lost touch with, "help" with the basement development, maybe a little shopping, some yoga and walks with the two super beagles - if I can get them (and me) off the couch.

These two sure make my life fun.

Enjoying life and relaxation
Bright Star Dreams

Warmth - Springing Ahead

Today we put the insulation back in the east basement wall. Homer framed the wall earlier this week. Do you think not having insulation on one basement wall since October would have impacted our heating bill for the winter? Since the window company only gave us a 1 hour notice of their arrival, this lack of insulation actually ensured that the job got done. If we hadn't already removed the framing and insulation, they would not have come that day. Recession? What recession? The contractors in Calgary missed the memo.

Interior framing and sub floor are planned to be completed in the next two weeks. Progress at last!

Spring ahead tonight to your
Bright Star Dreams

Cooking Sensation

Not me, Homer. Yesterday, this arrived at our door.

Our old one, a much smaller version, died shortly before Christmas. We now have fresh sun dried tomato hummus and there is a pot of soup on the stove. I am so blessed to have my own personal chef.