Delish Dutch Apple Pie

Jessy's grandma's apple pie is super yummy and super easy to make. I know, I've made it three times in the last week. This is one of those recipes that everyone at the table requests after eating a piece. DELISH!


What You Need for Filling:
4 cups cooking apples (3-4 apples) peeled and chunked - I recommend Gala apples
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp flour
Nutmeg and cinnamon to taste

What You Need for Topping:
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup butter
2 tbsp cream/milk (optional and I chose not to use it)

Pastry: 9" pie shell

What You Do:
1. Sprinkle apple chunks with lemon juice.
2. Toss with sugar, flour, nutmeg and cinnamon.
3. Place in pie crust.
4. Sprinkle on topping.
5. Cover loosely with foil.
6. Bake at 425 degrees for 45 minutes.
7. Uncover, dribble with cream if using, and bake for 15 minutes more.

Mmmm Buttons

My favourite woman dropped off a massive ziploc bag of my favourite things this weekend - thanks mom! Yay for Thrift Shops and a mom addicted to scouring them for fabulous goods.

I've decided to finally sort my collection of lovely buttons by colour so that I can display them in my sewing room/office. I started sorting and soaking the little buggers last night and I know I'm a dork but there is something oddly satisfying about the task.

Oh how I love buttons.

Blue Monday

1. Untitled, 2. Just Clouds and Bright Blue Sky, 3. dandelion blue, 4. Blue Oasis, 5. big blue..., 6. The blue tent, 7. a sky divided, 8. blue and white...2008, 9. dried toluidine blue on a petri dish

It was a grey morning and I needed some blue to brighten my mood.

Theme Thursday: Round Up

Stacy suggested that for this weeks theme we show off some of our best/favourite images from the summer. Our trip to BC was amazing and the scenery made it really easy to take some fantastic shots. Here are just a few of my faves for you to check out:

The view from my best friend Rebecca's condo.

Heading to the top of the world (aka the peak of Whistler mountain) with the amazing Jessy on a crazy cloudy day - we were literally in the clouds!

It's so incredible that it doesn't even look real does it?

My awesome man.


One of my all time favourite shots. Can you see Mike?

A shot from the airplane window on our flight home.

Can you believe fall is just around the corner?

Crazed Soccer Fan?!

Nope. Believe it or not this (not the greatest quality thanks to a shaky cell phone) photo was taken of Mike last night at a house warming party. His Ireland flag face was pretty friggen creepy in the dark.

Want to throw a kick ass party for your friends? Hire a professional face painter and a steel drum band for entertainment. Good times!

This is how I like to spend my weekend.

Spending my weekend with friends and family laughing, singing and dancing makes for one fabulous weekend.

Mike and our niece at our Fiesta this weekend. THANKS MOM & DAD!!


Joanne, Paul and the boys at the "August Birthdays" party on Sunday.

Of course laying in the yard with a good book and a cold glass of water makes for a lovely weekend too and after this busy weekend that's exactly what I hope to do on Saturday.

Thanks to Bird Bath for this week's "This is..." theme, it was an awesome weekend which made it easy for me to post.

Theme Thursday: Eyes

Being in BC means spending loads of time with two of my long distance loves who I think about every day and miss like crazy: Cara and Rosie.

This first shot was taken at the Feist concert earlier this week. It's a wee bit under-exposed but I still love it - Cara's eyes were the first thing I was drawn to when I viewed this pic after snapping it.

Of course Miss. Rosie, the happiest baby on earth, takes after her mommy in the 'perfect model department'. Check out those peepers: too cute!

Standing on top of the world!

Our week in Whistler was amazing. Mike and I spent Saturday mountain biking and had an amazing time; Sunday we took the peak chair to the, you guessed it, peak of Whistler mountain. It was a beautiful day on Sunday so we managed to get some pretty spectacular shots.

Where's Waldo Mike in these two pics?


The background is so beautiful it almost looks fake, don't you think?

Off to see Feist with a pile of people at Deer Lake tonight, have to fly!

Heading to the Top of the World!

Jessy and I took the gondola to Garbonzo and then took the peak chair up to the top of Whistler Mountain on Wednesday. We were blown away by the fact that we were literally in, and above, clouds!


These shots are all from the top of the Gondola, we went even higher when we took the Peak chair but I'll post some of those pics later.




This shot here gives you a really good idea of what it was like approaching the top of the glacier; it was absolutely amazing!


Our final adventure this week was ziplining at Cougar Mountain with Jess and Colin. It was such a rush! Godzilla was the biggest line at 1500 feet long, 200 feet off the ground with a 200 foot vertical drop: WOW! Colin has video of the ziplining but we don't have any still photos... once the video is on youtube I'll pass along the link to you!

Now I Get It!!

I've bitten the bullet and decided to pay for 24 hours of internet access so that I can update everyone on our adventures in British Columbia. We're having the most amazing time!

Mike and I agree that this trip is definitely our second best vacation (first being our Mexico/Jamaica wedding/honeymoon trip) and we're just halfway through it. We arrived in Vancouver last Friday and spent the night with Rebecca; she has the most phenomenal view from her condo on Sunset Beach.

Saturday morning we drove two hours to Whistler Mountain where we had planned to spend five nights. The two and a half hours it took to drive to the mountain seemed like just a blink of an eye thanks to the phenomenal views!

Cara, Herwig and Rosie met up with us in Whistler just a few moments after we arrived in the village. The boys hit the Whistler Golf course where they played a round, drank some pints and enjoyed the scenery.

Cara, Rebecca, Rosie and I spent the afternoon catching up over drinks (milk for the baby, beer for the ladies) and then took a hike to Lost Lake where we snapped some pics, oohed and ahhed over the baby and yapped some more.



Sunday afternoon the fun continued...
I now understand my husband's obsession with mountain biking. Cara, Rebecca and I rented some bikes and gear and hit the trails and WOW was it fun!

I'm totally hooked on mountain biking. I had a blast zipping down the hill with Reebs and Neen, three runs were just enough to get me hooked!

Monday and Wednesday there are women's clinics offered for a crazy good price at Whistler so I attended both clinics on my own and loved every minute. The girls were super cool and the coaches were awesome. They split us into groups by riding ability and there was no pressure to ride any runs we weren't comfortable with or to move at any particular speed. Both nights I rode with the lower intermediate group because I was comfortable riding blue runs (green are the easiest). I learned some basic riding techniques on Monday; Wednesday our coach, Jim, taught us to jump. Hitting table top jumps was what he worked with us on - not jumping over anything so mom don't fret - I caught a little air on a few of the table tops after practicing over and over again so that was pretty cool!

So far I've ridden Easy Does It (green), part of Golden Triangle (blue), B-line (blue), a bit of Ho Chi Min (blue) which was my least fav due to the zillion rocks and roots, Crank-it-up (blue) which I loved and Heart of Darkness (blue) which is pretty intense thanks to the drop on the right but wow is it fun! Mike is pretty stoked that I liked riding, we're going to bike together tomorrow! Yay!

Jessy, Colin, Ian and Jackie all arrived on Sunday afternoon. Rebecca headed back to Vancouver after riding but Cara and Herwig stuck around for another night. Remember I said we had planned a five night stay in Whistler? Well it has turned into eight nights thanks to a crazy rock slide that has blocked the only highway from Whistler to Vancouver. Thankfully our hotel has offered us a fabulous price for additional nights while the road is blocked. We've got it made at the Mountainside Lodge and would definitely stay here again in the future, we're right at the base of the mountain in the village. Check out the view from our room.


Monday the girls all went kayaking while the boys rode and others (Herwig - such a good man) took care of Rosie.

We had such a good laugh, particularly when Jessy flipped her kayak landing in the freezing cold creek next to a beach where three strangers were sitting, thankfully they were kind and helped us to right jess' kayak before they laughed at the situation. Hilarious!

We've been up to much more since Monday but I think this is a long enough post for today. I'll tell you about some of our other adventures tomorrow. It really has been a fabulous week!

Theme Thursday: Summer Fun

This week's theme was an easy one for me to take part in, playing with my niece and nephews is always a good time!

Two More Sleeps

We leave for Vancouver in less than 48 hours. I am far from being ready but I'm super excited and wish Friday would just hurry up and get here already! I'm dying to see my girls and their boys too! The plan is to touch base with Rebecca, Cara, Rosie, Herwig, Jen, Mike, Jackie, Ian and of course Jess and Colin throughout the two weeks we are West... there are a few others we are hoping to see while there as well but we'll have to wait and see whether it works out. YAY!!!

A shot from our June 2007 visit to Van

We have loads of adventures planned and both Mike and I will be blogging regularly while we're away so you'll see and hear all about it as it happens! Two weeks with a pile of friends who we haven't seen in quite some time and loads of fun things waiting for us to partake in. What trouble will we be getting ourselves into? You'll have to wait and see! I'm keeping all the goodies to myself and intend to share with them with you as they occur.

This is... what makes me happy.

Family and friends are at the top of the list of things that make me happy. These three in particular give me warm fuzzies: I can't help but smile when I see their faces whether it's in person or in photographs.




Better late than never. Thanks to One Little Acorn for this week's "This is..." theme.

A Day at the Beach

It was an incredibly windy day at the beach, so windy in fact that our little swimmer wasn't able to get close to the waters edge without holding tight to a hand belonging to an adult. We played in the water and built sand castles but a good deal of Neve the three year old daredevil and my time was spent on the jungle gym: climbing rock walls, swinging, going down the curly and bumpy slides, swinging, climbing up the slides and more swinging.




Playing in the sand with my parents sitting in lawn chairs beside the big beach blanket time warped me back to my childhood. My mom packed one of her famous beach lunches of course, loads of sandwiches, fresh fruit, cookies, cheese, chips and more liquid than an army could consume. Yum!




Grams, Papa and Neve being goofs.


Eight zillion shots later...


One of my absolute favourite pictures of the day: pure happiness on my parents' faces.

More from Someday Farm

A few more of the pictures I snapped yesterday while visiting Someday Farm. Truly a slice of heaven.

Sisters posing for the camera, they're sucking on all natural wheat, not cigarettes. This field is on one side of the property...


And this field is on the other...

What a view!


I absolutely loved the barn... can you tell?







Finally this shot was taken out of the window of Tanya's car on our way home - these wind turbines are truly amazing to see.