Halloween Cupcakes + The Pink Power Ranger

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!


Halloween is one of my favourite holidays. I love seeing all the kids dressed up and having so much fun. Brings back some awesome memories. Every Halloween my best friend and I throw a big bash! This year was no different. Amazing decorations, awesome food and great company. Can I say great night?

Oh yes I was a Pink Power Ranger!

Now the only draw back to this is.....I left my camera at my best friends house... yep you heard me. All my photos of the party are sitting in my camera case...IN HER LIVING ROOM.

So I don't have really any to share sadly.. not yet anyways.

But we can talk about this

Vegan cream cheese icing

On top of a vegan pumpkin cupcake

 With sugar candy pumpkins for more foodtasick amazingness 

Yes please!!

I got this recipe from The Family Kitchen! Everyone loved them, so much so I made another batch for my lucky coworkers...they enjoyed them too! The icing is by far the best vegan cream cheese icing I have made to date. And the cupcake had the perfect amount of moisture. Omg soo good. 

I hope to have my camera back soon to show you all my awesome decorations and the fantastic costumes at the party!!

Tonight I feel like I robbed Chapters Indigo Books. I was looking up to see how much they sold Plate to Pixel that has been WIDLY recommended by other foodie bloggers. And they had this crazy sale! List Price $35.99, Online Sale Price $23.75, Member Price $22.56 (I recently bought a book from the store and they gave me Plum Awards card for free, I registered it online...now I get member prices). They had Free Shipping on orders over $25 so I thought I'll just pick up another book, So I bought Food Photography: From Snapshots to Great Shots and it's list price $26.99 Online Sale Price $17.81 and Member Price $16.92. I then saw at check out a coupon code *BTW IF YOU EVER SEE THIS SEARCH THE WEBSITE ON GOOGLE AND PUT COUPON CODE BESIDE IT, I ALWAYS SAVE MORE* and entered in the $5 off code. Total order after GST $39.48

If you followed all that.....I totally robbed Indigo

After I checked out I noticed another online sale... And it is of one of my favourite vegan cookbooks. This may just have to be a blog giveaway soon! So subscribe/Follow me on Twitter/Join to keep updated with when!!!

Now off to play some Sims 3 Pets before bed....Yeah I am a nerd and I play with electronic dolls

Question: With Halloween being over are you getting ready for Christmas already? Any christmas baking planned? Or am I totally insane for thinking about this already?

Crockpot Delish

Sorry I didn't post last night, I had some much needed relaxing to do. In the morning I prepped for a meal that was about to be one of my favorites. I got it from Skinny Taste it was the Taco Chili.

 I had mine over a 1/4 cup of quinioa and the husband had his on a bed of brown rice!

Yep! That was amazing, I will for sure have that again, actually we have TONS left so I will be having some for lunch. Smaller portion though.

For my workout last night, I didn't have much time(as I wanted to have a low key evening, but still wanted to get in a workout). I did Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred part 1 & 2. 

I have been meaning to try this DVD for some time. And it was great, I definitely got all sweaty & I am feeling the sore of well worked muscles.  I would recommend this to anyone wanting to get in a workout at home if they aren't able to make it to the gym. It wont replace the gym, but is a nice alternative if traveling or time restraint.

Question: What kind of workout DVD's have you tried? Did they work for you? I have always been a little skeptical of them as I have had a personal trainer & have felt the difference. Are they any you would recommend?

We may have lost, but it's not all bad

How was everyone's Monday? Mine was typical, dragged on forever and wasn't short enough. Tonight my husband & I went to The Jet's game tonight.....we lost 2-1..close game!!! But it was still fun.

I love this man!!!!

For dinner I just ate some left over tofu scramble from Mama Pea @ Peas and Thank You. 

When I got home from the game I put together the crockpot for the Taco Chili from Skinny Taste. I can't wait to try this tomorrow. Not much else to blog about today other then it being a silly Monday.

Question: What do you do to deal with Monday Blue's? Do you get them?

Weekends go by way too fast!

How was everyone's weekend? Was it busy? Was it relaxing? Mine was fantastic! Yesterday I attended the Winnipeg Green Lifestyle & Organic Living Show. It was great! I got some awesome swag and picked up some local organic honey, organic anti-viral echinacea *it's about to get cold here, and with the colder weather comes the horrible colds, this was such a great deal! Usually it is $14.99 + tax but they had a special for the show that made it $10 with tax GO ME :)*  & organic lactose free mozzarella cheese for the husbands pizza. 

I love getting honey in these little glass bear jars! So adorable :)

My friend came with me & gave me all his samples! Lucky Me :)

Last night I made up some homemade pizza's & some vegan layered taco dip from the Kind Diet Cookbook. We all enjoyed our "sports dinner" while we watched the Winnipeg Jet's take one home!! WHOOP!! Today was a very low key day, I cleaned, did up our meal plan for the week & now just about to read the book "The Help" and enjoy some tea & whole wheat toast with organic p&j!! I am the biggest p&j fan!!

Isn't my halloween cup just awesome! 

Hope everyone has a great day tomorrow! WHOOHOOO for Mondays :)

Question: What is everyone doing for Halloween? Do you dress up? Hand out candy? Any All Hallows'Eve rituals?

Roasted Garlic Chicken & Vegetables

Hey Everyone, sorry for no posts this past few days. I have been sick with the stomach flu. Today I did go into work and managed to eat breakfast and a decent lunch. Go me!!! Now to the good stuff!!! I love easy scrumptious meals. One's that make the whole house smell amazing and leave my mouth salivating for dinner! Well this is one of them. You probably have seen a million versions and this can be created into many more, but this is the most common in our house. And its a household favourite.

Roasted Garlic Chicken & Vegetables

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

• 2 Large Carrots, cut into 2 inch pieces
• 1 Large Onion, cut into wedges
• 1lb small yellow potatoes, cut into halves
• 10 garlic cloves, unpeeled
• 9 medium boneless chicken thighs *you can also use chicken thighs with bones, just make sure the skin is removed*
• 2tbsp EVOO
• 1/2tsp salt
• 1/2tsp ground black pepper
• 1 medium red pepper, cut into wedges
• 1 medium yellow pepper, cut into wedges
• 1tbsp dried tarragon leaves

1. Preheat oven to 425F. In a roasting pan toss all vegetables with EVOO and half of all the spices. Cover and roast for 20 min.

2. Remove pan and add chicken. Add the rest of the spices and roast uncovered for 25min.

3. Add 1/2 cup of hot water and stir in. Roast another 25min longer or until vegetables are golden and juices are clear.  

Enjoy!!

I had mine with a glass of organic Cuma Cabernet Sauvignon wine. I'm a red wine gal, though I am sure a nice white wine would be more appropriate. 

Look how yummy and juicy it all is!!

I seriously want this right now....but I have a million things on my list to make right now, so this will just have to wait!

Tomorrow I will be attending the Winnipeg Green Lifestyle & Organic Living Show. I can't wait :) And tomorrow evening I will be having my brother and dad over for a "sports dinner". My brother is moving to Vancouver in one week. SO this is one of our goodbye parties...one of many :(

Night All :)

Sunday Night Football Comfort Food

Hey Everyone!! How was your weekend? Mine was great! We hung out with some friends, had dinner at my moms house and played some Monopoly....I won! Yesterday was really relaxing. My husband is a football fan, so our Sundays are spent watching all the games. I do manage to clean the house, go grocery shopping and do laundry however.  For the evening game, the husband wanted one of his favorite comfort foods. Ol'school Shepherds Pie. This recipe is adapted from my moms. I wanted to make a little more healthy version of hers. 

Sunday Night's Shepherd Pie

This recipe can be adjusted and made for vegan/vegetarians/meatatarians. My husband is lactose intolerant so I make it dairy free.

Yield: 6 servings(or 4 in my house)

Ingredients:

• 1lb extra lean ground beef, veggie ground or TVP
• 2 large potatoes, cubed (I use yukon gold potatoes)
• 1cup onion, diced
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tomato, diced
• 1/2 cup carrots, chopped in small pieces
• 1/2 cup green peas
• 1tsp basil
• 1/4 cup  cheddar cheese (I used daiya vegan cheese)
• salt & pepper to taste.
• a dash of paprika

1. Preheat oven to 400c.  Boil cubed potatoes till cooked, drain and mash. Put to the side

2. Fry up ground beef and drain. *A trick I learned from my mother in law is to rinse the ground beef off under water for a few moments to remove any grease or oil*  

3.Saute onions and garlic till clear, add tomato and spices. Add all other vegetables and cook for a few moments. Add ground beef and cook for 5-7 min longer till spices and veggies have mixed. At this time add more spices if needed.

4. Pour meat mixture into a large casserole dish. Top with mashed potatoes, sprinkle cheese and garnish with paprika. Bake uncovered for 30-35min till cheese is melted and potatoes have a slight golden baked colour.

Enjoy!

My husband loves bread, so I warmed up some french bread in the oven.

I also made some of Angela's Vegan Gravy from Oh She Glows

The guys loved it! And all our plates quickly looked like this

Tonight we are going to the Jets Game!! I hope they win!!!!!!

Honeymoon

My husband and I had a lot of discussions on what we wanted to do after the wedding. A lot of our friends and family suggested we go somewhere, however we weren't totally sold, as we just had a long year of wedding planning and my husband being in school. We felt spending the cash to go on a trip may or may not be worth it. And if we did go somewhere we wanted it to be hot and thought it would be nice to have our friends join us.

With much talk, we ended up going to my husband's aunt and uncles cabin. This was the best idea. A week of just us, the beautiful weather (yeah end of September and we had +30c!!! How lucky did we get?) and this amazing cabin. It was perfect.

Sorry about some of the quality of photos, some were taking with the ol'iPhone :)

How could we not be in aw of this?

We spent 3 days in the sun all day with glasses of wine and beer and just did this!

And watched this happen each night feeling more blessed! 

Sun kissed!

Several AMAZING dinners, all that the husband made....this NEVER happens! 

Breakfast in bed! How spoiled am I?

Some cribbage while the sun sets. 

YAY We are Married!!!

Question: Did you go on a honeymoon when you got married? If so where? If not why?

P.S I just got a Pinterest account! Add me if you are also on it! I have just started, but can already see I will be addicted :) Thx Lindsay for sending the asap invite, my obsession has begun.

PP.SS Thursdays will be followup posts to my wedding. I am hoping to receive my photos soon, that way I can break up the posts and share them once a week.

Wednesday Reads

Hope everyone had a good long weekend, or if you didn't have a long weekend, had a great weekend. Mine was quite busy with two Thanksgiving dinners, reorganizing our house, packing up wedding stuff(it was a little sad to see it all put away) and I spent several hours creating and designing my new blog.

I decided to go with The-Healthy-Wife.com. And will be moving over to wordpress. I will keep you all updated with the progress.

In between all my eating, organizing and designing I was able to get to the mall and FINALLY purchase Mama Pea's "Peas and Thank You" book. I am soo pumped to do some of these recipes. Can't wait!

On my Kindle I am currently reading Eating Animals Jonathan Safran Foer. I can't put it down! I have currently been making some different choices for where I get our meat in the house. I know my husband loves it. And I won't try and change that, but I do want to make a educated decision on where it comes from. This book talks a lot about this, and Jonathans struggle with making choices he felt comfortable with. I am only half way through, but I am already recommending it.

Tonight we are grocery shopping and I will probably work on the new blog some more! Can't wait to show everyone. Have a great Monday/Tuesday.

Saturday Madness

My husband is currently on call for his work and has this pager, well yesterday we had a crazy wind storm and this will strongly affect my husbands work. So of course the pager started going off at 6am and continued several + times after that, so this was an early morning for me.  I am still adjusting to a "non-wedding stress free mode" so my anxiety is still not at bay. But it is getting better, but I still panic a little when I wake up without as much sleep as required.

My husband who knows me sooooo well suggested we go out for brunch. I jumped on this right away! We went to a local destination in Winnipeg called The Forks, it has a little of everything of Winnipeg culture. We chose a restaurant called The Beachcombers, it was fab!

The Lounge (where we were) at Beachcombers

I had a salmon sandwich and the hubby had some pickerel sandwich. I tried his...it was way better then mine. But I wont tell him that!!

This evening we scarfed down some sushi(I didn't take any photos, we ate it too fast) and then I started my baking project!

It was big!

Because I am soo tired and have had one or two glasses of wine... I will just show you some photos.

Brownie Pumpkin Pecan Pie

Banana Loaf

 I also made a pumpkin loaf..... This thing wouldn't solid up. Hopefully it will taste good tomorrow. I hope any Canadians celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow have a FANTASTIC day. I know I am thankful for having the most amazing person in my life, my best friend, my soul partner and my husband. I hope everyone can experience what I have.

Photography by Jennifer Lee

Have a great weekend!! I have some new news tomorrow about the changes that will be happening with my blog, but this will wait till then.

Post Wedding - The Dress

Hey Everyone! Looking forward to the weekend? I know I am as it's a long weekend for us Canadians!!

Now that the wedding is over, I wanted to focus on some key parts of it. I have gotten a lot of questions, so I decided I will do a few posts regarding some of the major topics.

Today's post we will talk about THE DRESS. I have briefly talked about it before. But haven't gone into much detail.

Photographer Jennifer Lee Photography

I first saw my dress driving past it after work. I called the bridal salon and requested the number and designer. Shortly after this, my maid of honour and I went browsing. It was the first dress I tried on. And I always knew it was the one. I was pretty determined to have a dress with straps and pleating. And I got both. Being very pale skinned and a redhead, I am not able to wear white (I'd look like a ghost). So I chose a dark ivory.

Photographer Jennifer Lee Photography

It's really funny how many times my husband or guests stepped on my dress. Halfway through the photos I bustled it up because I wanted shots with both the train down and up. What is depressing is the bottom of my dress is just DIRTY.

Photographer Jennifer Lee Photography

 I haven't yet decided what I will do with it, if I will keep it and store it for ions. Or if I will dry clean it and sell it. I know many people I tell that to cringe at the thought of me selling it. But let’s be serious....I will never wear it again and it could very well make another bride VERY happy.


In other news I spent the evening last night researching the next required steps for my wedding invitation business. It's depressing when you see the required amount of money needed to keep me aligned with local competition. But I know it will pay off. I offer already pretty beautiful invites. In fact our wedding invitations were amazing, but I want to give that little extra that people will notice right away.

So things will be done in the next few weeks. I want some new tech toys and need to generate some other income for them (husband says we need to save for a house).

Note: Some of my fellow Canadian Bloggers have come up with the greatest idea!

 

So go check out all the info and if your a Canadian blogger lets get this started!

Lost in wedding planning

The title says it all! I love to blog, and have had so much happen in the past two months that I feel horrible for not sharing it. As most of you know I was planning my wedding.....and IT HAPPENED!

It was one of the most amazing days of my life! I hope to continue to have more and more of these days with my husband (I still giggle like a school girl when I say that) in the years to come.

Photographer Jennifer Lee Photography

So now what? After the whole wedding was finished, it was so anticlimactic, what do I do now? Am I really done planning weddings? 

The answer is, I still really don't know. The idea of possibly getting into event planning has floated around in my brain, but handling myself is a lot different than handling another bride. A lot of my wedding vendors kept telling me over and over again that I was the most relaxed bride they have ever seen. My response "I am just very organized".

So back to my above question, now what? 

• Well because of the wedding I reverted to the very basic needs for food. Not junk, but whatever was easy, non creative, unexciting and just pure nourishment for my tossing tummy. With the wedding now done, I feel ready to get my creative food genius going (not that I am a food genius by any means, but it sounds cooler when I say it like that) and start making some awesome meals again.

• I am a graphic designer; I design wedding stationary and always have loved this. I will dig a little more into this aspect as it allows me to stay up to date with weddings, but not being as involved in them as planning someone else’s.

• Getting back on my healthy track, I had a little bit of a separation with the gym these past few weeks. It's not that I didn't want to be there sweating my butt off, I just had a hard time working it into my conscious with everything else going on.

I think that is what I am going with right now. Another thing that is plaguing me is the blog name.  The original purpose was to record my journey to the Aisle. Well been there, done that. But I am not ready to stop blogging; in fact I want this to become second nature to me. However I am stuck with "Running to the Aisle". I am thinking the best course in action is to finish blogging here with my wedding stuff, then have a redirection to my new blog. A pain? Yes! But I feel that would be the most beneficial way to do it. I still have some wedding things I would like to share....SUCH AS PHOTOS! So I will continue to post those here till the new one is up and going.

I have been given just a sneak peak of some photos from the photographer, so over the next little while I'll share more with you all.

Thanks for sticking around; I know I have neglected you all.