HAPPY NOVEMBER!

Well it's November and you know what that means in the Richmond home - I can start decorating! Yep, as of November 1st each year I slowly start the Christmas decorating process. Usually just one or two things per week but I have so many fun Christmas stuff that to do it all in one or two days would just be exhausting. And besides, I like to enjoy it for the ENTIRE December month so this way it's less work and more enjoyment.

Big news at our house would be - Darrell & I went and saw U2 last week in Vancouver - AWESOMMMMMMME
Now to be truthful, the sound at BC Place is not the best and when the Black Eyed Peas opened up, if they played a song we didn't know we had no clue what the lyrics were. But, the sound was better for U2 and Bono's voice does not disappoint live one bit. They were incredible and it felt like a 'once-in-a-lifetime' kind of moment if you know what I mean. I almost cried when they played WITH OR WITHOUT YOU because my mind flooded back to an end-of-semester party with friends in England in the 80's, right before we all moved away to separate 6th-form colleges. Memories flooded back. Fantastic.

In other news, our friends Luke & Helena had a baby boy, Charlie (love the name!), which meant I led worship for a few Sundays while the new parents enjoy their new bundle. And I'm also going to be hosting an Adore Women Tea Party at our house in a couple of weeks. I just have to provide the house as the Adore Women committee are organizing food etc. But there will be a couple of English items I will be contributing - Devonshire Cream being one of them. YUMMY! I've also had a couple of wedding cakes, the last one being our friends Katie & Darron who had a beautiful wedding downtown. The next one is December 12th for Katie & Scott. And our good friend Kelly, is now engaged to Chris and will be going to South Africa to get married and live for a year - it's a great adventure for a girl we love to pieces and couldn't be happier for.

The kids had a fun Halloween which I will post pics of soon but I forgot to take my camera so will have to wait for the shared ones to appear. That's about it really. We've been very blessed with mild weather for being early November, Darrell & I even did yard work Sunday in the sunshine.

Hope all you friends are enjoying the Fall season wherever you are.

A few more pics from the 'Mother', plus one of my Mum, sister and sister-in-law at the sibs reunion in Kelowna, August long.

I've Returned

Well it seems I've been very absent from the blogging world but I'm back. I guess the allure of facebook with all of its speed pulled me away for a week months. Or rather, seasons. But the need to journal always come back eventually and here we are. I won't even bother to document everything that has happened since the last entry but will instead highlight a few great events.

There were weddings, babies, camps and parties!

The lovely Elise Michalski got married to Fred in the Spring in a lovely service at Glad Tidings followed by a reception at the Faculty Club at UVIC. I was fortunate to be asked to make their wedding cake; a Red Velvet Cake as it was the same cake Elise and her Dad would get every year on their shared birthdays.

Then in August Chelsea McQuade, a friend of several years thanks to teen camp - and a fantastic young, vibrant woman of God, married her prince, Johnny Sugrue. The wedding was beautiful at a quaint church in Brentwood Bay, followed by a vintage-themed reception at the Fireside Grill. I don't think I have ever had a friend who thought and planned any more for her wedding than this girl. She was organized! Every detail was taken care of including the vintage themed table at the reception with the vintage scrapbook she created for her guest book, and the gorgeous small wooden chest used to hold all of those precious money envelopes! The name place-cards were even little birds nests! I made this wedding cake too - a four-tiered ivory chocolate raspberry cake with Callebaut Chocolate Ganache and matching cupcakes that were presented in these gorgeous cupcake liners she bought online.

July each year brings camp and this year we had one at kids camp and one at pre-teen. PRE-TEEN???? SERIOUSLY??? But yes, at Nanoose Bay Camp if you're ten you go to pre-teen. Fortunately Zachary loved it and Brooklyn equally had a blast at kids camp where the speaker was none other than our last kids pastor, Caroline Bergeron. Teen Camp this year was a huge success, very few issues and overall extremely smooth. If you haven't yet seen our Katy Perry Hot 'n Cold video go to youtube.com and type in Nanoose Bay Camp hot n cold. I don't think you will be disappointed ;)
Then August brought possibly the funniest reason for a party we have ever had. One morning Darrell woke up to tell me about the dream he had. He dreamt we had a massive BBQ in our backyard, that he rented tents and tables and a huge industrial grill from his work and with a live band playing on our sundeck. So guess what? That's exactly what we did ! The band consisted of 3 of my friends who used to play in the old blues band I was in, Soul Commotion, along with my friends Luke & Park who I play with at church.
It was AWESOME~ they did two sets of about a half an hour each, maybe even 40 minute and everyone loved it! Brooklyn and I counted - we had exactly EIGHTY PEOPLE ! Which included 20 children who I have to say were behaved amazingly well. They all just looked after each other and the whole thing went like a dream. Darrell made homemade hamburgers and then everyone just brought something to share. So we had lots of food - and we even invited the neighbours - partly as a gesture of friendly neighbourness, and partly to prevent any noise complaints. We had six neighbours come and they had a great time! I was really happy about that because I remember as a kid our neighbourhood being much more of a community than I have experienced in Canada and I feel like sometimes people miss that sense of local community when they don't know the people who live on their own street. So yes, big success.
Well that will mostly catch you up. Throw in a couple of long weekends in Kelowna at Anna's house - one for baseball and one for a family sibling reunion along with my Mum - and that is pretty much our summer in a nutshell. And we're still enjoying summer as the weather has been gorgeous. Fall has started off well :)

April Update

As prompted by my sister-in-law, I am updating my blog.......

And, since my last post we had a little girl turn 8 (WOW!) and a son about to turn 10(MORE WOW!!) this coming Tuesday.

There is something eerie about having your first child turn double-digits. It's weird. It sounds old. And you can't believe you have now been a Mother for a whole decade! It is by far the biggest blessing (well two blessings actually...) in my life and I just treasure them both so much.

So for Brooklyn's birthday she decided she wanted a party at home (cheaper but far messier!) and would like to make AND ice her own birthday cake!! Girl after my own heart..... so we had a horse-themed party and she made a horse's head cake. Not bad hey?


Then today I finished my first of 3 wedding cakes; one every Saturday until April 25th. The colour scheme was gold and teal and this was by design of my meeting with the bride and groom.




Not much else to report but I guess there will be after Zachary turns 10 !!!

Showers, Babies and Birthdays

Well, since the Narnia party Aaron & Jeni (a.k.a. Turkish Delight!) welcomed little Benjamin Findley Norris into their lovely family. At 8lb. 2oz (i think re the ounces....) and born at 2:11am on February 3rd. What a little cutie-pie he is! So Sherisse (Aaron's sister) & I hosted a baby shower at the church and over 30 lovely ladies came out to welcome the little one.

So I haaaad to make a cake....! The plan was for it to be in the shape of a baby crib and in the colours of little Benjamin's nursery. And of course in honor of Jeni's awesome rock 'n roll vibe there were a few personal touches on the walls of the crib!
Then the Norris' along with Luke (whose lovely wife was up island) came over for supper and Brooklyn got to hold the little munchkin. So cute.


Then last night was my mother-in-law's birthday so I made a chocolate-raspberry cake covered in some of her favourite things - diamond rings, purses and shoes!!! Dinner was the Paesano meal at Macaroni Grill. Most delicious.

Pictures as Promised!

The Long Awaited Narnia Party

Ok. So it wasn't long-awaited for the guests as they knew nothing about it until this month. But it was long-awaited for me. Be warned, this will be a long post!

Rewind to November 2007. My Mum & I were sitting on my living room couch enjoying a nice hot cup of tea (as we often do!). I believe I had just had a Christmas party at my house (or was just about to, can't quite recall) and we started discuss the fun concept of theme parties. As The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe was such a hit we came up with the idea of a NARNIA party. Well as many of you know, tea gets the creative juices flowing and before long we had a string-load of ideas as to how we could make this work. The plan was to throw it in January of 2008 (so as not to interfere with Christmas too much) but the month got away from me before you knew it and February seemed too occupied with Valentine's Day etc., and not so wintery.

Now fast forward to November 2008. Again, not wanting it close to Christmas but January 09 looked good. So, this past Saturday 44 people (12 of whom were children) entered the wardrobe into the wonderful winter-wonderland of Narnia.

Costumes were optional but as I hope you will soon find out, in abundance! I turned my outside house lights off and instead had a lit lamppost that I had borrowed, outside of my front door. I had also covered the base of it with some 'snow'. Upon entering the front door (where the interior entrance lights were off) guests could hear the soundtrack to the movie which I downloaded and had playing in the entrance. Immediately in front of them were the 'fur coats' that they had to separate and walk through in order to get into Narnia. In reality I had hung a shower curtain rod in my ceiling skylight and hung two fur-blankets down from it. It was fantastic! I was thrilled with how it turned out.

Once in Narnia everything was white with winter! I covered all of my coloured living room couches with white sheets (thank you Kelly & Sherisse!) and all of my tables with white tablecloths. I also strung snowflakes in a line across the middle of the living room (above our heads) and there were sparkly white beads hanging everywhere on lamps, pictures and chandeliers. In the kitchen, again on a white tablecloth was a table full of.....white food! If you've never before seen a full table of only white food, it is honestly not that appetizing-looking. I think God invented colour so we would eat better. However, it was yummy! As Yvonne pointed out - surprisingly yummy! And you do have to rack your brains to come up with enough white food items to keep everyone full.

There was white cheese & cracker plates, white cheeseballs, white chips, pita bread with tzaziki, white triangle sandwiches with cucumber and cream cheese, devilled eggs, a veggie plate of only cauliflower and mushrooms with ranch dip, white pastries with various fillings, and a clear punch to drink.

In the dining room was the dessert table - a white chocolate fountain (yum!) with apple slices, bananas, cream puffs, shortbread, honeydew melon and powdered doughnuts. All very wintery and icy looking.

And the costumes were fantastic! I went as the Snow Queen - or White Witch. Darrell was the professor, Brooklyn was Lucy and Zachary was a centaur. I am rather proud of his costume as I made the entire thing from things found in the house! We even had a costume vote - you could vote once for the best child costume and once for the best adult costume. Luke won the adult prize for his brilliant Mr. Tumnus and Zachary won for the centaur. To be fair though (in case anyone's calling foul play....) you were not allowed to vote for your spouse or children. Following that we had a very quick 'fashion show' of the top 10 voted costumes. Each had to walk the 'stage' to a Hannah Montana song. (I know, nothing to do with Narnia but the easiest dance number I could find......)

So many people were creative - I believe we had 5 Lucy's, 3 Susan's, 2 professors, 2 Mrs. Mcready's, 3 Aslan's, 2 Peter's, 1 Edmund, 1 Lamppost (BRILLIANT!), 1 Dwarf Guard, 1 Mr. Tumnus, 2 Mermaids, 3 White Witches, and one Piece of Turkish Delight played by my dear friend Jeni whose baby is about to pop out any minute!!! I know I'm missing some but you get the general idea.

And to add the icing to the cake, my sister, brother-in-law and 2 nephews were able to be there from Kelowna! They came to Vic. for only 36 hours but made the most of the whirlwind visit to Narnia.

So - to all my friends who arrived with glorious outfits and festive faces - thanks for the memories. Here are the photos I have so far - hopefully the others who took a gazillion will send me some soon that I can add to the pile.Attaching the icicle eyelashes! And yes, that's my wedding dress.Next year's Family Christmas Card...haha
Mrs. McCready with her centaur nephew.
Some Lucy's, an Aslan, a centaur and little Jack with his back to the camera.

Christmas 2008 !

I know. I'm way overdue in blogging. But one thing lead to another and one function became another and there you go. Our Christmas season was varied and busy as usual. The kids had their musical production at GT and both of them did us proud with large speaking roles (Zachary making a VERY convincing cowboy with his Texas drawl). The school also had its concert. I never like it quite as much but mostly because its individual pieces and I love the theatrics of a full musical. Nevertheless, all the kids did a great job.
The rest of December has been very full. We had a gala dinner at the church that Rayael somehow persuaded me to play the part of Joey Fatone in an N'Sync lipsync that we did. Apparently my 'costume' was so man-like my husband ended up quite disturbed after it was finished!!
Then there was a shower at the church for Kendal Jones whose wedding to Evan Alnutt we attended just last week. As it chucked down snow I might add. It added to the magic of the day.
The next day (last Sunday) was our choir's concert with Leon.
We had Leon, Alison & Aria over with some of our friends on the Friday but also ended up having them stay the night with us Sunday night to save the trek to Sidney after the concert. They arrived Sunday afternoon to put precious Aria down for a nap and while Alison got her all tucked in, Leon and Darrell had to get Leon's rental car into our driveway. No easy feat as you will see from the photo.
The snow didn't stop falling! To save any further snowploughing by other vehicles Darrell then drove Leon and I in to the church and returned home to pick up Alison, Aria, our two kids and Sherisse who also couldn't get her car out for the concert. After the concert (which was FANTASTIC!) Darrell then did the shifts in reverse! Because the snow continued to fall this entire time I actually stopped at the shops on the way home and bought a turkey. Just in case we all ended up snowed in at the Richmonds for Christmas! Not what was planned, but still would have been a fun Christmas had it come to that.

After we were all back from the concert, Darrell, Leon & I had to shovel the road out to Haliburton to make sure Leon could return his rental car out at the airport. It was decided it would be best to return it that night and have Darrell drive them to the airport in the morning as the rental car could get buried in our road otherwise. Needless to say, the 3 of us were out there on a brilliantly white snowy night with an eerie but beautiful silence. In a strange way I kind of enjoyed it. We all cracked jokes to keep the time from lagging (burnt toast anyone?) and there was something a bit therapeutic about being out at midnight, shovelling in silence. My muscles did not agree however, but exercise was had nonetheless. And for us, the change in sleeping location meant that we all got a lovely extended visit on Sunday that was not originally on the books. The kids loved playing with Aria (her cute little voice is a bit hard NOT to get attached to) and we got some hang-out, tea-time with Leon & Alison catching up.

Despite being told the next morning that all the flights were cancelled, the Leontaridis' did finally manage to get home that night via a nightmarish combination of ferries, taxis and airplane rides.

Then on the 23rd we had a party to go to but at the end of it I felt a bit under the weather. That night it hit me. COLD ! I've been pretty much sick ever since and am even now writing this in my housecoat. But I do have to count my blessings and be glad it's just a cold and not the stomach flu. That I could NOT handle getting at Christmas. We had a mellow day here at the house (I slept for a few hours in the middle) and then headed over to Darrell's sister at 4pm for a lovely turkey dinner. At least I think it was lovely. I couldn't taste it as well as normal but what I did taste seemed delicious.

So now it's Boxing Day and Darrell has just taken our kids to the Boxing Day Skate. It's something we go to every year and I look forward to it as much as anyone but I just couldn't do it today. Too run down and congested. So, hopefully they will all have a good time and I can catch some zzzz's while they're gone.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Night!