Prepping the Cottage for Baby

Not sure how much we will be up at the cottage before the baby makes an appearance especially with School starting for both girls and all the birthdays that will pop up.  We had some family dinners in Van so we made a bunch of trips to IKEA to get office stuff and pick up a bunk bed for the girls so we can turn Rosie's crib/toddler bed back into a crib for baby.

Hubby and I spent the morning doing furniture moving and construction.  I took apart both toddler bed from the kids room and put one back together as a crib in our room. While I did that J started the job of putting together the bunk bed.  I think he cheated using power tools but it does the job done faster. It probably would have been easier for both of us but we had the girls helping with the construction projects and they liked moving things from where we put them, plus Rosie liked undoing bolts that I has put in to hold everything together while I tighten other things.

Once we finished with that we had a lovely lunch of poached salmon and corn sandwiches with a side of curried cucumber pickle and watermelon and feta salad.  I really want to try my hand at making a curried pickle this summer since that is one of my favourite way to eat salmon salad sandwiches with a nice thick layer of curried pickle which is very much a cottage things since we buy them from the preserve lady at the Saturday market on Denman island.  As an added bonus both the girls love them too.

Now I'm off to make banana bread with Rosie while Ladybug gets use to her new glasses.







I'll will have to figure out how to rotate the pictures on my tablet or phone since that is all I have to post on right now.

Blue Pie

My dearest husband brought home a giant box of blueberries the other day since we had a bunch of people including a bunch of kids, and what kids doesn't like blueberries (ladybug doesn't bit she gets that from my husband) so with no plans to use the berries they started to be very ripe.  In an attempt to used the berries I decided that pie was the best and tastiest way to used them.

I have never had a great time with pastry, it is an art and skill I have yet to master, although that would also assume I'm trying my hand at making it, but I'm not.  So I picked up a couple boxes of pre-made pie crusts and off I went.

Awesome Blueberry Lemon Pie.

4 cups blueberries, rinsed and dry-ish
3/4 cup sugar
3 tbsp corn starch
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/3 of a nutmeg, finely grated
Zest of 1 lemon
1 tbsp butter, cut into small pieces
2 ready made pie crusts

-Pre heat oven the 425. Having the rack in the lower half to the oven
-In a mixing bowl mix together blueberries, sugar, corn starch, cinnamon, nutmeg, and lemon zest.
-Pour into prepared crust, top with butter.
-Wet the edges of the bottom crust and place the top crust on. Crimp the edges with a fork
-Place pie on a cookie sheet lined with parchment.
- Bake 40-50 minutes until the blueberries are bubbly.  If the crust starts to bring brown to much cover loosely with foil.
-Let cool and enjoy.

Nesting, probably.

The clutter in my house has reached a point that it annoys me enough to actually do some small-ish projects.  The ones I have done aren't life changing organization but they are decluttering some small but annoying areas. 

A couple days ago I took apart the kids art cubbies and trashed a whole bunch of things, recycled a whole bunch of other things and I still have a small pile of things so donate.  I got ride of the non-crayola crayons because they are terrible and the kids won't use the. Colouring books always seemed lime the best thing for the kids but they prefer to be creative with plain paper, coloured paper and scrape book paper, so I'm donating all the colouring books to a local restaurant we frequent that could use them.  I also emptied and reorganized the two drawers keeping me things accessible but now tidy. 

Tonight I tackled the pantry which was a bit of a disaster since we got back from the cottage.  So I went through the bottom 3 shelves and reorganized, tossed expired things, and got rid of superfluous boxes and packaging. Lots of garbage, recycling and compost followed but now the hallway is cleared out and we again have a usable pantry.

Now all I have to do is finish in the living room, then do the dining room, basement and then prep our bed room for the babies arrival.  Not putting too much effort into prepping for baby since this is baby number 3 and I have tried to keep purchases to a minimum, and since we have a co-sleeper, baby bath tub, stroller, car seat and a whole bunch of loaned clothing, I think we are pretty much set.  The IKEA dresser still needs to be put together and filled with the stuff but again that can happen after baby arrives, if need be.

Now time for a quick shower and then a bit of TV then bed.  I'll probably still fall asleep before the kids.