Sep
24
Pie time!
Filed Under Family, baking, friends | 9 Comments
Friday marked the opening of our hometown’s fall fair, which also means it was our pie party!
Our friend Stef walking to the fair
Oma and Micaela walking to the fair
Before the pie party most of us gathered together at the official opening of fair. Our fair has been around for 151 years! After a long day of judging the winners are announced and awards are given out. This year we had a first for our fair, a male was announced as the fair ambassador.
Mom was the homecraft director this year.
Once all the homecraft, school fair, and crop awards are given out, there’s one thing left… the pie auction! Basically the pie auction is a fundraiser for the fair, to keep it running year after year. 15 pies are auctioned off- 1st, 2nd and 3rd in 4 different categories. (Last year Micaela and I made pies and they won so they were auctioned off!). This year we brought home 3 pies to our party (bought by 3 different families).
Expensive pie!
As you can see the pies at our party ranged in price from $230 -$300, but we also bought 2 pies that were not auctioned off for a much cheaper price ($9.00).
The line up of pies
We had cherry pie, apple pie, raspberry pie, unknown (possibly plum?) pie, and peach pie. The raspberry pie was the favourite overall.
Close up of the raspberry pie
I’ll post more about Saturday & Sunday at the fair tomorrow. (See pictures on flickr if you are interested in getting a preview!)
What’s the most you would pay for a prize winning pie?
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Sep
19
On (expensive) Pie
Filed Under Family, food, friends | 10 Comments
Tonight, we blondes (ok, three of us) will venture forth to our hometown fair to celebrate all of the wonderfulness of fall, and of pie.
This is going to sound ridiculous, but then again ‘ridiculous’ is pretty close to ‘normal’ for our family and friends. Basically, there will be several hundreds of dollars worth of homemade pie purchased in an auction (benefiting our local fair board) and consumed in a pie party at our farm. The pie might be made by a local with over 50 years of pie baking experience, or it might be baked by a teenager just starting out in the world of baking.
You receive only tiny slices, because there’s only around 5 or so pies purchased. Apple, cherry, or raspberry? A la mode? You got it. mmmmmm PIE…
It’s worth every penny. That our parents spend.
An open invitation is extended. Join us! BYOB. Also, BYO plate and fork.
PS: What is a pirate’s favourite arts and crafts material? Yaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrn! Happy Talk Like A Pirate day!
Sep
17
Stayin’ Sane in Cowtown
Filed Under fashion, friends, life | 13 Comments
There are a couple key elements that continuously keep me goin’ when I am so far away from home, and all the fun that comes along with hanging out with the rest of the girls. Luckily for me, I get to live with the first (and most important) one.
And although this boy is my best friend and my rock, I must add that he is also the first one to drive me absolutely mental. Case in point (point in case? I never remember the correct order):
Tim has of late awarded me with a very umm … endearing nickname. I am no longer “Leah” or “Lee,” he will only refer to me as “Ramekin” or “Rammo” for short.
Tim: “Ramekin, come sit with me on the couch and be my beer holder”
Somhow I agree to this, and while on the couch (while holding his beer) I reach to cuddle with him and he is shocked
Tim: “RAMMO - that wasn’t part of the couch deal.”
WHAT! I actually put up with this business? Well, yes folks I do. Don’t ask, though. Don’t ask me why - for that I have no asnwer.
My friends are also keeping me sane. Quite honestly, I don’t have very many friends in Calgary - you could say that I have two. But I am looking at my amigo situation as a case of quality over quantity, and Nat and Andrew are two of the best friends I could ask for out here. The kind of friends that love to celebrate the good days just as much as they love to commiserate with the bad ones. 
Packages from home also make me deliriously happy. Who doesn’t love presents!?! I was having a pretty crappy week at work last week, and it was like people just knew. On Friday alone, we got a package full of treats and a nice card from Tim’s Mom and Dad AND a girl at Tim’s hotel found a leftover box full of Gillette Venus razors and Covergirl LastBlash mascara and sent some home with Tim for yours truly!
So, so random and so awesome. It gets even better! On Monday, I got a package from my best friend Stef with gifts from Germany, where she had spent the summer. A cookbook to record all of our fave and made up recipes and a spoon holder for our stove - how did she know that was exactly what we needed! It honestly was, Stef I thank you, Tim thanks you and so does my stove!
And I cannot lie, I have been doing a lot of shopping lately. Calgary has a lot of really great Winners and everytime I spot a new one I haven’t been in I have to go check it out. Have you ever noticed Winners plays a lot of melancholic, depressing music? Once the song they were playing was making me soo sad that I dropped all the stuff I was going to try on and bolted outta there before I cried on the fitting room attendants shoulder. Well, today I found a Winners on my way form from a job training I was at and found this amaaaazing Calvin Klein dress. At first I wasn’t so sure but when I got out of the fitting room with it on this woman stopped me and was like “WOW! That looks amazing!” How can you ignore a statement like that?! With a price tag of $79.99 it wasn’t expensive for a dress, so I bought it. I immediately regretted it, as just having purchased a plane ticket home and paying for a conference for work (they will reimburse me someday…) I KNEW I shouldn’t have bought it. I told Tim I am going to return it, but what I really did was call Nat and ask her to find some place/occassion to go where I can wear the dress, and that way I have no excuse but to keep it! That, my peeps, is what good friends are for.
Tell Tim that I must have it! I don’t know if you can tell, but it is all like stripes (tiers?) or black satin and I swear it was made for me.
Lastly, my family. It always seems to boil down to that when it comes to us girls. I have been trying to make sure that I “do the rounds” and visit everyone that I can, and being with them makes me so happy. I do see my moms sister often, as she lives right here in Calgary and she did let us live in her house for a month when she was in France (so, so awesome) and it’s handy that her and her husband share similar interests as me and Tim. Namely wine and hotels. My cousin in Red Deer, Jon, is in a band and I dragged Nat along to see one of his concerts a while back.
That, my folks, is my life at the moment! It’s nothing too crazy exciting, but it’s what keeps me going on a day to day basis.
And girls and friends in London/Guelph: DECEMBER 16 - 28 is when the party returns to Ontario!
Sep
11
First Week of School
Filed Under Wedding, friends, micaela, thoughts, university | 5 Comments
This week marks my first week of teacher’s college. So far it is very reminiscent of elementary school - I have classes with the same 30 students all week, and my subjects are things like art, science, math, religion, gym, and so on. Being with the same class all the time is really nice - or it will be once I actually make friends with everyone. Basically by the end of the year all of these people will be like brothers and sisters, and I won’t know anyone else on campus, which is kind of funny. I am taking twelve courses at once, which is a definite increase from the five that is required in undergrad. So that is a little overwhelming.
The University of Windsor is a lot different from the school I attended for my undergrad, as far as I can tell so far. I don’t find myself homesick for my home (although I do miss Kent a lot, obviously - but I will see him every weekend so it’s doable), it’s more that I miss Laurier - the university where I did my undergrad. I keep comparing the two schools in my head whenever I notice something new about Windsor, and it always ends up falling short. I don’t know if it’s just because Laurier is the campus I’m used to and the only one I’ve really spent a significant amount of time on, but in my head it is exactly the way a university should be. The campus was much newer and prettier, I never had to walk through a slummy area to get to campus… and so on. I suppose this might change once I get used to Windsor. Maybe. There is one good thing about Windsor - you don’t have to line up for EVERYTHING. Laurier’s full name is Wilfrid Laurier University - or WLU, and there was an ongoing joke that it really stood for “We Line Up.”
My living situation is going well. I’m living with my friend Jen who I’ve known since junior kindergarten - since we were three! - and two other girls, also in teachers college, that I have just met. It’s always nice to live with someone you are totally comfortable around, that you feel comfortable borrowing things out of each other’s rooms, wearing each other’s clothes, eating each other’s food… I think it just makes a house feel like home. That probably has something to do with having four sisters. With my roomate and best friend from Laurier, Amanda, it wasn’t uncommon for us to come home from classes and find the other taking a nap in our bed, even in fourth year when we didn’t live with each other. So it’s kind of fun to be living with a close friend before I go and get married and live with a boy forever.
Speaking of the wedding - which I will talk more on later - I won tickets to the bridal show in London this weekend. Erica told me that her wedding photographer was having a contest, all you had to do is write a little something about what you love about your spouse. Here is my winning entry on The Last Forty Percent blog.
Finally, a picture of Jen and I in junior kindergarten - I’m the one third from the right in the middle row (if you include the little one in the rocking chair) in the Couturesmith dress. Personally I think I was the best dressed in the class. Jen is the teacher’s pet, sitting on the teacher’s lap! The cute girl in the very center in the white dress was my very best friend up until grade one, when she moved away. And a picture of us a year ago (her in the centre, me on the right) with our friend Michelle.
