Perfect Doesn’t Exist

I saw this posted on Thick Threads Facebook Page today and it is something everyone needs to see. We all know that photos are airbrushed to death these days. Photos that young kids see as they grow up and believe is how people really look, how they should look. Photos that even us grownups see and while we know different we can’t help but think “I wish I could look like that”, knowing full well that most of what we’re looking at is not what these people really look like.

Most of the time these pictures are of celebrities, people we never actually see up close to know exactly how they look. We see them in pictures and we see them on camera where there may not be airbrushing, but where numerous make-up tricks are used to make them appear “perfect”. We don’t see them face to face to see the lines, wrinkles, pimples, cellulite etc., so our minds trick us into thinking that this is really how they look. Then what happens? We look at ourselves in the mirror and start picking out all the little flaws we see.

Go check out this website, click on the “toggle” button to see the before and after for each row. Look closely at each little change on each picture. It’s shocking. Even though we know they do it, to see each and every little detail they change is a real eye opener.

Jolene

What I’m Wearing

Holy smokes! Where has the time gone? I can’t believe we’re at the end of November already! I managed to pretty much finish my Christmas shopping this weekend, I only had a couple of things for my kids left to buy and sales were great this weekend and made it easy to accomplish. I just have to get stocking stuffers and finish making a couple of homemade gifts. Hubby and I decided we’re not going to buy each other anything before Christmas, we’ll try to come up with something to buy together after Christmas instead. We’ll just get each other something small so we each have a gift to open on Christmas morning. Definitely happy to be done shopping early again, I’ve managed to be pretty much done by the beginning of December the past few years and I love it! It makes Christmas so much less stressful and more enjoyable….and with the family issues that are pissing me off anything less stressful is a good thing!

We had another windy day Friday when we went out shopping, so I had to do a ponytail again. Little did I know that the windy days we had last week would be nothing compared to what was to come Sunday! Crazy I tell ya! The whole house was shaking, and not just a little! All of downtown was shut down because windows were being blown out of highrises, not only was it too dangerous for anyone to be down there with the threat of getting hit by something, but the roads were so filled with debris that some of them weren’t reopened until Monday afternoon. There were trees down all over the city, HUGE trees! Shingles blown off and even some homes had part of their roof blown off. South of the city it was even worse a lot of major damage to homes and businesses and then on top of that some pretty bad fires started threatening homes. It was just an absolutely crazy day here in Southern Alberta!

Here is my wind and shopping ready outfit from Friday, hair secured up, no skirt to worry about blowing up and comfy flats for lots of walking.

Jeans: Penningtons, $50(2011)

Top & Belt: Dealzone, $10(2011)

Cardigan: Penningtons, $30(2011)

Shoes: Forever 21, $18ish?(2011)

Cuff: Forever 21, $5ish(2011)

Necklace and Earrings: Avon, gift from my Mom

Jolene

What I’m Wearing

First off I would like to wish my American friends a Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you’re enjoying the day with loved ones and eating lots of yummy food!

I managed to get a pic of what I wore yesterday. I apologize for the bad backdrop, I’m not brave enough to pose for pics outside(plus it’s a little cold to pose without a jacket now) and my house is a disaster right now. Why is my house a disaster? Well, on top of the usual slobbishness of my 2 boys, I asked slob1 to bring up all the Christmas decorations and stack them nicely together somewhere so we can start putting them up. Slob 1’s translation of this was to bring up all the Christmas decorations and spread them all over the entire main floor and start yanking stuff out of the boxes, so my house now has boxes, rubbermaids, garland, lights etc etc spread all over the place. Needless to say a good place to take a picture does not currently exist in my house.

I actually wore my hair in a ponytail yesterday! I don’t wear my hair up often, especially not in ponytails. I just don’t think I look good with a ponytail(my super fine hair makes a pretty pathetic ponytail LOL). The winds were insane yesterday though, not quite as bad as the town about an hour from us that had the roof ripped off the High School from the wind, crazy huh? But they were bad enough. So instead of my hair whipping around in the wind and getting all knotted up I decided to put it up. Thank goodness my headache wasn’t as bad as I usually get when we get a Chinook and these kinds of winds and I was able to get out of the house for a few hours and go for lunch with hubby. As you can tell from my last post, I NEEDED it! It wasn’t a cure-all, but it helped give me a bit of a mental break from stuff.

I went without tights because I thought it was warmer feeling out than it was and I didn’t want to overheat. Turns out I should have because I froze my legs every time we walked from the car to store and back to car again. I loved what I was wearing except that the skirt kept creeping up while I walked, I’m not big on skirts any shorter than what this was so it was quite annoying LOL.  I usually like to wear this top with my black jeans, but I just felt like wearing a skirt yesterday.

Top: Addition-Elle, $15ish(2010)

Skirt: hand-me-down from years ago

Boots: Payless, $40(2011, leftover style from 2010)

Necklace: Forever 21, $6.80(2011)

Earrings: Avon, gift from my Mom

Jolene

 

Ten on Tuesday

I have lots of recipes I can post, I think I have one or two outfits I can post, I have lots of other posts I’ve been wanting to do. But this week I’m just blah and can’t focus on posting anything good. The weather is really changing and my body is feeling it bad right now. It has been really windy off and on and I get headaches whenever it gets windy. We got some snow yesterday too. Just the whole weather change in general is hitting me hard right now. My head hurts, my body just aches everywhere and my head is so fuzzy…I hate that fuzzy feeling, especially when it lasts for days. I’ve been like this for about a week now and I’m so ready for it to end! My list of things to do is growing and I’m making no progress on any of it. I’m hoping since the winter weather is likely here to stay that I will get used to it soon and get back into the great groove I had started lately. I’m upping my vitamins and going to pick up another supplement I’ve heard good things about…..hopefully those will help too.

I came across one of those question thingies and thought this is at least something I should be able to do without too much thought…..so here is my “Ten on Tuesday”

Ten on Tuesday at Roots and Rings

1. What are your pantry staples?
Flour, Sugar, Oats, Honey, Peanut Butter, baking supplies(the usual baking soda, baking powder etc.), Tomato Paste, Diced Tomatoes, Tomato Sauce, Tea

2. What are your refrigerator staples?
Milk, yogurt(homemade),eggs, marble cheese, margarine, ketchup, mustard, hot sauce, ranch dressing, Miracle Whip, cream(for coffee), pickles, Parmesan

3. You already look like Heidi Klum (or your favorite supermodel). Now, what are the top three non-physical things you would change about yourself?
My nervousness, my constant worrying, my shyness

4. What’s holding you back from your dream job? (If you already have your dream job, how did you get there?)
Other than being a Mom I never really had a dream job, as I said in a previous post I always thought I would be a model but never went further with that….too old and fat to do that now LOL! But I am a stay at home Mom like I wanted to be, I imagined having more as one though and not struggling financially(ok, we’re not exactly struggling anymore, to some it is, but compared to what we’ve been through I can’t call this struggling). My kids are getting older and I know I have to think about what I’m going to do as they start building their own lives, ideally I would love to start my own business but what kind I don’t know yet, I know I really don’t want to go back to working for someone else. My husband and I have this dream of owning a very large chunk of land and having a Paintball field, Paintball arena, Laser tag…..all sorts of fun stuff like that on it and then maybe a small diner or cafe and live on the land as well….yeah, big dreams for people with no money LOL…..that’s the thing about dreams, you can make them as big as you want .

5. You have $500 to spend but it has to be on one item only. Go.
There are so many things that $500 could buy that we need, this is a hard one. It would probably be a piece of furniture. Either a real bed for hubby and I….in the 16 or so years we’ve lived together we’ve only had a real bed(frame, headboard etc) for maybe a quarter of those years at the most, last time was about 7 or 8 years ago. OR a new Dining set…..hubby is building me a table(very slowwwwly lol) and I need chairs too, so $500 could buy me some nice chairs. OR a China Cabinet….I’ve never had one and I have stuff I’ve accumulated from my Grandma’s that I can’t put out anywhere, and I just got another box full of stuff from my Grandma’s house that my Mom and Dad brought from a trip out there…..I would love to be able to put everything out on display instead of having it packed away.

6. What is something that you are embarrassed to admit you buy on a regular basis?
hmm, been racking my brain on this one and I can’t come up with a single answer! Yeah, every once in a while we buy chips or junk of some sort out of weakness, but we definitely don’t buy anything like that on a regular basis…..and not exactly something I think we should be embarrassed to buy…maybe if we were buying it a lot, but we certainly don’t. So I would have to say nothing.

7. What’s in/on your bed every night?
Two pillows, fitted sheet, hubby’s down comforter for him and my soft blanket for me, my heating pad….and at night nobody since we don’t sleep at night lol….but during “our night” which is morning for everyone else….hubby and I

8. What is a non-necessity item that, no matter how expensive it gets or how tight your budget if, you will always find room for it?
Make-up! I can’t live without my make-up, I’ll use the cheap stuff if I have to(and I usually do anyway). As for food it would have to be eating out once in a while. I love to cook but often when we eat out it’s just as much for sanity as it is for the food. Hubby will take me out sometimes because I’m home alone with the kids so much, I had no problems handling it when they were little, but at this age omg, I need a couple hours every once in a while.

9. What is the weirdest sandwich you’ve ever made?
Margarine and Pickle! It’s good! Kids were hungry and I had no meat or peanut butter or anything so I told them to use pickles…..they named it the “Freak Sandwich” and ever since we have it every once in a while even if we do have meat because it’s just simple and pretty darn good. My youngest tricked my oldest into adding Jam to the Sandwich once, saying he tried it and it was really good, which he had not hehe.

10. Would you rather: Be banned from Pinterest forever, but gain a million captive Twitter followers; or, never get on Facebook again but gain five thousand blog readers?
How about neither? LOL. If I had to pick I guess I would say the latter. I’ve been on Facebook for so long now that I’m actually growing a little bored and tired of it lately and I don’t care as much about Twitter. I love Pinterest and I would love more blog readers….so definitely the latter.

Jolene

Potato Soup

I grew up with my Dad often making Potato Soup and it was one of my favorite meals. I never thought I could have a Potato Soup as good as that. I tried for years to make it and get mine to taste exactly how my Dad’s did. While I don’t think I ever got it tasting exactly like my Dad’s did, I got mine tasting pretty darn good.

I wasn’t looking for a new Potato Soup recipe, but I love looking at recipes online to get ideas, every once in a while I find one that looks good enough to try almost exactly as it’s written. I came across this recipe for Potato Soup that is apparently a  copycat recipe for the Potato Soup served at Panera. I’ve heard of Panera before, but we don’t have them up here, so I have no clue what their soup is like. This recipe looked so good though that I had to try it….as for whether or not it tastes like the soup from Panera I have no idea!

I like to make soup in the Winter for my husband to take to work for his supper. He works in a cold warehouse all night, so I like to send him with something that will warm him up. Last Winter I decided to give this soup recipe a try. It was so fricken good that it is now a regular on my soup list for his work suppers. I mean, amazing good! It tastes like a creamy loaded baked potato, and who doesn’t love loaded baked potatoes!?! I sure do!

I went a little crazy with the chicken stock when I made it last week(yes, because I don’t measure LOL), so the soup in the picture is not as thick as I usually prefer it, the taste was not affected though, it was still just as good.  I always make a double recipe so I have enough for at least 3 or 4 nights of hubby’s supper and a little extra so I get some too .

Cream Cheese Potato Soup

Inspired by Panera's Cream Cheese Potato Soup by Shawn H

4 cups Chicken, Turkey or Veggie Broth*

4 cups peeled and cubed Potatoes

1/4 cup minced Onion

1/2 tsp Salt

1/4 tsp Pepper

1/4 tsp Ground Red Pepper

1 pkg(8oz) Cream Cheese

Saute onions in large pot in a little bit of oil. Add broth, potatoes, salt and peppers. Boil on medium until potatoes are cooked. Mash potatoes, but not all of them, keep it a little chunky(unless you really don’t like chunky, then by all means, mash it all up!). Mashing some of the potatoes will release the starch and thicken the soup.

Remove some of the soup into a blender, add the cream cheese and blend well. Pour back into the pot and simmer until it has reached the thickness you like and the cream cheese is nicely melted and blended in with the rest of the soup.

Dish out and top each bowl with some shredded cheese, crumbled bacon and green onion.

*I’ve made it with all 3 and they are all good.

Jolene

Planning for Adulthood and Quesadillas

(Scroll to the end of the post for a recipe for Quesadillas if you don’t want to read my other ramblings )

My almost 14 year old has taken an interest in cooking over the past several years. He has been able to do some simple things like making soup from a can, making Kraft Dinner and making frozen stuff you stick into the oven for several years. He started doing stuff that requires a little bit of actual “cooking” like making eggs a few years ago. He hasn’t really gone beyond that though. Yeah he helps me in the kitchen sometimes, but breakfast stuff like eggs or waffles(no, not frozen lol) is probably the only cooked from scratch meals he’s done on his own.

We’re trying to get him to think a little more about what he wants to do, he’s at that age where it’s time to sort out the ideas of what he wants to be that have been lingering through childhood and think about which ones he’s serious about. We don’t expect him to make a definite decision at this age of course, but getting an idea and setting some goals to work towards is something we want him to work on as he gets closer to High School. It’s something I don’t really remember my parents doing, I know my Mom wanted me to go towards Hair Dressing and I started taking it at the beginning of High School because my friends were, but quickly realized it really wasn’t for me. I didn’t have any other ideas to fall back on.

As a child I had done dancing, singing, a little bit of acting classes and modeling. I think in my earlier years I always thought I would be a model, but moving to a different city ended what I had began when I was little and when I tried to re-enter the world of modeling as a young teenager I was stopped short by knee problems preventing me from doing the "walk”. I guess I figured I couldn’t do modeling because of that, and as far as I remember that was the reason I didn’t go back. My knee problems weren’t fixed until I was in my late teens(if you can call it fixed lol) and by then I was busy being a teen and really didn’t even know how to get back into it or if I should.  Now as I look back and know more about the world of modeling I’m sort of glad in some ways I didn’t continue, I’ve seen some horrible things about that lifestyle and I probably wouldn’t have lasted long in that life….and considering my body completely changed as soon as I got pregnant the first time even if I had gone into the life it would have been over after that LOL.

With no other plans for my future to fall back on and part of a family that couldn’t afford to put one of us through a post-secondary education, never mind all of us, I finished High School without a plan for my future. I knew I wanted to get married and have kids, that was it. So what did I do? Yes, I got married and had kids, but I worked nothing more than retail and customer service type jobs. All of which were low pay. The best job I ever had was managing a baby store, I loved my job….only job I ever had that I loved. Problem was I worked my ass off running a store for a boss who took advantage of me and made it extremely difficult for me to do my job, plus lied to me constantly about a variety of things….all for $9 an hour.

I want more than that for my kids, but unless we were to win the lottery we could never afford to pay for a post-secondary education for our boys. Grandma has offered to pay for Culinary school for my oldest, so if he’s serious about his interest in cooking it is something that he will have a chance to get the proper training in. So in the meantime while I’m far from a professional cook I’ll do what I can to teach him what I can in the kitchen.

To give me a break from worrying about dinner one night a week and to get some practice making a variety of things I have decided that Sunday nights will be his night to make dinner. He gets to pick the dish he is going to make, as long as he lets me know by Thursdays when I make up my shopping list and gets my approval as far as ingredients go(groceries are expensive here, some things we just can’t afford so my meals are always planned around foods we can afford of course). Oh, and it has to be something he has to actually cook, not just something to throw into the oven.

He has made dinner the past 2 Sundays so far. The first Sunday he made Bolognese, this past Sunday he made Quesadillas. I usually go the lazy way and instead of typing out how I make something I look for a recipe that’s close to how I make it and print it off and just change the parts that I do differently. I couldn’t find a single recipe even close to how I make my Quesadillas though. The recipe is incredibly simple, but for someone who doesn’t follow exact amounts of much of anything when cooking it’s hard to write out a recipe! LOL!  So these are totally just estimates for amounts, it’s what my son followed and it tasted the way they do when I make them, so I guess they must be close enough LOL!

So I apologize for my very amateurish recipe writing, but trust me, the resulting product is VERY good!

Chicken Quesadillas

4 Large Flour Tortillas

2 cups Tomatoes, diced

3 to 4 Chicken Breasts

2 Tbsp Taco Seasoning

Water

2 cups Shredded Cheese

Sour Cream

Dice Chicken Breast, cook in pan over Medium heat until browned and no longer pink in the middle. Add enough water to just cover bottom of the pan, then add taco seasoning. Keep cooking over low-medium heat until water is evaporated and chicken is seasoned evenly to your taste.

Lay out tortilla and top one half with chicken, tomatoes then shredded cheese. Fold other half of tortilla over the half with the toppings and press together. Heat a tbsp or two of olive oil in frying pan on medium. Gently place Quesadilla into pan and heat until browned and slightly crunchy, gently flip the Quesadilla over and do the same on the other side. Remove from pan, cut in half. Repeat the process with the remaining tortillas. Serve with sour cream.

Jolene

What I’m Wearing and 20 Years!!

20 years ago today my husband and I started dating! I was 16, he was 17. We have been through so much in 20 years. Not a lot of people can say they’ve been with the same person for 20 years, even less can say they have been through the things we have and still be together. But here we are!

This is us back in 1992 heading to Alex’s High School Graduation, we had been dating about 7 or 8 months at that point. He was 18 here and I was just about to turn 17.  Yes, he had a mullet LOL, it was 1992, everyone was blind and thought they looked good back then, most of the guys had at least some resemblance of one LOL.

Life isn’t always perfect, life is hard. We’ve had a lot of hard times, or one continuous hard time, depends how you look at it lol. I hear people complain when their perfect life has one little hiccup, I laugh and think if they only knew what a truly stressful and hard life really is. We do, it could have been worse and I’m grateful it wasn’t. I don’t credit anyone else for it not being worse, we worked too hard ourselves to improve our lives to give anyone else credit for what we did. We did have a bit of help in a couple of ways from our parents, and we’re grateful for that as it was the only kind of help we got. We were lucky enough to always be healthy, I’m grateful we never had to endure that part of a hard life(and hope we never will). Even those closest to us(ok, don’t think I really have anyone that “close”) don’t know the extent of it, they think they do, but they don’t. We never blamed anyone else for our hard times, while there wasn’t a whole lot we could have done to prevent them(6 layoffs in 12 years, how could it be anything but just bad luck?) I still don’t blame anyone(ok, there may be a few specific employers who’s bad business management cause the layoffs that I would love to give a nice swift kick in the ass). But we made it through. Life still isn’t easy, but compared to the past it’s like a bed of roses!

I wish we had more at this point in our lives, but we have what we need and that’s all that matters. We haven’t owned our own home in years and since unless you want to live in a small box you can forget about getting anything decent under about $350,000(even most apartments are over $200,000), owning a home here is probably never going to happen. But we rent a house I love in a community I love, and fortunately we don’t have to see our landlords very often(I believe landlords come from another planet, they all surely must because they are all the same lol).

I wish my kids were more responsible, better behaved and took more interest in doing what they should instead of just what they want. But they are kids, one a teenager. They behave just like you expect kids their age to behave. They are the most polite kids to other people, they only have bad behavior toward Mom and Dad. I expect a lot, but only because I know they’re capable. They still want to be with us all the time, my 11 year old calls and complains we’re gone too long if we’ve gone out for more than an hour, he misses us already. His favorite place to be is still cuddling with us on the couch. I wish they could be more mature in a lot of ways, but they aren’t trying to grow up too fast in most ways and I’m ok with that(I just won’t let them know, shhhh).

Life isn’t perfect, but life is good. It’s hard to live off a single income, it’s not a large single income, but it’s the highest one we’ve ever had. I know people who live off twice as much and can’t make ends meet, but when you’ve lived off far less your entire life you just know how to make a dollar go farther and know what is important and what isn’t. We don’t HAVE to live off a single income, but life was actually harder when we had 2 incomes. Our 2 incomes at that time combined were far less than the single one coming in now. I’m where I’m meant to be, home to take care of my family. Not out of laziness, but because while we’re not religious people, we have very strong family values, I guess we’re a little old fashioned in some ways.

I’m hopeful that the hard days are behind us. Life will always throw difficult things into the mix, but the constant daily struggle we had for years has finally left us to enjoy life. My husband has a great job, maybe even a chance for a great new position in the New Year, we’ll see, but even if he doesn’t get that, the job is still great, and the company he works for is great. I’m finally a lot less depressed than I was for so many years, I like me and I don’t think I’ve ever truly felt that way before. The kids still have a lot of raising and growing up left to do, but with one already in his teens and the other not too far away we are finally able to focus on not just being parents, but being a couple too. I’m looking forward to the next 20 years and beyond and I honestly believe we have our best years ahead of us!

And here we are today! We took this picture just before heading out to eat today . The skinny bodies turned to fat, his mullet replaced by no hair(not because he’s balding LOL, he has such a thick head of hair It’s disgusting, he just likes the clean feeling of a shaved head and I think it suits him), a few gray hairs….ok actually a lot, but all on his head! Not a word of a lie I haven’t had a single gray yet(and not because of coloring LOL, I have plenty of dark roots between coloring)! And a few wrinkles here and there LOL.

We don’t usually go out on a day that hubby works, but he didn’t have to go in until later tonight so he and I went out for nice lunch/dinner together….we went for Vietnamese, our favorite! So that means I actually got to get dressed up nice to leave the house!

Jeans: Forever 21+, $15(2011)

Cardigan: Addition-Elle, $10ish(2009)

Layered top: 121Avenue(eBay store), $11(2011)

Lace trimmed tank: Warehouse One, $10 (2011)

Boots: Payless Shoes, $40 (2011)

Cuff(you can see it better in pic above with hubby): F21, $5(2011)

Necklace(see better in above pic): Warehouse One, $10ish (2011)

Earrings(sorry, can’t really see them ): Avon, don’t recall price (2009)

A kiss to hubby hehe!

Jolene

Chili

It’s that time of year for foods that warm up your insides! We are expecting our first bit of snow sometime between tonight and tomorrow morning. Sounds like not a lot, but any snow is too much! Yeah, not a fan of Winter, can you tell? I like the “cool” but hate the cold. I like looking at beautiful pictures with snow. I love looking just West of us and seeing the beautiful Rocky Mountains with their snowcaps, it’s a stunning site and I’m lucky to live close enough to see it whenever I want. I hate actually being in the snow though, I hate the slippery roads and sidewalks, I hate the deep snow you have to walk through to get anywhere and then the messy slush you have to deal with when it starts to melt. I hate having to bundle up before you can leave the house.

I love Winter cooking though! Soups and stews, using the oven and not worrying about making the house too hot, instead welcoming the added heat….well, ok sometimes, I get hot even in Winter lol.

Last weekend I made Chili for the first time since Spring. I don’t make Chili in the Summer. Even though I make it in my Slow Cooker so it wouldn’t heat up the house anyway, Chili is just too much of a warming food for warm days. Perfect though for the days that are now upon us! The high tomorrow is –8 C….our first day of the season below zero…boooo!

My family isn’t a fan of beans, so if you like beans feel free to add them, but we don’t. We like our Chili nice and thick and meaty. I usually make it with Ground Beef, but I have made it with Ground Pork before too because when I had a Costco card the pork was usually cheaper. There is very little difference in taste, I have replaces Ground Beef with Pork in many recipes and if anything I almost think the pork absorbs the flavors of everything in the dish better. Of course you could also use Ground Chicken or Turkey….both are insanely expensive where I live(so is the beef for that matter LOL!), so I have never used either of them. If you can afford them of course you will end up with a leaner Chili.

A note on the tomato items I put in as well. These are the items I buy to put in if I’m out of canned tomato products and buying some specifically for Chili, but if I’m just cooking from what I have on hand I have used many different combinations of tomato sauce, diced tomatoes and stewed tomatoes. The only one I remain consistent with is the tomato paste. I put the same total amount of tomato items in though, it doesn’t seem to affect the Chili by changing the combination of products.

Chili

(makes a big Slow Cooker full, for my family of 4 with 2 boys who are HUGE eaters we get 2 meals plus enough for lunch for one or two of us out of this recipe)

1 giant bulk pack lean ground beef

2 large onions

4 cloves garlic

2x 398ml cans of tomato sauce

2x 156ml cans of tomato paste

796ml can of whole tomatoes

398ml can of diced tomatoes

2 1/2 tsp cumin

2 1/2 tsp paprika

1 1/2 to 2 tbsp Chili Powder

2 1/2 tsp Oregano

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp pepper

3 tsp Worcestershire sauce

Saute meat, onions and garlic. Add to slow cooker when done.

Add all remaining ingredients, give it a good stir, cook on low for 8 hours. If you don’t have a Slow Cooker you can cook on the stove simmering for about 2 hours.

Jolene