Houses, Photos, Cupcakes, Smoothies

House Names
When we lived in England, most of the houses in our neighborhood had a name, and the name had nothing to do with the owners surname. It was often neatly printed on a sign posted near the front of the property, or on the house near the door. Our house was called ‘Dorian’. A few blocks away, there was a house called the ‘Wolery’, which I thought was very inspired. ‘Wolery’ is of course the name of Owl’s House in the Winnie the Pooh stories…

In Aberdeen, Scotland, homeowners took sign making one step further. Many homes had transom windows over the front door, and the house name was etched into the glass. Very nice.

We used to live in a small town in Alberta, and every house was referred to by the last name of the people who lived there just before the current residents. If our name had been Smith, and the previous owners were Jones, then when we moved into the Jones house, we were known to live in ‘The Old Jones House’.  The house we had previously lived in was called ‘The Old Smith House’. It could get quite confusing…

Wedding Photos
For our 40th Wedding Anniversary, the Kids took one of our wedding photos and had it made into 40 wallet size photos. They hid each one of the photos in our house – somewhere. That was over a year ago, and I found photo # 28 inside of the deep freeze, and the Car Guy just found photo #29 in the bar fridge. Goes to show that I haven’t done any defrosting in a while…

Cupcakes
I really like decorated cupcakes. Well, I like to eat them, not make them. My youngest daughter is the go-to girl in our family for this type of thing. Here is a photo of the cupcakes she made for a grandchild’s birthday party last year.

Tim Hortons and Smoothies
Tim Hortons, home of my favorite coffee drink the Ice Capp, is going to introduce a new beverage line – Fruit Smoothies. A 10-ounce smoothie will cost $1.99 and contain 130 calories, have zero grams of fat and a full serving of fruit. Customers can add yogurt for 70 cents, adding another 30 calories. I haven’t been able to determine yet how much sugar is in one. There are some complaints on the internet that the fruit that is added at point of sale isn’t whole fruit, but a pre-blended mix of fruit and juice. I expect it is more cost and time effective to ship pre-crushed fruit, yes?

I make fruit-milk smoothies at home all the time with my Magic Bullet. At the cabin, a smoothie and a bowl of popcorn is, on occasion, what I make for the grandchildren for lunch. This caused one grandchild to observe, “Grandma, you are just the best cooker!”