Soulful Sunday - Superbowl Sunday - Let's go Patriots

It would have been nice to attend a Superbowl Party.  My friends in Mississauga always have a great one either at Shari's or Lynn and Gord.  They serve amazing munchies and at times more. One of the special part is picking the right box and putting a bet for the right score at the right time.  I know that I won't win but it's good to donate it for whoever wins the game.  The party starts early and ends late.  It's all about friends getting together on a Sunday afternoon enjoying a special sport event.  My Canadian friends are great fans of the NFL versus the CFL.

For Jeff and I, it will be just having the game on TV as we continue working at home with the renovations.  The house is still in a construction state that we cannot have any friends over.  This doesn't mean we won't take a break to check the scores, the commercial and of course the half time show.  Although I am not a great fan of Madonna,  I wish they had some other musical group like Journey or Aerosmith.  But whatever reason they chose her, I am sure it had something to do with her new album or new song or come back.  Hopefully there won't be any costume malfunctions nor lip syncing.

To my New England Patriots play your best game so I can cheer

Don't get distracted by Madonna as you need your mind clear.

I have been a fan of yours since I have moved here

Instead of hors devours, I'll just be chuggin' down beer. 

Simply Saturday - Simple work means a lot

Today is the book sale at the library near our home.  Yesterday I met the Friends of the Library who are the volunteers who organizes book sale and other events at the library. The ladies were all very friendly and very nice.  The lead ladies were very appreciative of the hours we spent sorting the books for today's sale.  My MIL have decided to join me in volunteering with this particular library.  Next week we will try to get our orientation and completing forms in order to get officially part of the Friends of the Library.  The book sorting process was very interesting as we check each box and place them in their appropriate category.  All the volunteers were all working hard and helping each other to get the job done.  I am very happy that I picked another venue to give my time back to the community.

Last night I assisted Jeff with some of the simple work that is part of the renovations.  There were parts of the wall that needed scrapping which is a prepping process prior to painting.  I started with the small wall the divides the living room and the kitchen.  Once I finished scrapping, I painted this walls brown.  This is a small job but this was my training portion.  I must have passed that part, so Jeff said that I can proceed to scrape the rest of the walls of the living room and the kitchen.  All of a sudden my knees started to hurt so I had to take a break, a good time to blog.  My boss is calling and it's time to paint the primer on the cabinet part of the stair.  Simple work that means a lot specially when it's part of our home.

FMTY Friday - From me to you

Every Friday now will be called FMTY - From me to you. This will be my post that will feature friends and family that I have reconnected.  Of course this will change as I ran out of stories to share.  I hope that my memory can remember most of the stories on the connection with each one of them.  If you are wondering where this idea came about, it all began from an email I received last night and then a telephone call I receive the following day.

From me to you spotlight is my first cousin on my father's side of the family.  Her nickname is Nodie.  Of course she uses her nickname, all of us have nicknames and majority of our friends does not really know our legal name.  So yesterday I got an email from her and it has been at least 30 years since the last time we reconnected.  She is the daughter of my dad's youngest sister.  When we were young I remember spending some of my summer vacation with her family.  Her mother was a very awesome seamstress.  I think I've learned some of the tricks of the trade from her.  She showed me how to make my own pattern in order to make clothes that are made to fit me.  That's right, I use to make my own dress, skirt, blouse, and even tailored pants.  My cousin wrote me a very nice and up to date email and hopefully we can keep communicating and does not lose touch.  I found out that one of my other cousin, Lani who is the only daughter of my dad's older sister now resides in Australia.  Wow, I have a relative from the land down under.  What was interesting is how Nodie found me.  Here's the process she took.  There's my next door neighbor from childhood who also use to live in California but now is back in his homeland.  My cousin found him on Facebook and they reconnected.  She asked about me and it so happen my childhood friend Victor had my email.  He gave it to my cousin after a few exchange of information.  I am very impressed that she still remember some of our childhood friends.  As I recall Nodie also spent some of her summer vacation with us and that how she knows our friends in the small town of Muntinlupa.  It's funny that now that I live in the USA, I seem to get reconnected with some of our childhood friends.  I had lived in Canada for almost half of my life and there was only a few reconnections.  In a way I'm happy to reconnect with all of them after all these years. It is amazing how some of them can recall names and stories and the majority says that I have never changed - that I look the same and sound the same.  So from me to you my cousins and my friends, thank you for reaching out and I look forward to more reconnection with others this year.

Maybe someday my husband and I will get a chance to see this beautiful country, Australia.

Truthful Thursday - Breaking up is hard to do

When I started this post, I was going to blog about all the relationships (Hollywood) that are breaking up.  These are couples that have been together for a number of years and I was debating if I was going to include the one that only lasted 72 days.  Last night I opted to talk about the work that I did in our back yard.  Yes, for those of you who knows I don't like gardening, well, I was in our back yard for most of the morning.  My massage therapist cancelled my appointment due to her son's illness. As much as I was so looking forward to this, I had to understand her excuse because I too had little ones before that would require me to cancel an appointment, take a day off from work or whatever it is I am doing that day.  With that breaking the first time client was actually not good for business, right.  Well, I thought I would give her another chance.  Now I am wondering what I was going to do with my morning as now I am free.  It's too bad I said NO to tennis because I would have love to play again.  I looked out to our back yard and saw all the twigs that Jeff trimmed the other night.  During dinner I did ask him how I would go about doing this job so it can all go in the green bin and ready for Thursday garbage pick up.  He described the process and the tools I would require.  I decided to take photos to share so you know exactly what I am talking about.  I was determined to finish the job because I wanted to help out since Jeff has been working hard with the renovations.  An hour and a half , I completed the job and had a few more minutes before lunch, so I pulled out the weeds and dead plants in our flower box.  This breaking up is hard to do is all about breaking the twigs to the right size so it will fit the green bin. There were a lot of them and there was a lot of bending, sweating, a little back and knee pain but once I got every twig inside the bin, I was very proud of what I have accomplished.  The one important thing I learned from this process, I am glad I am not a gardener, a tree trimmer, or a ranch hand.  I don't believe I would have survived a job that required a lot of physical labor.  To those of you whose jobs require a lot of physical labor, I salute you and respect all that you do.

I used the longer wooden handle

This is the other half that still needs to be cut in order to fit the bin.

The green bin that I had to lay on its side - easier to organize the trimmed twigs.

Whet Wednesday - PALITAW

What Whet? What's PALITAW?  Whet - to stimulate the appetite?  Palitaw - a filipino dessert made of rice flour, boiled, rolled into shredded coconut, sugar and toasted sesame seeds.  Check out the photo.  I did not make it from scratch.  It actually came from a frozen box that I bought at the Filipino Supermarket while my sister was here.  We thought we were going to have it as a snack one afternoon but because we had so much desert around Christmas, we never got around having them.  I am posting this so my sister can Whet her appetite.  It's probably not a good dessert for someone who is diabetic, but having this dessert once every 10 years won't hurt me, right?

PALITAW - Filipino Dessert

Since we are talking about dessert, I am not sure if I shared that Christmas Dessert Platter we served during our Boxing Day Open House.

Christmas platter (Cupcakes, 6 layer square, brownies, date bar, cookies)