me time...

we all need it sometimes. i'm an only child, and i lived alone for my 5 years in toronto, so i'm used to it; i crave alone time if you will. i'll be getting lots of it while dylan is house sitting this week. he'll pop in a few times here and there, but for the most part, it's me the chloe.

a hot drink and a lit candle.

 a pile of magazines needing to be read and nail polish.

tea, i'm trying to like you.

those eyes.

and pajama bottoms; what i wear at home 100% of the time.

so here's the thing; i absolutely hate tea. but i want to like it! i keep trying it, but it's a no go. i drank maybe 1/2 of the passion tea above, and it was ok at best. black tea with a lemon wedge is another that's the best of what i've tried, but i still grimace with every sip. yet i still make tea from time to time in the hopes that eventually i'll like it. green tea? definitely not. chai latte? yes! chai tea? nope. maybe i'm just not meant to be a tea person. perhaps i'll just stick to my coffee; we've been best friends for years.

weekends are for...

i like weekends because they give us a chance to spend mornings together, which doesn't happen very often because of dylan's work schedule. sometimes he works overtime (ok, a lot of times), so he's sleeping saturday/sunday mornings too, but when he's not, it's nice to get out for breakfast and coffee. i can't complain too much about overtime though, he gets double time, and there's nothing bad about that. and who doesn't like starting (or finishing) the weekend with delicious food, and someone else cooking it and cleaning up?

this early morning date included:

1) the largest latte i've ever received. you can't grasp the size from the picture, it was like a soup bowl.
2) caramel french toast for me (and a feta/kale/spinach/onion omelette and hash browns for him).
3) a cute date.
4) fresh flowers on the table.

the latest {& greatest?}...

who's jumped on the bandwagon and downloaded the 'vine' app?? dylan told me about it last week, and i was all, "huh, say what?" apparently, he was ahead of the pack. for those of you who don't know what it is, it's like a mix of twitter (made by them), and instagram, and it's to post little short video clips.

you can follow along @ breeslife if you like.  oh, and because we're those parents, chloe has her own account, too; The Chloe Diaries.

are you using it? if so, let me know your username!

dear dylan...

please, for the love of god, get our headboard built this weekend. we've been here for (1 week shy of) 7 months, and we got the barn board back in AUGUST and i'm really tired of looking at an unfinished room.

*sad puppy eyes*

thanks.

frostbite...

monday was a frigid cold day so what else was there to do other than go to toronto and wander around. makes total sense, right? #socanadian. we also stopped into this condo presentation centre (i've been eyeing this place for about 2 years) and talked to a sales rep. man, we would love to live there, but a 1 bedroom + den runs about $500,000. the gentleman working there was very friendly and talked to us for about 20 minutes and answered all our condo questions. 2013 is the year is savings for us; down payments, upping school loan payments, and upping our savings in general.

pulled pork grilled cheese from say cheese. only $4.50 for most sandwiches; really, you can't beat it. plus, it was delicious.

we stopped here on our way home. frozen water.

frozen people.

it even looks cold.

obvious, but obligatory statement: keep your pets inside. it's far too cold for them.
every time i take chloe for a quick pee, she looks at me like, "are you friggin' kidding me? take me back in!"

just call me chef bree...

it was only about 4 short months ago that i tried crème brûlée for the first time (while in myrtle beach) and i completely fell in love. i got ramekins and a blow torch for christmas and i've been itching to use them ever since. saturday was the perfect opportunity. i was a little nervous (i always am when trying something new) with the 'tempering the eggs' step; i didn't want vanilla scrambled eggs, ya know? luckily, the recipe was very easy, and i was left with a lot of extra 'mix', which i put in a container and put in the fridge. google told me i could keep it up to 2 days. if i had more ramekins, i would have used it all at once obviously, but now that we've eaten a few, i put the rest in the oven last night.

 4 ingredients. simple as that.

 vanilla.

 6 egg yolks and sugar.

 realizing that there was so much liquid, i had to pull out 2 other ramekins, and there was still plenty left!

 testing the first 2 out.

 exciting!

voila! 

the recipe said to put them in the fridge for at least 2 hours before putting the sugar on (torture), and right at that 2 hour mark, we tried them. they were good, but when you broke the shell, it wasn't runny, per se, but it wasn't quite the consistency i was hoping for. later on in the day, i took 2 to my parents and we had them (so now they were refrigerated for about 9 hours), and they were so much better! like, really good. i'm quite proud of myself; another dish i can check off as something i'm good at ;)  

*note: overall, it made 7 oval ramekins, and 2 round ones. recipe here.

snowed in...

no, not really snowed in, unfortunately, but we got a bit of snow yesterday and last night, and they're calling for a bit more today. woohoo! and it's going to be just a bit cold at about -10! pretty safe to say we'll be hunkering down for the weekend and i plan on trying to make my first crème brûlée on saturday. i'm a  little scared, but i'm totally hoping that i can pull it off. full report to come monday ;)

sun shining through this morning.

happy weekend!

beans, beans, the magical fruit...

the perks of me being home more now (more on that later) is that we're getting in the routine of making real dinners again. i've got free subscriptions to chatelaine and the food network magazines, so there's lots of new recipes coming in every month. we were at costco last week getting quinoa (a 4lb bag nonetheless) for a recipe, and dylan saw this massive (what isn't massive at costco?) container of beans for a soup. we picked it up and made the recipe that was on the back for dinner last night. it was ridiculously easy and quite delicious. since it only required one cup of beans, we still have about 90% of the container left. must find tonnes of recipes that require quinoa and beans in the near future...

garlic, onion, and celery prep.

beans. just a picture of a cup of beans.

see? big!

the recipe if anyone is interested.

certainly doesn't look like much, but i promise it's good.

any quinoa recipes to share? or other things to do with beans? chili? hand it over!

weekend scenes...

this weekend consisted of...

 trying out a new-ish coffee place.

 uncharacteristically warm weather in january in canada. it was 13 degrees saturday, but the average is usually around -1.

 reading this book (i liked it!), then watching the movie right away (hated it!). (*and trying out new camera apps*)

endless peach bellini's, homemade pizza, and deep fried wings.

ok, seriously though, did anyone read or see the lucky one? i read the book in 2 days this weekend and thought it was pretty good. i was excited to watch the movie once i was done, so on sunday morning, i watched it while dylan was still sleeping. it was so completely different from the book, and not in a good way. so much was left out and changed and i just wasn't a fan. i didn't feel the chemistry between them and she just looked too old for him. i know she's older than in the book, not by much though, and in real life, but they just didn't mesh. the more i think about it, the more i think i hated the movie. meh. but zac efron was still a treat to look at for 1 hour and 40 minutes.

a look back...

i was a little bored last night and decided to look through  my 'dig cam' folder on my computer, which houses all 30,000ish pictures or so by year, season, month, and event.

 2007 at halloween haunt.

our first family photo; the night i got chloe :) 2007. so tiny!

 our first nyc visit together. 2008.

 my 21st birthday. 2008.

 camping. 2009.

 stuffed in the back on the way to camping. 2010.

 beach. 2010.

 superman at a hotel. 2008.

2012.

happy weekend!