Stench, Strawberries, Snack

Today I noticed that my house smells like puppy. Gross. Febreeze has become my new best friend.

{Here's a creative picture I took while playing with my camera.. the muffins are growing!}

Tonight for youth, I had the youth over to my house to hang out. I really love that about having a smaller youth group. To be able to be flexible and to build a tight-knit community with a smaller group. It's fun and also exciting. :)
Tonight I felt slightly home-makerish as I made snack for my staff meeting tomorrow. I made blueberry bran muffins and chocolate covered strawberries!
Chocolate covered strawberries always look so incredibly fancy and done up, but they are SO easy to make! What a fun treat to bring somewhere.
What I did was melted some milk chocolate and white chocolate, and I dipped the strawberries in the milk chocolate and then drizzled them with white chocolate. I put them on parchment paper for easy removal and then put them in the fridge to firm up. And voila! A fancy snack that looks like I took hours to make!
Today some new opportunities for some future traveling have come up that I am SUPER excited for! More on that later when I have booked flights and such (which will hopefully be tomorrow..)
I just realized today that next week is June (crazy!) and that the next 2 months are going to be a whirlwind. But an exciting one to be sure!!
And so I will leave you for now. Hopefully these treats haven't made your mouth water too much ;) You just have to join my staff meeting tomorrow! Or come grab the leftovers!

Off to Seattle and the Island for a couple days so posting might be slim but I will make up for it when I return!

Sokkie, Saturday, Sweaty

One of my new favorite things to do on a Saturday night? Sokkie!!

Sokkie is a South African way of dancing. And the name refers to dancing in socks instead of shoes. And on a hardwood floor, it also allows for spinning with ease.

A bunch of friends came over and we made dinner together before the dancing commenced. Here, Maia, David and Jannie are busy BBQ'ing on the back deck.
Thankfully, Elle was quite excited to have many friends to dote on her and play with her.
Anne, visiting from Edmonton, enjoyed some chili bites with me. Mmmmm.. probably not so good for the digestive system mind you.


Adri was making her statement about being barefoot in the kitchen cooking. haha.. but the meal was absolutely amazing!! :)
Matt and Chris stopped by to pick up a foosball table and ended up joining us for party of the party which was fun. And even more friends for Elle!

Enjoying the tasty meal together (before death by fork on my part)

Let the dancing/spinning begin!

And here's a video of Dave and Maia.. so you can see just how crazy the spinning gets. Got even faster afterwards. It speeds up in the middle. Enjoy! :)

Pinafore, Poopy, Practical

Puppies and friends interfere with blogging. So I apologize, but not really, because I love my puppy and I love hanging out with my friends.

Last week, Maia, Dave, Adri and I went to see HMS Pinafore. It was fantastic!! You should go see it at the Surrey Arts Center this week! It was the same society that I was in a musical with so it was fun to see people I had been in my last musical with.
I do think that we were perhaps a little bit to giddy and giggly for a musical, but it just added to the fun of it. All night, we kept mishearing each other. So we ended up hearing stories about people that eat girls, and a lot of other funny misunderstandings.
Maia and I went for dinner beforehand to the Olive Garden for all you can eat breadsticks, salad and soup! Tasty!!

And here's puppy taking a rest after playing with her for a while. She's a good cuddler. And so great to take naps with. As long as she's not biting your face off of course.

Here's Maia taking a nap with her. Glad my friends enjoy her as well!

Brooke and I tried out our latest sushi restaurant. Simon Sushi on 96 Ave on Wednesday night. We both gave it a 3.75 out of 5. Rolls were good and creative. Service was good. And they gave us free stuff! I always like it when places give you complimentary items.
And they have fun mirror placements for pictures of people's reflections. :)
So, go try it out sometime! I feel bad for all these places, because they're kind of off the beaten track. But we shall continue our quest to find the best Japanese restaurant around! :)

And things are going well with puppy. She's a pretty good listener and is learning really fast. The only problem is I suck at puppy owning. And don't have time for a puppy. So just trying to figure out how that fits into the practicality of it all.. Time will tell I guess!

Pitter, Patter, Puppy!

Apparently end of May every year I get an urge to buy puppies. This year was no different and after much more thought and research, I bought a puppy today!! And I will keep it for more than 3 weeks.

Presently she is sleeping in my lap as I write. And it's delightful to just snuggle with her.
She seems like a GREAT dog so far. Listens well, is super playful but also cuddly too!!
Still finalizing the name! But for now I'm just enjoying her! :)