a peek inside the fishbowl

First of all, thank you so much to all the people who’ve voted for my brunch menu so far. Three cheers for candied bacon!

MMMmmmm, BACON:

If you haven’t voted, GO VOTE. If I win, 20 of you will win some free groceries. And who doesn’t need groceries! (Er, please read this post if you have no idea what I’m talking about.)

I’ve had so many nice comments about our DIY/draw-on-it “tablecloth” idea from yesterday’s post that I thought it’d be nice to share a few extra details about it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Edited to add, October 5: Well, the results are in! I won, but only by one vote. In the spirit of good sportsmanship Sobeys has decided to split the big prize in half, to be shared by myself and the contestant who came in second place. This means I only have $250 in gift cards to give away to those of you who entered, not $500 as previously stated. I’ll only be drawing 10 names instead of the 20 I promised. Sorry folks. I will announce the ten names at noon tomorrow.

New update: I just posted the winners! Thanks everyone!

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I’m happy to announce a really great giveaway today because the prize consists of twenty $25.00 gift cards to Sobeys… and I think pretty much everyone could use one of those, right?

But there’s a hitch. If you want to win, I have to win. Let me explain…

Each of the six fab Sobeys food bloggers has submitted a brunch menu that has been posted on the Sobeys Fall in Love with Better website. If you’d like to win a gift card all you need to do is (1) go to my Sobeys post and vote for my menu by leaving a comment there and then (2) come back here and let me know in the comments below that you voted. If I win I will draw 20 random winners from these names.

To be clear, if my menu receives the most votes on the Sobeys site I will receive $500 in gift cards as well as TWENTY $25.00 gift cards to give away to readers, hence the giveaway. :) Sobeys will send all the winners their gift card in the mail (Canada only, and I am very sorry that residents of Quebec are not eligible). You have until October 5 to vote.

Remember, comment there, then comment here. That’s it!

But before you click over I should tell you that my menu features the Very Best Brunchy Goodness: delicious French-toasted croissants, fresh fruit, and CANDIED BACON. That bears repeating:

CANDIED. BACON.

Ohhh, I am salivating just thinking about how good it was. I also served it on a DIY “tablecloth” of our own creation (which I will be writing more about later). Here’s a sneak peek at one of my menu items:

Please vote for my menu, please and thank you!

I’m working with five other Canadian bloggers on a special campaign for Sobeys. You can read more about my involvement here. Please note that I am being compensated for my participation in this campaign, but as always my views and opinions remain my own.

My spare time has been filled with shopping for our reno. There is still so much to do. This past week it was about lighting fixtures. We have almost everything we need, including an amazing ceiling fan we picked up from a store called Northern Fan.

Sidebar: Twitter rocks.  We wouldn’t have known about this shop otherwise!

We do however, need something for our dining room. Sadly Mark and I can’t seem to agree on anything. Gah.

Anyway, I need to focus on other things before my brain explodes. Things like squishy marbles.

These came from a test-tube science kit we picked up at Tag Along Toys in Kanata. (Tag Along is a Fishbowl patron and we are big fans of this great little store.)

The test-tube science kits are all pretty cool. I like them because they give us an opportunity to do something a little different with the kids.

This particular one was called Garbled Marbles, and I believe the package said something about expanding polymers. (It’s up to you if you really want to use these to illustrate basic scientific principals but we totally glossed over it.)

The girls followed the instructions and set it all up themselves. It was pretty easy. All they had to do was put the tiny multicoloured pellets in a large bowl of water. When we checked in on them a few hours later we realized they’d expanded – a lot.

Some of them were totally transparent too – totally invisible if they were separated and placed in a glass of water. And oh, it was so neat to run my hands through these gummy-like slippery things:

It’s the perfect thing for kids who are super sensory. (Er, as long as they don’t eat them of course.)

Even cleaning up was kind of fun. We admired them for a couple of weeks and eventually decided to strain them and lay them out on a tray to let them dry. (New science lesson in evaporation!) When they had returned to their original state we decided to see how many we could fit on a quarter, just for fun:

And the best thing? They’re reusable too. Cool eh?