Are you the voice?

Sometimes I get invited to events. Some of them more meaningful than others, some more fun than others but none more poignant for me than the ones about empowering girls.

Every morning I wake up to a house of 2 girls, while I enjoy listening to everyone tell me how beautiful they are, I fear that I need to raise strong, independent, fierce, lovable and empowering females. Because while they are girls now they will become women sooner than I want, please I still can't believe they are already the age they are now. Where did the time fly to?

But when I read the invite for the Barbie I can be the Voice event, I knew I had to go. While Barbie might get all political, I was a Barbie girl, had 13 dolls of my own, each with their own separate outfits and personalities. I think roll playing in a creative manner is far more great than people might understand. Girls need to dream and imagine a future that might be... we must let them allow to imagine all the different ways they can achieve greatness.

The people at Barbie I think feel the same... because they are launching today officially the http://www.bethevoice.ca/ website for mom's of girls and boys who want to mentor their kids in being all they can be, with articles from various specialists and moms alike discussing mom issues in raising strong, independent and great individuals. Helped that we dined on cupcakes while we enjoyed the great view from Panorama Lounge.

It really was a fantastic event, even for a mom who sometimes feels unsure of her place in the world around her, to be with like-minded moms, who you can bounce ideas off, who want you to have as much as everyone else and really are cheering you on.

So the best part of it all, at the end of the day, I still get to call myself a Barbie girl!

My house in Chaos, and I like it!

My husband is a handy man... this is a plus in my head. But most people walk into my home and wonder why I live in a constant state of renos. It might be odd... there's dust, there's stuff and a lot of things that get left behind because I am helping with the renos!

But I love it, every moment of it!

Love deciding what is being torn down next, love that after hours of thought discussion together the husband and I come up with something great. We have something going on on every floor of our house. And while it seems like chaos, I am smiling when I walk by a newly tore down part of my house. Because the idea of what will be is far a superior feeling than the annoyance of a bit of disturbance.

While I get a lot of grief from family and friends about living in reno chaos, I am thankful to have met my family friend Linda; because she showed me that living in a home that is being reno'd is only a small part in the perfect end result. She's my home mentor... she doesn't know it! LOL

Projects I am working on:

1. Master Bedroom (which is HUGELY gutted; new electrical, walls down, and new closet)




2. New Railings on the front porch and new landing.




3. New Shed




4. New staircase to the basement.



5. New Furnace re-duct!--- we needed to re-figure the duct work unfortunately.

Are you working on anything in your house? Do you hate renos? Are you handy with renos ( I love working in the house, I laid tiles, painted and plastered the walls)?

My week eating!

Being Pregnant has really opened up my appetite, not literally I want to eat everything in sight as long as it doesn't have sugar in it... serious food turn off for my palette, yet my brains oozes and gawks at cupcakes and sundaes like I haven't had one in 10 years.

This week has been an especially hungry week. And so with some outings and well some staying ins... I feasted.

If you live in Toronto and haven't been to Joy Bistro I am sorry you are missing out... I have never been disappointed with my meal, they never miss out it usually is PERFECTION. I like to rant and rave about how great it is... but it really is. On Sunday's they do a Prime Rib, and well I am a sucker for a great cut of beef. So I packed the whole family and feasted.

A few nights before I wanted to eat something grubby and sticky... nachos won me over. We headed out as a family again and went to the kids favorite place Boston Pizza. Now sometimes you just go to fast friendly dining because it's where your kids want to go. But the nachos are sooo darn good, covered in ground beef (this is the way to go) and a extra jar of sour cream and it's perfection.

But on some nights I make dinner too... and because I live the motto that my kids only eat what mommy and daddy eat, it appears I am raising a set of Foodies! So with a large salmon fillet pulled out of the fridge, I made Salmon with seared Caramel Apples and Pepper Squash. So simple and so easy.

Salmon w/ seared Caramel Apples and Pepper squash.

Salmon cut into 4 pieces.

2 apples (I used granny smith this time around)

honey

half a lemon or lemon juice

1 pepper squash

2 tbsp of brown sugar

1 tbsp of butter

salt/pepper

Olive Oil

Heat the oven to 350 degrees, cut and de-seed the middle of the pepper squash. Put the sugar and butter in the cored middle and place on baking sheet for 45-50 minutes. Cut the apples in horizontal slices, peeled and cored. Pour lemon juice on top not to brown, then cook in pan for 2 minutes on each side, drizzle honey (I drizzled a little but go nuts have fun cooking should be fun) and let them caramelize slightly.

Pour olive oil in pan and cook salmon to person specification, and then plate the salmon on top of the apple slices. Take squash out of the oven, burning sugar is extremely horrible if you get it on you so be careful. Cut the squash to preferred serving and FEAST!

I won't lie, it was awesome... my daughters cleared their plates. Do you have any food recos for this very hungry pregnant girl in search of good food?

To pierce or Not to pierce!

these are earrings I have created

I let my eldest get her ears pierced!

Yeah, while many of you might be reading this as what's the big deal, it actually was HUGE to me. I didn't get mine pierced til I was 7 years old.

When my first daughter was born, I was berated with questions about when I would be piercing my daughter's ears. Why I haven't done it yet? The first year went by and I began to become hassled on my choice not to have them pierced while she was young enough to do it.

I knew someone when I was younger in High School who never had her ears pierced and really never wanted them done. This always brought great pause to me... maybe we don't want our ears pierced. Why as a parent should I just assume they do? This actually caused a debate in our household, husband assumed girls need their ears pierced and I didn't oblige his request to do it for them (maybe if I wasn't terrified of needles my stance would have been weakened.) I did state a decision, that if the time came and I was "asked" for ear piercing on multiple occasions I would oblige.

So about 6 months ago, my eldest mentioned she wanted her ears pierced. I took it lightly. Then she asked again, she perused my earrings, asked to wear them over and over again. I sat with her and discussed having to go and get them pierced. I informed her of the slight ouch, I told her a gun would be put near her ear, not a bad gun I stressed, a ear piercing gun.

After it was decided this was something she wanted anyways, I went to the location and asked on what shift did they have 2 girls to pierce the ears. Because I have heard horror stories of one ear being pierced and not the other. I had a date, a daughter who was willing and all my emotional bases covered. We set out and did that on a Friday night and she got her ears pierced. She picked out her set, she sat on the stool like a big girl and she cried.

But at 14, 18, 25 or even 40... when she asks me why I got her ears pierced I will proudly say because we discussed it at length and I let you decide, honey!

What have you been reading lately?

I have a bit out of the loop lately, I will take the liberty to blame it on pregnancy disassociation--- when you really are in your own head space you don't care to really see what's going on with the rest of the world; at least that's how I feel.

But near the end of the week I decide to get back to one of my most favorite mediums and get back on to twitter and see what was going on. (Yes that meant my FOMO kicked in for a few minutes: FOMO, Fear of Missing Out) What a pleasure it was to finally see a blogger to take the liberty to whip slash a PR firm who tried to strong hand them. Now let's not get me wrong , I have friends in PR, I have great relations with PR firms who send me fun products or invite me to great events. But let's call the truth the truth The Bloggess got email assaulted and did the best thing you can ask me Blogged about it and then sent it out to her 164K twitter followers who grew an extra 2000 by late yesterday night by calling out the VP from the PR firm who referred to her as a 'Fucking Bitch.' If you want to read it, you can here.

And if you need to fill yourself with a bunch of positive as well... I am not sure I mentioned on here yet that I love reading the Daily Love which is created by positivity professional Mastin Kipp this week Mena Suvari wrote about how she changed who she was to succeed in her relationships... it's a great read, an honest read, you can find it here.

And because I am a bit of a Canadian fan, Danielle La Porte is a self-help guru, not sure if she refers to herself as one, but she definitely wants everyone to strive to their greatness and you can see it from her posts on White Hot Truth which will link you to a great read about being in a slump and rising above it.

The Internet is fun, the musings even better... but when you can feel a certain something about humanity after reading a few posts, well then the Internet is a win for me. What have you read lately online that made you smile?