Shift Mama

School Day Morning: Shift Mama's Kryptonite

I love the weekends.  I get to sleep in a little, the kid turns on my coffee and lets the dog out and then comes in at 7:30 to tell me to get out of bed.  Then I read the paper, check twitter, facebook, and my email.  It's a nice relaxed way to start the morning.  Week day mornings.....not so much. 

Here is how the morning goes:

5:20 get up.  Turn on coffee, let dog out, let dog back in.  Treadmill for 20 minutes

5:45 get cup coffee and shower.  Get dressed, read paper, drink more coffee.

6:10: Kid gets up and gets dressed.  Then eats breakfast while watching iCarly or whatever the Netflix favorite of the month is.  I grit my teeth while Carly and her friends shriek endlessly.  Why is there so much shrieking in that show????  I make two lunches during the ear piercing noise.

6:50 All hell breaks loose,  the Kid has ignored my directions to get ready, brush her teeth and put socks on for 10 minutes.   We are no going to be late and I have now forgotten to eat breakfast.  This is not the optimal way to start the day.

As a result I am always on the look out for quick, make a head breakfast options.  Last week I posted about breakfast muffins, today Breakfast In A Jar, also known as Summer Porridge, Refridgerator Oatmeal, and who knows what else.  I like Breakfast In A Jar.  

I first saw this recipe on Pintrest a while back and pinned it as one to try, I've made it a few times and enjoy it, since the first time I saw it I have noticed it has been popping up quite continiusly on Pintrest so I guess lots of people like it, or at least they like the look of it.

Here's what you need: old fashioned oat (rolled oats), greek yogurt, milk,  jam, honey (optional), flax seed (optional), fresh or frozen fruit, and a regular sized jam jar.

Mix about a tablespoon of the jam and about a teaspoon of honey into 1/4 cup of yogurt.  This step can be skipped if you want, but I recommend it, otherwise you may end up with a big chunk of jam on your spoon when you are eating it (happened to me the first time I tried this)

Put 1/4 cup of oats, 1tsp of ground flax, a 1/3 cup of milk and your yogurt  in the jar.

Look how pretty that is! Don't get too attached - next step is to put the lid on and shake it all up.  Once it is mixed, take the lid off and top with chopped fruit.  No measurement on the fruit, just fill it to the top.

Final step - put lid back on and put it in the fridge.  The oats will soften over night.  Grab it and go on the way out the door and you are set for the day!  One more small victory for the Shift Mama!

 

 

 

Pizza Cups

I've noticed recently that those crescent rolls and dinner rolls in a pressured tubes have been making a comeback in the blog world recently - only like all things these days they have been upcycled - turned into something better than the were before.  I remember as a kid my mom would pick up crescent rolls for "special occasions" (mainly to keep the kids busy and feeling like we had a purpose - thanks mom!), they were a nice touch but this new wave of cooking is making them even better!

Case in point - these Breakfast Muffins fromYummy Mummy Club blogger Maija Moments.  She's turned dinner rolls into a bacon and egg breakfast you can hold in your hand and eat on the the go.  I made them today and have stashed some in the freezer to see if they can help cure the school day morning rush.  The recipe is easy to follow and turned out well, although I will use a quarter of a cheese slice in each one next time I make them since I ended up with a few muffins where the cheese escaped, making a pretty messy clean up job. I'm also thinking this recipe would be great for people with fancy trailers (like my mom) that have an oven and want to do something a little different for breakfast.

But camping food ideas isn't what this is about, this post is about adding my own pressurized tube recipe to the mix. 

This one is not really a breakfast recipe, although I do enjoy left over pizza for breakfast so they COULD be breakfast for someone out there.  We typically make them for dinner though. Here is what you need:

1 can/tube of crescent roll (I've been using the Western Family brand one, but if you want to be high class maybe pick up a tune of the Pillsbury ones)

Grated Mozza cheese (about 1/2 cup)

Pizza Sauce

any other pizza toppings you choose, diced so they fit in the pan.

1 Mini Muffin Tin

Step one: Open the can/tube of crescent roll and unroll them, work with one triangle at a time and cut in half.  Place in the muffin tin.

Step Two: Add Pizza sauce

Step Three:  Add Pizza toppings and top with cheese.  We typically make them just with cheese, but since The Kid made a huge leap forward two weeks ago and ate mushrooms and decided she liked them we may start adding those in.  I've also diced up peperoni and added that as well, just be sure to make the pieces really small, otherwise you end up with more of a pigs in a blanket type of bite and less of a pizza one.

Step Four - Bake in an oven preheated to 350degrees C for 10-12 minutes.  Let them cool slightly before serving. 

Step Five: Enjoy! (and maybe add a salad or something - it's all about balance)

 

(side note: The Kid came in as I was was posting this and was horrified that I was sharing my recipe with the internet - this must mean that they are good.   She would also like me to rename them: Little Pizzas In A Bowl.)

Mother's Day With Mother Nature

This past Mother's Day Isabelle and I took part in our city's spring clean up.  Check out my blog post all about it on the City of St. Albert Visitor Centre Web page.

I found a few really cool things while we are at the clean up event - a small shop in St. Albert that I have been meaning to get to had a display there - Seriously Green. They had reusable lunch bags on display so I stopped today and picked up two different types to test drive:

Lunchskins: these ones have a velcro enclosure and are dishwasher safe. 

 

The Sling Sisters reusable snack bag: these ones have a zipper enclosure and are washing machine safe.  I like the design options on these more than the LunchSkins but I prefer the idea of being able to throw the bags in the dishwasher so we'll see which wins out in the end.

The plan is to test the bags over the summer and see which ones hold up.  I'll let you know how it goes!

 

 

Alberta Girl Guides - 100 years - lets make a difference

It's May already and for this Shift Mama and many more that I know that means kids activities are winding up  for the year.  There is a brief couple of weeks before school lets out and summer activities, camps, playdates and holidays begin, a couple of weeks where I find myself saying - ok, now what?  What do I do now with all this free time????

I think, that's what, and plan and get ideas that I need to share with someone, anyone, so that means I share with you.

 

I'm not sure what I was doing today that made me think of the 100 years of Alberta Girl Guides that is coming up (I was supposed to be at a Girl Guide council meeting so maybe I was just tuning into that wave length).  Anyway I started to think about how Girl Guides is not as visible anymore.   When was the last time you were out somewhere and saw a group of girls doing something in the community to make a difference?  I'm thinking probably not recently.  Not that we aren't doing it, because we are - Girls are raising money for Girl Guides in other countries, doing park and highway clean ups, planning their own camps, touring the world, visiting Senior Centres and hospitals, and countless other things.  I think that there are just too few Units doing it frequently. 

So I am going to challenge all Guiders in Alberta to think over this summer.  How can we get out there, what can we do to show the communities that we are still here.  We're still strong and we're still growing leaders in community.

Ok, you probably say - Shift Mama - what are you going to do?  Also, you're probably going to point out that you are extremely busy already.  I get that - I'm busy too.  I work full time, have a kid, a dog, a house and husband that works out of town, plus I'd like to have some kind of non-Guiding personal life (sorry Guiding I love you but there is a limit).  Here's what I suggest.  Lets take advantage of projects and ideas that are already out there.  Take a look at your local or neighbourhood paper - who isn't looking for extra hands to help out.  No, we can't raise money for other groups but YES we can get a group of girls together in their snazzy new Uniform shirts and help out.  I'm going to go out on a limb and say that every small town has a foot race of some kind - Terry Fox, Run for the Cure, MS walk, Walk for Diabetes, just to name a few.  They all need people to hand out water.   Almost every community run event could use some extra hands, most places run a clean up the town/city/village/hamlet event - gather your girls and go do that.  Talk to the people in your network and see what they are doing and if they know any events that could help. 

(as a disclaimer so I don't get slammed by angry upper management - please check with your District Commisioner to be sure that what you are doing is approved.  As we all know there are a lot of rules - ALOT- and you don't want to be on the wrong side of the rule checkers -trust me on that one)

Head out and have fun.  Get noticed.  Promote it.  Tweet, Facebook, contact your local media (just make sure you have image release forms).  We've been in Alberta for 100 Years!!!  Lets make some noise and bring some awareness back to how awesome Girl Guiding is!!  Even the Queen was a Girl Guide (imagine planning a camp where the queen was in attendence....holy stress-arama)

Also - lets bring back the awesome hats. 

 

And all you other Provinces....I'm sure you have something to celebrate too so join me in getting the girls out to make a difference this year!

 

 

 

 

Trying an app on the ipad

I have finally managed to get the Typepad app to log me in so even though it's way past the time I should be sleeping I thought I should try it out!

My last post on the iPad I could get links to work so I guess I should try that....
I was looking through my past posts and realized my last "list" was a list of things to do through the spring and I am pretty much half way through it! Coming up this weekend is the Mothers Day clean up the sturgeon event in St Albert as well as the rose sale at the botanical garden.
If you want to join me on Mothers Day here us the link (hopefully) to the info:
http://www.stalbert.ca/cleanup

Also just realized I don't think I can control where pictures go but I will try that out too.
It's fun to experiment :)
I'm attaching a picture I took from my canoe last summer. Can't wait to get back out this year.

Visit St. Albert!

A while ago I think I mentioned that someone had asked me to contribute some blogs to their website - well that someone was the St.Albert Visitor Centre and my first blog has been posted!

You can check it out here -

Visit St. Albert

Through the summer The Kid and I (and occasionally the husband when he is home) will be venturing out into St. Albert, enjoying what the city has to offer and telling people about it! Kind of a Shift Mama Staycation Blog (although I really hate the word Staycation).    My list of things to see and do grows every day, it's going to be tough to do it all and write about it too! But I'm going to try!

Pinterest pass/fail

I finally got onto Pinterest.  If you are not familiar with this website, it's kind of a virtual bulletin board or idea binder.  You create an account and then "pin" pictures with links to websites for future reference.  You can create your own boards and pin whatever moves you.  I've heard a lot of about it in the past year and eventually after my friend got hooked I decided to check it out.

It is a fun way to sort and keep things you want to do.  It seems most pins I see are the do it yourself/craft ones or food ones.  I've pinned a few things and have been re-pinned.  It was a weird rush of "wow someone else things what I think is cool" and "wow - who is this person?" 

I've been collecting ideas for a month or so now and have decided to try out two of them.  I have a Pass and a not-quite Fail project to report on. 

Pass:

The first is a pretty simple idea - next time you buy green onions and only need the green tops, put the bulbs in a glass of water and they will regenerate the green tips.  I had green onions, so I decided to give it a try.  So far I would say it is a success.  Simple, easy, a passing grade for sure.  This pin I think was someone's actual photo so I don't know if the link will work.  Attaching it anyway.

ever growing green onions

Not-quite fail

I found a pin for a neat bird feeder.  Seemed simple from the picture and the instructions.  Seemed is the important word here. 

Sprial Bird Feeder

So I gathered all the supplies.  We had 16 guage wire though, so that could have been part of the problem I had.  Only thing I would add next time is work gloves.  Wire is sharp.

Next step was to cut a lenth of wire and wrap it around the rolling pin

Then I was hold one end of the wire with the pliers and hold the middle with my other hand and twist the top making smaller loops at the top, larger in the middle.  Switch and do the same with the other side.  Yeah, whaaaat????

Ok, that did not work.  Could have been the higher gauge wire.  Who knows.  I used my hands and wrapped the wire around my hand and finders to create the loops.  It sort of worked.So I stuffed it with oranges and hung it outside.  No birds have been attracted by the feeder.

I think I will make another one and fill it with nesting materials.  That might be kind of cool.  I'm also considering making another one and adding some beads and other shiny fun stuff.  I think this could be a fun garden decoration.

 

Into the Arctic

(I'm posting this using the iPad so I don't have the same editing capabilities as usual - sorry, I'll try and work that out for future ipad posts)

Last night Isabelle and I had the opportunity to attend an advance screening of the new IMAX film at the science centre: Into The Arctic. This film is a cool look at the lives of Polar Bears, Walrus, Seals, and birds in the arctic and how they have been affected by the rapidly melting sea ice. The film ran about 45 minutes and had stunning footage of a polar bear mom and her two cubs, as well as some wild underwater footage of bears and walrus. The guy that shot the underwater footage must have nerves of steel, he was pretty much face to face with an enormous bear and also got head butted by a walrus mom (note to self stay away from walrus).

Here is the link to the info page on the Edmonton Telus World of Science. http://www.edmontonscience.com/films/arctic-imax

It was interesting timing, our visit to see this film about climate change and it's effect on the wildlife. Yesterday news broke about the leader of one of the provincial parties Stating she doesn't believe climate change is real. It's beyond me how anyone out there can still deny that climate change is happening. certainly the bears realize something has changed, why doesnt a well educated woman also realize this?

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/health/Wildrose+Smith+convinced+climate+change+real/6467880/story.html

Of course this is the same party that has a candidate who is openly homophobic and another one who feels he has an edge because he's white.

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/opinion/Homophobic+rant+hurtful/6470048/story.html http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/17/ron-leech-wildrose/

If the rest of the country hasn't already branded us all as rednecks can you imagine what will happen if the Wildrose Party wins this election? Election Day is April 23rd, in the meantime head to the science centre and watch Into the Arctic.

Shift Mama Goes Skiing!

This past weekend was Easter and since Yves wasn't going to be home, I invited the kid and I to stay with family over the weekend.  We had a blast (of course) and got to go skiing.  I have to say I love heading to the mountains.  I grew up in the mountains, Yves and I met working on the Mountain (Panorama Mountain Village) and lived a few years with amazing views of the mountains.  Work brought us to Central Alberta which is about 3 hours to the closest mountains so needless to say we haven't been skiing much in the past three years.

We do try to head to Fernie at least once a year and each time we put Isabelle in lessons.  She has now had four lessons, this past weekend she ended up with a two hour private lesson (she was booked into a group but no other kids booked for the same lesson - bonus!!).  I got to ski with my dad and uncle for the morning, probably was one of the better ski mornings I have had in a long time - the sun was out, the snow was amazing, and the pace was just right.  Capping of the morning was catching a glimpse of Isabelle and her instructor on a main run - not the bunny hill!  We picked her up at noon, had lunch at the Lizard Creek Lodge (or Creepy Lizard as Isabelle likes to say) and then headed back out onto the hill. Skipping the Poma lift and heading right up on the triple chair!

here's Isabelle with my dad and uncle, just below the Bear's Den - for those of you that grew up in Fernie but haven't been back in a while, that is just below where the Bear T-Bar used to load.

She had sucha great time we headed back the next day for a half day, and she has spent quite a lot of time telling me how much she likes skiing.  I guess now I need to start investigating which Edmonton Area hill to buy a pass at, and also figure out where to get good used downhill skis and boots - I'm open to suggestions Edmonton and St Albert people!

Happy kid at the end of day one! Looked pretty much the same on day two. After skiing for the afternoon and hanging out with her cousin.

But now we're home, and it seems like spring is finally here - I've got tulips and iris popping up so I'm really hoping that the snow will stay away now until November!

For the nnext few months watch out for my posts on the City of St Albert Tourism webpage - I'll be contributing as a tourist in my own town!  I'm pretty excited about it and can't wait to start.  This weekend Isabelle and I will be around town, checking out what's new and fun in St Albert.  I'll post a link to my St Albert Blog here.  I'm not sure how much this will affect the Shift Mama blog over the summer, but I would expect to still write here as well - lots going on in my world out side of St. Albert so there should be no shortage of things to share with you!

One final ski pic though - I just loved the name of these skis!

 

 

Off Shift Weekend

This weekend is both spring break for the kid and turn around for the husband, so it's kind of like a vacation for me! I am struck by the amount of free time I have when the kid has no activities during the week though - so much time to sit and do nothing! Really, I should have been cleaning, putting away laundry and/or dishes, cooking fabulous meals and catching up things I have left un-done over the past three months but......I didn't.  And I am ok with that.

It has been an interesting week though, most of the snow is gone so the neighbourhood is full of kids on bikes.  When I come home from work I am met by a minature biker gang all decked out in bright colours and sporting all kinds of cool coloured bikes with handle bar streamers and clicky things attached to the spokes.  It's amazing what bikes and warm weather do for neighbourbood togetherness.  Kids from the ages of 4 to 10 are all hanging out together, zipping up and down the sidewalk. I love it.

This week at work I particpated in a biometrics test as part of our wellness program.  This test measured cholesterol, glucose, blood pressure, body fat %, weight, and BMI.  I am considering posting all my scores but need to think a bit about that still.  Blood pressure and glucose were fine.  Thes rest, not so much.  It's a good eye opener and kick in the pants.  I need to make some changes and I need to do it ASAP.   Along the same line as making changes, I was asked by some coworkers to join them in the corporate challenge mountain bike race.  I did it last year so I am game BUT they kind of indicated that they think I should do the technical part.  That is three laps of an up and down single track skill test and cardio ass kicker.  I'm kind of worried about my cardio ability.  They seemed ok with my "team not last" motto but I think secretly they would like to do better than that (secretly so would I).

Finally, topping the interesting scale, an organization has asked me to blog for them!  I'm keeping the details under wraps for a bit - until it is finalized - but I'm pretty excited!  Stay turned for more details, coming this week I think. 

That's all for now, off to do more nothing!