Departure

Boo today katieface leaves....

packing the car

hugs goodbye....

off to the plane..... byeeeee til next time :-) TFCO!!!

GO west young girls.....

Today the quest was to find a quilt shop.... out of town. My first choice was Cochrane, but I was having communication breakdown with my source, so second choice was Canmore. Only glitch about Canmore was that it was raining.... hard. Not the funnest day to walk around Canmore, and not great for seeing the mountains thru the clouds, so we were debating. But first things first.... I brought Katie to the store so she could make a card for Randy.


Katie found a few scrapbook pages starring herself on the wall!

Holly and I stole some of Gloria's soup, it smelt heavenly, and tasted just as good!

Holly teaching the card class.

When we left the store I still hadn't heard from Carolyn with the address of the quilt shop. I figured we would just drive to Cochrane and find a quilt shop. So off we went. When we arrived I called Carolyn and said "we're here" so she quickly ran down to meet us. We met at Addy's quilts, then walked down the street towards the tea place. We popped into any stores that looked interesting along the way and after a wonderful cup of tea and apple pie, we ended up at a 2nd hand store. I was telling Carolyn that whenever I'm in these stores I always look for Scrabble for extra letter tiles. While I was looking thru the games Katie found a blanket that she had to show me.... it was a blend of Jon Deere and Coke! It was gorgeous and New! So I had to get it, then on the coffee table beside the blanket, was a brand new scrabble game!!! We are on a roll with finding brand new treasure where everything should be used!
We had so much fun in Cochrane that there was no time for Canmore, so we headed home for Vino and Runescape.

To the mall

We actually did the leave the house and venture to the mall today. We had fun shopping at Cross Iron Mills, and Katie brought home a variety of cupcakes. Almost too pretty to eat!

Titanic Calgary

Today was a big adventure! We went to the Titanic exhibition at the Science center. It was pretty kewl. I still can't over the fact that these are real artifacts from teh ship. It was a great exhibit in comparison to Vegas, but.... in Vegas they left you with a grand finale feeling when you see the side of the ship's "big Piece" and here, the biggest piece was at the beginning. So the end kinda.... just ended. But not to take away from anything it was still awesome.



perfume bottles that STILL emit the scent of the perfume!

this was kewl, the bench frame still intact, the wood disintigrated.

where were these the night of the iceberg??

still gives me goosebumps. So in the end, Maddie and I survived, Dean and Katieface did not. That's my third time surviving! And this time I was 3rd class I thot for sure I was a goner!

Then after Titanic we went home to eat, and then onto another ship. This one the Queen Anne's revenge, we went to see Pirates of the Carribean! And yes OF COURSE it was awesome! Good to see Jack back!

Runescape for 5

I always have to make my Pasta when Katie comes, and this time she helped me with the meatballs, wait a minute??? that means she's learning my sauce a little bit more every trip. Hmph this just will not do lol! Anyway, we invited Dan and Ashley tonight so all my Rune Friends could meet.



in Runeland trying to get me a key....

it's not the best picture but this is our record, 5 people playing Runescape, Maddie missed it :-( she was still at Odefest, next year there will be 6!

Katieface lands

Spring is here when Katieface arrives and Katiepalooza begins! I arrived at the airport and patiently waited for the plane to land! And then YAY I saw Katie!! Usually we whisk her off to an adventure right away, but Dean was working, and Maddie was at Odefest, so I went alone, and brought her home. Adventure on hold....

yay katiepalooza

quick stop to the local slushee store, and then a quick stop to the LC, ( liquor store for you non-Manitobans ) to buy some rum .... for our slurpees! ahhh let the Fun ....Begin!

The unbelievable treasures

The locker that keeps on giving. So we have been able to go thru all the boxes, and find all the treasures. We're not sure what some items are worth, like an odd old book, that seems so out of place amongst the other brand new ones. Another set of childrens books, Dickens.
never again will I have to borrow locks!

hotel goodies for the guest room

my favorite piece of MANY jewels

brand new kitchen items.....

the matching blender to my food processor, and of all the colors it could be..... it was red, like mine! Even the bins that everything was stored in were brand new! I could go on and on about the treasures in this locker. Did I mention the suitcases? and the staionary? binders, staplers, tape, I never have to go to Staples again! It was a blast, and there are still things to learn about. For now, we will tuck it away and clear the kitchen for our guest to arrive in a couple of days.

Locker update

It took a few hours to unload the locker, the last thing out were these shelving units. Then to sort and sell the rest. Dean found all the toilet paper rolls and made a mountain out of them..... final count? 156!



I think it took 3 days and 2 book stores to sell all the books that would sell. There were a few cookbooks we kept, a few choice books we gave away, some actiong books Maddie took to the drama club, and the rest went to a book auction as donation. Dean now has officially made his money back, between the books and the rolled coins. NOT to mention, the jewellry I got to keep, all the kitchen gear, my lovely new red blender that matches my other red mixer :-) various other items, and let's not forget the mountain of toilet paper! Not only did they buy kewl tuff... they bought it in 2's! Well done, it was a success, and allot of fun. Now we just have to see what the other odds and ends bring in, and find a new locker??

Storage Wars

Recently Maddie started watching a show called Storage Wars and she got us addicted to the show. Then Dean googled to see if there was such a thing here, and lo and behold... there was. On May 14. So.... we went, with the idea to check out what it was all about and just be part of it. We did bring some cash, just in case, but we NEVER expected to get a locker.... well.... we did. Dean won the bid!



When we walked up and saw about 70 other people.... we laughed..... ya, we were NOT getting a locker with this crowd......

our lucky number. The first locker that went up for a bid, was a pretty big locker, there was lots of furniture in it, and we didn't know how we would ever get the stuff home if we won. We didn't bid anyway. Then the second locker opened it's door, and it was all stuff in bins, about 3 bins high. A few people grumbled and said ugh garbage. Along the edge there was stuff from hotels, like the coffee in packages and some sugar? it was hard to see thru the bags. there was some garbage, Tim cups and such. We could see a bunch of suitcases that looked full, and then of course all the bins stacked neatly, but hid all their contens. So Dean bid.... and kept bidding, and then suddenly the auctioneer said, sold to ... and he pointed to Dean!! Are you kidding me... we got a locker!???? Being the newbs that we are we weren't sure what to do. Dean went to pay, and these guys said to me and Maddie, you can go in, it's your locker.. we said really? and opened the door to peak.. then we opened it up all the way and started looking opening some bins. We found books..... brand new, in the chapters bags, reciept sticking out of the bag. More books, and more books... the guys kinda stood around on the outside, and said they would guard us. One asked if we owned a store, we laughed and said, No we started watching Storage Wars. I asked if they had a store, and they laughed and said no same thing, TV. Then Dean came back and said "OMG, we didn't win the locker, we have to get out..." we all looked at each other stunned, and sheepishly closed the door, quickly walking away, hoping nobody saw us..." we were almost at the car, when we realized the guy paying for the locker in front of us was actually paying for another locker. So WE did win the locker!! lol NEWBS! so back we went to shuffle thru our treasure. We wondered what had happened to the owners to not come back and get their stuff out of the locker? We found all kinds of travel things like they had travelled the world, we found holiday t-shirts with price tags still on them, jewellery wrapped up in tissue in the bag from the exotic store it was purchased in, and travel books from .... you name it, everywhere! The suitcases had brand new fluffy towels, and the book bins were paked with rolls of toilet paper, and new socks!

from Mexico, a cute frame, all wrapped up

almost empty, just a few bins left. We did have a load of garbage from the locker, 100's of magazines, they were a couple of years old, so we didn't even look, just got rid of them.

more brand new books.....

once home Maddie piled all the books up on the table, there ended up being about 300 of them. Of that number, maybe 5 were used, and there were 2 bins of REALLY old books that we'll have to investigate.

then we discovered the kitchen stuff, brand new items in boxes...... and LOTS of them!!

the other kewl thing was little bags of money everywhere, tucked into corners, between things, all kinds of little bags. At first there were bags of pennies, and nickels, but we kept piling them up. When we added everything up there was 170 bucks! That almost paid back for the locker in cold hard cash, without lifting a finger.

I so wanted to develope these to see who owned the locker, but then we found a whole bag of pictures from one of their trips! Mystery solved, but where are they?? lost on a holiday? witness protection?? we all had many stories thru the day!

my new socks that were used as stuffing :-)

Majority Government And Some Prime Rib

Selena has Halloween and I have Election Day. As you might guess, I was rather pleased with the results. I love Election Day but having 4 of them in the last 7 years was even getting a bit boring. Well, what's that saying "4th time's a charm"? It was great to vote in an election that changed the electoral landscape so massively.

I was actually trying to find the school where the PM was going to vote but could not find him in time. I had my sign and got ready for the election results to roll in.

I have a new creation for the BBQ. It will forever be known as the Majority Government Prime Rib. It took about 2 hours. We had to find something to do until the polls closed! What a great meal to go with a great election result. I will post this very simple prime rib recipe on our cookbook blog soon.

Every time we have an election, I think Selena might go to the polls and vote. And when she does this movie will happen:

Next election: October 19th,2015. I can't wait!

CanaAmerican Pickers.

Lately, the three of us have gotten hooked on a few shows like Canadian Pickers, American Pickers and Storage Wars. These shows are sooooo interesting because they are all about finding treasures and artifacts from the past. So in Eureka, we went "picking" to a few antique shops in Montana. We found a few cool things.

We went to one small store that has some old collectibles and some paint supplies. Just before we were about to leave I spotted this lone coke bottle on the shelf. I picked it up and it was really heavy. I knew it had to be old. I picked it for $9.00. On the internet I found out that this was known as a "D. Patent" bottle produced between 1938 and 1951. Cool! It is in mint condition and it had Kalispell, MT on the bottom of the bottle.

D. Patent Coke Bottle Picked - $9.00

Valued on the internet at - $9.86

Profit $0.86

Our first pick and we made 86 cents! We didn't over pay!

On a roll, we moved on. We found some Coors beer steins at another store. As some of you may know, I am a friend of the Coors beer so I picked this stein for $10.00. It's huge and can fit about 3 beers in it. It is in very good condition so we picked it. Apparently, it is from 1988 and manufactured in Brazil.

Coors commerative Beer stein Picked - $10.00

Some guy is selling one on ebay for - $30.00

Profit - $20.00

So we made a potential profit of $20.86 on our first day picking. Fun!

Here is the loot: