Help with our site redesign - vote on your favourite new layout!
Dear readers,
We appreciate your patience during this extended holiday break. Don’t we all deserve some nice holidays?! You’ll be excited to know that we are doing a blog re-design, and moving to a .com very soon. And we’ve also got a whole lot of new content coming due to some happy news in the new year… more info to come shortly!
In the meantime, why don’t you let me know what your favourite design for our new site would be?
We have 4 top selections, which you can visit at the following links:
1. Fabric Child
2. Lifestyle (all colours can be modified)
3. Cherry Truffle
4. Bueno
VOTE NOW FOR YOUR FAVOURITE!
Happy holidays and happy new year!
As you may have noticed, we’ve taken a bit of a holiday break, to come back strong in the new year! Happy holidays to you all and we hope that you are enjoying them with family and loved ones.
It’s been a busy time with lots of hosting for us, and we’re loving every minute.
Grocery Deals in Ottawa-Gatineau - December 16th
Time to start planning your holiday meals! And if you like cheese, well, you’re in luck. It seems that the cheese fairies have blessed you with 4$ cheese bars at pretty much corner. Stock up now and make sure you never pay full price for those things ;)
If you like pineapple, this is also a week for you. I buy it when it’s around 2$ for a large one, and right now that seems to be going on everywhere.
Keep these deals in mind when planning for your holiday meals :)
Walmart
Cheese 5 $
IGA
Cheese 3$/300g
Potatoes 2$ /10lb
Clementines 3$ /2.5 kg
Fondue beef 3$/350 g
Maxi
Blueberries 2 for 3$
Pineapple 1.99 $
Cantaloupe 1.99 $
Eggplant, zuchinni 99 cents/lb
Tomato juice 99 cents (1.3 L)
Beans 79 cents
Super C
Eggs 3 for 5$
Potatoes 2 for 3.50$/10lb
Sunmaid raisin bread 3 $
Salmon 5.99$/lb
Mangos, avocados 4 for 3$
Farm boy
Grape tomatoes 99 cents
Green onions 2 for 99 cents
Metro
Butter 2.99 $
Pickles 1.99 $
Food basics
Cheese 4$/500 g
Pistachios, almonds 2 for 5$ /1lb
Pickles 2 $
Mayo 2.99 $
Eggs (18s) 3.99 $
Tomato juice 99 cents (1.3 L)
Tomatoes (vine) 99 cents/lb
Pineapple, blueberries, baby watermelon 2 $
Clementines 3.97/2.3kg
Shoppers Drug Mart
Cheese 2.99$/300 g
No Frills
Cheese 3.77$/500g
Potatoes, carrots, onions 1.75$/10lb
Orange juice 1.47$/1,75L
Pickles 1.5 $
Pasta sauce 99 cents
Olives 5.99$/1.5 L
Pineapple 1.79 $
BRocolli 87 cents
Celeri 99 cents
Loblaws
Clementines 3.99 $
Chees 4.44 $
Salmon 5.99$/lb
Superstore
Cheese 3.97 $
La fruiterie
Avocados 2 for 99 cents
Tomatoes (vine) 99 cents/lb
Pineapple 1.99 $
Lettuce 99 cents
Dried cranberries 79 cents/100 g
A week for stocking up
Seems I haven’t posted up a shopping trip in some time! We haven’t been the greatest at taking pictures so we’ll try to remember ;)
Seems I had some room in the budget to stock up on things we needed :) I’ve had lemon juice on my list for well over a month, and was starting to run out of flour!
This reflects our needs very well :) Was happy to find that great juice at a discount.
Prices without sales:
Juice: 2x3.50$=7$
Raisins: 4.50$
Lemon juice: 2.50$
Flour: 5$
Coffee whitener: 3.29$
Kettle chips: 3.49$ (we had a free product coupon)
Blackberries: 3$ each=9$
Lime juice: 2$
Cantaloupe: 3$
Green onions: 1.50$
Lettuce: 1.50$
Pineapple: 5$
Chicken bacon: 3.29$
Cheese: 6$
Milk: 3$
Ciabatta: 2$
Total=62.07$
A savings of…about 27%! Not huge but still going strong :)
Doing nice things for other people - why not?
I came across a very uplifting blog post last month. It really struck a chord.
How I Celebrated My Birthday (aka 38 Random Acts of Robyn)
You should have a read through the whole post, and try not to get emotional. A woman and her family chose to do nice things for people. It’s that simple, really.
Some examples:
14. Paid for the woman’s coffee behind us in line at Starbucks.
22. Taped change to vending machines (I actually saw passersby stop and take pictures of the machines without taking the money).
32. Took plates of cookies to 2 neighbors I don’t really know and spent some time talking with them (no, I did not bake them myself but no one seemed to care).
I absolutely loved loved this idea, and have no idea why I’m not doing it right now. I love the idea of brightening someone’s day, no matter how simply. I’m going to try to make a list of ‘random acts of kindness’ that I can do in my life. I think my list might be a bit different, since many of hers related to money (and we don’t have that much to start giving away!). So my challenge will be to create a list of acts that can be done with little to no money.
I love notes and messages, and think that’s a great way to reach out to individuals. At University, some friends & I undertook our own version of ‘Operation Beautiful’. We bought mountains of post-it notes, wrote nice things on them like “You are awesome”, and posted them all over the campus, including bathroom stalls! It was lots of fun for us, made us feel good, and we assumed it made a couple of other people feel good too.
Have you ever done a Random Act of Kindness? Do you have ideas I should be adding to my list? I plan on following-up with updates on my list and my ‘action’ plan. Your input, dear readers, is always appreciated :)
Free awesome cookbook - 5 ingredients, 10 minutes
A friend shared a sweet free cookbook from the Stone Soup.
It’s pretty fantastic! Click the picture to download yours. What I like in particular, is that it actually contains healthy, fancy recipes. When we say 5 ingredients, we don’t mean “A can of mushroom soup, a package of cream cheese, salt, pepper, and macaroni” (is that 5?). Here, they’re talking wholesome yummy ingredients that are so delicious you don’t need too many of them.
Here’s a sample page from the book. Why haven’t I made this soup yet?!
