101 in 1001 Update!

I have finally crossed off enough things that I think it warrants a list update! The completed items are in purple and striked through, the pink items are in progress. I think I am off to a pretty good start. These lists are so much fun, because I am a total list maker. Sometimes I will write something on my to-do list that I've already done, just so I am cross it off!! Tell me I am not alone in doing that?

Start blogging (Started in May 2012)

Take a photography class

Take a cake decorating class (Completed in April 2012 at Michael's)

Blog every day for 30 days

Go to NYC (Went for our 1st anniversary in May 2012)

Plant a vegetable garden (Planted a veggie garden with my mom in June 2012)

Sell 1 item a month from our Etsy shop

Lose 20 pounds (get to 160 lbs)

Maintain weight for 6 months

Refinish a piece of furniture

Reupholster an old piece of furniture

Go to Las Vegas

Take a knitting class

Knit a winter hat

Take one photo I am really proud of

Take a photograph of a rainbow

Say “yes” to something I wouldn’t normally

Host a dinner party for 8

Go a week without buying anything

Read 40 books (It's sad, but I have read 1 so far - The Help. I have edited this and picked a better number, 100 in 1001 days?? Yikes. Who can read 1 book every 10 days??)

Don’t say anything negative for one day

Complete a 365 day photo challenge

Try a sport I've never tried before (DH and I are playing flag football this summer 2012!)

Donate money to a charity

Kiss in the rain

Make spaghetti sauce from scratch

Bake and decorate a birthday cake for someone (Baked my husband's birthday cake in June 2012)

Try a new recipe once a month for a year

Find out my blood type

Go to the gym 5 days a week for a month

Take a cooking class

Send a hand written letter

Spend a weekend without the internet

Make bread without the bread maker

Train Leroy to come when called

Learn how to cook fish!

Finish the photo wall going to the basement

Go to a wine tasting

Make homemade ice cream

Watch Gone With the Wind (Loved it! July 2012)

Carve a pumpkin

Figure out what to do with my wedding dress

Send in the paperwork and get my PEng

Have a blog post published on a well known blog

Have my blog redesigned to have a more personal style (Thanks to Emily at oh hello, love! this has been completed, July 14, 2012)

Make a meal with all ingredients bought at the farmer's market

Throw a surprise party for someone

Go on a girl's weekend with my sister

Have a will written

Try being vegetarian for one week

Write 100 thank you notes

Meet an internet friend in person

Go on a picnic

Go camping with the dog (We are going camping about an hour away this weekend so I am crossing this off, August 2012)

Go to trivia night

Be professionally fitted for a bra

Send at least 3 letters to the editor of our local paper

Move my blog to self hosted

Give up Facebook for a week

Try 10 beers I have never tried before (Rickard's White, Molson Canadian 67 Sublime, Upper Canada Lager)

Go to an exercise class that makes me feel awkward

See 45 movies in the theatre

Go for a ride in a helicopter

Get a promotion

Eat at 10 new restaurants

Host Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner

Make a surprise visit home to see my family

Spend 1 day a week television free for 6 months (Started this in July 2012, we're going with Wednesdays!)

De-clutter our house

Go to a comedy show (went to Absolute Comedy with two of my coworkers! July 2012)

See The Nutcracker at the NAC

Do something nice for someone anonymously

Go to a spa

Go to a Green Bay Packers game

Give a 100% tip

Have a booth at a craft sale

Take a spontaneous road trip

Create a scavenger hunt

Decorate Christmas cookies

Finish bathroom and back room in basement

Finish the fence in the backyard (Last pieces went up in May 2012!)

Buy a mouse pad for my desk at work (Just did this! I got a mouse pad AND a keyboard wrist rest. July 2012)

Learn how to use all of the applications on my Mac

Grow and use 3 varieties of herbs (Grew basil, oregano, and parsley, used all 3 in my roasted red pepper soup! July 2012)

Organize all of the documents/photos on my computer

Finally load up my digital picture frame

Go to a drive-in movie theatre

Have someone guest post on my blog

Go on a date night once a month with my husband (Edited to add a timeframe - let's go with a year! Started this in July 2012)

Get 5,000 views of my blog (1800 of 5000)

See the Best Picture Oscar winner from the last 10 years.

Enter a photo contest

Complete a crossword puzzle

Host a poker night

Buy a bigger TV for our basement den

Plant a tree

Read a novel in french

Make homemade jam

Write a letter to myself to open in 10 years

Write a list of 101 things I have already achieved in life

Celebrate finishing this list!

Weekend Recap, Vol. 3...

Happy Monday friends! Not much to write about following this weekend. I was off on Friday, and spent a lot of time reading through many new blogs. I also cleaned the house (not exactly any blogging material there...). While I did all of those things, Leroy laid around:

On Saturday we got up early to play golf, and then we did a bit of shopping. We're going camping this coming weekend, so we bought ourselves a tent, and then practiced putting it up in the backyard. We also bought some paint for a little furniture project that I'll hopefully be sharing next week!

I know I've shown so many tomato photos, but look at the redness of the garden tomatoes. They are so much prettier than any tomatoes I have ever bought in the store. This weekend we went ultra classy and used them in our grilled cheese sandwiches.

On Sunday we got up really early. I made french toast and it was delicious! It made 5 slices, and consisted of 2 eggs, 2/3 cup of milk, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, and 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg. It really reminded me of egg nog! I ate it with a banana and table syrup. Weird fact about me: I hate real maple syrup. Yep, it's true. I'm told this makes me crazy...

Later, we took Leroy on a long walk along the river here. The weather was great and we had a great time! I didn't take any photos for some reason, I really need to get better with that! My husband headed to football. I missed it this week because of a recurrent back injury :(. We lost, I think it's because I wasn't there :P As per usual, we had supper at the in-laws and I ate too much!

That's about it. I told you it would be boring!!! How was your weekend?

Pumpkin Spice Muffins...

Today I took my last container of frozen pumpkin puree. At halloween I bought a huge pumpkin and cooked and pureed it, and froze it. I have been swimming in pumpkin ever since, and finally I have used it all up!

These might be my favourite muffins. They scream Autumn, which is a little weird in the middle of summer, but whatever! They were delicious.

Here's the recipe:

• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon ginger
• 1/8 teaspoon of all spice
• 1/8 teaspoon of nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup pumpkin puree (canned or fresh - fresh is obviously best!!!)
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup honey
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• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (F). Line or grease your muffin pan. Sift the flour, sugar, spices, baking powder, and baking soda into a large bowl.  Mix with a wooden spoon to combine. Make a little well in the centre of the dry ingredients. Add all of the wet ingredients into this well. Don't worry too much, it will definitely not stay in the well, it'll go everywhere. Add the raisins, and mix well. 
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• Then you're ready to go! Pour the batter into the muffin tins. Makes 12 muffins

.

• Voila! I hope you try this, and enjoy because they are sooooo good! My husband hates raisins and he still really likes these muffins. You can also add nuts, like walnuts if you want. I didn't have any on hand today or I would have!

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• Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Friday Blog Favourites...

I wanted to give a shout out to my favourite blogs I have read this week! I am new to the blog world, and I have been reading a lot of blogs lately. I can't believe I never really got into this before, even just as a reader. There is so much incredible talent out there, and there are so many great thoughts and ideas all over! They're everywhere!

Via

Now, without further ado, here are my top 5 favourite blogs this week!

1. The Daily Tay... Taylor is hilarious. Her writing voice is just awesome and funny. She's got that sarcastic kind of humour that I just LOVE. Her post this week about the dog beach really sealed the deal for me! She already has tons of followers, but go check her out, I'm sure she'd love more!!

2. Our Little Balham Life... I like Nicola's blog so much, I've added her button! She's super cute, and talks about her life in England with her boyfriend, and her cat. Check it out!

3. Living Beautifully DIY... I love me some DIY, and some lovely Canadians! Something as seemingly boring as fixing up the pool shed is made interesting somehow. Follow along as they transform their house, one DIY at a time!

4. The Strawberry Blonde Life... Jill is awesome (she is Mrs. Snow Cone on Weddingbee!!). I love her newlywed blog. Her daily outfit posts have inspired me to do something similar! Go on over and say hi, and check out her button on my sidebar :)

5. Love and Renovations... Go say hi to Amanda over at Love and Renovations, she is Mrs. Cardigan on Weddingbee! Her and her hubby are slowly renovating their home, and she's got lots of DIY projects going on. Also, I love her Friday Finds posts! I spend more time looking for deals now :)

So that does it! It was so so so hard to pick 5. I have found so many awesome blogs this week, I definitely have enough to keep doing this post for quite a few weeks, and possibly forever. Tune in next week for 5 more awesome blogs!!!

I have been spending my day off doing laundry and cleaning our house. I did sleep in though, so it hasn't been a totally awful day, lol. Tonight my hubby is taking me out on a date night, we're going out to dinner and heading to see The Dark Knight Rises. I'm pretty pumped! Other than that, our weekend should be pretty relaxing.

What about you? Big plans for the weekend? What blogs are you loving lately?

Buttons, buttons, buttons!

Happy Friday to all!! I am home today, one of the benefits of my job is the option to work a compressed work week. Basically I work and extra 30 mins a day, and have every third Friday off! This is especially awesome because I am paid based on a 37.5 hour work week, but in my last job worked a 40 hour work week. This means that when I started my new job I worked the same number of hours, but had a day off every 3 weeks! Awesome perk, if you ask me.

Anyway, you may have noticed I recently put up some lovely social media buttons above my lovely mug over there on the right sidebar. Please click on them and follow me, I promise I can be entertaining! Although, if you don't want endless photos of my ridicilous dog, I wouldn't suggest following me on Instagram...

Although come to mention it, I do talk a lot about Leroy on twitter too...

Sarah‏@EatBakeSewLove

Oh the joys of dog ownership! Waiting for the bus, reach into my pocket and what do I find? Poop bags of course! #lovemydog

But I swear, I say other funny and awesome things too!!!

Also, Emily has also designed a blog button for me!! I am definitely interested in a button swap, so if you'd like me to display your button here in exchange for you displaying mine over on your blog, contact me!

I'll be back later today with a possible weekly Friday post, my favorite new blogs of the week! Stay tuned!

More cupcakes...

I made these chocolate cupcakes for my coworker's wedding shower a couple of weeks ago. I made 30+ chocolate cupcakes, some with buttercream frosting, some with chocolate buttercream. You can see the cake and icing recipe here.

I decorated some with Smarties, and others with Reese's peanut butter cups. The red sprinkle ones are leftover red velvet cupcakes from Canada Day! I think they turned out great! You can't really see the peanut butter cup, the picture is too dark, and I put them on the ones with the chocolate icing. Just wanted to share :)

Also, I am off tomorrow, so today is what I like to call "Faux-Friday". Anyone else celebrating Faux-Friday today? SO excited to sleep in tomorrow!

Our wedding cake - 1 year later...

I have been meaning to blog about our year old wedding cake experience for a month or so, or really, since May 21st when we celebrated our anniversary! As I mentioned before, my mom baked our wedding cake. She has a small cake business, because she is ultra-talented. Not only does she do a great job decorating, but she also bakes a delicious cake. We decided to go with a small, 2 layer cake, the bottom layer was chocolate and the top layer was coconut. We also had many cupcakes, which were chocolate pound as well!

We always intended to save the top layer of our cake, in the typical wedding tradition. That's mostly why we went with coconut, it's a favourite of both of ours! Anyway, my mom wrapped up the cake in a layer of plastic wrap, then aluminum foil, and then a plastic bag, and placed in the freezer of our refrigerator.

So, almost 2 months a go we finally got to take it out and see how it held up! We were pretty excited, not only for the cake, but also to get our freezer space back since we don't have a deep freeze and like to buy meat on sale! Anyhow, I excitedly unwrapped the layers.

We brewed up some coffee, and set up out on our deck. It was a gorgeous day for a cake testing! The layer of fondant was peeled off before eating, to reveal a little layer of buttercream frosting. The final verdict: a little dry, but overall still pretty tasty!! I would say it kept pretty well for an entire year.

We loved taking part in this tradition! And since we didn't remember to feed cake to each other on our actual wedding day, we totes mah goats took this opportunity to create that memory. It was pretty cheesy but also hilarious. And yes, those are definitely bride and groom (Mr. and Mrs.) mugs that our friend gave us as a wedding gift!!!

There you have it! If you're married, did you save your cake too?