My 40th birthday

I'm way overdo for this post, my birthday was on April 19th when I turned 40! It all started the weekend before my birthday. My hubby prepared a not so secret birthday party at the Heart in Crown close to our place. He invited friends and family, and it was a really fun night. The fun started the night before that though, I picked up my niece at school and she did a manicure for me, then the Saturday morning we went downtown and she was working at one of the booths (Arbonne) at the National Woman's show, and what was really great is she was able to get me and 4 friends free tickets to go. She had to show up earlier so I met up with two friends for breakfast, we then went to line up and ran into my friend and her daughter in line. We didn't stay with them long, it was so crowded in there that it was hard to all stick together. We did check out the whole thing and got to try some wine, try a few foods, and bought a few things. Then once my niece was done we went out for a late lunch and then my niece and I came back home to take a nap and then get ready for the party. We were fashionably late. My niece did my makeup and we headed to the party. Had supper there, lots of drinks and had a really great time. My brother and his family put together a really great box of things to help me into my 40's

It was amazing, laughed a lot!  I got a lot of great gifts, some Pioneer woman bowls from my friend, her daughter got me the smaller bowls and a cookbook holder. My in-laws got me a gift card to Chapters, which I of course already spent, I got 2 cookbooks from Clean eating (it's a magazine but they came out with two books), and a book called Into the Forest, I saw the movie a few weeks before and it was really good so I really want to read the book. My mother in law and aunts and uncles all chipped in and gave me cash which was perfect for the gift my hubby gave me, which was train tickets and hotel for us to go to Québec City.

So the following weekend started early, we both took the Thursday and Friday off (April 19-20) to head to Québec. The train ride was awesome, so comfortable in business class, and they fed us a late breakfast

It was really good!  Then we got to have a late lunch

Again very delicious, and that is red wine with my lunch. I had a glass before that to. When we got to Québec City, we walked over to our hotel, it was just a few blocks away. We settled in a bit and then since we sat for so long we decided to walk around to see what was close by, which was a lot. Here's a rink we saw

We also went into a bookstore that I saw. I really do love books and when I see a really nice looking bookstore I love to check it out

It was called Librairie Pantoute, it was beautiful in there! The picture doesn't really show how amazing it was. We then found a place to eat and have a few drinks.

Pub St-Patrick was a nice little bar to sit, chat, watch the hockey game and the food was so good!! We both had the same thing but mine was salmon only and hubby got a mix of salmon and beef, it's a paté,  with toasted bread, salad and some fries. He got a beer and I got a sangria.

Day 2 in Québec was a lot of fun, we only went to McDonald's for breakfast, then walked around. It was raining a bit but nothing to bad. We stayed close by to check out the Plains of Abraham

It was pretty cool to check out, beautiful views around as well

The boardwalk was cool to walk along, we saw boat, and there were a few other people walking as well. We then stopped in for some lunch

It was a very good pizza! We hung out there for a while, checked out a few stores and then went to the hotel to take a nap and then get ready for our supper. We did a reservation before going to the pub the night before, and we went to an Italian restaurant. It was our fancy night out to celebrate my birthday. I wore a dress, and he had dress pants and a nice shirt and it was really nice and the food was delicious! I know I took a picture of our food but for some reason my phone lost those photos so I'll just tell you what we had. I had the lasagna cause it's my absolute favorite food, and he had a spaghetti. We also first started with the bruchetta for an appetizer, it was so good! Here is the dessert that we shared

It was really good! We shared a bottle a wine with our supper. We then went to a pub to have a few drinks, chat and watch the hockey game.

3rd day of course started with some breakfast. We went to a really small restaurant. There weren't many places to sit and it was crowded but the food was really good. It's a buckwheat crepe with bananas and chocolate!

The above place is called Morrin, it started off as the very first prison, then it turned into a school, then they built the very first English library. I'm in love with that library, it's so beautiful!!

They even had a book that you can sign, and of course I did

We then got a tour of the prison

The above cell me and a few girls that were also there for the tour went in and she closed both doors, so the bars, and that redish door. It was really dark in there, there was just to say a bit of light going in, but not much. The rooms aren't very big either, but that was for the really bad prisoners when they would put them in confinement. I know I would go crazy being locked up in there for a long time. We also got to see a class room they had in there

It was a very interesting tour and found out so much information. Something to she shared with us is the library that they have, has 25,000 books. The ones on the second floor are very, very old, so if you want to look at them, you have to ask, and then you are supervised and have to wear gloves and everything. You can bring it home, it stays in the library. It was an amazing tour!

Not far from Morin I saw another library I wanted to see, this one was a lot more modern, but it was still really nice, especially the huge windows

It was so bright and beautiful in there. They had a round table in the center also where people can sit and connect their laptops and work. We also went to check out the market, so many little stores there.

There was one that was Christmas stuff only, I made sure to take lots of pictures to show my friend, I know she would love to buy the whole store. She would also love the kitchen store I saw, but my favorite part in that store was this

I wanted to buy it all! I didn't buy any but I was so tempted to though! We wanted to head back towards our hotel so we can eat supper and rather then walk all those hills we took the tran

Never been on one, and it was pretty cool. Scary a bit cause I don't like heights to much but it was a cool experience. For supper we went to a pub and shared their poutine and nachos

For sure something different as a poutine but it was really good. It's baked small potatoes, some ground beef, an onion ring on top and some gravy and cheese curds. The nacho was really good as well.

Our last day there, we just took our time getting ready. I stepped out to go back to the first library I found to buy something, and for breakfast we just picked up a drink and muffin from Tim Horton's and we checked out and walked over to the train station. We didn't have to long to wait and they fed us again

It was delicious! They were more generous this time around with the wine, and I was starting to feel quite good so I drank some water, and the food helped as well. It was an amazing trip! We would love to go again but in the summer when there's more things open, especially the patios. Best birthday present!!

Since then we have been keeping busy with work, volleyball, and a huge thank you to my friend and her friends, I got to go to the Bon Jovi concert for free. It was amazing!! I've been making simpler meals and snacks so still in the kitchen, but just not as much as I use to. Summer is coming though and I'm looking forward to going to the market to get fresh fruits and vegetables. Here's a lunch I made the other week

Still really loving the bento box. So my lunch was potato salad with some bacon, carrots and celery with humus, some pineapple, and a brownie cupcake I got from the woman's show, it's made with healthy ingredients, including black beans, and the made good is my new favorite snack, I got to try it at the woman's show and ended up buying one of each kind, they are so tasty! Today I prepared a few things in the kitchen, I chopped up a jicama, it's been a while since I have had one so I cut them up into bite size pieces, and I'm thinking maybe guacamole on top or a salsa, and I pre-chopped some red peppers and last night I cooked up some sausages on the BBQ and I cooked extra, some turkey sausage to also pack up for my lunch this week. I'm thinking to cook up some quinoa to have with the sausage.

Well it's almost supper time now, so I should go do that, which I'm making pasta. I'm using brown rice pasta with a vodka sauce and ground spicy sausage with onions and mushrooms. Haven't made it in a while and it's one of our favorites. I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend and to all the mom's out there, hope you all have a wonderful Mother's day tomorrow! I wish my mom was here so I can celebrate with her xo

New York City Trip!

Had the most amazing time in New York city with two friends. Our flight left Monday (March 5th), and there was a long delay in Toronto but we finally made it to our hotel around 11:00 pm.

We then left to walk over to McGee's

We got the story from the bartender that was working there that night. For those who have seen the show How I met your mother, the producers often went there for drinks and got the idea for a new show and used that bar as inspiration. We thought it was the other way around but it's cool knowing that. He also told us that they sometimes close the bar and the cast and crew go there to hang out. They have pictures of them up on the wall, the bar is longer and more narrow then the actual bar on the show but the look is similar, and they now have the drinks that were created on the show on their menu. I tried the Robin Sparkle drink and it was delicious!

Tuesday we got up early, had a light breakfast at the hotel and headed out to explore New York which started with a subway ride to Time Square. Didn't do so well since we went the wrong direction, but luckily someone was nice enough to tell us and helped us take the right train in the right direction. It was a cool experience and cheaper to get to Time Square, and we started with going to Carlo's bakery

For those who are a fan of food network, that is the Cake boss, Buddy Valastro. They had so many delicious options

Cakes


                                       Cupcakes
                                      & cookies


We each picked something different so we can try each other's dessert

At the top is what Samantha chose, a cannoli, to the right is what Anne picked, it's like a cinnamon bun but with pecans and caramel and a bit of icing, and mine is called a lobster tail, it's stuffed with custard mixed with whip cream. All very delicious!

We then went to explore Time Square and shopped around a bit, but didn't buy anything

That is me on a large piano on the floor of a store, I think it was Macy's, made me think of the movie Big with Tom Hanks, many years ago, so I had to try it out

So many big buildings, adds and huge screens, it was amazing!! We did stop for lunch at the Outback, we are all a fan of that place and miss having one here in Ottawa. We decided to share a few appetizers

So we had the blooming onion, but it wasn't blooming, just some on a plate, a quesadilla, fries with bacon and cheese and we also had the wedge salad, with some raspberry ice tea.

We did walk around a bit more and then made our way back to our hotel to relax a little bit and then walked over to Central park. We were about a 10 minute walk away

Just so beautiful there!!  It's huge, and there's so much to see and do. There's a skating rink, a gift shop, zoo, a place to play chess, tables along the walkways selling mostly paintings. There's even rocks to climb up on and enjoy the view. It was a beautiful day, and I was so happy being there, I really didn't want to leave and also made me feel like going for a run. We did stop in at a mall near by to sit and relax for a while and have a drink

On our way into the restaurant I saw a store I really wanted to check out after, and we did stop in

My happy place, I love book stores!!  It's similar atmosphere as Chapters, and a neat thing about this is it's like shopping online, you connect to your online account to get a discount and here's what I bought

It's just the two books at the bottom, I'll explain later about the book at the top. I have always wanted Jacques Pépin's cookbook. The one on the left caught my attention, they had a sign up saying it's amazing so I looked through it quickly and it's my type of book, healthy cooking and so many recipes look delicious!! We also checked out a kitchen store and then made our way over to have some supper. It was an Italian restaurant that was recommended by someone working at our hotel so we went to check it out.



Starting on the left, it's what Anne ordered, spaghetti, then I ordered ravioli, and Samantha got the margarita pizza, all very delicious! I did have red wine with my supper, and they gave us a bread basket which you see a bit of it above the spaghetti and they gave us capers in oil to put on it, and it was really good.

The top one is my dessert, it was a cake with chocolate and whip cream and a puff pastry at the top with a strawberry, and it was good but I have to say Anne's was better, Tiramisu. I'm not a huge fan of tiramisu cause it does have coffee taste to it but hers seemed more fresh and more flavor then mine did. I also enjoyed a nice port wine with my dessert. The food was really good, but it was quite pricey, especially the drinks, just a regular mixed drink was about $20, and they even had a shooter of tequila for $50. We are downtown New York though, and it was a fancy restaurant so makes sense that they bring the price up pretty high. To be honest I was ok with an expensive meal, we really didn't buy much and with doing so much walking and exploring it was nice to sit down to have a really nice supper and talk.

We then walked back to the hotel and the plan was to explore night life in New York but we got an email letting us know our flight the Wednesday night got cancelled and changed to Thursday morning because they were calling for bad weather. Airports do specify that if it's weather related they aren't at fault, meaning they won't cover our cost for our hotel, so started the search, first starting with the hotel we were staying at since it was such a nice one, but they were already booked up, so we spent a good hour trying to find another decent hotel and finally found one a few blocks away. It was an additional $40 each for the night and it was just 1 king size bed but it was just for one night so thought why not since all the other places were either booked up or way to expensive. It put a damper on our plans, but we needed some fresh air after all that, so we decided to walk over to the new hotel to make sure we were booked and to see what it looked like. At the end of the evening this is what my step count was

Let me tell you once I relaxed in bed it hit me on how tired I was since I only slept about 5 hours the night before so I slept really well that night! We were up early again though, had a bit of breakfast, got ready and then checked out but they kept our bags for us in a safe room so we didn't have to worry about it. We took uber to Chelsey NY to line up for the Rachael Ray show which was the whole reason for our trip to New York city

There was just another lady in front of us, and her friend was gone to get warm drinks and food so she joined us later on. We chatted a lot with them, and a few more ladies showed up so made more friends in line to chat and help pass the time. It was a cool morning and standing there for 2.5 hours we got quite cold. Around 9:00 am security guards came out to chat with us a bit, and then more came out and we got our tickets

They let us in, went through security but I was able to quickly take a picture of myself, sorry that it's a bit blurry though I had to hurry up to not slow down the line

Then they had us go into a waiting room, which they provided bottles of water, and small packs of goldfish crackers. Then we got to see Joey! For those who watch the show, he has been shown a few times, he's the entertainer. He is a comedian, and he truly is funny! He showed us the signs he will do to have us laugh, applaud, the mmm sound when she's making delicious food, ext... We were all color coded on our ticket and we got to go in first which we got to sit up front. I was so excited!  It of course looks smaller then what it seems to be on TV but it really is a nice studio. Couldn't take any picture unfortunately, I had to turn off my phone completely. Joey appeared again and had us laughing and then introduced Rachael Ray when she came in!  It was so amazing to see her in person, I unfortunately didn't get the chance to ask any questions or get to take a picture of her or even get her autograph but so cool to be in the same room and be fairly close to her! My dream has been to meet a chef in person, and I have but now my goal is to actually meet them, like get to talk to them a bit at least and get a picture taken with them and get their autograph. They didn't have any celebrities on this show but we did get to see Grant, her culinary baker, we also were part of another show, just the part where they have a band play a song. I really don't remember their name, or know them at all but they were really good. You will see that band if you watch the March 29th show, and hopefully they show us in the audience.

Thanks to our flight being changed and also thanks to bad weather, there weren't as many people that were able to make it so they had extra tickets to hand out to stay for the next taping, so we got lucky we were at the front and we got another ticket to stay!  They brought us back to the waiting room and had a slice a pizza for us to have for lunch. We then got back into the studio and we got seated just one row up from where we had sat. We again go to see Rachael and she talked to us a bit before the start of each taping. In between commercials we had Joey that had us laughing, she did have to get ready for the next segment so understandable that she couldn't talk to us to much. The second show we got to see Lucy Hale, she's from pretty little liars, which I hear is really good so I'll have to check that show out. She seems really nice. We also saw Auli'i Cravalho to talk about her new role in the movie Rise and funny thing is that we had another celebrity sitting right behind us that she was working with, so he got to go up and take a picture with her and Rachael and went back to sit, I remember his first name being Nacho, but don't remember his last name. We also got to meet Dan Harris, he's a news guy and he wrote a book, which is the book above that I said I would tell you more about. It's on meditation and we got the book for free. =)
We again got the chance to stay for the third taping, by getting more tickets!!!  The weather wasn't that nice out there, it was wet snow so it was wet and messy out there and colder so why not stay inside and take advantage to see more!

We again went back to the waiting room, where they had still more water and goldfish crackers for us, and then brought back to sit in the studio but this time we were on the other side and the before last row. It was kind of nice to be up higher cause there are a lot of cameras and camera men that were in our way at times so it was nice to be higher up to see. If you watch TLC and have seen the show trading spaces, well they are coming back, they have revamped the show, so we got to see Genevieve Gorder, Ty Pennington, John Gidding, and I believe it was also Paige Davis and Doug Wilson that were there. I have seen Genevieve and John a few times on the Rachael Ray show so it was awesome to see them in person and I'm a huge fan of Ty from Extreme makeover home edition. I have seen the show a few times back in the day and I really liked it so I'm excited to see it revamped next month. Also at the end of each show we went to, Rachael went in the middle isles on the stairs and they took a group photo of us, which we are suppose to be able to get on their facebook site but the last update was September, so not sure how long it will take till we finally see our group photos.

Overall it was a great experience to check it out. Would be nice if she had more time on her hands to interact with the audience. She did make us laugh here and there between recordings and she was really nice. The first show they also made cookies with bacon and it smelled so good!! They had some to share with the audience but not enough for everyone and we unfortunately didn't get to have any. Would have been nice if they would have had some for all of us. Joey did give away some prizes to a few people and again we had no luck. I was also just on the Rachael Ray show website to see if maybe they had the group photos there that's maybe more up to date, but they don't put them up on there but in the link I provided above for her website they do show the next episodes coming up this coming week, and I noticed that the date they say ours will air, also have Milo from This is Us, which we didn't get to see him, so looks like they tape the same day sometimes and other times it's bits and pieces of shows cause looks like it's everything we were there for except Milo which I'm so disappointed because I'm a huge fan of Milo, he was on Gilmore girls which I absolutely love, and I also watch This is Us and he's amazing on the show. I never realized that the audience changes, and I mean I guess no one really would unless they are part of the audience.

So you want to see us in the audience, we will appear on March 13 (minus the part when Milo is there), March 16, and the 29th (only the part with the band playing), then again on April 6th, but not sure yet if we are there for the whole show or only part of it. I always do tape her show to watch so I'll for sure be checking it out to see if you see us. The link I also provided for her website, the short video they show, if you watch it, right after the part with Milo, they show what she cooks, which also smelled delicious when we were there, right after that they show part of the audience for a few seconds, they show two ladies which we got to know a bit, but just behind them, you see part of Samantha, Anne and a little part of me, I'm like the far left (you don't see our faces). I wore a light blue shirt with a black cardigan on top. So hopefully they did catch us well on camera, I'm really looking forward to seeing the show on Tuesday to see how the part with Milo went and from the video it looks like audience members were able to ask a question which I would have loved to ask him a question!

We got out of there at about 5 pm, we took an uber back to the hotel to get our bags and then another uber to our new hotel. it wasn't a far walk but weather wasn't nice enough to drag our suitcases with us. We got somewhat cozy in our hotel, it was really small, and we then went back to the Outback for supper since it's a place we know we love and they have good prices.

The top is what Anne and Samantha shared, which they also started their meal with the wedge salad, and Anne gave me a little bit of her salad, and I had what's at the bottom, a steak with shrimp, and had wine with it. I had to show their amazing bread that they have there as well.

That's our desserts, the cheesecake and the brownie with ice cream which we pretty much shared but I really wanted the brownie so I ate more of that. I also tried two of their drinks before and after supper. We then went across the street to a bar to have a drink. The music was awesome and it wasn't big but it was cozy. We then went back to the hotel. We were able to sleep in a little later, got ready, and then headed to the airport, had some breakfast there and then waited for our flight. There was just a minor delay again in Toronto but the trip back home went well. My hubby picked us up and we got to tell him about our trip.

I really had a good time, it was great to finally get to see New York, but I know there's still a lot more that I haven't seen!  If your ever interested in being in the audience, sign up now for free tickets cause it took us about 2.5 years to finally get them. Our plan is to hopefully be on Ellen's show next, but I'm sure that's an even longer wait to get tickets.

Well I hope you get to see us in the audience on the dates above, I know I'm excited to check it out to see how each show turns out!