Yeah Right Pinterest

If you know me even a smidgen you know that I am slightly obesessed/addicted to Pinterest. LOVE IT. So so much.  And see, here's the thing, I actually DO some of the things that I pin. Maybe like 2% but 2% of 2294 pins is still ... a bunch. (It's too early in the morning to do math. It's not even 8am). 

Also fun fact, I can tell school around North America is starting soon because I get about 57 notifications every hour of other people pinning my school/lesson/classroom ideas. 

Anyways, my goal for a long time has been to do a pinterest favourite. Freezer Meals. Where you prep and cook like 50 meals all at once and then put them in the freezer for later. Then on those busy weeks where you want a hot, healthy, good meal you can just pull one out in the morning, throw it in the crock pot and come home to a house that smells like you have been slaving over a hot stove all day, when in fact you have been working or shopping or doing crafts all day.

As I am heading back to work full time next Monday (my feelings on this topic are Ughay - a mixture of ugh and yay), I decided that this week I should find a super-star mom/wife/homemaker and copy her blog and suggestions for bulk cooking. I pinned a few options and decided on this one because the recipes  varied and looked tasty.

She advertized 11 freezer meals in 3 hours for $50.
Not so much. 

The website did provide a shopping list which was super helpful, but my groceries ended up costing around $160. America has cheaper food. Plus I had to buy some things that I don't normally have on hand so that upped my costs quite a bit. I think if I did this whole set of recipes again, now that I have a lot of the random ingredients in my house I could probably do it for $100. No way could it get done for $50. I spent more than that on meat alone! Shopping at Wholesale Foods! Anyways, I'm not upset, because I separated most of the recipes into two portions so I actually have 19 meals in my freezer. And most of them will feed us for two meals. After all is said and done the number of actual meals comes down to about $2/person/meal. Which is pretty good. Because the recipes are really awesome and I am SO excited to try them.

Step one: get a good playlist going. 

One of the things I didn't read well enough before I began, was the amount of work that would be required. With this website all the meats need to be pre-cooked. Which was a lot of work. A LOT. While it was cooking I kept busy cutting, and prepping, and mixing other ingredients, but I was expecting to just throw everything in a bag and cook it later. BUT, if I had read the website more thoroughly she explains why she pre-cooks all the meat.

This project, including shopping time, took about 4.5 hours. 3.5 hours for the cooking/prepping, which is pretty close to what was advertized. I also did dishes as I used them so that took up more time, but it kept my kitchen cleaner and me sane.  I'm happy with this. It was a SUPER long afternoon. A lot of work for sure, but I decided that I would gladly spend even 5 hours prepping 19 meals than spend 15 hours cooking all these meals from scratch later on. Plus these recipes smell and look amazing! I want to eat them all right now!

The highlight of my cooking experience though, was when Arron came home from work and came in the door saying "Oh man! I could smell all the food three houses down! And I was praying, 'please let it be from my house, please let it be from my house!'"  I take that as a compliment, if he can smell the good smells from three houses down when he was in his tool, grease, and oil filled work van, it must have smelled pretty great.

Kitchen Before (Notice the picture frames on the fridge - pinterest, and the labels on my spice jars - also from pinterest)

Kitchen during

This is me making the VERY last recipe. I was so hot and tired.

This place, and this shop, and this person make me happy.

Monkey Face

There is just something amazing about being on the top of a mountain in BC.
There is nothing that can compare to it. And no words to describe it. But I love it. The hiking up process - that I don't love, and I also dislike the hiking down part, (so I guess I don't actually like hiking) but the actual being on top of it is pretty fantastic.

On Sunday my parents came to Williams Lake for the first time since I moved here a year ago. This time though I have a home and a husband and a yard and all the fixings to make them feel comfortable for a night or two. (Except Arron's tarantula... which lives in the guest room.... "I won't do it. I tell you I won't. I wont do it" squealed my mom, which resulted in the spider being relocated to where is now, two feet from my feet under the computer desk... eek.)

Anyways, my parents came for a visit. There was beer and bbq and then a small hike up a local mountain called "Monkey Face." I don't know why it is called that. It doesn't look like a monkey face. It's really close to where we live and the view is breathtaking. (Less so in the following photo's because of smoke from forest fires as well as the impending twilight) You can't fathom how high up you are. 2400feet at the top, and 1400 at the bottom where the Fraser River is.  Amazing. I'm really glad that I could show this beautiful place to my parents, and that my dad didn't fall off the side of the cliff - he was scarily fascinated with how steep the cliff face was and how far down it was to the river.

Honeymoon Snippits.

Of all the many many things we did on our honeymoon, I want to start with   this.

Because it was pretty neat.

Ziplining through the trees on top of a mountain in the Dominican Republic.

We went on a series of 9 ziplines and the video here is one Arron took on the longest one. 7500 feet long. He reached speeds of 47 km/hour. 



This is one of me coming in. Very exciting. :P

We honestly spent a lot of time just chilling at the beach and pool. Outing Ziplining was a highlight as was our outing to Catalina Island. We went on a paddle wheeler boat up a river and enjoyed the scenery inland and saw locations where Jurassic Park and Rambo 2 were filmed. Then we transferred to a large Catamaran and headed to Catalina Island - which was a tropical paradise. After that we went to explore a medieval village that was gorgeous.

Michael Jackson Tribute Night. It was AWESOME

Better than Tim Hortons? It actually was!

This is on our river boat looking up at the Medieval Village we would visit later in the day.

At the village, looking down at the river.

No words. Beauty.

This is where we were zip-lining

If you tell them you have sailing experience they will let you borrow a catamaran for the day. So Arron told them that. It was only a half-truth.

I have no sailing experience, but this is me posing like I know what I'm doing.

Naked Hippies Part 2

Sometimes the most random things happen to me and I think to myself, "Wow, this is so random! This is crazy! I can't even fathom the craziness of this once-in-a-life-time-event."

Like this event.

Attending that event (multiple times) gave me one of my best stories ever for "Story Time with Miss. G". The story of the naked Hippies. Seriously, 12 year olds LOVE this story. This story is one of my super-random-this-will-never-happen-again moments.

It was a beautiful hot day, which are few and far between in Barkerville and I decided that I would go down to the local swimming hole and just chill out for the day. When I got down there, much to my dismay, the swimming hole was overrun by naked hippies. A LOT of them. Like 100. Well... maybe 30. But that is still too many Naked Hippies to be hanging out with on my relaxing Sunday afternoon. So I walked up stream and around the corner until  I found a nice little island in the middle of the creek where I could spread my towel, put on my shades and read my book in relative quiet and peace. Not ten minutes after I started to relax a loud voice from down by the naked Hippies announced that while the town of Wells was totally free and accepting of naked communal bathing, there were small children in the area, so if they could move to a more secluded area the townsfolk would appreciate it. So with joy and carefree abandon the naked hippies skipped up the creek and promptly joined me at MY perfect island oasis.

That's the back story. Amusing for sure.

This past weekend Arron and I took a drive about an hour out of Williams Lake to Moffat Falls. It was an AMAZINGLY beautiful, hot, sunshiney, love-filled, newlywed, picnic-ey type of day at the falls. We hiked in and down to the base, in love and hot and sweaty and began to wade in the cool waters of the river. Arron waded past his knees soaking his jeans. I suggested that he just take off his jeans and go swim in his boxers, we were alone after all. He declined worried that someone would come along. Approximately 1 minute later three young guys came trouncing down the trail making Arron very thankful that he had kept his pants on.

We waded across the creek (fully clothed) and as we were eating our picnic lunch, who should also come down the trail but a dozen hippies. Who, when reaching the bottom of the cliff proceeded without pause to strip down until they became a dozen naked hippies.

I laughed so hard. What are the chances that I would end up in a river with a bunch of naked hippies again? I laughed. And I laughed because this time, my husband who wouldn't take off his jeans to wade across the river, was now surrounded by naked hippies.  I also was thankful, because now I got to share my naked hippie experience with someone I love.

Moffatt Falls before it got... busy....

People will inevitably wonder what we did.
Well... to be completely honest.... we joined them and went skivvy-dipping ;)

From the top of the falls

As close as I could ever possibly get. Right?

So I'm no longer Nikki G anymore.
I really enjoyed being Nikki G.
That name served me well for 31 years.

But now it has changed. I'm now Nikki D. Which really, is as close to Nikki G as I could ever possibly get right? Right?

I'm going to keep blogging. But now it will not just be about me. It will be about my wonderful husband Arron and I as we go through our life together. And I will blog about the wedding, and the honeymoon, and all that fun stuff too, but for tonight I just wanted to start things up, remind you to keep coming back and reading because I truly enjoy writing entertaining snippets for my friends and family and the random strangers across the globe that happen upon my humble blog.

Stay tuned.