A Festive Cap

I spent the entire day sleeping but felt so good (except for my stomach) that I put a festive cap on the day😀

Exercise: none

Teaching: none

Reading:

Last night I finished the book, Christmas Nights: A Diamond Creek, Alaska novel by JH Croix.

The story is of Janie Stevens and Travis Wilkes. Travis is relatively new to the small Alaska town and considered a good guy and an amazing bachelor. Janie has grown up in town but is scarred by the experience her mother’s ex boyfriend.

I liked that the book is about a grade one teacher. The teacher life was relatively realistic, though I have to say I’d like to be relieved to guide a cute fireman around my school!🤣. I also liked the supporting characters in this story- both Travis and Janie had a good support network of people to talk to and to straighten them out.  The Christmas theme was subtle, but still present. I found the fact that Janie was always described with the same word by everyone as annoying and unrealistic, and the pace seemed fast, though perhaps I just move too slow!  I liked how the author included a good wrap up at the end of the story that told you what happened to everyone. However, that wrap up came really abruptly. It was almost like the author got tired of writing, stopped, wrote the wrap up and called it done!?!

I think that anyone who likes small town, Christmas or enjoys a mans man would enjoy this story.

Knitting: none today as I slept from 9am-2:43pm:(

Gluten free/ Dairy free Products:

I’ve tried a few new things over the past weeks that I thought I’d share with you.

The first is another brand of dairy free egg nog. I have since called a halt to all the egg nog drinking:)

This egg nog is thicker than the So Delciious Egg Nog I shared with you before, but it didn’t really seem to have as much taste. It didn’t replace So Delicious as my favourite. I just can’t have it in my house as it with gingerbread tea is addictive!

I have also tried a few types of cracker products. Most of the time my shopping involves just fruits, veggies and protein so I don’t buy a lot of processed food. These next two were on sale and so made it into the basket.

These mini breadsticks were pretty yummy! I found them in the Italian section of Save On Foods. I had a few meals consisting of them and antipasto that a friend had made. They were not dry as a bone which was a nice surprise and they had a good flavour to them. If I was socializing and needed a gluten free item for a dip, I would pick these up:)

The second cracker I tried was a glutino sea salt cracker. Glutino makes one of my favourite gluten free breads so I was excited to see these on sale!

I have to say that I didn’t absolutely love them. They were good, but just a little off for me. I have to admit though that I was eating them without anything on them and with an unhappy stomach so maybe I’d better give them another shot at a different time.

The other product I’ve been drinking is the Tropicana Probiotics juice. I don’t drink a lot of juice as drinking doesn’t fill me up so it seems like a waste of calories, but with. Rug on antibiotics I thought it would be a good idea to have some probiotics in my diet. I just didn’t realize how difficult this would be since I ant have dairy. 

Sorry for the empty bottle picture!

I bought the peach passion fruit and the strawberry banana flavours of this juice. At my local grocery store those were the only choices. I liked the peach passionfruit better than the strawberry banana. I think it could taste really good as a mimosa!!!🤣

Christmas Movies:

Today, after my long nap, I watched Marry Me At Christmas.

I was super excited to watch this because it’s based on a novel by Susan Mallory that I just read! It is set in Fools Gold and tells the story of Maddie and Johnny.  I liked the movie though it doesn’t precisely follow the book. I think the changes were made to shorten it up and to suit the Hallmark style. It was lovely and nice the characters didn’t fall instantly in love!

Christmas Event:

This evening I decided to try leaving the house and see how it went as I’m planning to go back to work tomorrow. I walked over to a village Christmas festival that is only two blocks from me! How have I never made it to this festival in the last ten years?!?!

I was a little early so I stood by their enormous tree and listened to a concert band.

This tree might be tough to sleep with right outside your window!

The band was very cool though because it had a range of ages in it from high school kids to seniors. I had forgotten how much I enjoy live music.  I had gone to this festival thinking that I need to get out more and do festive things, and this was certainly a good start!

Lyndsay and her son arrived and we took off to have a look at the booths. One thing I noticed right off was that I would have had the booths much more decorated! They were very plain!  Lyndsay’s son immediately found the cookie decorating tent:) It was weird though as there didn’t seem to be anyone running it. I think this festival also needed some people dressed up! How fun would it be to decorate cookies with Mrs. Claus!  This lack didn’t affect the taste of the cookies🤣

I then learned that there were horse drawn rides! I never knew that and it’s always been a dream to ride in a horse drawn sleigh ( yup too many romantic comedies and chic lit in my life- but this actually comes from a puzzle I did as a kid🤣).  It wasn’t quite a horse drawn sleigh, but it was a horse drawn trolley that took us around the block with Christmas Carols loud:). I was happy with the experience!

Luke and Nat were Percheron horses and very well behaved:)

We stopped to try some dairy free egg nog!!! I was so excited to see something I could drink that I forgot about how upset my stomach had been. It probably wasn’t my best move of the night, but I got the recipe from the woman as it was really good! The only con was that it wasn’t a warm drink so it didn’t thaw my feet! Yes mom, I was well wrapped up in a scarf, toque, snowshoeing jacket and two layers of wool, but fur lined boots are now on the list!

Our last stop was probably our most exciting as I didn’t realize this existed!!!

It’s a truck full of books!!!!!!!! How cool is that? It’s like a dream to have the books brought to me:) The best surprise was that the prices were reasonable! I picked up a book about reversible knitting and Lyndsay grabbed a Christmas book for her class and a gift for her mom! It finished the festival off great for me:)

We did stop by the fire truck display so Lyndsay’s son could check it out ( while we checked out the cute firemen, but wow do they ever seem young now!). I keep looking for the foreman who helped at my accident ( last year) so I can thank him for his assistance, but he wasn’t there.

It was a lovely festive cap to the day:) and I managed to survive an hour out so off to work I go tomorrow!

Have fun!

AJ