While putting together April’s First Friday Favourites, I realized that I missed my blog-o-versary a couple of months ago! It’s been a year since I started posting my monthly favourites here, which reminded me that I’ve been blogging here for more than a year. These past several weeks have been fairly busy, so I’ve missed out on posting more than once a week. The rest of April is very full too, so my posting will likely be sporadic. Lots of birthday celebrations this month and I will be preparing for my first market in many, many years!
Inspired by one of my old planners by Pipsticks & Workman, these are things I’m currently loving:
WATCHING:
YouTube:
As I am quite nervous and excited to participate in craft shows again, I’ve been doing a whole lot of research on “how to set up your booth”. I recently discovered another artist, named Katie Wood who has a YouTube channel called maybe katie. Her business name is “Fun Gal Studio”, named after her love of mushrooms and puns, and her work is really charming and fun! I think it was this video about how to set up your table that I first came upon that led me to watching quite a few more of her videos. She seems really sweet and I love that she is a fellow Canadian who happens to live in Edmonton, the city of my birth! Not only does she provide some wonderful tips and resources, she makes her videos enjoyable to watch.
READING:
Brighton and I are still reading the How to Train Your Dragon series and are now onto Book 5. How Cressida Cowell comes up with all these ideas and characters is really fascinating. Any writer who can dream up twelve books’ worth of scenarios without losing their readers’ interest or have overlapping ideas is pretty damn good at writing.
GAMES:
After holding out on playing Catan for the first few weeks after Brighton had been gung ho about this game, I finally joined in on the family fun. I had tried to source the best possible deal on Facebook Marketplace, but there were not many listed on there. The average price for it new was about $65, so not exactly cheap and I wasn’t so sure that Brighton would like it. He was the one who insisted on buying it – with his own money – and it’s actually been a great investment. It’s one of the few games that our whole family enjoys. Unfortunately the normal version only allows for 4 players at a time, so someone either has to team up with another person or else sit out. There are expansion packs you can buy so more players can play, and a whole world of Catan. My sister’s family has a few other versions, so I’m going to hold off until I take a look at those before purchasing anything else.
Oftentimes now, I’m the one who suggests to play Catan and Brighton would prefer to play Clue. Since he and his sister, Blythe are now a little older, they are getting the hang of uncovering the mystery cards in the game. I think the version we have was either found at Value Village or else on the sidewalk close to our former Toronto home.
While I enjoy Clue too, it can be a little aggravating to play with a nine year old and soon-to-be twelve year old who have trouble staying focused at times. We played two or three games where they each made a mistake and forgot to show their clues, or else showed the wrong one.
At least they are still into playing games and spending time with us.
FOOD:
Lately, our family has been eating a ton of chicken! One of the dishes – sesame chicken – has become a family favourite and our eldest has been helping to make it. She sourced the recipe and we had it rice, broccoli and frozen sweet corn the other night… it was delicious! Another amazing way to bring up the flavour and umami of the corn is to torch it. The scorching makes it so tasty and contrasts nicely with the sweetness.
I made another Asian dish with chicken – red curry chicken – that we used to eat a lot of when we lived in Toronto. There were a lot of Thai restaurants in Toronto though, so we tried many different versions. Our favourite there was from The Friendly Thai. Since moving to Saskatoon, we haven’t found a great Thai restaurant and the few times we ordered this dish it was not up to par. So we’ve tried making our own quite a few times and this recipe seems to produce great results. Of course, the type of red curry paste helps too.
And speaking of chicken, Brighton has requested more chicken for his birthday celebration with family this weekend! We’ll be checking out the Minecraft movie in theatres too, as much as I’m not a fan. At nine, Brighton is still very much into Minecraft.
Right now, I’ve got a cake to bake. Happy weekend to all! Hope Spring has sprung wherever you are! It’s taking its sweet time here.
