One Of My Favourite Places

For a while now I’ve been wanting to show you one of my favourite places in the entire world. When we went for a leisurely walk on the Musquodoboit Trailways this past Sunday with Holly & her hubby, I was sure to snap tons of pictures to share! I’ve been using this trail for at least 12 years, even before it was officially part of the Trans-Canada trail system.

This post is very picture heavy.

It was a gorgeous, sunny day… Group shot just starting out.

For all you Nova Scotian’s out there, the Musquodoboit Trail is only a 40 min drive from Halifax and is 13km of beautiful scenery. It crosses the river and passes by a gorgeous lake. Plus there are a few “rugged” trails that lead to magnificent looks offs.


As you can see, the trail is very pedestrian friendly. It’s great for running, biking and I’ve seen tons of families with strollers and doggies.

One time we actually saw a doggie in a stroller, which I thought was hilarious! :)



Fun Fact: Nine years ago (OMG doesn’t seem that long ago!) I had a summer job working for the trail – website design and weekly on-site trail maintenance. Maintenance=cleaning the outhouses. ;) At the time I was close to 300 lbs and it took absolutely EVERYTHING out of me to bike the 2.5km to do the maintenance. Now when I walk by it, I just have to smile because it’s SOOO different. My how life is changed.


I’m trying to convince the Halibloggers to come out her sometime for a group hike, maybe one of the rugged ones? Would make for a fun day! AND I know all kinds of random fun facts about the trail that I could entertain you with!

Isn’t this little foot bridge so cute?


The lake was choppy but still so peaceful.

Sometimes I will just come up here to get away from life. This is one of the most relaxing places in the world and I’m so lucky that it’s only a 20 minute drive away.

Was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

Hubby’s B-day – Part One

Morning bloggies, happy weekend!

Yesterday was hubby’s b-day so I thought it would be nice for him to wake up to a yummy breaky. I made one of his favs, my mom’s Potato Boats. I had to get up a little early to make em, but I did take the easy way out by microwaving instead of using the oven. Stuffed with old cheddar & real bacon bits. Mmm mmm.

Fresh sliced mango on the side. It was perfectly ripe; very sweet & juicy.

Plus his cute card,

It reads -

Your keys on the table,
Your shoes at the door,
Your pillow on the bed,
Your clothes on the floor,
Your arm around my neck,
Your laugh in my ear,
Your body leaning close,
Our hearts beating near,
It's the little things that combine
To make one big love.

One of my fav snack combos of late is a rice cake with peanut butter.

While I was having my snack, I snapped a few shots of my desk. I’ve basically got a collage of all the important people/events in my life. J & I on our wedding day, a couple from Holly & Dean’s wedding, my stagette dinner, a few different family ones including one from my 10K and a couple shots of the Halibloggers :) It always brightens my day to look up and be reminded of all the fun times.






And this is the where the food blogging ended for the day. :) After work my main mission was to bake J’s B-day cake. He’s a chocolate peanut butter kind of guy and after seeing the cake that Angie made for her hubby I knew that I was going to make something similar. I googled for a recipe and decided to go the easy route and bought mixes instead of making the cake from scratch.

Somehow I ended up buying a chocolate brownie mix instead of a cake mix though. Opps. I mean really, the only words I can see on the box are organic and chocolate… :)


I followed the directions but then also added 1/2 cup of milk and 1 tsp of baking powder to the mix. 2 hours later….I think it turned out pretty well!

This is a double layer, double chocolate fudge cake with peanut butter cream frosting topped with tooooo many mini Reese’s! I’m scared to do the calorie count on this. ;)




Needless to say I need to get in quite the workout this morning so that I can indulge ce soir. Speaking of, I weighed in this morning and am down 2.8 lbs, which is quite a relief :)

I’m off to get prepped for the gathering tonight – we’re having friends over for dinner/cake/drinks.

More Festive Fun

And last but not least, we went out to celebrate Holly’s birthday on Saturday night. We got all dolled up (although I was lazy and didn’t curl my hair like planned). And, I finally got a chance to wear the most fabulous pair of shoes that I own!!! I bought these BCBGirls last Boxing Day and had been waiting for the perfect occasion. This was it. I was pretty excited and admired them all night. LOL



Then a cup of Spicy Asian soup. YUM!


My main stir fry was HUGE. I love taking home a doggy bag, this place has the best leftovers.


On my plate was a delicious mix of scallops, shrimp, snow peas, water chestnuts, carrots, green peppers, onions, broccoli, purple cabbage, bean sprouts, cauliflower, sundried tomatoes, a few shanghai noodles and rice noodles. Mixtures of sauces included mongolie house, curry and schezwan.



After dinner we ATTEMPTED to have a few drinks and dessert at The Fireside. I had such a great experience there before so I was quick to suggest it. Unfortunately, big fat FAIL. As the sign said, we seated ourselves, checked out the martini menu and waited, and waited and waited. For 20 minutes. I made eye contact with 2 different servers several times and no one bothered to come take our order. We walked out. I will never go back. Hubby did go up to the bartender as we were leaving to say that we weren’t impressed. No real response.

Chef Dean

It’s that time of year, plenty of food, drinks and celebration! I have tons of stuff to blog about, going to take me a few days to catch up. I’ve had a fancy dinner prepped by Chef Dean, an impromptu trip with my Mom to one of my favourite places on earth,braved the crowds and got most of my shopping done, got in a few runs and celebrated Holly’s B-day with a lovely dinner out. See lots. :)



I left off after my WI last week saying that Chef Dean was cooking for us….. and he did! He had an exam coming up that he wanted to prep for, so we got to be his guinea pigs! ;)




He made everything from scratch starting with the stock. Four hours in the kitchen, now that is serious dedication! The whole house smelled fantastic.

Dean and I had the trout, which was presented as breakfast, lunch & dinner. I haven’t had trout in many years, it was delicious. Thanks to the small portions required for this dish I still have some in the freezer to use up.


Breakfast was a warmed piece of french baguette with trout and a pouched egg yolk topped with amazing hollandaise sauce. Mmm mmm!


Lunch was a piece of trout and a salad - baby spinach & peeled orange segment.

Dinner was trout with a yummy rice & zucchini mix.

Presented beautifully. The lighting in these pictures don’t quite do it justice.


Holly & J had the chicken.


Chicken stuffed with feta cheese and spinach. There was a sauce but I can’t remember the name. :( Plus a cute side bundle of carrots and the rice.


The meal was fantastic and word on the street is Chef Dean did very well on his exam. Yah!! :) Thanks Dean.