Kelley Bromley

The time had come. My hair was so long that it was starting to bother me and it took forever to wash. I never did anything with it but tie it back in a ponytail. It had no style. It deserved a better home. Since I had planned on cutting it pretty drastically I decided to donate it to charity — the first thing that came to mind was Locks of Love, but I saw that this was for people in the United States. Then I found Pantene Beautiful Lengths, which accepts hair donations to make wigs for cancer patients in collaboration with the Canadian Cancer Society. So I printed my form, researched on the web for a Vancouver stylist who would tell me what would look good on me, and headed out!

You can see the results by clicking on the image, it will take you to the gallery where I have before and after shots. I LOVE the haircut! It’s the best hair cut I’ve had in my entire life. I went to Taylor Smit at Ego Salon on Granville Street and he was amazing. I didn’t really know what I wanted, and he convinced me to go shorter than I had anticipated because he had to cut off some of my dead ends before donating my ponytail and we wanted to donate as much as possible — over a foot! There were layers, which I was afraid of since the last time I had layers it looked more like a mullet… granted, it was a $12 hair cut from First Choice Hair Cutters, so I guess you get what you pay for. He chose the style and cut my hair and it is so easy to maintain! I even got a fringe! I will go back there for all my hair cuts until I move away from BC, LOL.

For those who are still left in the dark, Lionel and I are expecting our first child, a boy, in mid- to end-October. We’re very excited! We had our ultrasound on May 23, 2008. Unfortunately we couldn’t take a video — we bought an HDTV camcorder for this purpose, but it was against hospital policy. In fact, the technician said that if she caught Lionel she would ask him to leave. We thought that was a bit unnecessary, as we are very cooperative people, but there it was.

During the procedure the technician didn’t want me to ask questions because she was concentrating, and I couldn’t really see the screen, so Lionel would tell me what he was seeing every now and then — torso, foot, head, etc. She had some trouble getting some of the pictures and she shook my abdomen kind of roughly and I could see the baby shaking around! Eep. She said he was fine though. After she got her measurements and determined that everything was OK she was nice enough and showed us Baby’s face, feet, etc. It was hospital policy not to tell the parents the sex of the baby, but we asked very nicely and she said it was a boy — and yup, the image confirmed it. Definitely not a girl!

When we heard it was a boy Lionel and I just looked at each other and were like, “Uh oh!” We didn’t have a name picked out for a boy! We still don’t… but we’re working on it. All this time I was envisioning that it would be a girl, I guess because we have two nieces and I found it easy to imagine, and we had a name picked out for a girl, l and I was imagining my life raising a little girl… then this was kind of a shock, lol. I’m happy of course — we wanted more than one and I think it’s best to have an older brother, it worked out great for me!, it’s just that I was surprised. We’re going to get peed on!

We have to wait 30 days to get the digital copy of the ultrasound photos, but the technician gave us a print out of a few that we’ve scanned in. Click the image to see the rest!

Ok, so in other posts I have mentioned that I found some old photos that I had scanned years ago when my screen resolution was 800×600 and I thought 100dpi and a 300×400 picture was a good idea. The original scanning session, via parallel port, took forever, and it took me the majority of one summer to scan all the photos. Now, I thought these photos were left back in Newfoundland, but I was going through what I thought was my “photo box” and it turned out not to be filled with prints, but with ALL the original negatives! Now I had forgotten that I had packed these when moving from Newfoundland, as the majority of the packing happened in the wee hours of the morning, and in fact up to the morning the day the movers were scheduled to take our stuff. Anywho, when Lionel and I got to Vancouver we bought a flatbed scanner with a negative attachment that can scan 35mm film at 1200dpi and we tried it and they’re AWESOME! Of course most of the pictures were taken with a $20 Regal camera and are dark and horrid, but nothing a little photoshop won’t fix. I’m so happy! So, over the next few weeks I will work on the photos and have some nostalgic photos up from junior high and high school!

So Lionel and I upgraded to the Nikon D80 camera a few weeks ago with Linda and Charles’ help and we’ve really been enjoying it! I have some pictures of my greenhouse assembly to post, along with a big backlog of pictures from the Toshiba, but in the meantime I thought I would share these cool bug shots. THE CAMERA IS INSANE!!! If you look at the large version of the picture you can actually see the little hairs on it’s body!!

I’m not sure what kind of beetle this is but we see him or her every now and then on our patio, it sticks around for a few days, and then goes away for another month or two. Despite the long seven-story climb it never comes inside our house even though we leave the patio door open all the time. It likes to stay by the patio glass. When I saw it again I just had to take a picture! My attempts at documenting it with the Toshiba have been laughable and in no way as cool as these!

Since we’re rally getting into cooking lately, and since my recipe section has been neglected for a significant period of time, I am making some slight changes to the food adventures category. Instead of just blogging about suppers I’m going to post a series of pictures on how to make what I made and then post a link in the recipe section to that blog entry. So ideally the cooking entries should read like a recipe :)

Lionel and I are really trying to improve our eating habits. We picked up the book The World’s Healthiest Foods by George Mateljan as a guide and it’s FANTASTIC. He has done his research and has a lot of information on the biochemical properties of the food, and references nutrition journals. He’ll talk about ATP, reactive oxygen species, and enzymology, but in a way even someone not into the biosciences can understand. He selected foods that are not only nutrient dense (a lot of nutrients per calorie) but also affordable and available at many locations around the world. Each chapter tells you how to select and store the food, and great cooking methods which only take 5 to 7 minutes. Our cooking style was very similar to his to begin with, and we’ve kept some things he doesn’t recommend, heh, but the book has given us many useful ideas, especially when it comes to fresh produce and incorporating more vegetables into our diet.

In either case, I was so proud of the supper I made today that I had to blog about it :) I baked trout with fresh dill from our urban garden, butter, and lemon juice. I’ve done this a lot before but never with fresh herbs :) With that a made a chickpea salad with chickpeas, tomatoes, green onion, sunflower seeds, chopped pecans, and fresh cilantro and basil from the garden, seasoned with salt and pepper and a drizzle of olive oil.

To go with it I made a sweet tossed salad to balance the savoury chickpeas. I used romaine lettuce, cucumber, dried cranberries, and dried blueberries with raspberry vinaigrette. Woo! And to top it off as a snack that day we had edamame, which is steamed soy beans in the pods with salt, a really good chip substitute and delicious too!

Two days before this Lionel made an AMAZING pasta salad. He lightly steamed some fresh broccoli and mixed it with whole wheat bowtie pasta, tomatoes, boiled egg, fresh basil, dried oregano, olive oil, salt, and pepper. WOW. Best broccoli EVER!!!

I’m so excited to do some more cooking soon :)

Lionel has been wanting to make boerewors, a traditional South African sausage, for quite some time. Traditionally they are made of pork and beef, but since we don’t eat beef we decided to use lamb. On Monday we bought a beautiful boneless leg of lamb roast - 2kg worth. On Thursday we painstakingly trimmed the skin and fat away and cut it into pieces small enough to fit through the food grinder attachment of our KitchenAid. An hour and a half later we had a bowlful of ground lamb, excellent quality. Then we looked at it. Speckled throughout was pieces of grease from the food grinder. It was ruined. Now, this happened last time with carrots I was grating for a carrot cake (5lbs worth!), and so this time we were prepared and THOROUGHLY cleaned the device. But to no avail. Four pounds of lamb ended up in the garbage. This was quite upsetting. Did I mention we did all this after running 9.8 km the previous day, and me working from 6pm the previous day until 6:30pm that day, and then coming home to make sausage?! It hit us hard, heh.

So we went out and bought some ground lamb today and tried again. It was a success! Unfortunately the meat was ground very fine and was very lean (the recipe calls for bacon and we didn’t put it in). Next time the bacon goes in and we’ll request coarsely ground. In the meantime, the spicing was excellent!

Lionel’s friend James recommended a garden store downtown called Art Knapps. It was great! It had everything you need to start an Urban Garden. We got a little carried away… Lionel wanted to get some basil, so we got a big pot of that and a massive planter to hang on the railing of our 7th floor apartment.

Well, after I got in there I wanted to garden too! I got a smaller planter and some Cilantro, Dwarf dill, and Parsley to go in it.

I also got some English Mint, but I’ll need to buy another pot for it. In addition, I got a baby tomato plant! Lionel wants to grow Campari’s from seeds, but even though we don’t know what kind of tomato these will be, the plant was only $2.49 and already had little tomatoes on it! So we got a nice terracotta pot and I gave it a home :)

I still have to plant my Mint, and I want to get one more small railing planter to put some flowers in, but for a start I think it’s looking pretty awesome! To see all the pictures, click here.

Yesterday the girls and I had a Bahelorette / Girl’s Night BBQ and it was so much fun! We had it after the wedding because leading up to the wedding Lionel and I were so busy taking care of the last minute details and buying a house that we couldn’t fit it in. I picked up Hiu Ming and Ash and we gassed up the car before driving to Katie’s in Torbay. Strangely enough the pumps need to be turned on here in Newfoundland, which was completely foreign to me. I couldn’t figure out why the gas wouldn’t come out of the pump until Ash asked if I turned it on. At first I thought she was joking… but then I saw the switch. I was so used to Vancouver just swipe and go I didn’t even know you had to do that!

We drove out to Torbay uneventfully and got to Katie’s house and her dad drove us to the end of Bauline Line, where Katie was house sitting for her sibling. Ashley unveiled the copious amounts of alcohol she wanted to get rid of before heading to Japan, and we started cooking.

We needed extra milk, an egg, and had forgotten the cheesecake, so we wanted to go back to Katie’s, but we were stranded! We had a little miscommunication problem when Katie said to have her dad drive us out because she didn’t know I was taking the car. In either case, her dad got Katie and I and we picked up said items while Hiu Ming and Ash got to work on the mashed potatoes and the BBQ, even though neither one of them had ever BBQed before!

When we got back all was safe and sound and nothing had caught on fire. The meal was great and the talk was awesome! Katie and I got back just as Ash and Hiu Ming were finishing up with the BBQ and we did a little impromptu dancing, check it out! Hiu Ming is operating the camera and Ash is on the left, Katie’s on the right, and I’m in the middle.

After the meal Ash made us a Chocolate Raspberry Creme Liquor for dessert and it was delicious. We had some cheesecake, made some cookie dough batter for later, and chatted for a bit then headed out to the fire pit to attempt to build a fire, which was another great memory, haha.

Once it got going we made some smores by wrapping graham crackers in tinfoil with marshmallow and Hershey’s chocolate in between and sticking them in the fire. They came out a little burnt on the bottom where they touched the smoldering embers, but it didn’t taste burnt and we ate them anyway, LOL. We learned that dried pine branches make awesome surges in heat and create very cool looking sparks!

After the fire we headed to bed. Ash and Katie each took a kid’s room and Hiu Ming and I took the Master bedroom. We ended up chatting for so long, and the next morning Katie and Ashley said they could hear us giggling all night. It was so funny — Hiu Ming and I would both say we would stop talking and sleep and we’d both know we’d talk again in a few minutes. It was a blast!

The next morning we had watermelon, tea, and buns for breakfast before heading back. That day we went to go see the movie Transformers with the rest of the group and Ash brought the chocolate chocolate chip cookies she made with the Girl’s Night cookie dough. Fun Times :)

Oh yes. And it’s all mine! Bwah ha ha ha ha!

Of course, the story of my acquisition isn’t so pleasant. Lionel and I recently went to James & Allyssa’s wedding, which was a great time! I’ll be posting pictures later. But in any case, I found a great set of shoes to go with the black dress I wore to their wedding, and the shoes came in red, so we were just going to order the same shoe in a red to go with the wedding dress, plus then while I waited for those shoes to come in I could have my dress fitted using the black shoes, since they were the same height and everything. Well. It turns out that shoe was being discontinued and no store in Vancouver carries a size 7. In fact, internet stores who carry all sizes in black don’t even carry it in size 7. As far as I know, a size 7 of that shoe has never been made.

Now, this is a bit of an issue, since my wedding dress was accidentally lined and they kept the train on it, meaning it has some major revisions needed and that I have to have shoes to get it fitted ASAP. We looked everywhere, but could not find a set of shoes that would fit my oddly wide feet. Eventually we found the same brand (Unlisted by Kenneth Cole) that had a white satin sandal, but they only shipped to the states. Luckily, Lionel found a place in Point Roberts in Washington which is a little blip of US just across the border from Richmond. There is ocean surrounding the place, and for people living there to go to the rest of Washington they have to drive through Canada. In either case, a company there will receive US shipments in your name for only $2.50 a box! Now, since most stores have free shipping in the US, and many times it’s overnight shipping, this quickly solved our shoe problem. So, on Monday, while the Canadians were on holiday for Victoria Day we crossed the border, set up an account, and came home and ordered shoes.

This is all very well and good you say, but where does the mixer come in? Well, for the longest time Lionel and I have been dreaming of this mixer. This exact model. It is the top of the line by KitchenAid, all metal parts, 650W, bowl-lift model with stainless steel dough hook, professional wire whisk, and burnished steel whipping paddle. The next lower model is a measly 450W. We haven’t even seen this model in stores. Costco sells the lower priced head tilt 350W series for $350+. Sears Online sells the 600 model for $730. That’s to give you an idea of it’s insane goodness.

Now, Amazon.com always has good prices on electronics. Unfortunately they only ship those wonderful things in the US. For a year now I have checked in regularly to see what the mixer was going for. So, what did I do when I finally got a US shipping address? You bet. I checked on my mixer. To my astonishment, it was on sale for 1/3 off! This is extraordinary, because since it is being sold in America the full price is like a sale anyway (full price about $540 CDN, $500 USD). So, there was my baby, sitting at $370 CAD / $340 USD. I told Lionel. I was supposed to be working on my paper, he thought I was wasting time. I told him the price. He said buy it. There was no discussion, the decision was obvious. And do you know what? Lionel’s been dreaming about the meat grinder and sausage stuffer attachment to make boerewors and it was 40% off. I wanted to be able to shred lots of carrot and zucchini for baking. That attachment was 40% off. So now we have our dream mixer, the top of it’s kind, as well as our dream attachments, all for the price of the lowest model from Costco without attachments! Oh yeh, and did I mention free shipping??

To put the icing on the cake, I got a new hairdryer for only $20, and it sells for $40 normally. The Model (Revlon Tourmaline Light Weight) has beaten the $200+ T3 hairdryer and is highly recommended, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. My old hairdryer was given to us by Lionel’s mom, who got it from Value Village. It served me fine for about 2 years, but it finally bit the dust a few months ago, sent out sparks, caught fire, and partially melted. May it rest in peace.

Anywho, I just had to blog about this mixer. We’ve been talking about it FOREVER and I’m kind of in shock that we could finally get it. We were going to consider it after the wedding and when we move into a bigger place, but for that price we cleared off counter space for it the same day! WOOO!!