My Good Energy Giveaway: Starbucks Refreshers Good Energy On-The-Go Gift Pack

Have you heard?  Starbucks is now offering Ready-to-Drink Refreshers! Starbucks Refreshers are lightly sparkling beverages made with real fruit juice, B vitamins and naturally occurring caffeine from green coffee extract. These refreshing beverages are perfect for when you’re on the go and need a delicious pick-me-up and come in three flavours: Raspberry Pomegranate, Strawberry Lemonade and Blueberry Açai.  I've tried all three flavours now and have to say, quite truthfully, that I loved all of them.  The Blueberry Açai (pictured above) got me through a weekend afternoon visit to Ikea to purchase a children's bed...and well...that's saying something!

I've been spending a lot of time this Summer on my front porch.  When we bought our house a front porch wasn't something that was on my radar at all.  You know how you have a wish list when you're house hunting?  Yeah, well, "front porch" wasn't on my short list of must haves.  It wasn't even on my long list.  And now it's one of my very favourite places to be.  Especially now, when the weather is perfect and the garden is bloom.  I'm finding that the perfect good energy solution for me this Summer is some quiet time on my front porch, a good book and some good tunes and of course a refreshing beverage.  I've also been collecting some sources of Inspiration and some Fantasy Destinations on Pinterest.  Because Daydreaming is a big part of getting myself energized.  

Source

You can follow the Starbucks Refreshers Give Good Energy Pinterest Board for another daily does of positivity.

Found on Pinterest via source

Wait! There's even more good news!  The good folks at Starbucks are offering a Good Energy On-The-Go Gift Pack to one of my readers!

These gift packs include a variety of must-haves for a daily dose of inspiration and good energy on-the-go, such as: All three flavours of Ready-to-drink Starbucks Refreshers™, a personal journal, a yoga mat, an inspirational quote tote, refreshing body mist, lip balm, a portable cell phone charger, moist towelettes, ear buds and much more!

To enter for your chance to win, leave a comment on this post before 12:00am on Tuesday, July 8, 2014.  Good luck!

Oh, and Pro Tip:  The Raspberry Pomegranate flavour would make a great mixer with some vodka.  That might just be on tap for my next girls night!

         Disclaimer:  I was financially compensated for this post. I also received samples for review purposes. The opinions are completely my own based on my experience. 

Thanksgiving. Take Two!

Thanksgiving is one of those annual culinary touchstones.  You do not mess with Thanksgiving.  Even if you're Canadian and you already celebrated Thanksgiving in October. Because, let's face it, a lot of us in the Great White North double dip when it comes to Thanksgiving.  But for me, the second Thanksgiving, the American one is ALL about the food. Which is why, I must admit, I was a little nervous about the idea of facing this challenge: replacing butter with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter in two of my most popular Thanksgiving dishes.  Would my Roasted Brussels Sprouts be received with the same cries of "I didn't know I liked Brussels Sprouts"? Would the last slice of my Sweet Potato Pie be fought over like it is every year?  Only one way to find out!



Roasted Brussels Sprouts

What you'll need:
2 cups of Brussels Sprouts, trimmed and sliced in half, lengthwise
1/4 cup of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, melted
3 slices of low salt Bacon
3 Shallots
Salt and fresh ground Pepper to taste

Directions:

Toss your Brussels Sprouts with the melted I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and your Salt and Pepper and roast for 20 - 30 minutes in a 400 degree oven.

While they are roasting fry your bacon until it's nice and crispy.  Drain the bacon and use the remaining bacon fat to fry up sliced shallots.  Combine the bacon and the shallots to use as a topping for your Brussels Sprouts.

Verdict:  These are just killer! You'd never know that certain ingredient was missing.  Just don't tell Julia Child!

Sweet Potato Pie

What you'll need:
2 Sweet Potatoes
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1 tablespoon of Nutmeg
1 tablespoon of Cinnamon
1 Egg
8 tablespoons of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter
2 Frozen Pie Shells (yes, 2, trust you'll want more than 1)

Directions:

Place the whole sweet potatoes in a pot, cover with cold water, bring to a simmer, and cook until the potatoes are done all the way through. Let the potatoes cool slightly, and while they're still warm you can easily remove the skin.

Add the I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, Egg, Sugar, Nutmeg and cinnamon and blend together.  I like to use my hand mixer, but a stand mixer or a wooden spoon and some determination would work as well.  Just make sure to blend the filling until it's really smooth.

The next part is a little tricky, so stay with me (natch). Fill the pie shell and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour and 15 minutes.  Let cool and serve.  Preferably with Whipped Cream, because why not?

Verdict:  Another home run, and with our secret ingredient, why not have another piece?

After the success of this little experiment I can't wait to try making my Turkey and Stuffing with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.  Happy Thanksgiving to all of my wonderful American friends and Happy second delicious big meal day to my fellow Canadians.

Everybody in (washable) Paint!

This post is sponsored by GapKids. Check out all the fun Shine On activities at your nearest Gap store. For event dates and locations, visit Gap’s Facebook page and join the conversation on Twitter with hashtag #ShineOn.
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Last Saturday, Lenny, The Robeau and my niece Janet (who is a very talented art student) headed to the Eaton Centre to try our hands at some art at the GapKids Shine on Saturday event.  I was immediately struck by the fact that this felt like the Saturday mornings of my youth, crafting and creating art projects at the library. But with better lighting. And the option to shop!

The staff set us up right away with our supplies and Lenny didn't waste any time getting in there.

Up until this point, Lenny's medium of choice has been crayons, but she was so taken with the paint and all the different ways she could mix the colours.  Colour Blocking may have been the order of the day, but this kiddo was all about the blend.  

Everyone got in on the act, but this was really Lenny's masterpiece.

The Artist at work.

Someday, Janet will teach Lenny about the colour wheel.

The Robeau took a turn!

As for me?  I had so much fun, I immediately ran out and bought paint and brushes and a canvas so that I can try my hand at some geometric art!  I'll share some pics when I finally make the time to do it.

And here is Lenny's finished product, soon to be framed and hung on our dining room wall.  Thanks GapKids!

This month, select GapKids stores in stores in North America will host Shine On Saturdays events.  There are still two events in the GTA on the following dates at the following locations:


Saturday, August 18th - 10am - 1pm
GapKids at Yorkdale 
3401 Dufferin Street
Toronto, Ontario

Saturday, August 25th - 10am - 1pm
GapKids at Square One 
100 City Centre Drive
Mississauga, Ontario

Let me know if you make it out. I'd love to see your masterpieces!

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I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective, and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

Shine On Saturdays!

This post is sponsored by GapKids. Check out all the fun Shine On activities at your nearest Gap store. For event dates and locations, visit Gap’s Facebook page and join the conversation on Twitter with hashtag #ShineOn.
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One of Lenny's favourite things to do is picking out what clothes she wants to wear in the morning.  I think she might have a future naming fashion designs - she's dubbed a beach coverup of mine with a Pucci inspired print my "happy bubble shirt" and she is the proud owner of several "pocket dresses".  The toddler's sudden and rabid interest in fashion has inspired me to try and step up my fashion game too.  Having a new baby threw me deep into yoga pant mode, but now that she has opinions about these things, even after this debacle, I've been, if not always on my A-game, pinning like I am.

That's why, when I was invited to attend the Gap Kids Shine On Saturday event here in Toronto I was excited. It promises to combine the fun of fashion and shopping with all of the crafty goodness I look at online but very rarely actually do in real life.  I think Lenny and I are in for a treat!

Merrilee Liddiard, the super-inspiring Designer behind the beautiful blog Mer Mag has created arts and craft projects for tots and their grown-ups to create in store!  We're looking forward to unleashing our inner artists with the projects that Merrilee created inspired by the GapKids and babyGap fall collection, including the best new 1969 denim - Jewel Box Skinnies for girls (the new skinny jean updated in bright stretchy denim) and Action Stretch Denim for boys (designed for play all day- it’s denim that’s made to move).  From creating geometric masterpieces on canvas using paint and tape and colourful, custom journals that older kids can use when they go back-to-school it sounds like more creativity is going to be expressed and on display than at your average trip to the mall!  How cool is that?

This month, select GapKids stores in stores in North America will host Shine On Saturdays events.  The Toronto events are happening on the following dates at the following locations:

Saturday, August 11th - 10am - 1pm
GapKids at The Eaton Centre
260 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario 

Saturday, August 18th - 10am - 1pm
GapKids at Yorkdale 
3401 Dufferin Street
Toronto, Ontario

Saturday, August 25th - 10am - 1pm
GapKids at Square One 
100 City Centre Drive
Mississauga, Ontario

I'd love to hear from anyone who made it out in our city (and of course see your creations)!

And now, to brighten your day (it is so gloomy in the Tdot today!) take a look at these AMAZING kids in action.  



I'll report back with all the details of the event for you guys, including our completed art projects.  I feel like a regular Elsa Klensch!  

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I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective, and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

Recipe: Dessert Bruschetta

As I've mentioned on more than one occasion I'm not much of a baker. I mean, I love dessert as much as the next girl, but I just don't have the patience for baking. The measuring, the batches, the constant wishing I had just bought something at the bakery. It's exhausting. But that doesn't mean that I don't like to serve (and eat) dessert. Often, my solution is to pull a fast one and dress up ready-made baked goods and fresh fruit into something like this Dessert Bruschetta. This is so easy and tasty and it's great on a weeknight!

What you'll need:
Strawberries
Balsamic Vinegar
Brown Sugar
Fresh Black Pepper
Fresh Mint
Ready-Made Pound Cake
COOL WHIP Whipped Topping

Directions:

1. I think we all know that grocery store strawberries taste like...well...nothing. I like to enhance their flavour by macerating the sliced strawberries in a few slugs of Balsamic Vinegar and a sprinkle of brown sugar. Once the berries start to sweeten up, a syrupy sauce starts to form. This is so easy to do and the results are really, really great.

2. After letting the berries sit for about 30 minutes, stir in a little bit of fresh black pepper and a chiffonade of fresh mint. This adds a depth of flavour and keeps your berries from becoming too sweet.
 

3. Thinly slice however many servings of the pound cake you intend to use. Toast it on a baking sheet in a 350 degree oven for about 10 - 15 minutes until it's a nice golden brown.

4. Top your toasted pound cake with the macerated strawberries.

5. Finish the whole thing off with a dollop of COOL WHIP. Voila! Dessert Bruschetta:

Verdict:  I'm going to be serving this bad boy during BBQ season, for sure!  The macerated strawberries are always a winner, but when paired with the toasty pound cake and the COOL WHIP they are even better.

Addendum:  I feel the need to point out that even though this is sponsored content (Holla, COOL WHIP!) it should be noted that I'm no stranger to COOL WHIP.  Nolan family legend states that a 2 year old me was once spotted sitting in front of the fridge, open COOL WHIP container and tablespoon in hand.  Can you blame me?  No.  No, you can't.  So just be quiet about it and go grab a tablespoon.  I won't tell.

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Sponsored posts are purely editorial content that I am pleased to have presented by a participating sponsor. Advertisers do not produce the content. I was compensated for this post as a member of Clever Girls Collective, but the content is all my own.

Confession: I'm too cool to Scrapbook.

Thank you to LiveOn for this sponsored opportunity to blog about storing and sharing my most important memories with those closest to me. Although story ideas were provided, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Every parent has that one thing in their arsenal that can calm, amuse or distract their child. That one trick up their sleeve that can get you out of a tight spot. A cookie, a song or a favourite toy. Ours? Showing Lenny pictures and videos of herself on our phones or laptops. (Speaking of laptops, I'm typing this on The Robeau's because mine had a run in with a toddler and my first cup of coffee yesterday morning. Lenny: 1, Macbook: 0).

Anyway, it works. It always works. Like a charm.  She also loves the photo gallery that I've got on the wall in our little hallway of old family photos and new ones (in black and white). She points at them and identifies the people she knows.  The thing is, she doesn't know most of them.  And some of their stories are so many generations away, I'm worried she won't ever know them.

Lenny enjoying the wall of family portraits with her Uncle Garry and Cousin Janet, at her first birthday party.

Needless to say, the joy she takes in seeing these pictures is pretty heartwarming and makes me want to do everything I can to preserve those memories for her in an organized and meaningful way.  So much so that I once flirted with the idea of taking up scrapbooking.  When I confessed this to a couple of girlfriends over coffee one morning I was roundly chastised.  Which I totally deserved.  I even may have deserved the snarky emails sent my way about sales on glitter and photo paper (coughGAILPACKWOODcough!) because my friends knew and I knew that scrapbooking is not for me.  We are not scrapbooking people.  It was never going to happen.  And if it did?  Certain disaster.  And then the shame.  Oh, the scrapbooking shame.

That's why I was so intrigued when I was asked to review this brand new website LiveOn which promises to basically supply you with everything you need to make that scrapbook you're never going to make online.  That?  That I can handle.

When I first started tooling around on the site I was unsure. Slideshows? I can make those on a dozen different platforms. Voiceovers? No biggie, I can do that on iMovie. I wasn't sold.  What truly got me on board with LiveOn was two things. First, their promise that they will preserve your memories forever.  In their words:

We promise to keep your memories forever. Not 100 years, not 500 years, but forever. We have an intricate backup system of servers that will act as your personal vault, ensuring your stories are here for all future generations to enjoy. This promise of memory preservation is the number one focus of our company and we will do everything in our power to keep this promise to you.

One less thing to worry about grabbing when you're having that nightmare about your house burning down can't be a bad thing, can it?  Just me?  Never mind.

The other thing LiveOn is offering that I just love is the "Life Question" feature.  Imagine if you could go back in time as your great-grandmother her favourite song?  Or ask your dad what his favourite grade in school was?  If you truly take the time to answer a bunch of these questions you could practically come up with a memoir. Without the pressure of having to decide to what to write about.  Who doesn't like that?

I'm happy to offer my readers an opportunity to try LiveOn Rewind, a service that converts your old photos to digital. Just use code cgc34 when you sign up. It's a wonderful idea for the holidays. I hope you can check it out.  Let me know if you do, I'd love to know your experiences with the service.

Thank you again to LiveOn for sponsoring this blog post. Please click here to learn more about storing and sharing your most special memories. I was selected for this sponsorship by Clever Girls Collective.

All opinions expressed here are my own.

"I'm speechless. I have no speech." - George Costanza

Thank you to Yahoo! Mail for sponsoring this post about staying connected. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.
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I lead what is, in many ways, an exceeding verbal life.  I'm a talker.  I like to talk.  Sometimes, I think I like to talk too much.  It's not that I don't listen, it's that I'm anxious to contribute.  Finding the words isn't usually a problem.  I've talked for work, for fun, for art.  Back in the day, when I was performing stand up comedy at least 3 times a week there was very little I enjoyed more than engaging an audience in a conversation.  The gift of the gab, I've got it.  While this has served me well in many situations, sometimes my big mouth gets me in trouble.

Self editing is often a challenge for me.  Instead of pausing, thinking and realizing that now might not be the best moment to speak that hard truth or make that joke I jump in full steam ahead thinking that the honesty will be appreciated or the humour will diffuse tension.  It almost never does.

Sometimes I think I would have done better back in the days of letter writing and carrier pigeons, so I could carefully consider each word and really think about my intentions and impact.  Instead of jumping in head first, I would pause and the words I wrote would live up to the ones inside my head the way the ones that come out of my mouth rarely do.

The thing is, I can still have a degree of that ability to perfect my message thanks to email.  Email has allowed me the opportunity to apply for jobs without coming on too strong.  Email taught me how to have a serious discussion in a relationship with a significant other without being too emotional.  Email has provided me with the freedom to take the time to find the words when they are hard to come by.  We're all speechless sometimes, even mouthy broads like me.  I'm grateful that I live in a world where technology has allowed me to find my voice and to stay connected.  Email has made us all more tactful, better storytellers and I think, better to each other.  Email helps me find my inner editor.  I call her Mildred.  She's overworked and a little cranky to be sure, but she gives sound advice.  I don't know what I'd do without her.

My Sister from Another Mister.

Thank you to Yahoo! Mail for sponsoring this post about staying connected. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

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Remember when you were in grade school and you'd pass notes in class with your best friend?  That's the earliest forms of written communication that Annette and I took part in.  Burning questions like "What do you want to play at recess?" and "Do you like my new sweatshirt? The one with a teddy bear dressed as Tina Turner?"  Needless to say, I loved the sweatshirt (duh) and I wanted to dance a tango in the playground at recess.  Annette would lead.  Yeah, we were pretty weird kids.

Of course, the best stories always start when the weird kids find each other.  

Once we were in high school the note passing took on a serious, more long form nature.  One Friday morning, in grade 12 Law Studies, Annette wrote out a detailed missive explaining the entire plot to the episode of Seinfeld that I missed the night before.  I guess the teacher thought she was taking notes in my agenda book, but in reality she was filling me in on Jerry's trials and tribulations with a Cigar Store Indian and Frank Costanza's missing TV Guide.

When my BFF moved to Ottawa for first year University we'd send long, handwritten letters to each other. Me learning about dorm life and her new friends, she learning about my new job and getting the latest gossip from home.

Pretty soon we were grown ups, if you can call 22 year olds grown ups.  At the very least we were masquerading as adults, with schedules, office wardrobes and email.  Both of us, like virtually everybody else our age at that point, bored out of our minds at our desks, clock watching.  It wasn't acceptable to pick up the phone and call your pal to chat while you waited and waited for an assignment from your boss or for 5:30pm to finally arrive.  But sending an email?  BA-RING IT!!!

Over the past years 15 years, over email, we've counselled one another on relationship struggles, office politics, fashion, lunch orders and real estate.  We've planned a wedding, studied sonograms and picked out furniture.  We've made each other laugh, we've made each other cry.  And for me, those emails have brought our words to life the same way those handwritten notes did in grade school.

Pro tip: when choosing a best friend, find one who will take the time to fix YOUR dress on HER wedding day.
WHO DOES THAT?!

With a little luck, someday we'll be old ladies emailing each other pics of our grandkids...

There's still nobody I'd rather tango with.  Happy Birthday, Buddy.  Choosing you as my best friend reminds me daily of my impeccable taste.  Love you to death.  Email me!