Dress: Target | Bracelete: Forever 21 | Sunnies: (in other post) Forever 21 | Purse: Target (yellow S/O) | Nails painted by the lovely Amy!

I normally don’t post twice in one day, but I felt it was just a bit too image heavy to cram everything into one post! These photos are totally reminding me I’m well due for a colour appointment for my hair haha! Never the less, here is what I wore on our sunny victoria day backyard party! I just love this dress. (Who doesn’t love polka dots, am I right?!) I ended up buying it in another pattern too.

I just la-love these girls! Amy, Diana and I decided to have a little backyard party with the three of us on Victoria day. It was loads of fun!  I made pasta salad, iced green tea lemonade and we also had nachos, potato salad, cherries, veggies & hummus and amy baked cookies! We had wine too, of course ;).

It was a perfect day! Except for the part where the ice cream man didn’t stop & wait for us and we spent a solid 30 minutes trying to hunt him down. Eventually we gave up and went to Menchie’s instead. Amy pained our nails like the crazy talented nail-lady she is. Diana had flowers and cats done, and I went with daisies and polka dots :).

Diana is wearing a dress from the Jason Wu for Target collection, and the hat is from H&M. I’m pretty sure Amy’s in Forever 21 shorts and that the rest  is H&M too. For my outfit, you can see the details here.

My ice cream maker is god. I swear. Strawberry ice cream has always been one of my favourite flavours.. but I have a problem with the store bought kind (aside from the lactose). You see, I hate fruit chunks in store bought things. The berries in yogurt and ice cream are always gooey and soggy and stringy… gross!! It just really bothers me. For the longest time I wanted to chalk it up to frozen fruit that they’re using… but when I make smoothies and homemade ice cream using that, mine are okay. The chunks stay solid. So needless to say the strawberry ice cream that is in grocery stores I hate. It’s a real pain to find a nice ice creamery every time you want some strawberry ice cream if you’re a weirdo and hate chunks like me!

So I made up this lovely recipe! And since summer is around the corner and it’s starting to get really warm, I thought now would be a good time to share it with you guys. So here it is,  strawberries & cream ice cream, with crushed walnuts!

Strawberry Ice Cream

3 cups (lactose free) milk
1 cup + 2 tbsp (lactose free) cream
1 cup sugar
2 heaping tbsp plain greek yogurt
3/4 cup strawberry puree
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp honey

Combine the milk, cream and sugar together in a large pitcher and mix together. Add the yogurt next while continuing to stir, make sure the yogurt gets mixed in as thoroughly as possible. Set aside and create your strawberry puree in a blender. (I like to throw in a little more than a cup of strawberries – frozen or fresh, with a splash of water and blend for about a minute.) Add in the purre, vanilla, sugar and honey and mix again.

Following your ice cream maker manual’s directions, pour the mixture into the machine. While the machine is doing it’s thing, cut up some strawberries in to small bite sized chunks – I used already frozen ones for this because I ran out of fresh ones. Add them to the ice cream about 5 minutes before its done. My machine takes about 25-30 minutes, so I add them around the 20-25 minute mark. At this point you can also add the crushed walnuts, or you can set them aside and just garnish your ice cream with them when you’re ready to enjoy some!

If you don’t have an ice cream maker, here’s a good website with a few different options of how to make ice cream without one.

Also just to let you guys know I decided to go ahead and make a facebook page for the blog! I’d love it if you’d like it (that sounds really weird to me) you can do so here.

I’m a little late on this one… I had a really bad stomach flu for the past 3 days and this is the first day I’m able to sit up and keep food down. I know mother’s day has come and gone, but I still wanted to say something anyways.

First of all, Happy Mothers Day to all the blogging mama’s out there! Secondly, Happy Mother’s Day to my own wonderful mom!

Without her, I wouldn’t know how to make a website. She helped me learn the basics and also how to create animated gifs at the tender age of 9. (They were awful. If you want a blast from the past you can check out the website & some gifs my sister and I made here) She taught me that make-up goes on your face, not your sister’s porcelain dolls. (Sorry Lauren.) And most importantly she’s taught me how to be a good person and helped me become the lady that I am today. 

Thanks Mom.

Diana and I decided to throw a little surprise tea party for Beth’s birthday! It was super yummy, super fun, and some how we managed to keep it a secret from the girl and she was completely surprised. We consumed Salted Caramel by DAVIDsTEA (Beth’s favourite), sangria and had quite the spread. It was a wonderful afternoon and thankfully the rain decided to hold off for us.

Menu

Cucumber & cream cheese tea sandwiches
Scones with lemon curd
Peite toast crackers with summer sausage, mozzarella and sprouts
Strawberries & blackberries
White tropical sangria
Salted caramel tea
Vanilla ombre cake, garnished with blackberries and mint leaves

Avocado’s are one of my favourite things on earth. Bagel’s have always been my weakness. Ever tried a gluten free bagel? Yeah they suck. Until I met Udi’s. It’s really nice to finally be able to enjoy a good bagel again. Their breads and pizza crust are pretty good too! (Homemade bread is of course better.. but I’m lazy and don’t have a bread maker.) I’ve recently started playing around with avocados a little more. I just loveeee them.

This sandwich though is easily one of my new favourites. It’s nice and easy and so yummy. Toasted bagel, avocado, lettuce, tomatoes and cream cheese. Bam. Party in your mouth.

I’m also finding myself strangely addicted to almond milk lately. So. Good.

Today I went to a little event in Toronto called the Gluten Free Garage. It was my first year going, (I had to work last year boo) and it was a lot of fun. There is a ton of different vendors with samples and it’s a great way to find new products for yourself. It’s also pretty educational too!

One thing though that really caught my eye though was a company called Nutrilish who is going to be coming out with a monthly box subscription of gluten free products. (So it’s kinda like glymm box, birchbox, juelp box etc. but with gluten free food!) I’m so excited for it to launch. One of the hardest things about going gluten free is there is a lot of products out there that aren’t too great, and its a continuos struggle for me to find new GOOD gluten free products.

Also remember how in my last post I was so excited that it was getting warmer? Well two days after I posted that it snowed haha. Silly Canada. But it was 20C today and it was wonnnnnderful. Hopefully it stays around this time.

Oh and one more thing! Something really cool about the feedly app for google chrome – it adds this little icon to the bottom right hand corner of your browser so you can easily add blogs/rss feeds to your feedly list! (read more about feedly here)

Sprinnnng! I’m so excited that the weather is (even though wet) starting to get warmer and the days are getting longer. It’s such a nice feeling on the days I get off work at 7 or later that it’s still partially light out. It’s the best feeling! I don’t mind the rain. I love sitting down with a cup of tea and just watching it. That and it’s good for the flowers ;). A few are starting to poke out of the ground in our garden.

I’m really excited for spring for so many reasons. I can finally paint my furniture for my room soon.. it’s been way to cold to do it and I wouldn’t dare attempt it inside. I’m a messy painter. The Zoo! The Toronto Zoo is one of my favourite places in spring. The animals are always more active and fun to watch before the summer heat sets in. Being able to wear dresses without thick tights, saying bye to heavy winter jackets. Oh and BBQ season!!!

I’m also excited to start sharing some outfit posts again. I’m going to be honest here, I have zero motivation to do them in the winter. I usually don’t have anyone to take the photos for me so I rely on a tripod and just takes longer that way. I’m a big baby in the winter, (and yes I’m Canadian) and just don’t like the way the photos turn out when I’ve tried taking them indoors.

Another thing I’m looking forward to is getting back into geocaching again. I know there are lots of people who still cache in the winter (and some caches that are designed around it) but yeah.. back to me being a big baby. I’m a bad Canadian I know. I’m mostly just excited about being able to spend almost all day outside again.

I remember it being so much warmer this time last year too. I think that’s just making me want spring extra bad. But I know it’s finally right around the corner! (You watch, I just jinxed it.) Is the weather spring like yet where you guys are? Do you have any big plans or things you’re excited to do in the Spring?!

Also, I feel like I should mention it even though I’m sure many of you are probably already aware but something that’s going to be effecting us bloggers (late) spring is that Google Reader is retiring. It’s not set to happen unit June 1st. If you use Google Reader to follow my blog and don’t want to stop your subscription, you’re going to have to find another way to follow. my top choice (and what I’ve switched to as well) is Feedly.

Feedly is very similar to google reader and you can set it up so that it will automatically import your RSS feed from Google.  It has a few different layout choices as well including one that is almost identical to reader’s interface if you prefer it, or you can select a more visual approach with thumbnails and a summary (how I use it). It’s a web based app that you can also use on your iPad, iPhone, Android or Kindle. I use it both on my computer and iPad.

Some other ways to follow as well are subscribing directly to the RSS feed, or through Bloglovin’, Twitter, or you can check out this article by Life Hacker with a list of google reader alternatives and find one that suits your own needs.

I’m curious now – how do you guys follow this blog? Either way, I’m so thankful that you do! Thanks for stickin’ around kids :)

]]> http://misskaitonline.com/?feed=rss2&p=12341 1 http://misskaitonline.com/?p=12591 http://misskaitonline.com/?p=12591#comments Wed, 03 Apr 2013 03:58:35 +0000 Kait http://misskaitonline.com/?p=12591

I really wanted to make something a little different for easter desert. I hadn’t made ice cream in a while, so I thought mini egg ice cream. But then I thought that was too expected. I sat down with one of my favourite  (sadly retired) spring tea’s, Jolly Jellybean by DAVIDsTea… Jellybeans. Jellybeans!!!!

I was really worried it was going to be too sweet, or just plain weird, but it turned out to be ammaaazing. I’m so glad I went with my gut and took a chance. As always, if you’re lactose intolerant like I am, just use lactose free milk & cream! Easy peasy and super tasty!

♥ 3 cups milk
♥ 1 cup + 2 tbsp cream
♥ 1 cup sugar
♥ 2 heaping tbsp plain greek yogurt
♥ 2-3 tsp agave nectar
♥ 1 tsp vanilla
♥ chopped and whole jellybeans

Follow the instructions for your ice cream maker, mine requires adding solid ingredients (ie the jellybeans) at the 20 minute mark/just before the ice cream is done. It’s amazing how the cream actually soaked up the flavour of the jellybeans too. My ice cream maker creates ice cream similar to soft serve, so I like to pop it in my freezer safe container and freeze it for a bit before serving.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend!

I was originally going to wait until my room re-do was finished to share this, but then my duvet was arriving late, so I put of painting and a bunch of stuff. But I just love my quilt so much I caved and just had to share it now. Kantha quilts are made from old sari’s and are hand-stitched together. They’re really quite beautiful and each one is so unique. I’m absolutely in love with this quilt. I’ve wanted a kantha quilt for a while. I received this one c/o HomeSav.

If you’re not sure what HomeSav is, they offer high end home-related products at severely discounted prices! (Kantha quilts normally run around $200+ and right now they have a showcase on with them for $88. I kinda want another.) I’ve had some disappointing shopping experiences online recently, but HomeSav blew me away with their service.

They provide amazing customer service (Shout out to Amanda!), and even though they said it could take up to 3 weeks for my items to arrive it only took  about 5 business days. Gold stars all around! I’m so happy with my quilt.. and I think I’m starting to become addicted to sites like HomeSav. Just what my bank account needs ;).

My duvet did arrive yesterday though, (finally! But that’s a whole different story…) so I’m really excited to start my room now that I have everything for it. I have to re-finish an antique desk, my dresser and paint still but I’m going to be sharing all of that as I do it :)

Before going gluten free I rarely ate foods like sandwiches, burgers, cereal, pizza and other normal bread products. Now I find myself craving them all the freaking time. I have never really found or made a gluten free pizza crust that I’ve liked until recently. I’d still like to figure out how to make one for myself, but for now Udi’s will do.

This doesn’t take long at all to prepare or cook, especially when you’re working with a pre made crust like I usually am. Not to mention its one of the best pizza flavors I’ve had in a while. It’s especially god with a creamy garlic dipping sauce.

Chicken Club Pizza
♥ pesto sauce
♥ mozzarella, feta and goat cheese
♥ 1 cup spinach
♥ red onion
♥ bacon strips, cooked
♥ 1 boneless chicken breast, cooked

Cook your chicken and bacon first. (We cooked our chicken just in a pan, covered with tin foil and in a little bit of water at 400F in the oven.) Wash and chop up all your veggies and set aside. Drain some of the oil from the pesto sauce then spread the pesto all over your crust as thick as you’d like. Add the mozzarella next, it will be your base cheese. Layer on the veggies, feta and goat geese then the meat. Follow the instructions for the crust your using and bake. Udi’s only takes 9 minutes.

If anyone has tried any amazing gluten free pizza crust recipes I’d love for you to share them with me!