Blown Away

The weather has been really temperamental the past week or so. One day it will be sunny and warm, the next it will be raining and turn to big, fluffy snowflakes and then turn into fog and then be warm and everything is muddy. All in the course of a couple of hours! It's very confusing to decide what to wear when you leave the house in the morning, because you have no idea what's waiting for you when you walk out the door.

The worst part that I've been having trouble with is the crazy wind. With no trees or high buildings to break the wind, it is a viscous, bitter wind that you can hear no matter where you are in the house. Sometimes, when the house is quiet and still, and we're sitting on the couch, you can feel the house move from the strong wind. It's unnerving to say the least!

 Our weekend was pretty tame. After work on Friday, I decided that we needed to properly celebrate Jeff's new job, so we had a lovely candlelight picnic in the living room and had a lovely night with yummy food and yummier wine!

Saturday, we and our neighbours co-hosted a dinner party as a belated thank you to my boss and co-worker for making our transition here so wonderfully seamless and welcoming us with open arms. It turned into basically each of us making a dinner a full dinner and so there was an abundance of food and beverages throughout the night.

For our dinner, I decided that the lack of a crispy French baguette in town was unacceptable, so I tried my hand at baking an artisan loaf of bread and so we had crispy fresh bread and summery bruschetta as an appetizer. Now that I know how easy it is to bake bread, I'm never buying it again! It not only made the house smell amazing while it baked, but it literally took me about 5 minutes to pull the dough together.

We also made a colourful garden salad with a roasted red pepper dressing, roasted carrots and onion and my now "famous" stuffed chicken breasts. Dessert was a healthy Peanut Butter and Jelly Mousse Pie (under 200 calories a slice *and* it was no-bake!) Our neighbours made a beef roast with gravy, scalloped potatoes, and rice curry salad. All this food was made for 6 adults and 1 toddler. Surprisingly, we didn't have as much leftover as I thought we would!! (It's Baker Lake, Nunavut - when we get together, we eat, ok!!)

After our food coma, Sunday was a really lazy day. There was a lot of lounging in our pajamas, movie-watching, catching up on Facebook, epic napping, and then Jeff went to work in the evening while I watched the Emmys. It was a quiet, relaxing day as the wind whipped around the house.

This coming week we don't have much planned, really. Jeff is off to Winnipeg for training the latter half of the week, and my biggest excitement to look forward to is the season premiere of Grey's Anatomy (sad, I know.) There was a group of us in Ontario who would get together weekly to watch Grey's together, so I am thinking of putting some feelers out to see if any of the girls here would be interested in doing the same. It'd be nice to do something that reminds me of home.

-L