On Vacation

So summer is now officially over and now we are vacation bound to Mexico. Yes, Mexico. We've rented a house in a little fishing village called Bucerias just north of Puerto Vallarta. My Etsy store is on vacation mode and will be returning second week of November to gear up for the holiday season. If you want to keep track of our travels I will be blogging on my Encil Blog here. The picture shown is of Christian overlooking the tarmac at YVR from our hotel room. On the plane shortly....

AVA

So my dearest friend Gae posted her summer pictures recently. I came across this one of her daughter Ava. Sweet Ava. I think I'm going to try the hat next summer.

Marvelous May-May

Our permanent Nanny Maricel has joined us from Hong Kong for over a month now which means it's time to say good-bye to our dear Nanny May-May. Tonight we cooked her favourite - Italian and Maricel made her first Meringue which turned out beautiful. However, the whipping cream was a bust when they both showed me the "butter" they had made - so we opted for Ice-cream instead. We gave May-May a supply of baking goodies including her very own Laughing Lemon apron to take with her on her next adventure. The night was stormy and fun. Love you May-May, we will miss you very much. Sir Keith, Maam, Nanna and especially Christian.

Not a lemon but a plum

Tonight we went to our dear friends and next door neighbours for dinner. Bette was gracious enough to offer to cook after last night's fiasco. We gratefully accepted. Their orchard has been brimming and their plum tree overflowing, it's so beautiful. Christian and I enjoyed our time together. He got to grab his first piece of fruit straight from the tree. Nice way to end a chill day. Back at it tomorrow. Need to solve my shipping problems. Have my first online order to fill (thank you Kristy!) It was really fun to get the email notice especially since it was from my first boyfriend's little sister. We've committed though so even if Keith has to drive the lemon rosemary cake to Squamish himself it will happen (but he's told me straight, after this, he's not in the courier business). Why with all that we can accomplish in the world does it cost $27. to ship a cake 40km away? I suppose we could take the backroads? Anyway, that's tomorrow's challenge. Tonight I sleep dreaming of Christian and the plum.

Recollecting last night's toast "To not being a lemon"

You can imagine the conversation around the dinner table last night in the middle of the tornado. Everyone had their share of lemon jokes and ideas were flowing.

• why not sell the lemon sugar to bars to make lemon drops. kind of like blazes beans (not bad)
• why not inject each lemon with vodka (not legal)
• why not scrap the whole prepared food idea and put little happy faces and laughing lemon logos on them and just sell the lemons (printing is possible. we looked into it for an egg client once but they were selling advertising space. not joking. it's big in Asia).

We had an entrepreneur who is kicking butt in the electric car business. An ex-banker. A physiotherapist. A 91 year old woman who is smarter than us all. A nurse who's a clinical analyst. Me and the most relevant to this conversation, an insolvency accountant who takes care of the majority of corporate bankruptcies in the province.

I don't care how much people make fun of me. Maybe my blog will get picked up and sponsored by Sunkist? Anyway, I'm having fun.

Opening Day: First, some venting

I'm in bed. Christian is beside me (we're bed sharing much to my husband's disputes). I'm doing it for all the wrong reasons. All selfish on my part of course. It's the only real one on one, completely interrupted, look in each other's eye time I get with Christian lately. He was a star today and I feel pretty good. Big take away - high labour business!!!! It did not help that after the morning at the market (after waking up at 4AM to tend to Christian and bake) we greeted new guests from England to our B&B. Keith forgot to tell me I was cooking dinner for them tonight. Yes, tonight. Tonight which came after today. I cook a five course Itallian thing for guests on Saturday nights and guess what, today was Saturday. Okay, b r e a t h e. No problem (that was for you Becky). What you also don't know is we were already having friends over for the weekend on top of our two lots of B&B guests. Thank goodness they are the kind of friends where everything is simple. Try two meals at once though. Two different menus.... All was good and at least I had dessert to serve - lemon tarts ( with lemoncello)!