My Humble Apologies…Your Winners And Easter Activities..

I don’t know if there is any punishment in the blog world for being late on giveaway announcements but I do apologize for my tardiness. We had some last minute guests arrive this weekend to spend a couple days with us and leaving my guests to blog just isn’t going to happen folks…so I do apologize but my guests came first…I hope you understand!!

I have to tell you the number generator on Random.org was a lot easier then I thought. I simply put in the amount of comments I had on my giveaway and clicked to find a number…I did this three times as I promised three winners…and here they are:

Winner of the beautiful jewelry set and knitted hat is:

Comment number 8 which was left by Sylvia at Hjemmebest. Congratulations Sylvia!!!

Winner of the adorable child’s dress is:

Comment number 21 was left by Caroline..who truly believed this dress would look adorable on her English Rose….and now I guess we will find out!! Congratulations Caroline!

Finally, the winner of the set of photo cards from me and an extra surprise is:

Comment number 28 which was left by Jaymo! Congratulations!!

I’d appreciate it if all my winners would send me their addresses privately to the following email address: dinjente@hotmail.com and we will get your prizes out to you as soon as possible ok?

Thanks again everyone for participating and thank you again to the wonderful ladies who volunteered the beautiful prizes!!! You are the best ladies!!!

So we have had Easter vacation since last Tuesday and it has been great to not have a clock we have to follow….just do our own thing. I have had a little more time to try out some recipes which I have been wanting to try. I don’t really have recipes but I will share what I did as I pretty much made these up as I went…I had seen these recipes other places but either didn’t have everything needed or only remembered parts of the recipe, so I just made up the rest of it myself…never the less…here we go…

The first lunch, I toasted bread by brushing the bread with some olive oil and rubbing fresh garlic over the bread…

I added some brie cheese to each slice and then I took some yummy asparagus and dipped them in egg and then in bread crumbs and garlic pepper and then lightly fried them in a pan and added them on top of the brie. I had a couple garlic shrimp left in the fridge so I put them on the one bread but not the second. You could use any kind of cheese for this really, camberet would be nice, blue cheese would be good too. I have also seen people roast pine nuts and put them on here and when I was done with this lunch I thought next time some honey drizzled lightly over the top here would be good too…the only limitation here is fantasy folks…

I had taken out chicken breasts to make chinese one night but realized I had taken out one too many breasts…so what to do with the last one? The Captain and I were home alone for lunch so I decided to whip up some chicken curry salad. I lightly fried up the chicken breast in some olive oil under a lid so the moisture would stay in the chicken breast. I put more garlic pepper on (my favourite spice for the moment) each side and when it was done I chopped the chicken up into tiny pieces and added some chopped yellow pepper, onion, and cucumber. Mayonaise, a little aioli, and curry powder. Blend well and put into flour tortillas with some lettuce and cherry tomatoes for a scrumptious chicken curry wrap!

Friday we had agreed to meet some friends down at the beach to grill hot dogs and just enjoy a beautiful day together. I had made some homemade cinnamon rolls to bring along for everyone and they were a hit!

Some people (eh hem…the Captain) couldn’t put theirs down even while grilling hot dogs!!!

It was a beautiful day…one of many we have been having here on Helgøya. I am completely convinced we will be having a fabulous summer because the spring is so wonderful..just like the year we moved in here.

My little friend Marte and I were checking out a Viking burial grave site which was next to where we were grilling…there is apparently three such sites here on the island…kind of weird to think there are a bunch of Vikings buried under those stones but also kind of neat to see how they were buried and such a beautiful view the people who buried them gave them…

My buddy, Marte, is an expert climber for her age…I wish I had half her energy and looked this cute when I was climbing…but I know I don’t have her energy and I know for sure I don’t look this cute climbing…

It was a great afternoon on a beautiful day with wonderful friends…I was so grateful for everything…

Our guests this weekend were The Capitan’s cousin and her family. They were going to pick their son up who was visiting friends in Eidsvoll and decided to go down a couple days early and spend some time with us and we are so glad they did. They are the kind of people that you can say, “make yourself at home” and they do…there is no stress, you can be together and talk and laugh or just be together in quietness…they love to eat like we do and so it is a joy to make food for them. We ate turkey, salad, broccoli salad, waldorf salad, mashed potatoes, asparagus, broccoli, and gravy for dinner yesterday (Easter Sunday) and carrot cake for desert. YUM YUM! They have a Duck Tolling Retriever female who was with them. She and Jenny hung out together all weekend and I think Jenny thought it was great to finally get a fur visitor who was her size and not bigger!!

Yesterday afternoon we got a call from a friend of Julia’s who she was suppose to be out with. He told us Julia had had an accident on a cross bike she borrowed from another friend. He said it looked really bad, she was awake and moving around but we should come and get her. We had been drinking a little so we sent Sarah to pick her up and the boys were going to bring Julia’s moped back to the house. When Julia got here she was crying and scared. Terribly shaken by what happened and still in shock. She was all scraped up with blood on her hands and legs from big scrapes and cuts and dirt and parts of last year’s field crops in her pony tail. She doesn’t remember anything from what happened. Her last memory is of the tires starting to wobble and shake and that is it. According to the boys, she was racing around the field on a 250cc Cross Bike and apparently lost control and flipped head first over the bike and onto the ground. She just lay there completely motionless for a few moments until the guys got over to her and they said when she woke she was disoriented and wandering around talking nonsense. She had thankfully been wearing a helmet but that is the only protective gear she had on her. Otherwise she was in shorts and tennis shoes!! The boys said it was the scariest thing they had ever seen and they were just sure she had been killed…

As a parent your first concern is- is she ok? When you find out that…you start to get angry…how stupid could she have been to say yes to borrowing the bike and not having any protective gear except a helmet? And how stupid of the kid who owned the bike to let her borrow it without any protective gear….there are a lot of things to be angry about but we are hoping lessons were learned from everyone who was involved and there will never be a repeat of this accident. Julia was truly lucky and I choose to believe my mom was watching over her which is why she came out of such an ugly accident as well as she did. Time will tell if my adventure seeking daughter learned her lesson or not…

Ok folks, I am going to let you go. I am still using my old computer to blog and fix photos as I haven’t quite figured out the mac yet…I am still trying though…so maybe one day I’ll post my first mac blogpost but for now this will have to do!

Enjoy your Monday everyone!!!

Until next time my friends…..