Friday Finds

It’s been a super busy week of Spring cleaning, swimming lessons and walks toting rocks around in the sleigh.  I’m working on a couple of projects that I’m super excited to share, but in the mean time here’s a list of my favorite finds this week:
 
 

Favorite Kitchen Island

 
 
 

Favorite Skirt

 
 
 

Favorite Gallery Wall of Mirrors

 
 
 

Favorite Bedding Set Perfect for the Lodge

 
 
 

Favorite Ikea Find

 
 
 

Absolute Favorite Bedroom

 
 
 

Favorite New-to-me Blog

 
 
 

Favorite Necklace

 
 
 

Favorite Must Try Recipe

 
 
 

Favorite Wallpaper

 
 
 

Happy Weekend!!!

The Famous Granola Bar of the Kootenays

It never fails that when someone comes to visit and packs one of our granola bars on their way out for a ski, bike or hike, I end up sending this recipe home with them because they love it so much!  A friend of mine shared this recipe with me shortly after our move to Fernie when we noticed everyone (you think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not!) snacking on them.  Turns out they come from an amazing cook book that originated right here in the Kootenays at the Whitewater Ski Resort just down the road from us.  So, with this VERY snowy day, I thought it would be a great chance to share the most well known granola bar of the Kootenays once and for all.

 

GRANOLA BARS

1 cup butter
1 1/2 cups peanut butter
1 1/2 tbsp of vanilla extract
2 cups of brown sugar
1 cup corn syrup
6 cups of rolled oats
1 cup coconut, toasted
1 cup sunflower seeds, toasted
1 cup sesame seeds toasted
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup raisins

Toast coconut, sunflower seeds and sesame seeds in a skillet and set aside to cool; this “set aside to cool” part is REALLY important, otherwise they will expand over the tray while baking and make a huge mess of your oven (definitely learned that one the hard way).  In your mixer cream together the butter, peanut butter, vanilla and brown sugar.  Then, add the corn syrup.  Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, mix the oats, coconut, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, chocolate chips and raisins.  Now, if you have a massive mixer, you can add the dry ingredients to your wet; however, if your mixer is an average size, you may be able to add some, but you will not be able to add everything with out it spilling over the top of the bowl (yet another lesson learned the hard way), so you may need to mix some by hand – and this is seriously the main reason we now have a bigger mixer!  Once everything is thoroughly mixed, you can press it all onto a greased cookie sheet.  Bake at 350℉ for 18-20 minutes or until the edges turn golden brown.  Let cool and then turn it onto a cutting board (or two) and cut into bars or squares.  Makes approximately 24 bars.

For all the times I’ve made these, I don’t think I’ve ever really done it the same way twice.  Depending on what I have in the freezer, I will sometimes throw in some nuts, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, various dried fruits, white chocolate chips … really, anything goes!

We ALWAYS have a batch of these cut up in the freezer, so we can grab one whenever we have a craving or need a snack on the run.

ENJOY!

 

 

 

Shared on Liz Marie Blog.

Welcome to our Home! making it in the mountains House Tour

Because almost everyone we love lives SO far away and we totally understand that you can’t just pop over for a visit, I thought I’d take y’all for a tour through our new (4 months old is still new right?) house.  Please consider these before pictures as we’ve got a zillion ideas about how we are going to turn this into our rustic retreat here in Rossland (I’ll link to my Pinterest page so you can see the house through my eyes).

 
 

We really LOVE our treed in back yard, though we’re not as fond of our super steep and uneven driveway (at least that’s temporary!).
 
 
Come on in …

That’s our “courtyard” deck out the french doors.  The “office/ playroom” is straight ahead and there is a small powder room to the left.

The dining room is on the other side of the front entry and faces the courtyard deck.

It doesn’t look much like a dining room without the table.  It’ll look gorgeous with a big barn wood style table and some rustic benches and chairs, but for now it’ll just be that room we have to remember to duck in when we chase Carson through (yes, even me!).  The living room to the right is an absolute disaster complete with a coffee table for a TV stand, a rug meant for the office and who could miss that gaping whole in our fireplace where the beautiful mantle should be?  A work in progress for sure!!!

And …. the kitchen, complete with butler’s pantry to the dining room (minus the handy butler).

Now we’ll head upstairs.  Here’s the landing at the top of the stairs and the hallway leading to the kids’ bedrooms.  The bookshelf that’s there right now is actually for C’s room and the rocking chair is meant for the living room on the main floor.  The bookshelf the we bought for the actual space is sitting in the room for things we don’t have a place for yet, otherwise known as our spare room.

Here iss Carson’s room for the time being, though it will become the nursery for whatever lucky baby comes into our lives next.   He absolutely LOVES looking out that window from his crib!

This is the spare room, which will soon become Carson’s room.  This will be our first project and we are super excited to start!!!

There’s a jack & jill bathroom between the two bedrooms.

Lastly, to the left of the stairs we also have the laundry room – LOVE, LOVE, LOVE having our laundry upstairs!

Off to the right side of the stairs we have the master bedroom.  Our master bedroom is yet another work in progress (sensing a theme here?), which will be much easier to tackle once we finally get our King Size bed.

Our master closet is down the hallway to the master bath.

Our toilet has it’s own separate “room,” which is nice seeing as our bathroom has no door separating it from the bedroom.

And all the way down to the basement.  Being above ground, our basement gets a ton of natural light and pair that with it’s high ceilings, and it’s really not so bad.  It’s quite big with two main spaces.  The first (straight ahead from the stairs) will be our family room area and the other (beside the stairs) will become a playroom in a few years and then, eventually, we picture filling it up with a pool table.  For now, they are both a big, open mess, which seems to be a recurring theme right now.

There is a hallway that leads to the guest room, guest bath and garage.

The garage is barely a two car, but luckily has a really big (like meant to be a bedroom big) shop.  Brady is thrilled to have a space to work on his skis and bikes!

Just because it’s one of our favorite parts of the house, I’ll leave you with a shot of our backyard.  Aside from a view, a private and treed backyard was at the top of our house hunting list and we are super excited to have found such a perfect oasis!

Thanks SO much for visiting!

And so it’s settled … we’re living in Rossland!

This isn’t news to most of you and I may seem really late to the game (you know, having moved almost 4 months ago now), but since I’ve only just decided to start “blogging,” this seemed as a good a place to start as any.  This newest endeavor might suggest to you that as a stay-at-home Mom I’m looking for ways to fill my days, so let me take this opportunity to make something clear: as a Mom, a wife, a homeowner, a Teacher-on-call, and a friend, I have more than enough to keep me busy.  Add to that being someone who needs to have everything perfect, always (think Monica from Friends, though in my experience people find it less endearing in real life), there aren’t enough hours in the day.  BUT, my crazy full, never stop running in circles head needs an outlet.  Plus, I thought this could be a fun way to keep our far away family and friends current with all things Mercer (even if my Mom and Grandma are the only ones to read this).  Enjoy!

Now, back to the point …

Having been born and raised in Whitecourt, I’m not sure we ever really considered choosing to settle anywhere else.  So after University, we bought a town house, found some jobs and built a life back home.  With Brady’s love for skiing and us both taking up mountain biking in the summer, we were spending more and more weekends away.  This gave us many opportunities to explore new places, but unfortunately had us truly living for the weekends and spending most of our weeknights wishing we could be doing what we loved.  After years of dreaming about owning a vacation property at a ski resort ‘someday,’ we finally had the bright idea to actually LIVE there (seriously, what took us so long?)!  It seemed a bit crazy (clearly we have slightly subdued version of crazy), but really, it wouldn’t ever get easier to pack up and head to the mountains.  After a couple of years in beautiful, but not so perfect for us, Fernie, BC, we discovered Rossland and it was love at first sight!  We instantly fell head over heals for this charming little town of only 3500 people and one little traffic light.  Folks here are beyond friendly (people always say that, but it’s never been more true!), the summers are breathtakingly beautiful and EVERYONE here is thrilled when it snows -every single time!  Not to mention, we can take part in all of the super fun things we love to do any day of the week we choose 🙂  Don’t let my enthusiasm fool you, our move to BC hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows.  We miss our families more than words can say (at least what my limited vocabulary can convey).  This is especially true since our son Carson was born – as he learns something new and exciting, it serves to remind us how much they are missing – EVERY SINGLE DAY.  Also, having always taken the rich Alberta economy and our generous incomes right out of University for granted, we had a pretty big wake up call moving to the land of no teaching jobs and a less generous government that charges you an extra 12% tax on everything you buy (which is somehow already double the price that it used to be).  Turns out all this beauty and fun comes at a price we would have to work hard to afford.  Luckily almost everyone here shares in our struggles – so, we’ve made our own little Rossland family (and a pretty amazing one at that!) and we spend as much time outdoors with them as we can enjoying this beautiful place.  Turns out keeping up with the Jones’ in Rossland, BC is all about what you did today rather than what you bought, which is much more up our alley 😉

I promise, I do in fact have a point …

Making life in BC work has been a dream come true as well as one of the hardest things we’ve ever done all at the same time.  Every time things got tough or we’d miss our families, the conversation would always roll back to, “maybe we should just go home.”  We’ve struggled with whether making things work here was worth the effort and the sacrifice of being so far away from the people we love most in the world.  There’s no question that life in Whitecourt was easier, but we kept holding on to hope that the struggles were worth it.  There was no doubt in our minds, there was ALWAYS no doubt that this was where we wanted to raise our family.  That we really do LOVE it here.  Once we head out for a hike, hop on our bikes or go for a ski, it’s so easy to remember that!  So, how did we finally end this torture of going back and forth that we’d put ourselves through for the past 4 years (it seems we’re slow learners)?  In one weekend the most indecisive people in the world decided to take that option of giving up and going home out of their back pocket – somehow Brady and I FINALLY made a decision and bought a house in Rossland.

Now, Rossland is home and we’ve never been happier 🙂

 

Shared with: Define My Happy and there’s No Wine in Mom.