Christmas 2010

At the end of last year's school year I agreed to help our area Girl Scouts and I just haven't had the time to blog. Christmas time and a new camera gave me the kick I needed to post these pics. I hope you enjoy them.

Let me take you to... Strawberry Fields Forever

Click play...

and enjoy the music
while I show you what happened to a few strawberry roots in a bag.

We put the roots in the ground last year, early in the summer.
We didn't put much thought into them.
The bag of roots was around $5, if I remember correctly.
I planted them where tomato plants had been. I found out that's not a good thing. I'm crossing my fingers all goes well.

These are the pics I got before I covered them with bird netting.

Okay, now I'll let our pics speak for themselves...

Saying y'ello to yellow!

I'm not sure if it was the gorgeous weather today or the fact that my allergies finally let up this afternoon but I'm feeling pretty sunny.

As a matter of fact, I've been feeling sunny since the first warm up of the year. I've been stockpiling sunshine, tucking bits of it away in a tidy little file here on my laptop.

What better a day to share it than today?
So, say y'ello, yo and hello, to yellow!

Whether you coat the walls with a shade of buttercup...

Add various bits of that primary hue in accessories...

Paint a piece of furniture lemon...

Throw on a buttery pillow...

Or change the mat in a favorite frame to the color of a sunbeam...

You can't go wrong with yellow if you want to brighten up a room!

Yes, these days it often gets passed over for blue, but what would a beach be without the glorious sunshine?

So...

What's for dinner?

Dinner?
Yep, that's what we had tonight and yum! So good! I wanted to post some of the recipes that I make that are vegetarian. I hope you find some that you can use.

You don't have to be a vegetarian to enjoy this meal. Not only is it delicious but it's a good break for your budget, too.

Bread Rolls
Ingredients:

2 (.25 ounce) packages highly active dry yeast 2 cups warm water (110 degrees to 115 degrees) 1/2 cup sugar 2 teaspoons salt

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, divided 1 egg 1/4 cup vegetable oil 3 cups whole wheat flour

Directions:

1.

In a mixing bowl, dissolve yeast in water. Let stand 5 minutes. Blend in sugar, salt and 3 cups all-purpose flour at low speed until moistened; beat 2 minutes at medium speed. Beat in egg and oil. Stir in whole wheat flour and enough remaining all-purpose flour to make a soft dough. Knead, I use my mixer with the dough hook, about 3 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease top. Cover and let rise until doubled or cover and refrigerate overnight. Punch dough down and form into dinner-size rolls. Place on greased baking sheets. Let rise until doubled in size. Bake at 375 degrees F for 10 to 12 minutes or until light golden brown. Serve warm. If desired, dough may be kept up to 4 days in the refrigerator. Punch down daily. These are much better the second and third day. They never make it to the fourth day, lol.

pasta Fagioli
Ingredients:

1 (28 ounce) can diced tomatoes (32 ounce) cannellini beans and juice 1 bunch of spinach, washed and cut 3 cubes of Not Chicken 1 cup of water mozzarella, to top

2 tablespoon dried parsley 1 large head of garlic, diced 3 teaspoons salt 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper 1/2 pound whole wheat elbow pasta olive oil

Directions:

	Cook beans or use canned beans. Cook pasta. In a few tablespoons of olive oil wilt spinach and saute' garlic. In a large stock pot combine all ingredients and let heat. Sprinkle cheese on top and serve.

Makeover - Walmart bathroom accessories

For those of you that I haven't scared away by my previous post, I am posting one of those projects that I didn't get around to posting during the time I took off to work on insulating our laundry room...

As a lover of words and white, these really caught my eye.

The thing I didn't like about this set was the toothbrush holder. Most kids' brushes have very chubby handles and we like to stow a travel toothpaste in the brush holder. Since our cabinets are childproof it allows the children to access their toothpaste without getting into the cabinets. ;)

I found a set of plain ones at Wal-mart for $1.50 each.


They aren't exact but they are plain and simple, although I don't love the white plastic pump.

I cut out a few words in cricut vinyl on my cricut cutter and stuck them on my cheapo finds.



They've been on there for about a month. They haven't peeled or lifted one smidge. Pretty good, in my opinion.

We painted the bathrooms, too. In this bathroom, the walls were khaki in color but the warm weather inspired us to paint it a beachy blue. I also tackled the icky ceramic soap and toothbrush holders that were set into the wall.


Ah... it's nice what some drywall, drywall clips, and joint compound will do to big square holes. I still have plans for above the toilet but for now this is the shot I'm posting. ;)


I hope everyone that tours the house will love it, too. Maybe enough that we get a contract? :)