weeknight dinner

I am in love with this recipe...so is my husband. It's Pioneer Woman's scalloped potatoes. It's actually her Potatoes Au Gratin recipe adapted by slicing the spuds thin. It's in this cookbook, her new one, that was on my Christmas list this year. Tonight I added some pieces of ham. So good! I've really liked all of the recipes I've tried of hers and they are very easy. I usually only like trying recipes on the weekends when I have more time. Almost never after work. But these are simple and the ingredients aren't too expensive either.

Mmm. Mmm.

Tonight I had all intentions of doing some scrapbooking but honestly after cooking, eating, getting the baby ready for bed, getting tomorrow's clothes ready, showering, ...I just don't feel like it. I've never really been a weeknight crafter. Ever. Except knitting. And even that I don't feel like it. I had all intentions on being less of an old lady about weeknights but I just can't! I'm tired!

But I did get to see this earlier and it just made me smile...

Miss. Ellie playing princesses with her daddy before dinner. I love them.

Hope that you had a good Tuesday! Thanks for reading...

a new year

Ebelskiver - Danish round pancakes

So we enter a New Year! Last year marked a year of extreme ups and downs. More than any other year for me and my family. But this year is starting out a wonderfully exciting note. We are getting ready around here to welcome Baby Ellie.

Yesterday Cary and I celebrated our first married New Year quietly. Relaxing, cleaning, watching the Lion King, and enjoying a quiet day at home. My mom gave us an Ebelskiver pan from Williams & Sonoma for Christmas. They are little round pancakes. We filled ours with blueberries, rasberries, blackberries. We used defrosted frozen berries from Trader Joes and the Ebelskiver mix from Williams & Sonoma. They were heavenly! I would like to get the cookbook to get some more ideas. They were suprisingly easy to make...no harder than regular pancakes. I actually found them easier since I am not good at making normal sized pancakes that don't fall apart when I flip them!

Today I "killed" Christmas. That is how my Dad affectionately calls the New Year tradition of De-Christmasing the house. So I took down the tree. Vacuumed. Though sitting here I still see needles on the rug. And I will probably continue to see needles in the rug until next December! I can't wait for Cary to bring back the three large Christmas totes to my parent's storage shed so we can reclaim some of our space. We are going to stay in our 1-bedroom apartment until next October likely. So we are working to streamline things as we get ready for the baby. I have taken many bags to the Salvation Army and we have cleaned closets, reorganized. We are almost ready. In a few weeks we will order our crib. Just waiting to get my Rewards credit from Babies R' Us to put toward the cost. I need to wash all the baby clothes. My mom has been so helpful and generous. She has gotten so much for us...along with our other family and friends and my shower. I need to also bring an extra tote of larger clothes back to my parent's for storage until we need it. I think we are going to be able to easily make our space work for awhile without feeling overcrowded. I am definately in full Virgo nesting mode!

So with that in mind, I better log off for now and write more later!

Happy 2012!

valentine

Valentine's dinner at home

Today I am grateful for:

• a beautiful homemade Valentine's Day candle lit dinner last night.
• red roses
• candles
• Trader Joe's yogurt
• chocolates
• Better Homes & Garden magazine
• the Olympics and remembering dreaming about being an Olympic Figure Skater as a little girl
• time to scrap with my friend on saturday
• heart shaped sugar cookies
• the sun streaming in the window
• long weekends
• barn stars
• faith

I am having a very nice weekend. Saturday went food shopping with my mother and sister and then finally had a friend over to scrap. I'll show some of the layouts later in this post. Then Sunday I prepared a Valentine's Dinner for Cary. He had to work until later in the evening so it was a late dinner. An appetizer of scallops and ceasar salad. Then steak tips with peppers, onions and mushrooms, scalloped potatos, green beans. And three beautiful desserts from a local specialty grocery store....

We ate by candlight which we never do and I loved it! I got the two candlesticks at Michael's for $5 each marked down from $12 each! What a deal. It really made a difference for our dinner. We sat and talked for awhile about all sorts of things. It was a really nice night. I am lucky.

Here's some recent layouts...some I did this weekend with my friend and others I recently finished. Most of the supplies came from Cocoa Daisy kits with a few other supplies I had on hand thrown in. I'm typically not good of keeping track when I'm scrapping so I'll just post them without supply lists this time!

"Christmas Nest" - a page documenting some of the directions around the apartment. The tree picture is mounted on an envelope that contains more images. There is something about this layout that bothers me. It took awhile to arrange the photos and never really felt like it came together. But I'm letting it go!

******

"A Night Out" - about an after Christmas get-together with old friends. Pretty simple layout using all elements from the January Cocoa Daisy kit.

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"Christmas Girl's Night" - 2 page spread of the festivities when I hosted Girl's Night just before Christmas. This layout was fun to do....

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"Christmas Eve Morning" - Played around with the scalloped paper and some non-straight lines. I feel like I get in a rut with my over-organized linear style. I wanted to try something different.

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"Christmas Eve" - need to still do the journaling on this page but I like how it turned out. Used a piece of paintable patterned paper I have been holding on to forever. Used some iridescent metallic watercolors to just highligt some of the scroll and leaf shapes. Little hard to see in this picture.

So now I just want to finish my Christams Day layout and add in the journaling and I can close the book on 2009....literally! I did start a smaller scrapbook with just some favorite photos over time. No particular order or year. Just a place to tell stories and scap photos  feel like scrapping. And this year so far I haven't been as good at taking photos and developing them so I want to get on that. But I've never really been one to worry about being "caught up." I used to be and I let that go...too much pressure.

Well....
Today having a lazy morning so far. We'll see what the day brings!

Happy monday!

fall day

Hello.

I have not been a good bloger in the last few months. Few posts. No layouts. Really very few projects. Blah! That is not good. I guess I have been focused on other things aside from my art stuff. That isn't entirely terrible but I do want to try and do some this weekend. I have been spending time with Cary which is wonderful but also being a worrier about things I don't need to allow to consume my mind and time.

A fall weekend! At least today will be. Hoping for some apple picking and apple pie. And tomorrow I want to make a roast beef dinner. My mom always did that growing up for Sunday Dinner. I love the smell cooking for hours.

I came home from work tired last night. Cary had cleaned the bathroom, vacuumed, mopped the floors and took out the trash. What a guy! I am lucky.

Here's to hoping I have some cards or a layout to post later this weekend. I am dying to use my Cocoa Daisy kit goodies!

Happy Saturday!

full, fun weekend

Fun weekend so far!

Much needed...

• Ate lots of crap (McD's and Wendy's in one day and a Grande Java Chip Iced Frappuccino..mmmm)
• Shopped with my sister, bought over-priced makeup at Sephora, and an outfit, etc. Spent too much money but had so much fun.
• Knitted (photo is of a lace dishcloth I started & finished this weekend!)
• Saw "Love you Man" with Cary. Very funny!
• and now I'm getting some chores done...laundry, etc.
• Now I'm cooking some ribs and potato salad for sunday dinner before Cary goes off to work..and I'll be off for a visit to my parent's and a knitting group at the yarn store. I'm off!

Hope everyone had a nice weekend!

2009

Happy New Year everyone! I am determined to make 2009 more positive. I rang in the New Year with a call from Cary who was at work 'til 2am. Yesterday, as of noon I am on vacation until Jan 13th. Yippee. Yesterday was not such a good day. I thought about listing why but decided to hit "backspace." No need to rehash yesterday. Last year.

So today. I started off with a nice breakfast for myself. Cary sleeps 'til noon so it's a quiet morning to start of the year by myself.


Then I boiled shrimp and made nice hot cocktail sauce for some hor'dourves I'm making later. That is something my mom always did on holidays and I want to continue. Even if it is just the two of us.

Now I want to just knit, watch TV and enjoy the sun coming in the window...over the huge drift of snow on our balcony!



And...watch my flower bloom today!


Maybe a little later I'll post about my 2009 Intentions and my One Little Word. Haven't worked on my painting since my last post but maybe tonight I will. Thanks so much for the kind compliments! It always feels like a risk to put stuff you make out there for others to see and it is nice to hear positive comments. Thank you!

Here's to 2009 and a positive attitude!

weekend in review

Cover of my Summer 08 Mini board book

I had a nice, relaxed, quiet weekend. Didn't check everything off my list but did do a lot...chores I wanted to get done and fun stuff.

Including:

Got some acrylic paints, gesso and a small canvas. Did some work on one I started with water soluable oil paints I have...not done yet. I hope to post it later when I get some more done with it. It is a theme of Just Be. Live. Relax.

Bought a 12x12 album to start Cary's book. Might save it for a Christmas present.

Visited my parents and unexpectedly picked up my sister from work today.

Baked an apple pie, lasagna and made homemade chicken soup to free me up during the week and have some good lunches and leftovers.

my apple pie. my favorite recipe and dessert!

Went to the apple orchard for cider, cortland apples to eat and some for my pie. Love the smell at the orchard. I could just stay there all day and take it in.

Vacuumed...but think the vacuum broke. Made a "crack" and then shut off...wouldn't turn back on again. Uh Oh.

Did 3 loads of laundry.

Got into the holiday spirit. I know it's 2 days after Halloween. And I'm not talking putting up Christmas decos yet. But I'm starting to get excited. Seeing ads with red & green. Collecting ideas for my Christmas cards. Getting ideas for gifts I want to give my family. Also thinking about doing Ali's album idea for the days leading up to Christmas. Started gathering up stuff I have to start putting that together. Need to order covers and gather a few more things to make pages out of.

Bought a set of sheets and a new large sauce pan...stupid things I needed to get.

Grocery shopped.

Found out that my closest mall is getting both a Sephora AND an H&M next week! Yeah! That could be dangeous...I haven't been to that mall in awhile....

Updated the journaling on my July, August, September layouts in my 2008 Album. Started the rest of the September and October page. Still need to order the photos.

Finished my 08 Summer mini book....

I used a mini board book that I've had for ages and didn't know what I wanted to do with it...until now. I have been gathering ideas and the photos for a month or so. I bought the Memory Makers Passport Collection page kit to use. Also used some of their new tiny alphas for each page title...layered these over a stamped Journaling circle from Autumn Leaves. Stamped those in a bright green to highlight the other green accents. That was a color I saw everywhere this summer and loved.

Here's the cover...used some chipboard numbes and lots of ink on the edges. Also used a little green acrylic paint so that the title would stand out a little better. It's hard to see but also mounted the photo on some bright green cardstock mounted on the light blue paper from MM.

An example of one of the spreads. I used the same light blue as the cover on the top of each spread. This is where I stamped the bright green journaling circles and created titles with the MM mini alphas in cream. I used a variety of the MM Passport Collection patterned papers for the bottom of each 2 page spread. I mounted the photos and then used a little cream acrylic brushed on under each photo so I'd have an opaque surface to journal.

Closeup of one of the pages. Love this MM paper...esp the paper that looks like a collage of postcards.

Closeup of the journaling circles...the colors are much better in real life.
Pages about the Red Sox game we went to. I scrapped each of these events in my Random Album in more detail and also noted many in my 2008 Year in Review Album...but I wanted a quick, visual overview of the highlights of the summer in a small album format to have out in the living room for people to check out.

Another page...


One more page...

So...I had fun. Have a few more things I have to do today. Iron clothes for work tomorow. Unload the dishwasher. Boring. But I also can't wait to try my lasagna and pie and enjoy Desparate Housewives tonight!

Thanks for reading!

family reunion, a recipe and some more cards

Circles, circles, circles! You'll see a theme with this batch of cards. This one was actually the last I did. I used a Paper Source round card. I hand cut some circles out of scrap paper. Stamped "hi there" and added a few rhinestones.

Today is our 2nd Annual Family Reunion! I can't wait. My dad's family is HUGE. He had 10 brothers and sisters, they all had many kids, and so on and so on! It should be fun. And today I'm feeling much better. Not 100%...but better. I really shouldn't complain...people deal with far worse than me. Anyhow, yesterday I made a blueberry pie (actually 2...one for us here!), my Aunt's Salsa recipe, and today I'm making a Blueberry and Orange Spinach Salad. So good. Here's the recipe...

Blueberry and Orange Spinach Salad

from Betty Crocker Summer Favorites - Summer 2007

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup coarsely chopped pecans
• 2 tsp real maple syrup
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 2 tbs fresh orange juice
• 1 tbs white wine vinegar
• 1 tbs olive or vegetable oil
• 2 tsp sugar
• 4 cups torn fresh spinach leaves
• 1 cup fresh blueberries
• 2 medium oranges, peeled, cut into sections (about 1/2 cup)

Step #1: Heat oven to 350'F. Line cookie sheet with foil. In small bowl,mix pecans and maple syrup until pecans are well coated. Spread pecans on foil. Sprinkle with 1/2 tsp sugar. Bake 7 to 9 minutes, stirring ocasionally, until pecans arelightly toasted. Cool completely, about 15 minutes.

Step #2: Meanwhile, in small bowl, beat orange juice, vinegar, oil and 2 tsp sugar with wire whisk until well blended.

Step #3: In large bowl, toss spinach, blueberries and orange peices. Pour dressing over salad; toss. Sprinkle with pecans. Serve immediately.

This salad is so good! Especially if you love blueberries like I do. Well...I'll leave you with a few of my cards...I hope to catch up on blogs tomorrow...Happy Saturday!

Layers of ribbon scraps glued and stapled onto a 1 inch square of cardstock. Then I mounted the square onto a slide (originally white - I painted it brown with acrylic)
More hand cut circles out of scraps of paper. Stamped the little coffee cup. One of my favorite and oldest stamps! I colored it with pencil and added some stickles for the "steam."
Again...ribbon scraps glued onto a 1 inch square of cardstock. Stuck to blue and cream this time. Added the K & Co. "baby" sticker. So easy to make!
Circles again! I had made my boss a birthday card like this a few months ago. I had the same layout but just added a monogram letter to one of the circles and loved how it turned out. So I used the same layout and stamped "hi there" added a few rhinestones and that was it!

Thanks for looking again!