Quick Post

Hola all.. just thought I'd share a couple of memo pad creations I've been experimenting with the last couple of days.  

Hope that you all have a wonderful weekend!

PS - I would appreciate prayers - I've been having a lot of trouble with my left knee and I have to go to an orthopedic surgeon to see whether I need surgery or if it is just the beginning stages of arthritis.

Food experiments

Well, last night I thought I'd experiment a little with dinner... half came out well.. half, I did NOT like. I made some indian spiced turkey meatballs from a recipe I found and mashed cauliflower.

The Indian spices in the turkey meatballs just turned my tummy.... yuck... so I didn't eat them, but hubby ate his... said they were not horrible but def not his favorite.... so note.... turkey + Indian spices (mainly Cumin) do not match!

However, my mashed cauliflower tasted really good. Hubby really liked it and so did I. I miss mashed potatoes so much, they are a favorite of mine, but I can't eat them hardly at all, so I thought I'd see how mashed cauliflower tasted.

Mashed Cauliflower Recipe (Sorry - I cook like my mom, no exact measurements - I just pour in what looks right and tweak for taste, but I'll try to give you close measurements ;) )

Ingredients:
1 head of cauliflower
1/2 cup of heavy cream
1 cup sour cream
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic power
salt and pepper to taste
chicken broth/chicken boullion
shredded cheddar cheese

Directions:
1. Boil a head of cauliflower (like you would potatoes) in some chicken broth. (Note - I didn't have chicken broth, just boullion on hand so I put in a dollop of chicken boullion into my water and let it boil away until tender (about 10 -15 minutes)
2. After tender, I drained and poured in all of my ingredients (except the cheddar cheese) and got out the mixer and mixed away on lowest setting (side note - make sure you use a bowl with HIGH walls - I did not - I just put back in the pot and when I turned on the mixer it sprayed all over me and on the counter :) )
3. put back on stove and slowly melt shredded cheddar cheese into mashed caulflower (I probably put about a cup in, but it all depends on how cheesy you want the cauliflower to be.)

-- Mashed cauliflower is a little more fiberous than mashed potatoes, but as long as you get the cauliflower tender when you let them boil on the stove you don't really notice it - and that's from someone who is WAY OCD about food textures.

Some Christmas Cards...

Hi All... Long time no talkie.... Sorry... we've had a lot going on lately, and I just haven't had the opportunity to upload any pictures! Well, this week I took some pictures of my Christmas cards. I streamlined the process a little bit, and kept the formatting similar for groups of 5.

I used a few digital images, and I will post the source later this evening when I get home!

Supplies:
Paper: Target Dollar Aisle, a friend
Digital Images: Sources to come
Embellishments: Ribbon from a friend, gems from acMoore

Enjoy. :)

And just as a reminder, these are a few cards I made at the very beginnning of the year... I still have a ways to go, but it is kinda fun to see the improvement in my card style!

Card Drives

Morning all... Just wondering if anyone in blogland has seen any card drives for the Thanksgiving/Christmas season? I did one for a few Nursing homes last year and wanted to send more out this year...

Labor Day Weekend

Well, hubby and I actually got a lot accomplished... even if I don't have any pictures to show for it. I shall try to take some pictures of it (probably this weekend, because we're having company and everything will be spik and span ;) )


We got a couple of shelves we had mounted next to my crafting desk. The shelves are holding my flowers and buttons right now. We also got a few pictures hung up. AND we no longer have any boxes left ;) (Okay, so I may have removed everything from one box and just transferred the items to an empty tote, and then disguised the tote as a bench...but still.... the boxes are GONE!!!!!) I was also able to get the spare room cleaned up and the futon made up as a bed. We still have a few pictures to hang up in the room, but overall - made quite a bit of progress in getting the last major disaster of our new apartment taken care of ;)  


The biggest item on our to get list (for the apartment anyway) is a filing cabinet for the office (so that we can take take all of the office supplies/files out of the filing box and laundry basket we are currently storing them in .... and also move the storage cube that is currently holding the printer back into the living room)....and we'll probably need another bookshelf of some sort - we have a LOT of books and we repurposed one of our three bookshelves into our closet to hold the hubby's winter clothes (our closet is SOOOOOO much bigger in this apartment, but it didn't have any shelving, so we needed somewhere to put his sweaters).... 


Annnnyway, we got the guest bathroom all finished up (YAY!) Hubby said he hadn't realized that the current shower curtain we had didn't match, but said I could grab a new one and I scored one on clearance at K-Mart! (The bathroom has a palm tree theme, old shower curtain while having similar colors was floral. Our bathrooms are set up opposite of our previous apartment. The guest bathroom is now the bathroom with the bathtub, while in our previous apartment the master bathroom had the bathtub.) 


I also re-purposed some old frames, and put scrapbook paper in the frames to match the living room and hung (or rather hubby hung) the pictures on either side of the mirror in the living room to balance the wall out a bit (the mirror wasn't quite big enough to stand alone on the wall.)


I was even able to squeeze in a little crafting time and whipped up a couple of cards. (I plan to take pictures of those tonight. :)  )


We also picked up a couple of racks to organize our kitchen cabinets better, I have a little more re-arranging to do as we're getting settled and the original set up doesn't quite work as well as it could, but for the most part the kitchen is done.  The only thing I didn't get done that I had wanted to was to finish laying down shelving paper in our linen closet (the paint is flat and every time you pull something out it leaves a scratch.) I finished one shelf last weekend and will probably just do one shelf an evening this week and finish it up. 


And that is our Labor Day weekend.... How did you all spend your weekend?