Productive Sunday

I have accomplished so much today!

I had dinner and dessert made before 11:00 a.m.

Yellow split pea soup, deviled eggs and pineapple upside down cake.   I am amazed that so many people I come across in my real life have never heard of yellow split pea soup.  Almost everyone knows of the green pea soup, but not so many of the yellow.  I made it early so it had time for the flavors to meld...it's like Chili--tastes best the second day.

 I am not posting the recipe because I just throw things in, but if you Google it, you will find that the majority of the recipes are quite similar............and very close to the way I made mine.

It is such a healthy and delicious soup! I used two of the pork ribs I made for Saturday's dinner.  Just before I put the BBQ sauce on them, I removed a couple to use for today's soup.  Most people just use ham, but I like to be a tad different! :)

I spent a couple of hours early this afternoon wrapped in a quilt while watching a Lifetime movie and browsing through 3 old magazines.  From three magazines, I ripped out just three pages that had something I thought I might one day want to try--a patriotic cheesecake, a Margarita and a S'Mores oven recipe.

I threw the rest of the mags in the garbage.

I also did quite a  bit of cleaning.  As I sat in the Lazy-Boy watching the movie, I noticed a lot of dust on the family room entertainment center (I almost never sit in the family room -- I probably should spend a bit more time there).  As soon as the movie was over, I got up and removed everything from the shelves so I could wash them all down with soapy water.  As I was removing items I found some  black wooden artsy things that I was looking for last weekend. I thought they were in the basement. 

Last weekend I wanted to  swap them out for the two chickens from above the dining room  hutch.  Chickens  just did not go with the current zebra theme.  So I put the chickens on the entertainment center--I put a sachet (that I won a few years ago (3?) from a blog giveaway from Jean) around the hen's neck.  Jean, after all these years,  this sachet still smells good if I walk by and rub it between my fingers!

The black things were put above the dining room cabinet.  I think they go much better with the zebras, don't you?

I have spent the whole weekend home in my jammies--I wore a different pair today than I did yesterday! LOL.  It's been wonderful.

I hope your weekend has been equally as wonderful!

People Actually Pay For This?

Early this morning, I was checking out the home section of CC and look what I came across!

Don't they look remarkably like the ones I just made? Geez, who would pay those prices--$49.95 for one candle! No wonder they are in the outlet! I do have smaller pieces of bark on mine, but they only cost me a few minutes of time and a couple squirts of hot glue. Those of you who commented about all of the money I saved, were right! I had no idea how much money I saved. LOL.

When I got home from work today, I set a tiny little Christmas table for two right in front of my tree. Note the candle with the birch bark that I made.......OK, I admit my bark is pretty tiny compared to theirs, but the overall theme is the same and it did not cost me $39.95 for this sized candle.


Sunday afternoon I quickly made up this pine tree trivet (a pad to set hot items on) for my SIL, who is hosting a Christmas morning brunch.  I am planning to make a recipe Patti, from Osage Bluff,sent me for a blueberry french toast casserole as well as some Napoleon cookie bars.

 This pad is the perfect size to set a 9 x 13-inch dish on.  Usually when you are having a buffet with hot items, you have to toss at least 4 tiny potholders down under the hot dishes. These are so much easier to use.  I think she will like it.  I gave her one a couple of years ago, but she won't use it because she says it's too pretty. This time I am just going to take this and put it under my dish (if a few blueberries stain it, that's OK). I will tell her it's hers to keep and PLEASE use it, abuse it, and when it's all worn, throw it away!  I make these for people to use!

Tomorrow night I am going out to dinner (Chinese restaurant) with my two sisters. We are all planning the Christmas Eve party. Some of you know that I have been doing it for the past three years, but this year I  did not feel like doing it, so Sister T is hosting it this year with the help of Sister D. Sister T has decided to serve a full dinner --prime rib--everyone brings a dish. I have been assigned dessert. It will be fun and different from the heavy appetizers we usually do.  I know that I will thoroughly enjoy being a guest and not having to do all the work!

I hope all of your Christmas plans are coming along as nicely as mine.

Still Living in a Mess

Since we were gone for the past two weekends, we didn't get much inside painting done. It still looks like this:

Everything is very white because the new drywalled walls have all been primed with Kilz.

Yesterday I bought 2 gallons of the green paint, Recycled Glass, that I showed on the previous post.  Can you believe that I have not even looked in the can to see what the color really looks like?  I don't want to look because I am afraid it will scare me! I have told myself that no  matter how scary it looks in the beginning, I will follow through because it will look very different once I get furniture in the room. 

We are planning to spend the whole weekend working in the house, so it should all be done by Sunday night. I hope so because I want to do some Halloween decorating.  I made my "Boo" banner and these little wooden circles that I plan to glue to twine and drape over something--no idea what yet.

Doesn't this chocolate/caramel dessert look divine?  It is the only picture I took last weekend when we went to the Bruce Springsteen tribute.  It was very good--a rich melt-in-your-mouth dessert.

We had a frost this week which killed a lot of my plants, like the Creeping Jenny in this  milk can. 
On the inside of this arbor I had some Colchium that looked terrible this year. So I removed it and planted the Manhattan lilies that I bought last week. This should look very pretty next July with the huge pink 'Manhattan' blooms.


All the deck plants got hit hard. What a mess!

This is the area I showed you on the last post that was still looking good...NOT anymore!

I am hoping to get everything cut down over the weekend and put away for the winter.

I have been doing a bit (O.K. a LOT) of online clothes ordering this week.  Here are a few of the items I am waiting for:

Those round things are bracelets.  As you can see, I am still into the bright colors!

I hope you are all having a good week. Even though I have not been posting, I have been visiting a lot of you during the early morning hours.  Once I get all the work done around here, I will be back to regular posting.

Great Balls of Fire!

We just returned from a weekend get-a-way. On Saturday night we went to a Tribute to Jerry Lee Lewis concert. Click this video for 38 seconds of pure energy!
Wow! Could you get your leg up there on that piano? LOL. I don't think I could.

Does anyone remember this pioneer of the rock & roll culture? He was a bit before my time, so I did not really know much about him. My husband knew of him and told me that "Great Balls of Fire", was his biggest hit in the late 50's--a time when I was barely out of diapers. I knew most of the songs though.

We met a couple of our Canadian friends there and enjoyed a tasty roast beef dinner, a glass or two of wine, and even danced to an Elvis love song - Can't Help Falling in Love.

The only food pic I took was the dessert--some sort of lemon trifle--very light and good, although I was shocked that they had no garnish on this plate. A squiggle of colored sugar syrup and a sprig of mint would have made all the difference in the presentation. In spite of the naked plate, I still had a great Mother's Day weekend. I hope you did, too.

Spring is Here, so I Thought I Could Wear My Big Bold Hair Flower

What do you think?

Is it too bold?

I must say I like it, but sometimes I wonder if I am the only person in the world who does! :)

I am at that stage of life, where I no longer worry (much) about what everyone else thinks. Although, I must admit, it would please me to no end to know that the rest of the world is not laughing hysterically at my latest hairdo.

This is what we had for dessert last night:

It was delicious!

I have not baked in quite some time. But really why should I bother when what I buy tastes better?

I think the last thing I baked was blueberry muffins, which I thought were terrible. I tried some Internet recipe which had a lot of brown sugar in it. I remember thinking that the brown sugar would make the muffins heavy............it did and I didn't like them at all.

This little cake is tasty and just the right size for two people. I may give up baking.

Welcome 2010

I am happy to report that I did stay awake until the new year came in.

I didn't get very many pictures because it was dark and it's kind of embarrassing when the flash goes off and everyone looks in my direction. :) I assured everyone at my table that I was not getting their faces, just table and hands toasting shots. So you won't see many people, even though there were about 300 attendees.

Isn't this the cutest robot? He was going up and down the corridor as we were all waiting to get into the banquet hall for the NYE party. He would stop and talk and make funny little jokes. I thought it was quite a unique way to keep people waiting in line entertained.

This was our dinner table -- nothing too special about it--just your typical banquet table.

I thought this was a little interesting -- one chocolate confection atop an upside down water glass with a silver bow.
Dinner was steak & chicken Parmesan, garlic redskin potatoes and creamed asparagus.
Dessert was banana split cheesecake.


We enjoyed the band. They were very young, but they played a lot of music from the 70's/80's --DH and I even danced a little after dinner - something we haven't done in a while. I snapped this pic as were we walking in to the room. The band had not yet started.
See all those balloons on the ceiling?

You should have seen the mess when they all dropped at the stroke of midnight and everybody spent the next 15 minutes stomping on them until each one was popped.
I am glad I did not have to clean it up!

I did not end up drinking any Cosmos, but I did enjoy the bubbly...I only had two of these tiny little glasses, so I certainly did not over indulge. It was a good thing I drank so little because I would have hated to miss this sunrise outside my window at 8:15 a.m. on New Year's Day.
What a way to welcome 2010!

If I Was Having a Halloween Party

this would make a wonderful dessert:


When you slice the cake each piece looks like a giant piece of candy corn!

It even uses that checkerboard cake pan I bought and have never used!

The recipe is from the Wilton site.

You just use any white cake mix you like.

Decorating instructions:
Place Divider Ring in one 9 x 2 in. pan from set. Tint 1 cup of white batter orange and 1 1/3 cup yellow; reserve 1/3 cup white.

Fill inside small center ring with white batter, inside medium ring with orange batter and inside large outer ring with yellow batter.

Carefully remove Divider Ring before baking. Bake and cool 1-layer cake.

Divide cake top: mark 2 inner circles, one 1 in. and one 2 1/2 in. from edge of cake.

Cover sides and top to 1 in. mark with yellow tip 16 stars, cover area to 2 1/2 in. mark with orange tip 16 stars, fill in center with white tip 16 stars.

Attach icing decorations to cake sides. Position candies around cake.



Have you ever seen anything cuter than these strawberry ghosts for appetizers? They are from Taste of Home.
They look pretty easy to make, too.
Strawberry Ghosts

30 fresh strawberries
8 ounces white baking chocolate, chopped
1 teaspoon shortening
1/8 teaspoon almond extract
1/4 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips
Wash strawberries and gently pat with paper towels until completely dry. In a microwave-safe bowl, melt white chocolate and shortening at 50% power; stir until smooth. Stir in extract.
Dip strawberries in chocolate mixture; place on a waxed paper-lined baking sheet, allowing excess chocolate to form the ghosts' tails. Immediately press chocolate chips into coating for eyes. Freeze for 5 minutes.
In a microwave-safe bowl, melt remaining chocolate chips; stir until smooth. Dip a toothpick into melted chocolate and draw a mouth on each face. Yield: 2-1/2 dozen.

Hodgepodge Day

Who wouldn't want to eat more pork when it's this delicious?
DH bought an assortment of colorful peppers last week. We had them for three days in our salads and I still had a bunch left. So today I decided to toss them into my pork chops in tomato sauce. Don't you love all that color?

Thursday night after work and after dinner, I baked some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. It must be the colder weather because I almost never bake anything on a week night.

We had a cookie and a cup of hot tea for dessert tonight.

Tomorrow we plan to put all the outdoor stuff away. It's been cleaned and sitting out to dry for a couple of days. I counted all the containers full of dormant plants that we have to store for the winter. There are 30 of them. We have had a lot of rain so I am leaving the containers out in hopes that they will dry out a bit. I don't want them to rot while under the house.


I've also been sewing a bit today on a new table runner

and I spent a couple of hours reading a new book.

It's been a good day.

What a Picturesque Location for a Post Office & A Healthy Dessert

I just happened to have my camera in the car when I went to the post office--a plain Jane unadorned old building that I've been to hundreds of times. This time I took a few moments to appreciate the beauty of its location. In fact, I got right out of the car and walked up to and on that bridge to take pictures.
It seems like such a waste to use property with a view like this for a post office that has no windows facing this side. A much better use would be a big house with lots of windows that I could live in! :)

What made me turn into the post office in the first place was the view on the backside. Any idea what this is?
If you live in a cold-weather state, you probably recognize this huge pile of road salt. It reminded me to enjoy the beautiful weather today, because it won't be long before this salt is dumped by truckloads on to the cold, icy roads of my county.

I made the most delicious healthy dessert (now there's an oxymoron) and it was way too easy.

I put a good-sized spoonful of brown sugar and a splash of diet 7-up in a ramekin then added a red Anjous pear (artfully striped). Not only does the removal of a few strips of skin look pretty, but it gives a place for the spoon tip to cut easily through when you are enjoying this seasonal delicacy.
I baked them at 350 for about 1.5 hours.

The liquid caramelized and---oh, boy, it was good!

Now that I am remembering the experience, I want more. I will have to ask DH to buy some more on his grocery shopping trip later this morning.

Banana Bread in a Canape Pan

Remember that post I did recently about kitchen gadgets I couldn't live without? These gadgets. I said I was going to use at least one of them in September. Last night (even though it was still August) I decided to use one of the canape bread pans to make banana bread.

I pulled 4 bananas from the freezer.

Don't worry about their looks. This is truly a case where beauty is only skin deep. They are fine inside. Because they are still frozen, I use rubber gloves and a small paring knife to peel them.

I popped them in the microwave after they were peeled so they would thaw. Then I went about making my banana bread. I read that the batter must be thick for these pans, so I was happy to see that mine was. I sprayed the pan liberally with nonstick cooking spray. I had to guess at how full the pan should be. .. about 3/4 was my guess.
I put the round caps on each end. On the bottom end I did put some foil, just in case it leaked. Then I put the pan on another pan (again to catch any possible leaks). Oh, in case it flopped, I made the second loaf in a regular bread pan.
I was not sure how long to cook it in the cylinder pan. I decide to check it at 35 minutes.

I am afraid of what I might see, so I slowly lift the top (wondering if it might explode) since both ends are capped and there is no hole for air to escape.


I am just thrilled! It has risen to the top (so my 3/4 guess was right on) and it's nicely browned at the edges.
But just to make sure it's done, I checked it twice with a metal skewer...It seems perfect. I could hardly wait to take it out of the pan and slice it into those pretty little scalloped rounds. I am mentally planning some type of stacked banana dessert on top of my orange flower plates.

I turned it over and was so excited to see it slowly slither out with no sticking. My gosh, this is all working so beautifully! I wonder why have I waited 10 years to use these pans.

And then it happens............about half way out of the pan.....

.........PLOP! PLOP! PLOP!

A big bunch of goo oozes out

I could have cried. The entire center is still raw batter. I stare a moment thinking I should have known it was too good to be true. Nothing I have baked in the past three months has turned out. Then I scooped it back into the pan and stuck it back in the oven for another half an hour.

When I finally took it out and let it cool, it looked like this. The center still was not cooked. I just cut a few rounds from each end and threw the rest in the garbage.

It's a good thing I made one in the regular loaf pan. At least I have something to show for my efforts.

I may try these pans once more. Maybe they should be lying down when I put them in the oven and not standing on end. If anyone out there knows anything about them, please let me in on the secret!