Easter Wishes

Hello friends. I am packing the car to head down to City House for the Easter weekend and couldn't leave without wishing you all a most blessed Easter.

Sunday we will be attending services at our Vancouver church in celebration of our Risen Lord and Savior.  After our hearts are filled we will be having an afternoon meal and the other happy events of the day.

I will be attempting to make hot cross buns and it will be my first time...sad but true.  There was a question in my mind as to what recipe to use as there are so many.  Lo and behold, Lindsay from the lovely blog Wooden Nest, shared a recipe this morning leaving me to ponder no more.  I will share how they turn out.

I do hope you all have a blessed Easter weekend and look forward to perhaps hearing some highlights.

Much love to you all.

Saving The Studio

Happy Friday, and the end of another week, this one seemed to fly by faster than usual. I know, for many of you, it has been a wild and weird weather week, hopefully the weekend will bring sunnier days for us all.

I will start this post off with a warning.  For those of you who are super organized and have been so most of your life, perhaps even from birth, you may want to avoid this first photo...it may be too much of a shock to your well ordered self.  You have now been warned.

This is the Studio/Junk room...I know what you are thinking...How does a room get this bad?  Well, to be honest, this photo was just taken today and I have actually been working on the room for some time.  I can only say in my defense, that it is not easy to keep all of the things that you think you 'need', in a 750 square ft. home. (Approx.) And for some reason, the mess seems to get worse the more I work on it.

Progress is being made and I am discovering things I forgot all about, like this bin of vintage patterns that I would like to put in my Etsy shop.

And this wild Asianish (is that a word?) fabric that I fell in love with and thought would make a great apron.

Speaking of  aprons, I completely forgot about this book along with other sewing and craft books that were in a corner ready for those bookshelves yet to be purchased.

Oh, another interesting thing happens when you live in a small home with minimal kitchen storage.  Sometimes, small appliances live in other rooms, like displaced relatives staying for 'just a short time'.

So my friends, now you know my messy little secret.  I figure, if I show you the room, then I will have to keep up with the digging out and finally make it be the studio...my studio, that I have been dreaming about.  It will be that much easier to accomplish when I know you are all cheering me on.

With that said, I will now wish you all a fun and sunny, first weekend of Spring.

xo

Happy Spring

Happy Spring to you, my friends! I know many of us have weather that look and feel more like winter right

now, but calendar says the new season has arrived and we must have faith that it will soon prove to be true.

I was able to find a bit of sunny color yesterday amongst the old windows and screen door at the back of the

garage.

Today, I am trying to keep those daffies in mind as the dark clouds grow and the wind whips around the

Little House.  Possible snow showers and high wind are in the forecast, a perfect day to curl up on the couch

with a cup of coffee and the Spring issue of FOLK magazine.  I am new to this magazine and have never

seen it in person before.  I started following FOLK on twitter and kept seeing many around the blog land

raving about it...So, that was it, I had to see for myself what all of the buzz was about and it arrived today.


If you are interested here is a link to look into it.


Are you familiar with FOLK magazine, do you have a subscription?


Off I go now to dig into it an have my coffee (cold by now I'm sure).

Have a great day!  xo

Bye Bye Google Reader !!

Hello my friends.  This is an impromptu post so there will be no organization to it...not that there is a lot of organization to my posts normally....Anyway, I have seen around the old blog land today a bit of angst from the announcement that the Google Reader will be gone July.  I know that many use that to keep up with the blogs they follow.  I use Blogger Dashboard, probably because I don't know any better.  Who knows how long that will be around.

I don't know how to help you out on this but I know someone who has already done a great job of researching this for you all.

Sandra, at 'Diary of a Stay at Home Mom' has a complete list of help and is happy to share it all.  Here is the wealth of info that should help you all out.

Have a good evening, my friends.  xo

Wilma's Advice

This morning, as I was giving the chickens their morning treat, I mentioned to them about losing an hours

sleep when we changed the clock this weekend.

Wilma looked at me and said "We didn't notice anything different..we got up when the sun came up and

went to bed as it went down, so you see, we didn't lose anything."

I will be pondering the wisdom of Wilma today.


Happy day to you all!  xo

Reminder

A little reminder, before you go to bed tonight....

Don't forget to...Spring Forward.

Sweet dreams!  xo

Eternal Bouquet

Many moons ago, I read about woman who bought herself a mixed bouquet of flowers at the market. That in

itself is not so unusual, but at the time of the article, it had lasted years and the beautiful blooms continued

to give her as much joy as the first day of purchase. How is this, you ask? Well, it seems, at the end of the

week some of the flowers still looked pretty while the others were ready for the compost pile...it seemed a

shame to throw them all out so she sorted them, gave the nice ones a good stem trim and fresh water and

off she went to do her weekly shopping.

While at the market she saw a small bunch of carnations that would be just right to fill in for the ones that

she just removed, so in the basket they went.  Next week she sorted out the spent blooms again, went

shopping and came home with a small bundle of tulips and next week the same.....and so the Eternal

Bouquet was born.



Above, are the flowers that my Mr. brought me a week ago and as you can see, some are done but others

are still pretty.  So, I was reminded of the story I just shared and decided that I might try my hand at the 'E'

bouquet.  I will let you know how it goes.


Have you heard of this or perhaps you do this yourself?


Have a happy weekend my friends....Don't forget the clock...Spring Forward!  xo

Menu Plan? and Cookbook Winner

I don't know about you but I fly by the seat of my pants about what to have for dinner, more times than I

care to admit. With it just being the Mister and myself, I have gotten into that bad habit.

There are so many bloggers out there that sit down every week and faithfully get there menus put together

and actually know well in advance what will be on the table every evening.

Daughter Kami is one of those super organized gals and many days has something cooking in the crockpot

first thing in the morning.

Perhaps I will make a better effort to use some of my vast resourses and save some money at the market at

the same time by planning ahead.

My question:  Do you do menu planning and if you do, how often?  Please share.

*

Now for the winner of the Pie Ography book....It is 'Shine'  who has the lovely blog, 'Shine's Thyme'.

Congratulations Shine, please email me your info and I will get it ordered right away!

*

Have a lovely day my friends!  xo

Good Report

Good day my friends, I hope you had an enjoyable weekend. Mine was great, I got to spend time with the

children and grandkids which sometimes doesn't happen.

Friday, I had my first follow up check with both of my Doctors and the report was excellent. They both

announced "Fantastic performance", which I translated in to "the tumor went away and no sign of it". I don't

go back for 3 months..yeah!

This morning is the drive back north to the Little House. Please remember that

today is the last day to enter for the cookbook giveaway. The link is on the sidebar and you just need to

leave a quick comment to enter. The winner will be announced tomorrow.


Have a lovely day, my friends! xo

PIE OGRAPHY - Giveaway

Happy Friday my friends, I hope you have had a most marvelous week!

As you can see we are having a giveaway and one I'm very excited about too!

I'm sure most of you have seen or even purchased the beautiful magazines titled "Where Women Cook" by Jo Packham.  Well now, Jo had the brilliant idea to do a book on pies and approached Anne Marie of Na Da Farm Life blog, to do  the honors of putting it together with the talented photographer, Traci Thorson.  I will let you go over to Anne Marie's blog to read all about how  this special book came together here.

Anne Marie is also hosting a fun event...pie ography Thursday, where we are all invited to share our pies too.  Yesterday was the first day for that, you can check that out here.


I can't wait to get my copy of this sweet book...this will be a great way for me to 'finally' learn how to make a good pie.

Here's how you can have a chance to win a copy.  Just leave a comment about your favorite pie, or a special pie that someone has made in the past or perhaps, even one you would like to make sometime.

The winner will be announced on Wednesday. March 6th.

Have a very special weekend, my friends.    xo