April SNOW brings May flowers??

On Monday we went on a walk after dinner wearing shorts and t-shirts.  Tuesday morning I pulled my winter coat back out of the closet and scraped my windshield before heading home from school that afternoon.  Wednesday??  The power went out about 4:30 am and I received a call at 6:30 am saying school was cancelled due to inclement weather and no electricity in the building.  But don't worry, it's supposed to be 65 again by Saturday.  :)

Snow (ice?!) days are the perfect opportunity to curl up with a good book, do some crafting, and bake something warm and delicious.  This morning I finished the second book in The Hunger Games series.  Let me just say that the ending was completely not what I expected, but I LOVED it!  I cannot wait to start the third and see if the Districts can overthrow the Capitol.  Maybe this afternoon?

One of my favorite cold weather recipes is a Chicken and Wild Rice soup recipe I found on AllRecipes.com.

  

Chicken and Wild Rice Soup Ingredients 1/3  cup wild rice 1 tablespoon vegetable oil 4 cups water 1 onion, chopped 1 stalk celery, finely chopped 1-2 carrots, finally chopped ¼ cup margarine ½ cup all-purpose flour 3 chicken broth 2 cups half-and-half cream ½ teaspoon dried rosemary ½ teaspoon thyme ½ teaspoon parsley ½ teaspoon pepper ½ teaspoon salt 2 cups chicken, cooked and chopped Directions  1. Rinse rice; drain. In a medium saucepan, combine rice, oil, and water; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes. 2. Meanwhile, in a large pot, cook onion, celery, and carrots in butter until vegetables are almost tender. Blend in flour, cook and stir for 2 minutes. Add broth and undrained rice, bring to a boil. Cook and stir until slightly thickened.    3. Stir in cream, rosemary, thyme, parsley, pepper and salt. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, about 20 minutes or until rice is tender. Add chicken and heat until warm.

I made a few changes that I included in the recipe about.  You can find the original here.

My Valentine

Even though it's March already I thought maybe it was time I introduced you to my other half.  We were eating supper on Thursday night (last night in February) and he says, "So, I don't think I ever asked you.  But, will you be my Valentine?"  Eh, why not? :)  We did celebrate on the actual day and he gave me a beautiful bouquet of flowers.  I love them!  And they're still looking good two weeks later.

We've been married for just over two and a half years and he always goes out of his way to make me feel special on days like Valentine's Day.  I'm so proud of him for being confident enough to listen as God called us out of the city we had been living in for two years and led us in this new direction.  I can't believe this July we'll be married three years and finally moving into our own home.  I can't wait!

Pinterest Challenge...Jute Wrapped Vase

It's simple...I love Pinterest. I waste way too much time looking at all the great ideas people pin.  But, Pinterest is great for ideas so I suppose my "wasted" time is worth it right?!  One thing I pinned not too long ago was this glass vase wrapped with jute.

chemistrycat0.blogspot.com

I like the texture of jute and lately have been wanting to wrap it on everything from Styrofoam balls to flower vases.  I started with a plain vase that I had received flowers in at one point or another.  I have quite the collection under the kitchen sink so was happy to find a new life for one of them.

Wrapping the jute was pretty simple.  I just started at the bottom of the vase and began wrapping  using hot glue to hold the jute in place.  For me it helped to set the vase upside down and press the layers up into each other.  Here's what it looked like about halfway through.

Originally I thought I wanted to wrap the whole vase but I really liked how it looked with a few inches of the top of the vase showing.  When I was happy with the amount of jute I called it done!  And here's what it looked like with some flowers from Hobby Lobby a few years back.

Even though it's a few days late I decided to link up with the Pinterest Challenge.  If you've never heard of it, you're missing out!  You can read more about it at Young House Love.  Have a good weekend!  I'm hoping the snow melts here soon :)

Better late than never

 I love decorating for each new season and holiday.  So, when the Christmas season ended I knew I needed to find a Valentine's heart to take the place of my the manger scene.  I had a blank square canvas left over from another project as well as some pearl beads.  I decided I wanted to create a heart out of the beads on a striped background.  Here are my supplies:

I started by painting the background of my canvas grey.  It took two coats to get a nice solid color.  Then, I taped off the stripes and painted the leftover space red.  I mixed a bit of grey into the red so that it wouldn't be so bright.  I wanted a darker, older looking red and only painted one coat so that the brush strokes and grey background showed through just a bit.  After the paint was all dry I cut the heart shape out of paper and lightly traced it onto the canvas.  I didn't want to free-hand my heart directly onto the canvas because they always seem to come out lop-sided!  Then, I just started hot gluing the pearl beads into the heart outline, trying to keep the three sizes of beads intermixed.  And, here's another picture of the final product.

I love the pearly heart on top of the stripes.  Too bad February is almost over!  On to finding an Easter or spring decoration to take its place.  I'll let you know what I come up with.

So it begins...

Blogging has been on the back of my mind for some time as I love reading through some of the great blogs out there.  The problem...what would I write about?  And...who really wants to read about anything that I have to share?  But, I find myself in the middle of projects here and there, trying the occasional new recipe, and trying to figure out life in the country.  Maybe I have a few things to write about after all.  So, thanks for stopping by.  We'll see which direction this journey takes!

http://www.tysto.com/articles06/q3/country.shtml