Maxam Made

It is WOYWW #191 already!  The weekly world Wide Desk hop, hosted by Julia here at : http://stamping-ground.blogspot.com/   I checked her blog and oh the wonderful sunshine and green there in Beautiful Oz!! My work desk work was inspired by this lovely little Valentine I made at a shoe box swap several weeks ago   Isn't this cute! When I first made this I thought well this is a nice card but who will I give it too?     So I thought I would  give it to one of the girls at church, well then I thought I'd like to make them all one, we have a about 15 little  and medium girls, they would all love a valentine! This the a2 size and was a lot of fun  making this clean and simple card!   Then I thought about all of the wonderful women in my life and how wonderful and rich they have made my life, I need to make them a valentine too!  So now I have two batches of valentines going, I'll have somewhere around 60 to send out. Of course my sweet husband's valentine will be the best !

Cold and snowy and sleety today, nothing unusual for New England.  A great day to stay home, I didn't even take Luke for a walk.  The view from the kitchen sink window! Makes washing the dishes so pleasant.  Yes It is true I still was my dishes by hand , why not, I can do it faster and certainly cheaper than using a dishwasher.  I'm an expert, 34 years of no dishwasher, why get one now, after the kids have grown and almost all of them out of the house?   It was definitely a soup kind of day, and with Steve home, I love to make a pot in the am so that we can eat it all day. This was the soup at 11 am     Then again at 6pm.     and somewhere in the middle.     this was very easy!  I/2 pot of stock, add 1  large chopped onion, 1cup of barley and cook on a simmer for an hour, next add 3thinly sliced chicken breasts ( I do this while they are partially frozen - very easy and no messyness).  Add 2 thinly sliced carrots, 1 cup cooked black beans, 1 large can of diced tomatoes and 1/2

"Breaking fast" somehow sounds so much more epic than "Breakfast" But how ever you want to say it we have all heard how important it is to eat in the morning.  Now there is rarely a time in the day I don't want to eat, but what I don't feel like doing when I start my day is cooking and cleaning pans.  eggs sometimes make me feel a Little sick and toast, well there is nothing very healthful about that and not to terribly appealing to me.  My usual breakfast is a very healthy protein smoothie that Steve make before he leaves at 6am for work. Soy protein powder, and big handful of raw spinach,  a banana, strawberries and blue berries - we picked 40 pounds of blueberries locally last summer and I froze them for the rest of the year. I am hoping they last till June. This year I will pick at least 52lbs so that I can make sure we have a Pound a week. at 2.00 a pound, it is a very healthy choice.  That is choice number one. Number two choice is Oats.  I make a

It is WOYWW# 190!!  go here http://stamping-ground.blogspot.com/  To join Julia Dunnit's world wide desk hop for creative work desk weds. fun!! It is cold here today and windy, Frrrrr ezzzing cold and WINDY.  And yet This guy still thinks he needs to go out side and get exercise, he told me so while I was sitting at my desk in my nice warm stamp room with my mini furnace keeping my feet warm.      The animals around here think I am their pet, Luke  gets in my way enough that I can't do anything except what he wants.  We go through this every day around 11 am, it is the Luke hour.                Tink just gets in the way because he thinks it is funny.   When I got Luke out for his walk, it was so cold the ducks were trying to swim south, before the icebergs hit them I think they may have actually been frozen and they were floating with the currant, I couldn't get pictures of the ice flows they were moving too fast and my camera lens was to slow , I will let you figure the

I had a fun day today, When Steve is on drill one weekend a month, it is my normal "girlfriend time".  Sometimes it is a road trip to a craft destination, sometimes a lunch.  Today was breakfast with a good friend I hadn't spent time with in almost a year.  It was really a great breakfast, the food was good but the company was better, Nancy and I are walking down similar paths in life and it was really good to hear how she was managing and it felt good for me to talk about somethings I don't normally, the soul was fed a good meal too!  I came home made a pot of soup and went off to Jackie's house to meet up with 5 other women.  It was more of the same, we ate, talked, shared.  Nobody had to get home, or go to work in the  morning.  It was a very relaxing time and it had been about 6 months since we last did something like this.  I treasure all the friends God has brought into my life, they make it so much richer!  The laughter , shared wisdom, advice wanted and un

It's WOYWW#189 time!  The world wide blog hop that starts Here: http://stamping-ground.blogspot.com/  on Julia Dunnits terrific blog!  Grab a cuppa and join in! Today I have been busy getting ready for a swap on Saturday, the regular crew of stamping friends, this time we are getting together to swap card kits and make kits for troops.  I enjoyed making that trifold card so much earlier, I decided to make 15 kits of these for the swap and another 20 for my card stash.     For the card Kits I will bring and assortment of saying and images along with coordinating ink pads.  For my stash I will file them and then pull them as they are needed and use the appropriate sentiments/images.  With having the bases made I can personalize the cards very quickly.        This batch required a lot of cutting and scoring and folding, but I really like the results!                         I started this earlier in the day       It must have been overwhelming for my staff:   Tink just couldn't ta

Last Sunday My Friend Betty asked me to make her a set of thank you cards.   Funny thing was the only MOJO I had a the moment was This:   But Since I was asked I thought the least I could do was try so I made a set of these:   Betty has just redone her living room in these colors so I thought she would get a kick out of the cards.  She did  like them and when I gave them to her she asked me how much she owed me for them.  Well I wasn't going to take cash, Normally with my Friend Betty I will work for food, she is the best pie maker  in Massachusetts!  But since I'm trying to loose weight I had to rethink that .  I asked her for a bottle of her orange salad dressing, it is so good!  We swap home made salad dressing on a regular basis and I was having a craving for this particular one.  Now My husband thought I was being selfish, He like s the pies too!  I did get two bottles of dressing for the cards, What a deal!!   Yesterday I made a great dinner Salad, I thought I'd share