Baskets, Baskets, Baskets

Who doesn't like baskets? 

Baskets are a great way to corral some of our things.  A word of caution is in order though.  If your way of organizing is to just keep buying more baskets, it may be a sign you have too much "stuff."

Do you really, really need another basket or do you need to thin out your possessions?

If I had my way, my house would be completely full of Longaberger baskets.  I finally chose three of my Longaberger baskets that I really loved and sold the rest on ebay.  Thank goodness they tend to hold their value so I was able to pay off the bank loans required to buy them in the first place - only kidding.  But they are pricey!

The one on the right is only about 9" deep and the handles fold down. Perfect for sitting on the floor behind the front seat of the car.


The one on the left is one my hubby won in a drawing.  Longaberger had a demonstration of how they made their baskets at the Spokane museum so we actually watched the basket being made.  Fascinating!

I love the matching medallion on the small basket...

 Business like baskets...

 

Beautiful colors...

  

One of my favorites - pistachio...

 

A color for everyone...

Lids help keep out dust...

Do you have favorite baskets or just too many?

House Envy

The lesson of the gifted bird...

Do you:

1. Think your house/apartment is the ugliest ever?
2. See DIY projects by others that make you feel like a klutz?
3. Worry that you are the most disorganized person in the world?
4. Spend inordinate amounts of time rearranging your tabletops?
5. Sometimes eat off of paper plates and would die if someone found out?
6. Shop too much looking for the perfect item for somewhere in your home?
7. Become discontented with what you do have very quickly?
8. Imagine life would be way better if you only had (fill in the blank) ________?
9. Wish your house was bigger, brighter, cleaner, or a different color?

If you answered yes to more than 3 questions, you may have a raging case of "house envy."

The solution? 

 

Celebrate who you are and how you live.  Be grateful for the lovely things you have.  Remember that "things" don't bring happiness.

And most of all remember:

If only the most gifted bird sang,

the forest would be a quiet place.

Garden Catalog Time

I love this time of year when it's rainy or snowy and the garden catalogs are filling the mailbox.  I'll be ordering more seeds than usual because my hubby built me a large cold frame last fall.

I love Oriental lillies because they smell so wonderful. This one is a must-have this year! It's called Nippon.

This is one of my Stargazer lilies from last year...

I have a fairly large cutting garden and I always plant lots of gladiolus to keep vases filled in the house.

There is never a very good assortment of tomato plants at the nurseries or big box stores so I like to start my own.

Some of last years tomatoes with some fresh basil...

I love iris too...

 

  

  I'll start seeds in the house in just a few weeks and move to the cold frame in April.  I have mostly perennials.  My daylily business doesn't allow a lot of time for fussing over annuals.  The annuals I do have are mostly in pots.  Petunias are my favorite standby because they smell so good.

How many of you start seeds?

Easy Chicken Roll-Ups

The dinner party was a great success.  All that remained to do after the guests arrived was roast the vegetables and warm the bread.  The evening before I made the chicken dish, baked and stuffed the potatoes, prepped the salad stuff, and even sliced the bread and wrapped in foil.  My kitchen was spotless when the guests arrived, and I even had time for a short nap in the afternoon. 

Here's the simple version of Cordon Bleu I made.

Put foil on your counter to make clean-up easier.  Cover the chicken breasts with plastic wrap and pound them out (great way to get out some aggression!)

Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and granulated garlic. Throw on some fresh chopped parley

Add some slices of ham. I used Black Forest Ham from Costco (ooooops! - hit the publish button by accident so if you're viewing this in your reader you may have to come to the site to see the rest )

Sprinkle on some mozzarella cheese. You could also use the traditional Swiss.

 

Roll them up and secure with small metal turkey skewers.  Bamboo tends to shred the chicken and a word of warning:  if you have to use toothpicks - COUNT THEM so they can ALL be removed before serving.  Guests choking at your dinner table on a stray toothpick tends to throw a bit of a monkey wrench in your elegant evening.

Brown them in a bit of olive oil and plunk in a baking dish.  You're just going for a bit of color here - not cooking them all the way through. Don't worry if they look a little messy. We're going to cover all that up later.

While they are browning, start a basic white sauce in a sauce pan.   After browning the chicken, deglaze the pan with a bit of extra dry sherry and add that to the sauce.  The little bits of cheese that have leaked out and browned add a scrumptious taste to the sauce.  Add grated Romano or Parmesan cheese to your sauce and finish with a dollop of dry sherry.

If you are making this the day before simply cover and put in fridge. The next day bake the chicken at 375 for about 25 minutes.  Remove skewers and spoon the sherry sauce over chicken, throw on more mozzarella or grated Romano, sprinkle with paprika for a bit of color, and pop back in oven for a few minutes for the sauce to warm.  Some fresh chopped parsley on top before serving also looks lovely.  

I have lots of new vintage and antique items to put into my Etsy shop and I haven't even done my planning for the week yet.  Where does the time go??

Secret Sunday

Secret Sunday Place

Create a Secret Sunday place to sip great coffee and be with The Lord. You may want to take your Bible or just sit quietly and listen to the Lord.

 

  

 

 

  

  

 

 

Organize a Dinner Party

I'm having a small dinner party tomorrow night.  One thing I always do when planning a party is to have as many things as possible done before the guests arrive. It gives me a chance to focus on my guests and have a kitchen that doesn't look like a small explosion occurred. I will post some pictures as I prepare the various dishes.

Menu:

1. Baby Spinach Salad w/Oranges & Toasted Almonds w/ Balsamic Vinaigrette
2. My form of Chicken Cordon Bleu w/Sherry Cream Sauce. This dish has evolved over the years into a simple and elegant dish that can be prepared early. When I post the pictures I'll give directions
3. Oven Roasted Veggies including asparagus, baby carrots, cauliflower, mushrooms, onions, red, yellow, and orange peppers.
4. Twice Baked Potatoes in the shell
5. Bread basket w/  oven warmed Three-Cheese Semolina bread & Potato Rosemary bread
6. Fruit tart and assorted chocolates w/French Press coffee for dessert

I'll assemble the chicken tonight, make the Sherry sauce, clean the spinach and portion pack, peel the oranges, cut up veggies and bag, prepare the tart, and prepare the potatoes. 

Tomorrow all I will have to do assemble the salad,  pop the chicken in oven for about 25 minutes with the potatoes. When that comes out, the veggies go in for 20 - 25 minutes, warm the bread.  I usually set the table the night before but since this dinner will be later, I'll do that first thing tomorrow, including putting out all the serving pieces.

As you can see the picture is from the 1st Art Gallery. It would be nice to have a handsome footman to serve.  Sigh...  Ooooops! I do. It's my husband.

Spring Will Be Early This Year!

Custard Candy

One of my projects this year is to finish the fence line along the area we call "dog trail."  It's my meadow area and I started calling it dog trail when I cut the path through the middle.  It winds all the way around the back of our 5 acres and across the 5 acres of our pastor who lives next door to us on our west side.  It gave him a fun place to walk his dogs everyday.

The problem is the neighbors to the east (left in the photo) are complete slobs. I mean really, really bad!  The row of trees on the right borders what we call the "east lawn" of the front yard and blocks the bad view.   We named all the areas so when my husband and are discussing what needs to be done we know which area we're talking about.

For the past few years I have been planting along the far east fence line (to the left) in the hopes that you wouldn't have to see the junk from my beautiful and serene meadow.  Two years ago I planted about 25 Chinese Elms and Siberian Pea Hedge plus about 5 or six evergreens. Last year saw the addition of another 25 Chinese Elms and 25 Siberian Pea Hedges (both super fast growers.)  This year I already have another 25 Pea Hedges ordered and money saved for another 10 evergreens.

This is a small part of the east lawn with the meadow behind it...

Tomorrow I'll be placing my seed orders and will possibly start shipping daylilies a month early. A bonus for those that live in warmer climes...

And the bonus for me is I'll have most of my "spring" work done before spring even officially arrives. Whooooeeee!  With 5 acres - three in gardens - that is HUGE!!!

How many of you have started working outside in the garden??

 Don't forget to head over to The Shabby Chic Cottage for Transformation Thursday 

and...


My Romantic Home for Show and Tell Friday

A Dollar Store Display Vase

The Dollar Store just stocked these cool glass vases.  I grabbed an ordinary candle holder (the shorter one.)

A bit of clear silicone glue...

An exercise in patience.  Twenty four hours to dry...

Voila!  A really chic display vase. I have filled with ribbon.  This summer I will probably put my shells in there. Endless possibilities... 

It's large enough to make a statement

 

Different items can be used for the base. Cherubs would be nice. 

I'm going to make a few more to be filled with special things for gifts. Candy, shells for my friend who has a nautical theme in her bedroom,  embroidery thread for the sewer on your list, baby stuff for a shower.

Head over to The Shabby Chic Cottage for Transformation Thursday...

Collections,Clutter, and Poppy Plates

What do collections and clutter have to do with each other?  A lot.  We all tend to do this. If one or two shells are neat,  a hundred would be a hundred times neater.  Wrong. A hundred shells (unless you are studying the mating habits of shellfish), quickly becomes clutter.  Cleaning, rearranging, storing, and shopping for something for our collections takes precedent over just living.

Watch how easily this happens.  My mother had a beautiful hand-painted poppy plate. It is now my poppy plate. I decided I really loved poppy plates. Next thing I knew I had about fifteen hand painted poppy plates.  I spent untold hours searching for more poppy plates on ebay. Then I spent hours figuring out how to display all those plates.

One day I looked at all those plates and decided I had gone a bit crazy.  I sold all but four - the original and three of my favorites. All the rest were sold on ebay.  Why four?  Because that's the number of plates my display thingy would hold.  Someday I'll tell you about the elephant collection...

My Four Plates

I love the yellow and white poppy on this plate...

And my very favorite is still my mother's poppy plate...

It has wonderful detail...

Do you have some collections that have gotten out of control?

Linked to My Romantic Home "Show and Tell Friday"  Head over and check out all  the great entries.

More on Changing One Thing

Trying to Take My Own Advice

Since I’ve got the closet and bathroom thing all handled, it was time to change the next thing.  Except this time I’m actually working on two things at once – Picasa and LiveWriter.  Right now, Picasa has me flummoxed.  I’ve always done fairly well with my Kodak program and Picasa seems like a ton of work.  My PhotoShop program is a complete mystery that has yet to be unlocked.  LiveWriter is proving to be fun and I’ll keep working on it.

The biggest change we’ve made around here is the way we eat.  I’ve become a big fan of "Let’s Do Lunch."  It’s a simple, natural, and healthy way to eat.  Perfect for the whole family.  Saundra over at An Italian Mama Gone Crazy has started a new blog based on the Let’s Do Lunch plan. It’s called Let’s Eat! And Lose Weight.  Saundra shares recipes and hints for eating in this healthy way.  Bonus: you lose weight!!!

 

Visit the Let’s Do Lunch website to get a better idea of how it works.  I caution you to not do this without buying the book.  The book is deceptively small and at first I tried to do this without the book. Not a good idea. The book is available on Amazon. Skip the recipe cards on the website.  You can get all the recipe help you need from Saundra or the "Let's Do Lunch" forum.

The basics:

1. Eat some fruit every day
2. don't be afraid of good carbs like beans and corn
3. be very afraid of bread, pasta, rice, and potatoes
4. have fruit for breakfast
   
5. eat your main protein meal for lunch
6. dinner is fruit, a light soup, salad

Bonus: You get to eat popcorn!!!

More tomorrow...