Spring is zipping by with craft fairs, and HOA doings

Gee whiz, I can't believe how fast this spring is flying by. I've been a busy beaver with making my 'dazzlers' to boost my inventory as this is the season for craft fairs to spring up. I've done 2 more shows since the one in Feb, again with somewhat mixed results. One was a small neighborhood festival at their community center grounds. It was a great weather day and I did sell several items, however, it seemed like it was more of a walkabout for families with kids/dogs. Got to wear those kiddos out somehow. The other was at a church property - it was quite large and fun, but sales were again slow (for all of us vendors).

I have 2 more shows scheduled this month; this weekend, another neighborhood, and the 19th at the Thrasher-Horne Performing Arts Center. I'm excited for that one and hopeful that I get a good location for my booth. I figure as long as I cover my booth fees and supplies I'm ahead of the curve.

The hearts and moons are popular.

A couple of shots from the One Heart Church fair. I did meet a lot of nice vendors that have been having mixed results this spring. We just keep rolling along, we're all having fun. Once a "maker" always a "maker" - totally addicting! Also, the more I setup my booth, the easier it gets. It can still be a hot and sweaty deal though.

The little pink tent that thought it could.

Lots of professional looking setups - If I keep going
I'm going to have to up my game, lol.

I was surprised by the Boss the other day with a bouquet of beautiful tulips - just out of the blue! Sometimes I forget he has a romantic side to him. 💗 Thanks sweetie.

I may have mentioned that I volunteered to join the board of our homeowners association to handle the secretarial duties  - the normal 9 member board was down to 5 and the HOA's operational responsibilities proved to be a lot of work for so few people. If I can free up someone from having to produce agendas and board meeting minutes, they can put their time and energy towards other projects. Luckily, I find I'm enjoying it, it's stimulating the business side of my brain which has been dormant for a while, lol.

Just a final note once again thanking Publix for selling ready-made pizza dough. Such a handy shortcut, and delicious to boot.

Kitchen sink pizza at it's finest; pepperoni, Italian sausage,
bell peppers, onions, mushrooms, garlic, black olives, capers
and 2 kinds of cheese - divine. We eat 1/2 and save the rest.

Thanks for dropping by - and sorry about the long wait for this post.

The week leading up to Christmas and beyond

(This post might be a bit long because.....) Busy times all around what with picking up a few smallish gifts/treats, getting everything wrapped, decorating and figuring out how to fit in all our favorite foods throughout the days before Christmas. I do love this time of year, not only because of the spiritual aspects of the season, but also because it seems like many people are on their best behavior, using small acts of kindness to spread the good cheer around.

Let's start with a southern favorite - collards. I was in Walmart the other day and spotted a great looking double bunch of collards for a very good price and I was not to be denied! I got them cleaned up and cooked one day then let them develop their flavor overnight. The next day we had the collards with BBQ chicken quarters, half a sweet potato and cornbread. I forgot to take a picture but it was pretty & yummy. Here's a shot of the greens though.

Totally worth the effort, probably 5 meals worth
for the 2 of us to pair up with pork chops or ham.

Don't forget about the pizza, also a big time favorite and easy to throw together after a busy day.

I participated in a Christmas Brunch & Cookie Exchange on the 14th which was wonderful and rather low key with about 9 of us. Definitely less noisy and chaotic than last year with 20+. It's always a treat to spend time with ladies; neighborhood ladies, lady friends of ladies. I don't get enough of that now that I'm practically a recluse at times, lol. (Self-imposed I must add, I like my solitude quite a bit.) Anyways the Peppermint Crunch Chocolate chip & pecan cookies were a hit.

I don't do too terribly much decorating these days but I did get my mantle fixed and the tree(s) up. That was fun! We had 4 up; the micro tree I made from coat hangers last year went on the fireplace hearth, the fiber-optic mini goes in the dining room, another small tree on a table in the craft room and the 4' tree in the Florida room where all the festivities take place, and viewable by the neighbors across the lake.

Micro tree on hearth - so cute.

Mini fiber-optic tree in dining room

Craft room tree with some tiny
bobby-dazzlers for ornaments

Florida Room tree where the gifts
end up and our big meal is served.

Anyway, after that was all taken care of, I turned my attention to the treats I was taking to our neighborhood Christmas Dinner Potluck. I wanted to bring some gluten-free cookies and some regular ones, so first were the Pecan Pie mini muffins. I used 1 to 1 GF flour for these and they turned out just great. The recipe is on the Food page just below the header photo. So-o good. 

Pecan pie mini muffins. I made a 1 & a half batch and got about 50.

I also tried Peanut butter cornflake cookies with a few butterscotch chips in them - very addictive! Lastly were the Chocolate Brownie Peppermint macaroon bars, to die for - so moist with the brownie layer then a coconut, pecan and peppermint crunch macaroon layer on top. Several extra's went into the freezer for later, 😉. The Potluck was very nice. Lovely decorations, a nice turn-out and super good home-cooked food.

We have a wonderful neighbor that owns this great meeting hall
and she graciously allows us to use it at various times.

Merry Christmas! It's finally here, and what a beautiful start to the day, thanks Ed for capturing it.

Christmas morning, what a beauty. Crisp and cool too.

First things first, the gift giving, ahem, right after breakfast I mean, lol. Lots of fun stuff, cool tee-shirts from various Nat'l Pks for him, a dream interpretation book for me (what do those lost-in-the-airport dreams mean?!), a great new purse, and a slingshot for me!, a gorgeous framed pic of St. John's USVI featuring Trunk Bay for him, and some other odds/ends.

He's always been like this! Gotta love him.

My goodies.

Finally time for our Christmas dinner prep. We went with a Cornish hen again this year, as it's the right size to have for 2 special dinners, one on Christmas and one a few days later. This is our 50th Christmas together - YAY!

The hens, cut in half, with root vegetables
 to join the rest; cornbread dressing, rice and gravy.

The table got dressed, the Saraceni Blumond sparkling wine got chilled and around 2:30 dinner was served. So thankful to our Father for all our many Blessings.

We were going to get into the fruitcake that's been mellowing for a few weeks with our hot tea later, but were too full to partake. Dinner was MM-MM-good.

And as if that wasn't enough, I got my first video call (through FB messenger) from my gorgeous niece and nephew & his family from California. So wonderful to actually see everyone. It's been 20 yrs (I think) since we last met up in person, but we made some plans for a Colorado visit next summer. I sure hope it comes to fruition in some way, shape or form!! ❣️

Counter clockwise, beautiful Nicki, her brother Joe behind her, and his extended
family ending with his wife Deia and her Mom, visiting from Brasil.

That was so cool! A great way to end a wonderful Christmas. Thanks for coming along for the ride. I hope your Holidays were just as special wherever you were. Wishing you a Happy, Safe and Blessed New Year.

Typical Fall doings, cooking, fabric fun, and football

 We've been home now for a few weeks and have been getting back into the groove around here by doing some cleaning and shopping, plus having some good chit-chats with my neighbors.

I have also been adding to my trivet "tubie" stash, as if I needed to - on the way back home I occupied myself in the passenger's seat by stuffing polyfill into empty "tubies". Boy, did I end up with a pile, in fact, I actually bought more polyfill during the trip, lol! The Boss likes to handle the driving and I think he found that having my hands occupied shut me up quite nicely - win/win. 😂

Getting plenty of supplies ready for football season.

I'm also restocking the freezer with easy meals & sides, plus all my "timesavers"; sauces, salsas, stock, raw chopped veggies like onions, peppers plus sauteed mushrooms. I keep my buttermilk frozen in 1 cup batches, it thaws easily and works great for cornbread. I save a lot of time and money by storing this stuff in the freezer instead of letting it moulder in the fridge.

One of the first things I did was prepare and fry up a ton of meatballs, like maybe 75?!  One of the most well-liked meals around here is spaghetti & meatballs, probably the Boss's favorite, so I wanted to get a big batch of that made up. When I portion it up for the freezer I put 12 meatballs and an adequate amount of sauce into each container. This gives us 2 meals of 3 meatballs each, hey, 2 no-brainer meals, I love it! 😏 Here's what the ingredients look like before final prep.

Now that's going to be a *bunch* of sauce!

Meanwhile, the Boss has been getting the pontoon boat parts out and prepped for assembly. He's looking forward to getting some lazy rowing in on the lake.

A few more bits and bobs and it'll be ready to launch.

We had one of our stunner sunrises this morning. These really strut their stuff during the cooler fall/winter weather. They don't last long - maybe 10 minutes max, but boy, what a show.

This started out deep reddish-pink, but had progressed
to yellow as the sun is just getting ready to poke up.

Last night I made pizza to enjoy during the (recorded) Tennessee - Alabama game - Roll Tide! A bit of a slow start but they got it done. It's a deluxe with pepperoni, italian sausage, mushrooms, onions, bell pepper, black olives, capers and 2 kinds of cheese. The shot was taken before the top layer of cheese was added. YUM!

One dinner and a couple of lunches for sure.

Storage for my trivets can be a problem. I like to look at them before they get sold and go away, so putting them in a box just doesn't work for me. I set up a mounting system on one of my craft room walls. I used an aluminum flat tie with 3 rows of chain and shower curtain hooks and it works great. I'll show you.

Well, that's about it for now. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you have a great day! See you next time. 😎

Long overdue & wrap-up post

This post should have been written about 10 days ago but somehow I never got around to it. In between pulling weeds, working with food to not only use up or give to my neighbors, but also to freeze for our trip out west, plus the normal daily chores, I got really busy working on trivets. It was so much fun. I had to sew quite a few "tubies" with the new fabrics I bought, so that I would have a good stockpile to choose from while out at Rocky. I also got creative and gen'ed-up some trivets to add to my collection.  One of my neighbors wanted to buy a few to give as unique gifts, yay! So, in addition to the 19(!) I already had "in stock", I made 4 more and enjoyed the process very much.  Here are the new ones.

 The crepe myrtles were in full bloom and boy, are they showy. When it's a good year they are bursting with blooms, and it sure seems like a good year.

And this is one in a shopping center parking lot,
you know it's not getting a lot of love.

On the cooking front I baked a banana bread to have something sweet to go along with our evening hot tea, and froze half of it to take with us.

Finally, I made pizza using the store-bought dough I had in the freezer, so easy and so good!

Before baking, and it's enough for dinner for 2 and lunch for 2.

Thanks for reading along, that's all I've got for you, but the next post will be from Colorado.