Here are a few of my meals.  I don’t always take pictures of my food now and the reason is mostly that I am constantly taking photos for the businesses and editing them. It seems like every day I’m working on photos and so I tend to not take them of my own food. However, I need to get back into that habit for accountability.

Here is one of my regular breakfasts, which you have seen before:

This is the Golden brand cheese blintz. I tried the Manechevitz? (sp) brand and didn’t like them as much, plus they don’t have as much protein per serving as the Golden brand. We keep talking about making our own blintzes with crepes, but never get around to it 😀

A dinner featuring Instant Pot potatoes:

I used a bag of those mini potatoes that comes in mesh. I put the IP on saute and cooked them for about 5 minutes. Then I moved them into a steamer basket, seasoned with herbs, salt and pepper and added 3/4 cup of veggie broth to the IP. Set it for 4 minutes and did a quick release. With the sauteeing, it took 15 minutes from start to finish for the taters. They were tasty! The next day we made smashed potatoes with the leftovers. Yums. We are using the IP pretty regularly a few times a week. It was definitely a good purchase.

You know there has to be bagels, right?

We were at Panera this morning. We don’t go there very often, preferring local places, but with the snowy weather walking downtown wasn’t feasible. So, since we had the car, we went further than downtown for breakfast.

Another IP meal – quinoa! The IP makes perfect quinoa. Or maybe it’s John who does it since he always cooks the quinoa.

John is a vegetarian, so quinoa is good for his protein. I topped mine with chicken and BBQ sauce, having precooked several chicken breasts for the week.

These are in the house right now:

Reese’s Pieces are okay. Not my favorite, but I eat them because they are there. John got a big party bag of them from Amazon. That’s something that annoys me about myself at times. Sometimes I can just not eat stuff without problem, but then other times I do.  Part of it is feeling cooped up from winter weather.

I got a little ahead of myself the other day:

I’m so eager for gardening that I couldn’t resist the seed display. It couldn’t have been set up more than a day or two before I saw it and I already was purchasing LOL!  It’s too early to even start the seeds indoors.  Between these and the flower catalogs that arrive several times a week, I’ve been dreaming of all the flowers I’m going to grow 😀

One of the things I wanted to put down as a goal for 2018 was to get back to blogging regularly again. Oops.  Now it has been a week since I posted LOL!  I also want to read again regularly and comment more on others. Please leave a comment with a link to your blog so I can make sure I have it in my reader. I hit “mark all as read” since there were several hundred blog posts in there and it was too overwhelming to go through them.

I do have to say that I’m struggling a little with eating right now.  A lot of it has to do with the weather. So cold outside and all I want to do is curl up under a blanket and eat all the things 😀   I do exercise pretty much every day either on the treadmill or my bike trainer, but my outside walks have been curtailed with the cold. I was out the other day when it got warm for a day and it was glorious! It’s amazing how great 50 degrees feels after negative temps versus 50 degrees in the early fall feeling freezing cold.

I am going to try to post more food posts. I may not blog every day, but I need to be more accountable with food to focus myself again. So, I’m going to shoot for at least 3 posts each week on the regular.

Update on the wool dryer balls I purchased:

They work really well! John and I do laundry separately, so we have both used them a couple times. There is definitely a reduction in static after using these. Clothes come out soft and maybe the dryer time is reduced as well.  We have so much static in our house because of the dry air that I’m tempted to rub one of these on Pixie to see if I can reduce her static. Her nose gets zapped a lot and I feel bad about it. There are a lot of sellers on Etsy for these, but here is a link to the shop I got mine from .

And in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. on Monday, my choice of quote for the day:

Time to review what I accomplished on my goal/to-do list for 2017!  It was certainly a crazy year, so much different than the year before for both John and I. Here I sit on New Year’s Eve wondering where the heck the year went, probably like a lot of people.

This was the plan for 2017

1. Read 25 books.  Nope. I read 12. I ended up just so tired at night that I wasn’t doing a lot of reading near bedtime, which is when I normally like to read.
2. Be more of an activist for the environment. I am still so, so, so concerned about the direction our country is taking in terms of the environment. I can’t even tell you.  I did participate in a climate change march. I bring my own water bottle to counter service eateries so as not to buy bottled water.  John has started asking for no straws in drinks when we go to a table service restaurant, which I need to remember to do as well.  Plus, I have been working on my pollinator garden. I saw more bees and butterflies this year, and with our water feature added, there are even frogs!  I had my garden certified as a wildlife habitat since I meet all of the requirements.  It’s small, but if we all did just a little, it adds up.
3. Build something.  I didn’t really build anything like I had planned, which was a piece of furniture. So much of my time was swallowed by the businesses. However, I did paint and recover a chair and did more with the garden beds.
4. Get back to a structured lifting program. This was a big fail. I exercised a lot with walking and biking, but no lifting program. I do have to say that I am regularly lifting heavy boxes with the biz, so there is some functional fitness. Budget kept me from joining a gym.
5. Grow the businesses. Slogging away at this. I spent a lot of this year laying the groundwork and some of that is bearing fruit now and I’m set up for some good things in 2018.
6. Do more meal planning.  Not really.  We plan some meals, but not like I had planned. John prepares a lot of our dinners, which is nice. He is the pizza man for pizza Fridays 😀  . We did get the Instant Pot, which is going to play a bigger part in meals. It sure makes cooking quinoa, oats, rice and such pretty easy and makes for good bulk cooking.

All in all, 2017 was both what I expected and completely not.  I bit off not more than I can chew, but certainly I had a very full plate.  I’ve chosen my word for 2018 and I need to set up some goals for the year.

have a safe and happy New Year!

Is anyone else messed up about what day it is? I keep forgetting LOL.  It’s nice having Christmas on a Monday.  This is one of the first Christmases in a few years that I didn’t have a job where I needed to at least check in if not being scheduled to work.  Yay!

John and I hosted the Christmas Eve dinner as we have for probably the last 8+ years? It’s been quite a while.

It was my turn to make The Cake this year, too.

Kind of looks like Jabba the Hut. The frosting is molten hot when it goes on the cake and you have to keep scooping back onto the cake. Wait too long and it will crystallize solid before it gets spread on. The frosting has to be done in 2 layers because of that. It’s worth it, though!

We did ham with cheese souffle and Hasselback potatoes:

The ham was done an hour early and the souffle wasn’t done in time for dinner. Not our most successful meal, but still good 😀

There was entertainment afterwards with John playing:

I even made the piano festive this year!  I brought my guitar down, although I didn’t play any holiday tunes.

I can’t believe I have to wear glasses to see my fingers. My eyes are getting old! I’m very serious here, too.

We didn’t end up playing any games this year. Time snuck away with music and opening presents.  We did have time for dessert.

My family way overdoes it sometimes…

John and I brought cookies over to our neighbor later that night since there was a platoon of them.

Normally we go down to my sister’s house on Christmas Day for games (and more cookies), but we woke up to this on Christmas:

We got at least another 6 inches on top of what we already had. Then the wind really picked up later, so it wasn’t conducive for travelling or even wanting to be outside. I don’t think we will see the ground again until spring, especially with the cold temps arriving.

Hope you all had a good holiday, however it was spent!

Things have finally come under control around here! Yay!  I was up to my eyeballs filling little jars the last week:

I ended up doing 250 of these little jars. This was for 2 wholesale orders, which came in within a day of each other. Wholesale orders are not too common in late December, but these were both subscription boxes.  Those are definitely a game changer as far as wholesale goes. I’ve done 4 of them now.  They are nice as far as the size of orders, but unlike a regular store order that is a selection, the boxes are one single item. I did a box that ordered 175 bars of a single soap scent.

We are getting a big snowstorm today. We already had snow on the ground, but this sure does guarantee a white Christmas:

Not sure how much we will get when all is said and done, but I think we are at least up to 6 inches so far and still snowing.  It sure looks pretty!

I am actually taking an extra day off next week and keeping the businesses closed on 12/26. I need to take a break and get things in some semblance of order around here. 😀

John and I are hosting the family dinner on Christmas Eve again as per tradition. Nobody is going anywhere today with the weather, so it’s time to cookie bake!  We are pretty ready for the holiday. Gifts are all wrapped and we have shopped for the dinner food.

Time to enjoy the tree, along with Ms. Pixie:

That’s her new favorite spot. Now that the radiators are on for winter, the tree gives her a hiding spot and warmth. Kitty heaven!

Have a safe holiday everyone!

This weekend was the Christmas open house at the Chapman Museum where I do my volunteer work.  Each year there is a different theme for the holidays. This year was featuring Snowflake Bentley, who was the first person to photograph snowflakes through a microscope. It seems appropriate for this post considering all the snow falling across the US.

Bentley lived in Vermont, actually with his mother for his entire life.  He would go outside with a black tray to catch snowflakes. Then he took them to his microscope station in an outbuilding (no heat, obviously) where he would photograph them through the microscope.

This was from a Popular Mechanics Magazine in 1922.  He photographed over 2000 snowflakes and did lectures about them and the technique for photographing through a microscope, as well as publishing a book. Every snowflake has six points and over the years, Bentley never found two alike.

Anyway, here are a few more pictures of the deLong house (part of the museum).  This is the parlor:

Do you see the difference between the two chairs? The one on the right with arms is a man’s chair and the one without arms is for a woman. The reason being a woman needed room for her skirts.

And the couch that I covet there (although I would like a different fabric on it)

The library:

We had a couple of snowflake making sessions to get ready for the season:

These were used in various places, the majority on the tree:

There was live music:

Refreshments that look like snowflakes:

These were found at Aldi’s, by the way. They are really tasty. I need to go find them LOL.

Quite a few people came through, which was great. It was free to attend and view the museum. There were more people than I’ve ever seen in the year that I’ve been there.  It’s good to be a tourist in your own city sometimes.

Here are a couple more photos of snowflakes:

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These are the actual photos taken through the microscope. He never copyrighted any of his photos, so they are all public domain. It really is amazing the difference in all the flakes. Something that you never really think about when it is coming down and accumulating. We are going to get our own share of snow on Tuesday and it sounds like it might be a decent snowfall. Not sure I will be photographing each flake, though!

I thought I would pop in and show my face again LOL.  This is about how I feel right now:

I just finished the last of my shows for the season. Now it’s just online orders to fill for the next couple of weeks. Business has been really busy and I kept thinking it would slow down, but even today it was quite busy. Not that busy is a bad thing, but the above meme about sums it up 😀

Biking season is pretty much done. I did bundle up for a few rides:

I still have not brought the bike inside yet. Maybe I can squeak in a bit more riding in December. It’s possible, right?

We put up our tree Thanksgiving weekend.

I love this tree so much. It’s very real looking.

I did succumb to a Black Friday deal:

That’s my Amazon link (full disclosure). I won a $50 gift certificate to Amazon, plus I had a promotional credit in my account. I ended up not paying much out of my pocket for the Instant Pot. Yippee!

We are hoping to replace the rice cooker, slow cooker and pressure cooker and save some space. First try was steel cut oats:

They came out yummy. I think it took maybe 20 minutes from start to finish, most of which was just the cook, so I didn’t have to do anything but have coffee while it cooked.

I really like my pressure cooker, but I haven’t used it much recently and working a pressure cooker on an electric stove is a real PITA.  The IP made it very easy.

We also tried doing a pot-in-pot recipe cooking the main and side at the same time. We did a chickpea curry with rice.  The sauce had to be thickened a little after cooking, but other than that, the rice turned out perfect!

John wants to make baked beans or (and) a cheesecake. I downloaded a couple free recipe books for the Instant Pot. Something like 700 recipes all together. That’s waaaay too many LOL.  It will be nice to incorporate this machine into cooking Christmas Eve dinner this year.

That’s life in a nutshell right now. Hope people are still reading!

Just a quick check in. I’m going on a little blog hiatus just because I’ve gotten so busy that I don’t have much to post about that isn’t business involved just now, which you probably don’t want to read about LOL. This will last a few days to a week or so.  Just letting you know I’m fine and all that, so no worries.   😀

One more day until candy corn is 50% off – woo hoo!!!  Then it will be gone for another year.

Saturday we did our annual pumpkin carving. This was after our hike and standing for a few hours in the evening probably didn’t do my legs any favors as they were pretty sore come Sunday.

I think we need a bigger table or smaller pumpkins. Maybe both LOL!

I decided to go with I guess a steampunk skull?

We had 3 painters and 4 carvers this year.

And of course, a gathering is not complete without the food!

Finger foods because it was just easier.

My sister made those pumpkin pocket pies (ham and cheese – with some plain cheese for John).

Finished pumpkins:

My youngest niece is super talented at drawing. She hand painted her pumpkin with no pattern:

She’s very into anime.

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Glitter is evil. It’s days later and it’s still everywhere LOL!

I put some glitter on the stem of my pumpkin, which came out fun!

Happy and safe Halloween!