Mailbox Monday - April 27, 2009

Thanks to Marcia at The Printed Page for hosting Mailbox Monday's. This week I had two new books show up on my front porch. Shanghai Girls by Lisa See came from Random House, and Swimming by Nicola Keegan from Marie also at Random House. I love Random House :) I wonder what this week will bring me?

A Fancy Birthday

In January, my youngest niece, Sydney, turned 6. She had a Fancy Nancy birthday party. I love little girls who have birthday parties themes from story book characters. Fancy Nancy is a hoot, and I encourage everyone young and old to read her books. For Sydney's party my sister-in-law, Kirsten, made each girl a crown pillow that they got to decorate, then they had fingernail painting , and then ate this wonderful crown cake that Kirsten also made.

This page has a Lovely Lilac cardstock base. I also used Whisper White, Basic Black and Pink Passion. The black and white pattern paper down the side is from Imaginisce. The title is stamped with the Best Friends alphabet in Lovely Lilac ink. I used the SU slit punch to make the scallop borders and used a hole punch to give it an eyelet look. The journaling card is a large scallop circle punch and it slips inside an envelope that I die cut with my Big Shot. I used my white gel pen along the scallop edge to accent it. In the right hand corner of the picture I added lots of fun embellishments - a vellum heart tag with a Rose Red SU felt flower and a black brad, there is a chipboard crown that I covered with a silver pen, and a black chipboard flower from Colorbok (from the Michael's dollar spot) with two pink brads. None of my three nieces are very prissy, girly so I don't use a pink and purple color scheme very often so it was a bit difficult for me to work with. But I had fun with all the embellishing.

BB: Croque Monsieur

It's a fancy French ham and cheese sandwich. Very yummy, very rich. You can find the Barefoot Contessa's recipe here. Kate at All Food Considered chose the recipe for the Barefoot Bloggers. Tim and I made this together and made a few changes: halved the cheese sauce, used Jarlsberg cheese instead of Gruyere, and used spicy brown mustard instead of Dijon. We also used a loaf of home made white bread. I would recommend not using a thick slice of bread, there just gets to be too much bread.

Participating in the Barefoot Bloggers has been a lot of fun. Tim and I have both loved trying new recipes and using some new ingredients. I can't wait to see what the recipes will be for next month.

Mailbox Monday - April 20, 2009

Welcome to Mailbox Monday, hosted by Marcia at the Printed Page. Be sure to stop by her blog and see what great things she got in the mail.

I only received one book last week, but I am so excited to read it. Library Thing sent me an Advanced Reader's Copy (ARC) of The Late, Lamented Molly Marx by Sally Koslow. It won't be published until May 19.

I have book club tomorrow and we will discuss Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I'm having trouble finishing the book. Yes, I know it's very short book, but animals keep dying and I know it's not going to get any better. My reward for finishing Steinbeck will be Molly Marx. Can't wait to get started on it.

Spinach - it's Yummy

Saturday I spent the day scrapbooking. Tim spent the day replacing the fuel pump on his Buick. Before I left I made these Spinach Balls. I found the recipe on Friday on www.mochefsallowed.blogspot.com. They were super easy inexpensive and super easy - perfect to take to a pot luck lunch - and they got rave reviews.

Spinach Balls

1 frozen pkg chopped spinach, cooked and drained

2 cups herb & seasons stuffing mix

1 cup chopped onions

3 beaten eggs

6 tablespoons of melted butter

6 tablespoons of Parmesan cheese (I also used a little shredded Colby Jack mix)

3/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Mix all ingredients. Shape into 2 inch balls. Put on sprayed cookie sheet. bake at 350 for 20 minutes. Makes 4 dozen.

This week I'll share the scrapbook pages I got done.

Lunch with a Friend

On one of my Fridays off, my friend Judi came over for lunch and brought McDonalds. Fitzgerald was naughty, as always, and dug into Judi's bag and helped herself to the last of the french fries. And my good friend Judi thought it was cute.

I used more paper from the K & Company Wild Saffron stack that I have. Love that paper. On the right side are some chipboard swirls from Fancy Pants Design that I inked with SU Basic Brown. I also punched some little flowers out of Summer Sun card stock to match what was printed on the paper. Below the photos is some fun scrunched SU ribbon. The title is stamped with red ink and the Best Friends alphabet onto matching K & Company labels.

Mailbox Monday - April 13, 2009

Each week Marcia, at the Printed Page blog, asks us to share what new books came into our homes that week. I only received a couple of books - which is okay since I have a huge stack of library books to read plus lots of other free books, ARC's, and book sale books to read. You can visit the Printed Page, by clicking on the link on the right side of the screen, to see what new books other book bloggers received.

The Red Leather Diary by Lily Koppel came from Book Club Girl. Check out her blog (see the link on the right side of the screen) to see more information on her radio show. Lily Koppel will be her guest on April 29th at 7pm.

And as part of the Harlequin Ambassadors program I received a box with 5 copies of a Harlequin Super Romance Married by Mistake by Abby Gaines to give away. I've given most of them away here at the library, but I've saved one copy to give away here. If you are interested, let me know, and I'll randomly pick a winner on Wednesday. The New York Times recently reported that in this sluggish economy "sales of romance novels are outstripping most other categories of books".

Happy reading everyone!

BB: Chinese Chicken Salad

I admit, I love Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa and I watch her on Food Network. I love how she makes fabulous looking dishes with fairly simple ingredients and techniques. But I have never made one of her recipes. I found a group, called the Barefoot Bloggers, who make several Barefoot Contessa recipes each month. I haven't formally joined their group, but I've decided to play along. This week the recipe was Chinese Chicken Salad. I was worried that I might not like the dressing, but it was all delicious. The recipe calls for red pepper, but I don't like it, so I didn't add it. Next time I might add some more veggies, like broccoli. To make a dinner meal, I put the chicken and asparagus over some brown rice and then drizzled the dressing on top. You can see the recipe here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/chinese-chicken-salad-recipe/index.html

Book 25: Buffalo Lockjaw and a DNF

Title: Buffalo Lockjaw
Author: Greg Ames
Copyright Date: 2009
Rating: 2
Notes: I've struggled with my reactions to this book. And it comes down to the fact that I didn't like it. And I'm sad that I didn't like it. I understood where the author was trying to go with the story - James is trying to deal with his mother's decline due to Alzheimer's - but it didn't work for me. The narrator, James, was whiny and it just overwhelmed the book for me. I do want to thank Gail at Everyday I Write the Book Blog for sending me a copy of the book and for hosting the book discussion.

DNF = Did Not Finish = a sad, sad thing

Title: The Eleventh Man
Author: Ivan Doig
Copyright Date: 2008
Rating: DNF
Notes: I hate that I'm not going to finish this book. It is beautifully written. I made it almost half way through, but the plot and the characters just aren't interesting me. I read the last few pages to see if that might entice me to finish it, but no. It's about the members of a winning college football team and what happens to them during WWII. So if you like beautifully written books, the west, football, planes or WWII, then you might love this book. I did not.

And now I hope I can move out of this reading funk.

Chef Tim

I've realized that I make a lot of scrapbook pages about Tim cooking. I promise, I cook too. It had been a long time since Tim has made fresh pasta, so a few months back he made another batch. Hopefully I can get him to make it more often this summer. We have a nice garden going and all those fresh veggies would be so good with fresh pasta.

The pattern papers are K & Company's Wild Saffron. I borrowed a CM circle punch to punch the circles out of SU Real Red, Sage Shadow and Chocolate Chip. The title is done with Pressed Petals chipboard letters. At the bottom is SU Real Red ribbon and some hemp, held together with a SU paper clip.