Friday, March 21, 2008

Easter morning breakfast kits

I thought the nicest gift we could give my parents, mother in law and sister and her family would be Easter morning breakfast kits. Breakfast will be easy! Wake up, heat it up and ENJOY! Each kit contains a handmade Easter card, a bunch of sunny yellow daffodils, a spinach/sauteed onion/jack cheese quiche, lemon blueberry scones, cherry almond scones, and maple sausage links. I think they're adorable - the perfect gift! Happy Easter, everyone!

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Bake me a cake as fast as you can

(Okay, so not really fast, but...)

An invitation to have dinner with Kevin's uncle Ron and his family ... 'Randa MUST bring one of her fabulous desserts!' Hmmm....what shall I make? I know -- let's try a *brand new* recipe! What on earth was I thinking?? Luckily, it turned out even better than I could have imagined. It was a big hit with everyone, seconds were even requested. There was not nary a crumb left on the plate. Apparently, orange chiffon cake was an excellent choice! (for those interested, the recipe is in the March issue of 'All You' magazine)


Paddycake, paddycake, baker's man...

For some reason I've been in a baking/cooking mode for the last month or so. I got it in my head that I want to learn how to make a wonderful loaf of bread from scratch. I was talking to some friends about this (hi Bev and Ken!) and they asked if I wanted some sourdough bread starter. Sure! Though it's something of a time consuming process - feed the starter, let it sit, scoop some off, feed again, let it sit, THEN actually make the bread, let it rise, shape the loaves, let it rise again (don't forget the second rise, mom...) - it was well worth the effort. Two loaves of delicious, homemade sourdough bread. Kevin's words: 'THIS is a winner!'

Back by popular demand

Wow! I can't believe it's been over a month since my last entry. Apparently I've been a very busy girl. What have I been up to? Oh, nothing - just a lot!

Kevin and I are still saving our pennies for a house. I'm happy to report that as of this entry, we are at 28.88% of our goal -- this after saving for less than three months! We're terribly proud of ourselves. We keep looking at houses, but it's truly just looking at this point as we really aren't even considering making any sort of purchase until the end of this year or beginning of next. Hopefully, not only will home prices have fallen even more by that time, but mortgage rates will have followed. For some odd reason, though housing is going down, mortgage interest rates are going up. Go figure.

Anyway - in the meantime we've been making plans here and there, looking at buying a few pieces of furniture or things for the new place. Last week we bought a matching nightstand for our bedroom set. We already had one nightstand but thought that two gave the whole suite a more finished look. As luck would have it, the furniture we have was still available so we were able to buy the matching nightstand without a problem. Well, techninally there were problems however, they were more customer service fiascos (of the losing the furniture variety) -- but that's another entry for another day. We also bought a new comforter set for the bedroom. Though we love the one we have - bought for a fabulous price five years ago when we painted the bedroom - we decided it would be nice to have another one to swap out from time to time. Where the older set is a deep, rich burgundy color, the new one is a taupe/green color with burgundy accents. We put it all together tonight and dressed the bed. We think it looks terrific, even if we do say so ourselves!