Spring Slowly Arriving

It's been cold and windy, but the crocus have popped up.

A bee was even visiting.

These colors get me excited for Easter!

Om, nom, nom...

Not a bit of yogurt goes to waste in this house.

Silas is a little nervous about inserting his nose in things.

Saffy dives right in and doesn't stop to breathe! I have to keep pulling the cup away to force her to take a breath.

Saffy often has a pink ring of yogurt around her her nose from the edge of the cup.

'The Fox and Grapes'

I accidentally threw the dog's tatty old rope toy into a tree today. Silas was beside himself with frustration. He jumped straight up and tried running leaps to reach it. When that didn't work he barked, cried, moaned and groaned at it and me.

Poke

My last post (from Christmastime!) seems so out of place at the top of my blog now that spring is on the way. It's definitely time to poke the blog and let you know I'm still more or less here! Nothing is wrong, just keeping busy and focused more on my fitness lately and therefore keeping up with my cycling blog quite a bit more. Although there hasn't been much on the crafting front, there has been a lot of another of my hobbies: cooking. I guess all that exercising is making me hungry and I think home cooking is the BEST!

This beef stew, with cocoa as a surprising ingredient, has become a winter staple ever since I saw it in a Rachel Ray magazine in Oct, 2006.

Probably my favorite food magazine is Everyday Food and the March, 2009 issue has a lot of good ideas.

This penne casserole with chicken, mushrooms and sun dried tomatoes will be a new regular for us. When you make it, you freeze half of it to bake at a later time! Shown right out of the oven:

And hot and ready to eat:

Also from the above issue, I've made the smoky chipotle beef taco filling, shown just shredded here. It was one of those things that just get better as leftovers. Sorry not to show it in the soft wraps, they got eaten up too fast.

The tacos were good with a side of corn and one of my favorite foods, avocado.

I could probably eat guacamole every day! A vat(!) of my own version:

That's just a sampling of the late winter foods I've been cooking. Believe it or not, I've had a jump start on summer with a little grilling too. There may have still been snow, but the air temperature wasn't too bad! I am dreaming of summer days spent relaxing outside in the yard, but first we must get through mud season and those of you with dogs know how fun that is...

PS: As well as biking, there are some dog pics on the cycling blog. I'll just send you there instead of posting twice!
PSPS: I'm playing around with updating the look of the blog a little.

Best!

Happy Holidays!

I thought it was about time for a little blog update to say Happy Holidays to you! We're enjoying the season here and have brightened our house with a table top tree in the living room. There is a tiny tree with mini ornaments in the dining room and strings of lights in the windows, doorways and outside on the porch. The cards are up along with some Santa's, reindeer and shiny trinkets. We'll keep things up until just after New Year's Eve.

Bandit got a new bed and various cardboard boxes. He's been as snug as a bug in a rug while the dogs have been playing outside.

We had about 5 days of snow, which the dogs were thrilled about! Silas found the buried toys.

Saffy likes to eat snow.

Here is one of my Christmas presents from Jeff, a silver and ruby ring made by a local artist.

There are some pics of the dogs opening their presents here on my cycling blog. My cycling blog has been updated more often lately as there has been more of that than crafting. I go through phases...guess that's normal, right?!

Awards, Blog Prize and Catching Up

Madalyn at Unravel Me nominated me for this:

And, Tracey at I'm Just Me... thinks I'm sweet!

Thank you! I'm so fortunate to be spoiled with awards from such thoughtful blog friends despite the fact that I've been such a blog slacker lately!

And, over the weekend, I received my blog prize from Yarnivorous, a lovely set of her stitch markers, including one with a kitty bead in honor of my blog title! I'm thrilled with them and have tried to do them justice in these pics. You'll want to stop by her online shops!





Thanks, Yarnivorous!!

In knitting news, I'm working on a pair of wrist warmers for a friend. The Rose Tyler style ones...

And, as you can see from the bike glove tan lines on my hand, I've been doing a lot of cycling, but you can see the pics and read about that on my cycling blog.

Dogs

We all watched a nature show about dogs on PBS last night. Saffy had the best seat in the house (on top of me) and Silas sat next to us.