Tuesday, January 27, 2015

The Thing I Love Most About

having family over for a meal is the sharing.  The sharing of stories, the sharing of time and the sharing of recipes.  My family and I love spending time together and will use any excuse to visit each other. 

My sisters and I like most of the same foods and 3 of us love to try new recipes so we are always exchanging.  One of my brothers will eat anything as long as it is accompanied by meat and the other brother will eat anything that is wrapped in bacon!  I love that someone is always trying something new, even my meat loving brothers. 

My husband loves that I try so many new recipes.  I have recently gotten back into the habit of planning our menus and have been cooking with a new recipe every night.  The two dudes that live with me are in heaven.  I have also been cooking less food.   As my children leave home, I have been finding it very hard to cook smaller meals. 

Since I began cooking at the age of 12 or so, I have had to prepare food for a large family and adjusting to cooking for 3 has been the impossible task.  We ALWAYS have leftovers that no one wants to eat.  Always.  My fridge looks like a Tupperware wasteland. 

I have tried everything to no avail.  Leftover night, new meals from the leftovers, packing lunches and snacks.  Nothing works to keep this leftover mountain manageable.  But, I digress.  I was talking about trying a new recipe.  On the menu for tonight is a recipe from The Best of the Best.  It was created by Emeril Lagasse and was fairly simple with easy to find ingredients.  No preserved lemon in this dish.  



No photos either but I like to think that if it had had one, the dish would have looked exactly like this........



with the exception of being styled.  I think I nailed it.  It tasted delicious and bonus......  No leftovers!

On the creative front, one of my goals this year is to use what I buy, when I buy it.  I have really cut back on my scrappy purchases but thanks to the incredible designers in the paper crafting industry, I can always find something new and interesting to create with.  One thing about scrapbooking, I never feel that there is a lack of interesting supplies. 

These are my most recent purchases:

 
Some of this is just plain supplies that I needed more of like the tombow glue, spray bottles and staplers.  But the rest is pure creative spark......
 
I have been hearing so much about the pan pastels and seeing so many projects that have that smudgy, chalky look that I finally invested in them.  They were pricey!  I got a set that included colors that I use a lot of and my plan is to use the pastels to create backgrounds and ink edges......
 
 
I love to create mini albums and want to use these ring binders to turn an old book into something interesting.........
 
 
No plan for this but seriously.  Gold hearts on washi tape.  Had to give it a home!
 
 
Ditto on the ombre bling.  It will be cut apart and added to everything I make until it runs out. 
 
 
 
Neenah white is everywhere and everyone is using it.  Thanks for enabling:)  It is the only reason I bought this since I am zero picky about cardstock most of the time. 
 
 
Amy Tangerine paper stack.  Nuff said.  I have seriously already used several sheets....
 
 
I love those hearts!  I should have bought more :(  Bold gold is still very, very pretty and useful to me and these embellies are generic enough that I can use them in a million different ways.  So are the Pink Paisley stickers.  There are 4 sheets of chipboard stickers in this pack!
 

 
Well that's all for me folks.  Have you been able to find new crafty things to come home with you?  I'd love to hear about it, especially if you don't have a scrapbook store near you.  I don't and really miss having a large selection of products to choose from (even though I still manage to spend all of my scrapping dollars teehee). 
 
Thanks for stopping by and have a crafty day!
 

No comments :