Pass the mittens, please

Winter comes early here...and by early, I mean September 29! Holy cow, it's real snow. Thursday and Friday were in the 70s, and today we have knitting mittens weather.
We've been meaning to make a coldframe for the salad garden, and so today's the day! DH has made two trips to the hardware store already today...
We'd better hurry!
I tried to get some pictures of the little husky boy running around in the first snow of the season...
...but he was just too excited!
Today's obviously a great day to catch up on some ironing, knitting, and for making some spicy Italian sausage soup and beer bread. Mmmmmm.....

Valentine's Day Picnic

I love, love, love Valentine's Day! This year, we actually celebrated a day early because I had back-to-back Pilates clients on the "actual day." I ran by the store after work and picked up some favorites: three pounds of king crab legs, a par-baked baguette, a bottle of wine, and a couple of gorgeous chocolate covered strawberries. I mean, looking at these beauties in the display case, could you pass them up? Mmm....

While my husband was at the gym, I started a huge pot of water to boil and clicked the oven on. As soon as he got home, the crab went in the pot and the baguette in the oven. By the time he'd showered, we had a nice little picnic all set out on the floor (the better for just lying around and cuddling). Other may have fun going out in the cold, teetering in their heels in ankle-deep slush and snow, dealing with impatient waiters trying to hurry you out before the next table arrives? Pas du tout!

My darling husband sent me a bouquet of roses on Monday, since we will be leaving for a wonderful Yellowstone weekend on Thursday morning and he wanted me to enjoy them. I gave him a ski joring set so that he and our doggie can drag each other around in the snow. Seems to be the hardest part so far is getting the durn thing on the dog! We'll see how that progresses.

Tea and Toast

"With just a little extra effort, something as simple as bread and water becomes tea and toast."

Mmmm....simple pleasures, eh? And making a little seemingly heaven out of seemingly hell, as one of my marketing profs would say. Although there's hardly any hell in homemade bread and fresh springwater, but the point of this post is that with just a little bit of trying, we can make our lives exponentially better, nicer, more elegant.

This little nugget of wisdom isn't my own necessarily, but the thoughts came to me when a friend of mine (yes, even though we've only "met" over the Internet, I'd consider her wonderful enough to be someone with whom I love to be friends) said something recently on a chat group. It was a quotation, although I liked her version of it better than the original quote, which was attributed to "anonymous," I think, and so I'll attribute it to her instead. Check her other stuff out here:

http://ponderingsofapackrat.blogspot.com/