Sending out Some Love
Valentine’s is a funny holiday. Mr Chiots thinks it’s all a setup by card companies to get business after Christmas. We don’t celebrate, no cards, flowers, candy or jewelry is exchanged here at Chiot’s Run. I may make a batch of chocolate covered cherries for us to enjoy. Even though we don’t celebrate, I love Valentine’s day stuff. I don’t know what it is about all the hearts and cards and cheesy stuff that I love, it’s just so FUN! I’ve always wanted to send out Valentine’s to friends, but have never really gotten around to it. This year however, I decided it was time.
I decided to make cards for a few friends that live far away and I don’t get to see often enough. I love the cheesiness of the Valentine’s we used to pass out as kids, so I decided to make mine as cheesy as possible. I had a few popcorn boxes sitting around leftover from a project for our business. I printed out a few things on my computer, then I got out my scissors and tape. I spent an evening being crafty, something I haven’t done in a long time. It was fun. I’m sure they’ll bring a smile to the faces of those that receive them.
I even found a piece of popcorn clip art for the envelopes, which I printed up. At the post office I found these vintage TV show stamps that fit the theme perfectly. I sealed them with a heart sticker to bring the cheese factor up even more. Can’t wait for my friends to find these in their mailboxes! There’s still time to send out a few Valentine’s of your own!
Do you celebrate Valentine’s Day?
Share this:
Planning My 2010 Garden
Earlier this week I sat down to figure out what seeds I needed to buy for the coming gardening season. A cup of coffee and a few seed catalogs is a great way to spend a winter afternoon. I have a lot of seeds left from last season that are still viable, but some seeds like onions, beans & peas don’t germinate as well the second year. I really want to grow a lot of onions and peas in my mom’s garden plot this year, she doubled the size of her garden so I could have space for these items. I’m hoping the full sun will produce bigger onions that I can grow in my shady gardens. That means I’ll be buying some pea seeds and some new onion seeds.
I decided I’m going to focus on growing things that are difficult to find or more expensive to buy at the farmer’s market. Things I can get easily I won’t be growing (like popcorn and maybe squash). I’d like to grow some shelling peas for the freezer and I’d love to grow a nice batch of carrots. I definitely want to grow some pickling cucumbers, we’re really enjoying all the different pickles I canned. I want to grow a bunch of potatoes, perhaps try a few interesting varieties. I’m definitely going to grow Principe Borghese and San Marzano tomatoes again this summer and I want to try a few new varieties as well.
Are you growing anything new and interesting this year?
Share this:
A Beautiful Day
We woke up to a beautiful day yesterday morning. The skies were clear and blue and everything was coated with a light layer of fluffy sticky snow. It almost looked like the snow actually grew out of the trees. You could see each individual snowflake, it was lovely. Days like this make the longer winters bearable. When nature is this beautiful I don’t need to say anything, the photos say it all.
Sunny days like this make me happy, we don’t have many sunny winter days here in NE Ohio. I hope you have a beautiful day!
What kind of weather makes you happy?
Share this:
Superbowl: Food or Football?
We always get together with friends for the Superbowl. I’m not really that big on football, especially the NFL (personally I think it’s all rigged). For me it’s all about the food and friends. We usually plan out a special menu, last year we had a wild game theme with buffalo and venison mini burgers and other delicious sides. This year we’re doing fun snack food, like potato skins, chips, and these pretzel dogs.
I also made some of these chewy oatmeal cookies for Mr Chiots, he’s a big oatmeal cookie fan and I haven’t made them in a long long time! They were really great, perfectly chewy and full of nuts and raisins.
Of course there always ends up being too much food, but that’s what the Superbowl is all about. Food and Friends!
Did you watch the Superbowl? Is is about the football or the food for you, or something else?
Share this:
Snowed In
I’m sure many of you got the same winter storm we got hit with on Friday/Saturday. It started snowing around noon on Friday and didn’t stop until about noon on Saturday. We don’t generally get this much snow at once here in these parts of Ohio. It was a heavy wet sticky snow, so everything was covered in snow. The side of our garage was plastered, as was the house and all the trees.
Since we had a meeting in Cleveland yesterday evening, we had to dig ourselves out. So we bundled up and headed out to shovel the driveway.
This is what we saw, we had to start shoveling from inside (and we have a step up into our house).
We still like to shovel our driveway, instead of a snow blower. It’s like raking leaves, a great reason to get out on a beautiful day and a great workout (keeps those gardening muscles in shape)! We only have one snow shovel, so I had to use my gardening shovel. We ended up with 14-18 inches of snow, we measured here between our house and garage which is a bit sheltered. My mom who lives an hour northwest of us, got around 8 inches. In Pittsburgh, about an hour and half east of us, they had almost two feet of snow.
We’re loving this snow! The sun came out yesterday afternoon and it was just beautiful. I was hoping to head out and take some photos, but after two and a half hours shoveling I was a bit tired.
Did you get hit with the winter storm?
