2020 Garden

OMG!!! I have officially put my order in for the seeds I wanted for our garden this year!  My only question is... What are we going to eat???!!!

I have ordered the more beautiful flower seeds from Floret Flower Farm!  This is my third time to order from this lovely company.  If you grow your own flowers you should seriously look into their selection.  I unfortunately was too late to buy some of the seeds on my wishlist but that's ok.  What is meant to be will be and I am so tickled at what I did buy.  If you are lucky to be one of the people that had my flowers adorn their summertime tables last year then you will know the fortunate beauty of bringing garden flowers indoors and should really be excited about my selection this year!  Here are pictures (taken from the website of Floret Flower Farm) of what is coming this summer to a garden near you!  And please click HERE to see my wishlist where you can find all of these flowers of my choice and more!

Here we have Bachelor's Buttons, Cosmos, Snapdragons, Black Eyed Susan, Sunflowers, Zinnias, Foxglove, Dahlia, AND ornamental squash!

ALSO, I was teasing about what to eat :)  I still have tons of seeds leftover from last year for fresh veggies.  I did, however, have these on my list of seeds to buy from Rareseeds.com or Baker Creek Heirloom.  Find their website HERE.

I'm excited to grow Stevia this year as I haven't had any in the garden in several years.  In fact, I'm still using it from the last time I grew it in 2014 LOL!  

I decided to include Marigold in with my tomato growing this year to keep bugs away which I haven't done in a long time.  I had some strange bugs last year that didn't seem to mind any kind of poison I put on them,  

I am really looking forward to having dried Parsley after this season!  It's also been several years since I've grown parsley.

I love these white zinnias and can't wait to have them as a bit of contrast in cut flowers this summer.

And the Brandywine Tomatoes.  I had really good success last year with Bonny Best from this site and decided to try these for this summer.  I am planning on only growing two varieties this year.  last year I had five varieties in the garden and seriously only wound up canning the Bonny Best.  I'm not going to grow any cherry tomatoes or smaller varieties as I really just wound up having too many to eat.  Seemed a waste of garden space and only gave the bugs something to eat.  I'm trying to use my space wisely I guess?   

I will still have squash, zucchini, green beans and peppers to eat.  And of course the flowers!  I'm drooling just thinking about how beautiful this summer is going to be!

Breakfast For One

Good morning!  I have been wanting to share my tips and tricks for Breakfast For One for a while.  I truly wanted someone else to take the pictures, mainly because I'm kind of busy during this process.  But alas, today is the day and it's up to me.  So here goes.

This Breakfast For One, as I call it, isn't because I'm single, because I'm not, but only because I cook breakfast for Shaun on the daily and I eat something else.  He needs a more "stick to your ribs" kind of start to his day.  So, I am sharing one of many breakfasts that I cook for him.  

This is for scrambled eggs, toast, and sausage gravy which today also features onions and mushrooms.

First... a tip.  It makes more sense to me to cook the eggs first.  Mainly because your pan is pretty full after the gravy.  So, I first get a bowl, pour some water in it and heat it on two minutes in the microwave.  When my eggs are cooked I pour the water out and put the eggs to rest in their warm bowl inside the microwave while I cook the sausage and gravy.

  Well thank goodness my microwave is semi clean.

Next I go ahead and chop up my onion and mushrooms while my pan is heating with a little butter in the bottom.  Even though I use a copper skillet I have little faith in "nothing" sticking, especially when I cook eggs.

And on to my next tip... I use a rubber spatula for this whole process.  It is so much easier to scrape around the sides of the pan.  And since I'm not flipping anything over it just makes more sense.

I always whisk my eggs with a little water in a measuring cup or bowl and pour them in when the pan it decently heated.  The spatula also helps to scrape around the sides of the eggs.  To scramble well I gently pull from the center while also working around the edges and turn over when necessary.  It truly only takes a couple of minutes to cook eggs.

 Look Ma!  I love my birthday mug from Cracker Barrel!!

When they're done, pour your water in the sink and place them in the bowl in the micro until you're ready to serve.

Now... on to the good stuff... gravy for one.

I precooked my mushrooms and onions in butter for just a minute then added my sausage.  I find it easier to twist the bottom of the tube of sausage and pinch off how much I need.  Let it cook until lightly browned.

You can see it really doesn't make a whole lot of grease if you use a decent quality sausage.

Here's what I use for my gravy, plus milk.

Toss in a tablespoon or a little more of flour right onto your sausage.

I like to throw in a pinch of chicken bullion and black pepper.  Toss it around with your spatula until you can't really see the flour anymore.

Then add your milk.

If I had to guess how much it's probably about a cup of milk.  Let it come to a boil.

Scrape around the sides.  I tried to get a picture of this next step.  Did not work.  When my gravy has begun to change colors to more of a tan than white and feels like it is thickening I like to take my spatula and drag it from the side inward.  When the gravy comes together slow then it's done.

Put your piece of toast on your plate next to your warm eggs and pour the sausage and gravy over the toast.  And WaaLaa!  Breakfast for one!

Kiss Kiss Hugs Hugs Have a good day!!

A Quick Library List

HiYa!!! I thought I'd share some of my favorites as of late from the library!  Instead of my normal "Literally on Hold at the Library" list, these have already been viewed and read and loved by me.  So here we go.

Stacey Little's "Southern Bite" Cookbook is wonderful.  I have to admit that I am a frequenter of his website recipes also!  I checked out his cookbook from the library (and also intend to buy it) and I am obviously not the only one because the pages are "literally" falling out!  I really like the Chicken and Dumplins Casserole, Smothered Pork Chops, and Old Fashioned Banana Pudding was made for Shaun's birthday last week and will be my go-to banana pudding recipe from now on!!

I'll take any book from Mary Emmerling!  I love her style and can spend LOTS of time thumbing through the pages of colorful pictures and stories in her books.

Where the Crawdads Sing.... I LOVED THIS BOOK!  My sister Mary Evelyn suggested that I read this one.  I was on the hold list at the library for three months!  It is truly a wonderful read!  I'm not telling you anything about it.... just read it!

As you know, I always like to have an "TV of DVD" series going in my kitchen.  Cheers has been the one for some time now.  I'm actually on season five right now.  The library lends them for 21 days per check-out so I can take my time with them. 

I just watched Death at a Funeral this week at the suggestion of my mother.  Let me say that this British comedy made me and Shaun both laugh out loud.  I watched it twice and enjoyed it and laughed both times.  Thanks Mom!

Miniature Lantern Tutorial

Happy pre-Thanksgiving Y'all!  I promise I will eventually report on something other than miniatures... buuut it's just what I feel like sharing mmmk?

I recently posted pictures on my Instagram page of a cabin scene I made.  And in this precious scene were two lanterns that I made in a sort of jiffy.  The next day or two I thought... maybe this mini cabin person has a collection of lanterns... so I started digging for more beads and more buttons and along the way thought I'd show you!

I started by going through my old button stashes for bases, middles and tops of the lanterns.  For the bottoms I wanted more decorative and flat bottom buttons.  For the middle, ones that could support the round globe beads.  For the tops, something either domed or that had a hook resembling a handle.  Here are the ones that I found.

For more of my miniature tutorials click HERE.

Decorative bottom buttons.

Tops.

These are the beads I used for the globes or the lanterns.... I guess there are not pictures of the middles.  They are pretty plain.

Next I glued the middle buttons to the bottom base buttons, then the globe, then more middle buttons, and then the tops.  I used Elmer's Wood Glue.  It's my favorite go-to glue.  I didn't take pictures of the process of gluing.  I simply dip my favorite paint brush into the glue and dab it on a button the stack.  The important thing is to give the glue time to dry.  I'm bad about the patience part of this.  :)

After the glue has dried and set it's time to paint.  I just use normal craft paint.

Some of them need handles.  So I cut a piece of wire about one inch in length, bend it around a paint brush handle and bend the ends.  I then put glue on each bend and place where it belongs on the tops of the lantern.

Here are my results!  They aren't perfect and some of them aren't straight but that's how I like them.

This one sort of looks more like a hummingbird feeder to me.  So I guess that can happen too.

When I look through old buttons like this I always pick out the shell buttons and put them in a special jar.  I can always spot them.  They have a different kind of opal-ness to them in color and shine. Most of the time the backs of them are darker like sea shells, a lot of times they aren't level in their cut and they most always have a cooler temperature.  I like to touch them to my chin to make sure of the temp.  They are so pretty and I for sure don't want to use them in this project and paint over their natural beauty!  Check these pictures out of them.

This picture show the back sides.

They aren't always white in color.  I love these darker ones.  

The back of these is the picture above.

It looks like I've never gone through this tin of buttons and pulled out the sea shells.  

I'm certain there's more!

My morning sorting.

For more of my miniature tutorials click HERE.