Tonight's Dinner

Fresh mixed greens sprinkled with berries, cheese, nuts and drizzled with poppyseed salad dressing!



Soooooo yummy!!

Pile It On Challenge #27 - A Holiday Twist

Hello!

Are you enjoying this gorgeous weekend? I sure am!

But on to important card business, this week Pile It On is being sponsored by the Character Cafe. They have wonderful digital images, with very different styles, so there is something for everyone!

This week The Character Cafe is going to be giving one lucky winner a $15 gift certificate to their store! Sooooo you need to know what this week's Pile It On challenge is all about...... it's a holiday twist ... we want you to use a holiday color combination on a NON holiday card.

I decided to use traditional red and green along with this gorgeous image of a mum, to create this card:



And it incorporates these challenges:
Pile It On: holiday colours
Little Red Wagon: use nestabilities
Cuttlebug Challenges: use doilies or lace
Friday Sketchers: sketch
Shabby Tea Room:embossing


If you can, please do join in the fun at Pile it On!

Radish Salad

I'm back with another recipe I tried out of the early summer Food and Drink magazine featuring radishes. I think radishes are an acquired taste and I certainly don't mind them if they are not too hot! So if you're adventurous and/or like radishes, do try this recipe, its quite good and quite simple to make too!




2 lbs radishes
1/2 cup radish leaves, washed, dried and torn(I used extra arugula as the radish leaves didn't appeal to me)
2T thinly sliced chives
2T grape seed oil
1T mirin or rice wine vinegar
1/2 tsp coarse sea salt
4 oz shaved parmigiano-reggiano(I think I was heavy-handed with the cheese and freely grated it on!)
2 cups arugula or watercress

Trim radish roots leaving just a bit of the stem. Wash well, drain and towel-dry. Slice thinly, crosswise or length-wise, put into bowl. Toss with torn leaves, chives, oil, mirin and salt. Arrange on platter and sprinkle with cheese and arugula. Makes 6 servings.

Asparagus Salad with Mediterranean Salsa

If you live in Ontario you're probably familiar with the LCBO's Food and Drink magazine. It has fabulous recipes and other entertaining ideas and I often wish I had more time to cook as so many recipes appeal to me.

Recently I did get the chance to try out two new recipes,one of which features asparagus with a yummy salsa by Lucy Waverman.



Although recipe calls for white asparagus as well as green I didn't like the look of it in the store and used only green.



I really liked how it turned out.The salsa would also be a great accompaniment to other roasted veggies. I'll be making this again!

Here's the recipe:


1 lb (500 g) green asparagus
1 lb (500 g) white asparagus
1 tsp (5 mL) salt
1 tsp (5 mL) sugar

Mediterranean Salsa

½ cup (125 mL) chopped shallots
½ cup (125 mL) chopped green olives
¼ cup (50 mL) chopped roasted red pepper
1 tbsp (15 mL) chopped capers
¼ cup (50 mL) chopped parsley
2 tbsp (25 mL) lime juice
2 tbsp (25 mL) orange juice
¼ cup (50 mL) extra virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper


1. Peel green asparagus if stalks are thick. Peel white asparagus.

2. Bring a large skillet of salted water to boil. Add green asparagus and boil for 2 to 3 minutes or until still slightly crisp. Remove with tongs and run under cold water until cool. Pat dry.

3. Add sugar to boiling water and add white asparagus. Boil for 2 to 3 minutes or until slightly crisp. Drain and run under cold water until cool. Pat dry. Place green and white asparagus on a platter.

4. Combine shallots, olives, red pepper, capers and parsley in a bowl. Stir in lime juice, orange juice and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper, spoon salsa over asparagus across the centre.


Serves 4

July 1 Fireworks - Beginner Photos

Before you read any further please be cautioned, these are my first attempts at taking fireworks photos and they are really not that good. As the experts say, you do need a tripod. But I thought I'd share anyway, they make me think of sea creatures, lol.








I am rather proud of this sunset photo though!

Little Red Wagon Challenge # 36 - Nestabilities!

Hello all, its Wednesday again! The weeks do fly by! Time for another Little Red Wagon challenge!



This week Carolyn challenged us to use Nestabilities in creating our project. I used two different labels dies and created this card:



I also took inspiration from this week's colour theme(green, deep red and kraft)at Embellish Magazine to create this Let's Hang Out invitation.

If you can, please join us at Little Red Wagon, we love to see what you create!

Blooming Early July

Today I'm sharing garden photos I took on manual settings.

Petunia

Shasta Daisy
Another bird bath pic

Stella D'Oro Lily
Sweet Peas
French rose
Nasturtiam
Fushia and begonia

Rose buds Delphinium

These are all untouched and I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

Blooming Late June

Hello all!

I thought I'd share some garden pics took in late June on the flower auto setting of the camera. I'll share others I took on the manual setting in another post.

Rose
Spirea
Perennial geranium
Hydrangea
Annabelle hydrangea
Lilies
Impatiens in the bird bath
Astilbe

An Update on Life

Happy Sunday Evening! I hope you all have enjoyed the gorgeous sunny and warm weekend.

My blog has been distinctly lacking in the life component lately so I thought I'd post a bit of a summary of what my family and I have been up to.

So here we go.....

In early June we participated in a 5 km walk in support of ALS. It was organized by my friend Ann and went really well. I also went to the Crop for the Cure in St.Jacobs put on by Tracey, it was another well organized and fun event!

Then in mid-June I went to Toronto to take the Copic Certification Course. It was a terrific day and the course was very well taught by Sherrie of Card Creme. While there,I ran into Donna MacDonald, a wonderful lady, who I worked with years ago. She has a very inspiring blog here.

I've been to a couple of birthday celebrations, one for my sister, who made some yummy drinks that I'll feature in a separate post and the other for my friend Jeannie who celebrated a very special birthday. As we left she presented us with our own personalized scrapbookers 'loot' bag, here's a pic:


Each bag was tailored to the recipient and mine contained a lovely selection of ribbon and flowers along with some other goodies(I ate all the chocolate before I took a pic:


Thanks Jeannie!

Then I took a photography course on how to use your SLR camera at The Art House .It was expertly instructed by Sue Sykes. It was a great day and I took these photos, all on manual camera settings:





Brittany and I met my sister and her family in Stratford for a decadent dinner at the Erie Drive-In Restaurant which included deep fried mushrooms with dill dip. They were so good!

We had friends Kathryn and Dave over for dinner where I tried a couple of new salad recipes that I'll share in future posts.

On another evening we went to the Mohawk Race track with friends John and Dana where we enjoyed an awesome buffet dinner and had fun betting on each race. I started with $20 and left with $17,not bad for 13 races,lol!

Last week I went to my nephew Brayden's grade 8 graduation, congrats Brayden!

And this past Thursday I saw Eclipse with my daughters. I got such a laugh out of the teenage girls squeeling at Jacob's chest.

We spent time this past weekend enjoying the sunshine and did go to see fireworks at the U of Waterloo where I experimented with taking fireworks pics, I'll show the results in another post.

And finally, I took some garden pics today that I'll show in another post. While doing so I noticed that some of the delphinium was falling over so I cut them and along with some hydrangea created this arrangement:



So there you have it, my update is complete......and probably tells you way more than you wanted to know,lol!

Little Red Wagon Challenge #35 - Tags!

Happy Canada Day!



I've been busy living life(update to come soon) and am a day late in posting my creation for this week's Little Red Wagon Challenge, hopefully its worth the wait, lol!

Joanne challenged us to use a tag. I decided to create one using three different spellbinders shapes!



As always, if you can, please play along with us at Little Red Wagon, we love to see what you create!