Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I can't believe I'm not getting around to actually posting photos of my St. Patrick's Day decorations until the day before. These have been up since March 1st... and while it's one of my smallest holidays decoration-style, it's also one of my favorites.

In our house, we have Celtic roots from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall... pretty much anywhere the ancient Celts lived, so did our ancestors. While we may not be Catholic - we ARE Irish and love celebrating our heritage during the month of March with traditional recipes, and fun leprechaun-free decorations.

On the front door, we hung this sweet little tin of shamrocks that may look familiar from THIS post from last year.

For the fireplace, we put up the same paper banner from last year. It's hard to read, so I may have to make a new one next year... but the letters spell out "Irish Blessings." Little Lambie sits on the hearth, in honor of all the sheep in Ireland.

On our little accent table in the living room, I borrowed an idea from Pinterest and filled a few of my hurricane vases with split-peas and tealights. The little angel is one of my favorite decorations, because her gown is printed with my favorite Irish Blessing:

May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face.
And rains fall softly on your fields.
And until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.



Over on the sewing table, I did actually pick up a few new pieces this year. The tablerunner is actually an aran-knit scarf, and I found the sweetest little spun-cotton mushrooms to sit in my favorite milkglass bowl atop a few faux-moss rocks from the dollar-store.

On our little hutch nearly everything is identical from last year. The one addition I made, is a little paper doll with her sweet little piggie friend.

And the last little bit of Irish decoration is also a repeat from last year. Up in my kitchen niche are two reprinted vintage cards, and a vintage vase of sequined floral picks.

Truly, while I may love decorating the whole house for fall, I also enjoy how just a few small decorations can make such a huge impact on the look of my house!

Whipped Cocoa Butter Recipe

I have been using the avocado-green Sunbeam mixer given to my mom when she was first married in 1968 for the past several years. It STILL works, but my son has asked several times if he could have it when he moves out and we've been looking for a replacement BEFORE the Sunbeam breathes it's last... and to be honest I've wanted something slightly more robust with a nice big dough-hook for awhile anyway. Meet Vincent. I named him Vincent because this mixer is one HUGE beast. And with a 300 watt motor, he's powerful too. I think it could beat our car to a smooth frothy consistency. Naturally with a new toy to play with, I feel the need to put it through a few... err... abusive paces to see what it's made of. Last night we whipped up some garlic-cheddar biscuits, and soon I'll be making oatmeal bread with the dough hooks. For this afternoon however, I thought I'd see how it handles running continuously. For an entire hour. On high. Because of course, you just never know when that'll come in handy with a mixer. I had an amazingly simple recipe for homemade whipped cocoa butter, but in searching around a bit I found some nice alternates to a few ingredients that I've been dying to try. And since we've just about finished up the last of my most recent batch, this seemed the perfect time to replenish our stock. To make this, you will need just four ingredients. These can be found at most health food stores, but if you can plan ahead... you can find them all online for MUCH cheaper! To make about four 4oz jars (I doubled the recipe because I plan on sharing) you will need: * 4oz cocoa butter (I prefer the wafers because they melt quicker) * 2oz apricot oil * 1tsp cornstarch * and 1/2tsp liquid Vitamin E If your cocoa butter is unscented you could also add up to a dozen drops of essential oils, (mandarin & lime would be divine!) but I prefer the chocolatey cocoa butter fragrance myself. To make this, melt down your cocoa butter, then refrigerate for 15 minutes to start it cooling. Whip it on medium in your blender for 15 minutes, then put it BACK into the refrigerator for another 10 minutes. Then whip it on high once more, for anywhere between 15 minutes to an hour. It's at this point that the mixture will go from being a gold liquid to a frothy white "whipped cream" consistency. That's what you want. I did mix mine for a full hour, but it didn't seem to expand after the first 30 minutes so that might have been plenty. Your mileage may vary, of course but that's what I noticed. Once it's done, simply spoon it into whatever cute jars you have laying around and use as you would a massage oil, or lotion. It will harden just a bit in the jar, but will melt on-contact with your skin so all you need to do is scoop out a teeny tiny bit and it'll melt down almost immediately. My kids prefer using this as hand cream just before bed! It smells divine, and after about 5 minutes any "greasy" sensation has soaked into the skin so ALL you're left with is wonderfully soft (chocolatey) skin!

The "Our Movie" Date

Several months ago, my kids were looking over my shoulder as I looked up fun & interesting "Date Night" ideas. A few of them were based on a movie theme, and that seemed like a great idea... but none of the movies were OUR favorite movies. They asked if we could come up with a special Princess Bride date-night, since that's one of our families all-time favorite movies. And... they wanted to HELP with the details!
 

 For fun, each element of the day was based on a line straight from the movie. To begin with, we said "Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up." Then we listened to the soundtrack to the movie, and hung this canvas print that we'd had made earlier with quotes from the movie on the wall.

Then we headed to Caribou Coffee, (a favorite "splurge-spot") to order our favorite drinks... to replicate the quote "First, let's drink. Me from my glass, and you from yours."

During lunch we had fresh strawberries & bananas for a chocolate fondue snack because of course "The chocolate coating makes it go down easier."

Then we opened a new game for the Wii... National Geographic Challenge, (which is REALLY great for kids wanting to practice up on all sorts of world geography trivia!) saying "In that case, I challenge you to a battle of wits." This ended up being a girls-against-boys challenge because the questions were SO hard, but everything ended well... the girls won, of course. *grins*

We had PLANNED on having a Just Dance competition in honor of the quote "We face each other as God intended... sportsmanlike. No tricks, no weapons, skill against skill alone." but decided against it, as I wasn't feeling terribly well. *sigh* Oh well, the best intentions & all that...

And for dinner we decided to use the quote "As you wish" to all choose DIFFERENT fast-food restaurants to order from & brought everything home to eat.

After dinner, we set up a cute little bedsheet-tent in the living room, made from vintage bedsheets & 1x2 lumber. When the kids were little, I used to pitch our tent inside the living room every February, and call it "winter camping" to help break up the monotony of cabin fever. Since having to give up tent-camping, we haven't done this in a few years however, and decided to recreate the experience in a slightly more playful manner.

From within our tent, curled up with our favorite blankets, we watched the movie The Princess Bride... with movie-sized boxes of chocolate-covered peanuts, which my daughter handed out asking "Anybody want a peanut?"

The Party 6 Years in the Making

My daughter was born on the Chinese New Year.

I would never have known this, but while I was pregnant my husband was the only non-Hmong person in his department at work. When I went into labor early, EVERY lady made sure to tell him I should do everything in my power to hold out on giving birth until after midnight - because being born during the year of the dragon was VERY very lucky. And yes, somehow she WAS born - two hours into the year of the dragon; my little Chinese New Year baby.




When she was old enough, we told her the story of her birth. On her 6th birthday we surprised her with a pink cheongsam, (Chinese brocade dress) and a pink Asian birthday party. And since that day she has insisted that on her TWELFTH birthday - when it is once again the year of the dragon, she wanted another Chinese tea party birthday.





Since she is a girly-girl, a traditional Chinese New Year party in red & black with dragons everywhere just didn't seem appropriate. So instead, we went with a Cherry Blossom theme where everything was pale pink & dark brown.





For the invitations, we used a cherry-blossom rubber stamp & chalked the image to give it a soft "watercolored" look. Inside, we created a birthday haiku rather than using the traditional "You Are Invited" wording.



For decorations, we strung pink & brown paper lanterns across the ceiling, and scattered pink cherry blossoms across a brown "tablecloth." (it was actually a thrifted bedsheet cut down to size!)







We set each girls place with a silk fan, and chopsticks for each girl to take home.









Being a tea party, the treats were easy to decide on as well. We had chocolate-dipped fortune cookies, almond cookies, and tiny tangerines with jasmine green tea. Rather than a large cake, we made vanilla cupcakes with tangerine frosting & decorated them with the prettiest sugar cherry blossoms I could find.





Everything was set out on the old sewing machine, which doubles as a display-sideboard in the dining room.


While I had originally envisioned framing a piece of Chinese brocade to use as a backdrop, I found the most beautiful painted scroll for $4 that looked absolutely perfect just above the table, and seemed to complete the display perfectly.
















At the party, the girls spent hours playing "how many pieces of rice / buttons / tangerine-slices / and flower petals can you pick up with a pair of chopsticks in 30 seconds" before running off to the bedroom to practice a play - to which I was the sole audience.


I'm sworn to secrecy on the details of the play, but it ended with a sweet interpretation of a Japanese fan-dance with flower petals raining down throughout the living room. Then they painted blooming cherry tree branches using straws to blow the paint into the shape of the branches before settling down to watch The Amazing Panda Adventure for bed.














In the morning the girls woke to mandarin-orange rice pudding & tea, before getting ready for church. And to go home, the princess & I had picked up some pretty Bed Bath & Beyond body washes & glittery body-spray in Cherry Blossom, (they were on SALE for 1/3 of their regular cost!) and some pretty soaps. We also tucked in a tiny felt fortune cookie with a handmade fortune that read "Thanks for coming to my party!" This party may have been "six years in the making" but it was both the most laid-back party we've ever had. The girls loved every second of the party, and I loved how everything seemed to come together perfectly for one beautiful celebration for my pretty pretty princess.

Valentine's Day Decorations

I have some WONDERFUL crafts & decorations to share today! February is a special month for us. This month is my mother's birthday, my daughter's birthday, and Valentine's Day.  am absolutely not a fan of pink though - which means a lot of commercial decorations just won't do. Most of our new ideas came directly from my Valentines Day board on PINTEREST... where you can see links to all of the original posts. For this month I chose to stick with a single theme for all my new decorations... and I LOVE how it turned out! For our front door, we reused the pretty stuffed-hearts from last year.The kids and I took vintage valentines and printed them onto iron-on patches. These were used both to create this adorable door-hanging AND to fill a pail sitting on our fireplace hearth! For the rest of the fireplace, we made a heart chain from OOOOOLD book pages. These were carefully Mod Podged so we can reuse them year after year, and I love how this turned out as a simple and unique spin on traditional Valentine's Day "fluff." To tie everything together, I added vintage buttons to the vase, and my little bowl of vintage thread. Then on a whim I took a coat-hanger and bent it into the word LOVE and wrapped that in red yarn. The adorable paper-and-button flowers were my favorite addition however. I just LOVE how these turned out, and all I needed was more of the vintage book, and some coated-wire! In the close-up photo, you can see one of my favorite buttons. The glass button in the front was from a sweater my great-grandmom knit for me when I was a little girl. I've always had a fascination with the pretty "seashell" pattern on these buttons, and was so excited to find a pretty craft to show them off! In the dining area, I used more of the old book and some wool felt to create a simple centerpiece and drops from the chandelier.Seriously, I am loving how quickly (and inexpensively) all of our new decorations turned out this year! The rest of our decorations are pretty much the same as last year. In my cabinet-niche we have the little stuffed bears that have sat there every year since my daughter was born. This year they're sitting on a vintage gingham square that doubles as a card-tablecloth. On top of the china cupboard I have my feather-tree with the pretty glittered vintage Valentines. This year we added a few of the Valentines to our apothecary jar, and I REALLY like how that turned out! And of course there's the hutch display. The one big change we made here this year, was to put our little mailboxes onto "posts." These were candlestands from the thrift store! The two red ones were painted because they were traditional oak stands & not quite what I had in mind, but the other two were perfect as-is. How has everyone else decorated for February?!?

NOT giving up!

I placed my FIFTH marble into my awesome mushroom jar this afternoon. A minor milestone, perhaps... but an important one for me. Today was the day my joints conspired to try to make me give in and not exercise. And rather than take the same route I've done for years and listen... I exercised anyway. I was all fired up because I've exercised four days in a row dozens of times. The fifth day is one of my biggest hurdles & I was ready for it today. Woke up, hopped right into my exercise outfit... and the kids needed help with school 'til lunchtime. But even that didn't stop me. Right after lunch, I pulled out the Balance Board and started up the Wii fully ready to do my 30-minutes of exercise. Halfway through my FIRST round of Rhythm Parade, (I've been doing three) my shoulder started hurting. A LOT. I fought through to the end of the set, but just barely. I DID manage one heck of an awesome score though! See?!? Seriously - ONE step away from perfect?!? I was on FIRE! Unfortunately there was no way I was going to be able to do a second, let alone all three sets of marching because my shoulder was THROBBING now! No problem, I told myself... so long as I can do both sets of Jackknives it'll still be awesome. WRONG AGAIN! Yep, the last 10 of my Jackknives caused my hips to start clicking & aching. *sigh* There was NO way I could do 30 more, when I barely got through the first 30! This is the point where I would usually walk away. Because... well... I HURT! But my companion Arthur Ritis is here for life, and tomorrow won't make me feel any better. I KNOW this, and today I decided I've had enough. Maybe I can't do what I'd planned, but I CAN still exercise! So today, rather than giving up and grabbing my hot-packs, I ran through the exercises and decided to give Rhythm Boxing a try. I haven't done that in awhile because the marching seems to be so much more effective, but I figured "Why NOT?!?" and started it up. One expert & one regular level later, I'd completed 21 minutes of boxing and STILL wrapped up with my five favorite yoga stretches. That's 41 minutes of exercise... on a day when I would have otherwise given up! I am NOT giving up... I AM going to make my goal this time! Mr. Ritis is just gonna have to deal with it, because it's time to fight back.

One Day at a Time

Two years ago today, I was sitting in the emergency-room for the second time in two days with a shingles infection that had gotten into my eye. After four MONTHS of multiple (LITERALLY hourly) eyedrops to keep my eye dilated, fight the infection AND fight temporary glaucoma this finally cleared up. Sort-of. To this day, I am completely nightblind. I also have a permanent "hole" in my vision that has ruined my depth-perception. One year ago today, I realized that because of my restricted exercise regime during all of this, I had gained back all 30 of the pounds I had lost. I felt horrible, looked even worse, and... did absolutely nothing about it. And over the past year those extra 30 pounds gained four more friends to bring me to a new highest-weight-ever. While I cannot change my vision, I CAN change my weight. This weekend I jumped on my scale, to find that 8 of those pounds have disappeared. I don't know why, and I DON'T really care. They're gone, and I'm ready to fight to keep them from coming back. So yesterday was the start of a new phase of "me." Yesterday I started exercising with my daughter... again. And since visual-aids really help me to stay on task, I'm using a visual reminder to help keep me on task. I saw THIS POST on Pinterest and immediately fell in love with the idea of filling a jar with marbles as visual inspiration. And while I do plan on copying the original blogger's idea of using one pebble for every pound lost - I wanted a short-term goal to begin with. So my version looks like this:My absolutely adorable mushroom jar will hold one marble for every day I exercise.  I'm keeping it on my desk right next to the computer, so I am sure to see it on a regular basis. The two little marbles already in the jar are for yesterday & today. There are thirty-three on the tray. But I am determined to get them moved to the jar. And hopefully by that time, I can start a NEW jar with a few extra marbles in the bottom! Slowly but surely I'll get there - one day at a time.