Rhubarb!! Must be spring finally!

Rhubarb!  Isn't it beautiful!

Ready to go into the oven!

And ready to eat!

Rhubarb Crisp

4 cups chopped rhubarb

3 tbsn orange juice or lemon juice mixed with 1 tbsn cornstarch

1 c granulated sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ginger

1 tbsn cut up butter

1/4 c melted butter

1/3 c brown sugar

2/3 c sifted flour

dash salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

2/3 c quick cooking rolled oats

Heat oven to 375 degrees.  Grease an 8 inch square baking dish.  Arrange cut up rhubarn and mix with juice/cornstarch mixture.  Sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on top and dot with cut up butter.

Combine melted butter and brown sugar.  Sift together flour, salt, and baking soda; mix with oats.  Combine the flour oats mixture with the brown sugar and melted butter mixture until well blended.  With hands, spread the crumb mixture over rhubarb.  Bake 40 minutes.  Serve with whipped cream, cream, or ice cream.  Yumm!

Getting it right

I've tried a couple of things by the front door but none have made me smile like these things do.  This is an old rusty iron piece that the seller could not identify other than it was sitting by some tires in his old grainery.  I thought it was going to be a garden ornament but I like it a lot better here!

I also bought a length of old molding.  I love the chippy paint with blue paint peeking through the yellow.  It is cheery and warm and works well with my kitchen which has blue lamimate counter tops (that I desperately want to replace with granite or some solid surface) and blue vinyl print flooring (which needs to be replaced with wood).  I found some wire hooks in the garage and screwed them into the molding,

And now we have a spot to hang those things we use daily and were leaving on the stair railing.  The old window screen with decorative hooks just wasn't right--that gets to hang outside by the deck and patio.

I'm baaack

Hi again!  I dropped my camera, which interrupted my blogging, which got me out of the habit, then April came with unseasonally warm weather, and well... 

Here is the planning stage of one of my latest projects.  I decided I needed to use up things I had rather than buying new supplies for awhile.

I played around with making some fabric flowers.  These look like dogwood blossoms to me and remind me of my time in Tennessee.

I used an old page out of a French book as the background, layered cheese cloth over it and sewed around the page and the cheese cloth in a free hand manner.  Then layered a variety of created flowers on top of that.  I like the way these bits and scraps came together. 

Check out other great projects at :

Valentine's Day tags and such

This was an incredibly lazy weekend.  I prefer weekends wherein I have a sense of accomplishment and feel rested and refreshed by Monday morning.  Ah well, hopefully I won't regret what didn't get done this weekend as I move into a busy week.

The one thing I did do is play around with tags and stamps for Valentine's Day.  I will definitely be stamping on torn strips of muslim to make ribbon for other occasions also.  I love the way that turned out. 

Here are my bits and pieces from the weekend.

Linking up to some of the parties I enjoy. Go check them out and see what everyone else is doing!

My current favorite and a dog story

Do you sometimes save things even though you have no idea what you are going to do with them?  (Wait, who are my readers?!--of course you do!)  Well, I had been saving those metal Fossil watch tins. 

I recently rediscovered the joys of Modge Podge.  Modge Podge meet metal box.  Throw in bits and pieces of vintage paper, saved tags, and other collected papers.

(Tracy from French Larkspur might recognize the tissue paper with which my latest Jeanne de' Arc magazine was wrapped.  Thank you!  I love ordering stuff from Etsy as the wrapping and extras are a good as the ordered object!)

I tear bits and pieces and Modge Podge them to the inside of the box.  I cut larger pieces to fit the bottom/back of the box.

Then my husband introduced me to Rub and Buff.  I love this stuff.  Rub it on and you have a metallic finish.  A little goes a long way.  And there are endless uses for it.

Then once everything has dried, decide what to do with the mini display space.  Here are some of my past choices.  These last two are waiting for inspiration to strike.

And while I was busy decopaging and buffing, we had a visitor.  I was stuck at home today because of the major blizzard covering the upper midwest.  In the midst of these 50 mph winds, cold temps, and whiteout conditions, a loveable golden retriever showed up at our house.  Now we recently moved to the country and our nearest neighbor is about 1/4 mile away with a marais and trees seperating us.  Poor puppy had no tags so I didn't know where he belonged.  We haven't yet met our neighbors and after doing a county property search to find names of the nearest neighbors found that no one had landline phones.  So, I couldn't track down phone numbers.  After a very lengthy internet search I finally found one probably work email address and sent off a message.  10 minutes later my phone rang and the dog owners had been found.  By this time, 'Frosty' the dog had been at our place about 4 hours.  He wouldn't stay in the garage where he had shelter, water, and food.  Oh no, he had to sit at the patio door hoping to come in the house. 

Unfortunately, a strange dog with no tags was not going to get to come in.  I finally pulled out a blanket and draped it over the patio furniture to give him a windbreak and he settled in and napped until his owners arrived.  All ended well.  'Frosty' was happy, amazingly warm and good natured despite the snow and wind, and got to go home.  We met our neighbors who seemed very nice.  The moral of this story--please make sure your pets have tags!

I am linking up to the following parties! hosted by the most generous bloggers.

Visiting Silver Sunday Party

I thought I would drop in and visit Silver Sunday and the Gypsy Fish Journal.

I just started picking up some pieces of silver when I find them. I plan to keep collecting silverware so that I have enough silver for those times I have guests for meals. And I started picking up silver platters because they seem to sell for next nothing are are great for decorating and projects.

Here is my small begining collection of silver ware.




The small silver pieces are spoons that my husband inherited.  They are very interesting.  I often wonder what their story might be.




Right now, the silver ware is displayed on my very eclecticly decorated mantel.

More of Jack Frost's work

I so wish I were at home rather than the office so I could take pictures of the winter wonderland out there.