Spring!

First - today is so much better than yesterday.  Thanks to an amazing partner and my little boys I got some encouragement, laughter, and just a lift up out the hole I was starting to dig myself.  The sunshine today helps too. :)

Just a little evidence that spring is here - and there will be wonderful colors showing up around here soon.  And the grass is starting to turn that wonderful shade of green.

 

 

A Weekend Visit

Sometimes I am completely torn between my Love of living in rural Ohio and my unquenchable thirst for travel.  I love all kinds of travel, via planes, trains, or automobile.  Just exploring a new place.  Taking pictures of it all.  But at the end of the trip, I'm always ready to come back home to the slow pace of the country.  The wide open space that is our yard, the familiar places we frequent.

This past weekend a friend and I drove to Lancaster, PA to visit my best friend.  On Saturday we rode an Amtrak train into Philadelphia.  It was my first experience riding a train somewhere, and I enjoyed it.  So nice not having to worry about where to park or having to deal with the stress of driving in a city.

We took the subway to the historical part of town and walked from there.  We spent the day walking to several historic sites and then venturing downtown for a bit.  We met up with my best friend's cousin who lives in Phily. We had cheese steak for lunch. (So good)  We walked around carrying coffees.  We hung out in a Barnes and Noble when we started to get sore feet.  Then we made our way back to the train station, and back to Lancaster.  Then Sunday we drove the 6 hours back home.

I loved visiting. I loved getting a glimpse of what life might have been had we moved to Ireland, in the sense of living in a city.  (We most likely would have been in Dublin.)  But as we were driving home it hit me how much I really do love home.  I love living in the slow paced country.  But I'd go visit the city again in a heart beat.  Always torn. :)

Recipe Catch Up and Spring!

I have a few recipes to share. 3 of them I made over a month ago... I just found the pictures and realized that I hadn't posted about them yet. And instead of typing out the recipes here, I'll just post the links to where I found the recipe. I'm pretty sure I followed these pretty close to what was in the original. (Then again, it has been a month...)

The first is Faux Thin Mints.  This is the one recipe where I really wanted to do some tweaking.  They turned out alright, but there was something missing.  And to tell the truth these pictures were taken before I was completely done.  I actually ended up putting more chocolate on top.  I think some of the first things I would try differently would be to completely coat the cookie in chocolate - and use semi sweet chocolate instead of milk chocolate, and maybe add a bit more sugar to the dough mix, and bake them longer than I did.

Second we have the Homemade Oreos.  These really deserve a post of their own.  They were wonderful.  The frosting for the middle will certainly be seen in my kitchen again.  Probably on top of someone's first birthday cake...  Also, definitely check out the rest of the blog where this recipe was found - I have found many good recipes there.

Third is another round of Banana "Ice cream"  I added some frozen blue berries, raspberries, and cranberries to the mix. (Not too many, or it won't get creamy.)  Also, if you let everything thaw just a bit it makes blending it up into a cream easier.

Last is the newest one I've tried, Homemade Cheddar Crackers.  They didn't turn out like I had hoped, but they tasted great.  I think I needed to roll mine out thinner, and I didn't use the flour it called for, so that might have been an issue.  My crackers were not very crunchy at all.  However, they did get the stamp of approval from my husband and oldest son - so that's success in my book. :)

Now that spring is here it feels like there is so much more to do:  Start the garden, work in the flower beds, keep up with the Quilt A Long, several trips, spending lots of time playing outside with the boys, hanging laundry outside, taking walks, running outside, Grilling!! (hope to try a bunch of new recipes to go with our new grill), spring cleaning, the list could just go on and on. It should be a great spring!