Oh Nuts

When we hear the word joy we immediately think of something that made us very excited and happy. Or you could have thought of the little blue haired character from Pixar's "Inside Out." But what one thing that you might not think of when you hear the word joy is an acronym. Now after reading that last sentence you are probably wondering how there is an acronym in a three letter word. Well many years ago I saw the acronym written on a post it note and hung up in a bathroom and it has been something that has stuck with me since then. And the acronym for joy is: J esus, O thers, Y ourself...and it is something that we should try to follow out. While I might not be doing a good job of it, I have tried to follow it every day. Whether its, in the morning, afternoon, or evening, or even if you do it through out the day, we need to take some time out of our busy schedules each day for Jesus. While it might be hard at first and take time, just trying to take time out of...

Last week during one of my many Pinterest scroll and pinning sprees I found a delicious sounding recipe for Cinnamon Oatmeal Muffins. So I printed out the recipe and thought that I wouldn't be able to make them last week. But I ended up having Thursday off of work unexpectedly so I decided to make the muffins. Cinnamon Oatmeal Muffins Recipe: 1 egg (room temperature) 1 tbsp. coconut oil (melted) 1 cup milk (I used almond) ½ cup honey 1 cup flour* 1 cup rolled oats ½ tsp salt ½ tbsp. baking powder 2 tsps. cinnamon Recipe Directions:  Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large bowl add egg, honey, and melted oil. Stir until the ingredients are combined and slowly stir in milk. Add the oats to the mixture and let it rest for 1-2 minutes. Mix the dry ingredients in a small bowl and add to the mixture. Mix until dry ingredients are blended in well. Place cupcake liners in a muffin tin and add 1-2 heaping tablespoons of batter to each liner. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes or unt...

The idea for this popped into my head one night while my family was praying the Rosary together and because we have a couple birds currently living inside the chimney of our house. It's not the greatest but let me know what you think. Birds in the fireplace. It's what they call their home From Spring until Fall. From darkness into light they fly. And from light to dark they return, Flying between walls of brick and stone. In their choice of nest, Birds in the fireplace are heard. Bickering back and forth They speak in a language all their own. Inside their home of darkness and soot, They speak while flying to and fro. Constant chatter and flying they use. Hardly stopping while in their nest. Day or night they fly about. Either sky high or or darkness and soot, Hardly slowing down as they do. At Summer's end they prepare. When the leaves start to fall, The birds prepare to move on. Soon the birds leave their fireplace home. As the weath...

A while ago I decided to ditch the black and white blanket that I had been working on since January, because I was so fed up with trying to use it. So now I am working on yet another knitting project. This time it is a pillow case for a throw pillow. As usual, like, most of my ideas lately, I got the idea off of Pinterest. The website that I got the idea from is The Decorated Cookie , where the owner did a post back at the end of January this year with a bunch of different knitting projects and links to the original posts for those. The last one in the list was for knit pillows . After looking at the link and seeing that it was really easy to make I decided to give making a pillow case for a throw pillow. Using two skeins of yarn that I had already purchased for other previous projects I started making a pillow. I haven't bought the pillow that goes inside of the case yet, but I will probably get it soon. When I first started knitting this project the weather was still on ...

We have this salmon recipe in our large yellow recipe binder and I had tried it once before, though it hadn't turned out quite like it was supposed to, at leas I think it didn't. Anyhow I decided to try it again today since I was looking for a meatless lunch option. Since it only takes a few minutes to prepare the sauce part of it as well as bake I decided to share the recipe on here. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place salmon in pan and sprinkle with garlic, salt and pepper. In a bowl mix 1/2 stick butter*, a drizzle of honey, 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, 1/3 cup mayo. Spread of salmon and bake about 15 mins or until flaky. *I find that it woks best if the butter is softened a bit first, before it is added to the other sauce ingredients.

Whelp...I'm back from vacation. It was a lot of fun though and I can say that we got our tent taking down and packed up skills down to around 45 minutes. And that is with taking down two tents. While we all enjoyed ourselves on the trip, we are all glad to be home and to have an extra day in there before having to go back to work. Between the pictures that I took with the camera on my phone and my nice Canon camera I have over 100 pictures from the trip and that doesn't count the couple pictures that I deleted off of both devices. In my last post, before going on vacation, I mentioned that I was going to start the photography scavenger hunt thing while on vacation. While I had brought it with me I didn't really take any pictures for it. Although some of the pictures that I took on vacation could have worked for it, I decided not to keep them as vacation pictures and then just start doing it now that we are back. When I actually start doing the scavenger hunt is anoth...

Last night I was scrolling through Pinterest to see if there was any new pins that sounded delicious (food), crafty, writing related, or something that fit into one of my other boards and one of the pins that a friend of mine had pinned was for a photography scavenger hunt. Of course since I enjoy doing photography and haven't taken any pictures with my camera lately, the camera on my phone doesn't count, I decided to pin it and then print it out so that I can bring it along on vacation next week. I would start doing it this week but I am rather busy with work and trying to get ready to leave for vacation, so the scavenger hunt has to wait until next week to start. Once I start the scavenger hunt and come back from vacation I am planning on posting the pictures on here to share. found on:  http://www.doodlecraftblog.com/2012/02/picture-scavenger-hunt.html