Runaway October

Aren’t these guys just too cute!?

Con­fetti Flow­ers Christ­mas Card

Make a state­ment with Shut­ter­fly Christ­mas photo cards.

View the entire col­lec­tion of cards.

Some of you may have had this soup before. It’s one of Olive Garden’s most pop­u­lar dishes.

This Thanks­giv­ing we had an Ital­ian theme and we brought this soup–it turned out quite yummy. It’s also quick and fairly inex­pen­sive. A great choice for chilly nights.

Unti­tled by Divine Domesticity

Zuppa Toscana (Olive Gar­den Copycat)

Serves: 6 to 8 people

Ingre­di­ents:

• 1 lb ground Ital­ian sausage (Your choice on Sweet, Mild or Hot)
• 1½ tsp crushed red peppers
• 1 large diced white onion
• 4 Tbsp bacon pieces (I used reg­u­lar bacon, though pre­cooked bacon or even Real Bacon Bits would work)
• 4 cloves of gar­lic, minced
• 10 cups water
• 4 cubes of chicken bouillon *
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 lb sliced Rus­set pota­toes, or about 3 large potatoes **
• ¼ of a bunch of kale

Direc­tions:

1. Sauté Ital­ian sausage and crushed red pep­per in a large pot. Drain excess fat, refrig­er­ate while you pre­pare other ingredients.
2. In the same pan, sauté bacon, onions and gar­lic over low-medium heat for approx­i­mately 15 min­utes or until the onions are soft.
3. Add chicken bouil­lon and water to the pot and heat until it starts to boil.
4. Add the sliced pota­toes and cook until soft, about half an hour.
5. Add the heavy cream and warm just until thor­oughly heated.
6. Stir in the sausage and the kale, let all heat through and serve. Delicious!

* Con­versely, you can omit the bouil­lon and the water and just use straight chicken broth.

** If you have left over baked pota­toes, you can just slice them and toss them in. Cook long enough to warm them through and move on to step 5.

Image by bookgrl

Enjoy!

Do you have any favorite soup recipes you’d like to share?

Some­times when you aim to hand make all of your gifts, the final goal can get away from you. Sure, that super cute scarf would be fun to make, but in Ari­zona who’s going to use it?

So the boys (with lots of help from Mama) are mak­ing soap to give as gifts this year. Who can’t use soap, right?

Don’t worry, the stove was not on yet.

My fancy dou­ble boiler.

Adding flax meal for exfo­liants and kelp pow­der which is a great detox­i­cant. (Is that a word?)

Soap on a Rope, poured and set­ting up.

In the molds, with a fin­ger­print… for authenticity.

We did two dif­fer­ent batches so far–one for the gals, one for the guys.

The Guy Recipe

• 1 lb sus­pen­sion Shea But­ter soap base
• 2 table­spoons Kelp Powder
• 2 table­spoons Flax Seed Meal
• 15–20 drops Tea Tree Essen­tial Oil

The Gal Recipe

• 1 lb Honey melt & pour soap
• 4 Tb Beeswax
• 4 Tb Honey
• 15 — 20 Sweet Orange Essen­tial Oil
• 1 tsp shim­mery Mica for sparkle

(P.S. — If the boys give you a gift of soap, pre­tend to be sur­prised! They are very proud of their efforts! )

Declan, Rowan and Mom’s new kit­ten, Cataclysm

After explain­ing to Declan and Rowan what Thanks­giv­ing is about, these are the things they have decided they are thank­ful for.

Rowan:

• Kurt (My moms cat)
• Lions
• Horses
• Cows
• Vit­a­mins
• Books
• Candy
• Jalapeños
• Mama
• Our house

Declan:

• Books
• Meat
• All that other stuff (Trans­la­tion: I’m dis­tracted and want to ride my bike, which I for­got to men­tion I was thank­ful for.

Time for another install­ment of things I would love to have (doesn’t that sound won­der­fully mate­ri­al­is­tic of me? :/ ) and I fully rec­om­mend them for the other spe­cial peo­ple in your life.

Again, none of these pic­tures are mine. I do not claim them. I just stole them bor­rowed them to show­case these prod­ucts. They are the right­ful prop­erty of their owners.