Mediterranean Pasta Salad

This recipe was from The Food Network Magazine. Matt and I made it last week and thought it was delicious so I wanted to share it with you all.

Ingredients:

1 pound tricolor pasta (or pasta of choice)
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2-3 tsp dijon mustard
ground pepper and salt
2/3-3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup diced sun dried tomatoes
1/4 cup fresh basil chopped
1/4 cup diced onion
2 large pickled pepperoncini peppers diced
3 tbs halved black olives
2 tsps chopped fresh oregano
1 1/2 ounces crumbled feta cheese
1 1/2 tbs grated romano cheese


Directions:

1. Cook pasta, drain and rinse.

2. While pasta is cooking, make vinaigrette. Whisk together: vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper to taste, then gradually mix in enough of the oil to make a smooth dressing.

3. In separate bowl, combine, sun dried tomatoes, basil, onion, pepperoncini, olives and oregano.

4. Add the cooked pasta, vinaigrette, and both cheeses and toss.

**The only alterations I made was more cheese of course and I dont much care for onions or black olives so I didnt put those in there either. Also, I added chicken and served warm for a main dish. It was soooooo delish!

Booty Pop!

Yes that is the real name of an actual product being sold these days. When Matt and I went to Houston the last time, we stayed at the hotel halfway and I saw this commerical on TV. At first, I thought it was an SNL skit but then realized that it was about 9:00 am and SNL wasn't on and that this was an actual advertisement. I cant believe this is for real!!! Good ole' "As Seen On TV" products. What will they think of next.

A Late Christmas For My Dear Friend

Can you guess who she is?

You might find her here:
Here: Here: Here: Or even here: But NEVER here (that's crazy talk):Give up, well here is one more clue, this is her office:

Merry-very-late Christmas Katie!! You don't have to learn how to finish your green scarf now!! (Although if you find it and want to still, I will be glad to show you how :) )

Hats and Scarfs

Number One:

I was practicing making a swirled pattern and learned how to make flowers. It kind of reminds me of Charlie Brown but I like this hat a lot and it is pretty easy to make.

Number 2:

With this one, I was practicing making elf hats and wanted to make a new Santa hat for the cocoon that I made earlier and featured on Katie's blog here. I thought it turned out alright but i think the tail part needs to be thicker for longer. It got to skinny in the end.

Number 3:

This is a hat and scarf combo that I made for my secret santa person at work. I came across a crocheted pattern for these ruffle scarfs in an email I get from Lion Brand every week and thought I would try it because it was only a variation of 2 stitches. I just love the pattern and it is super easy to make, but not with this kind of yarn though. It is a lot easier with regular yarn.

Number 4:
This is the same scarf pattern as number three but with a smaller size yarn so it is more the size of a decorative scarf. I got this yarn at a random yarn store in Houston on Thanksgiving break. It is a pale blue, black, and white yarn. It ended up really pretty as well.


Well that's it for now, I will get back to knitting soon but I am on a little hiatus for a bit so I can organize my craft room and clean house this next week. It is a mess from all the holiday comings and goings.

All you ever wanted to know about the Christmas Cactus

So I already did a post previously about my little cactus but I am doing another one because I think it is so pretty and it bloomed a whole bunch more since the first post. I saw this at the store that we bought our Christmas tree at and had to buy it because my little one died that I had before. The reason it is called a Christmas cactus is because just before Christmas is when the flower bloom. There are other cactus' in the family that bloom at other times of the year for instance the Easter cactus.

Around early December, these tiny little buds start forming and before long, they turn into these beautiful big flowers. There are many color varieties but I got this one because it was the biggest and the brightest colored flower they had.

You can really tell the difference in the lighting in all the pictures! I have been looking at some websites to see what I need to do throughout the year to get it to bloom again next year and have been coming up with lots of different suggestions. Some people say they are finicky and some people say they are easy plants. Some people even say they can bloom year round in some temperatures and environments. We'll see how it goes. In case you are interested, here are a few websites about these plants and also for my reference later when I need to look up what to do:

http://www.wikihow.com/Care-for-a-Christmas-Cactus

http://www.humeseeds.com/xmasccts.htm

http://www.essortment.com/all/howtotakecar_rhtu.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holiday_Cactus

Winter Wonderland Part 2

Christmas Day, YEAH!!

Christmas Day was way more fun for playing in the snow. The blizzard had stopped so we just had lots of great snow to play in without the drizzle and ice hitting our faces! Lucy just loves the snow and gets so excited to play in it when we get any so she had the time of her life. This is one of those pictures where I had to trick her to look. I was holding her second BFF above the camera (her frisbee).

And here are some pics of all the snow we got although they dont really do it justice. The front porch was covered even with the planter of snow and higher in some spots with the drifts. The night before, all of the windows were all snowed on and we couldnt even see outside...but that went away when the sun came out.

Our door was snowed shut for several days as well because we never got out to scrape! Im sure the mail people loved us for that, oh well!

A few backyard pics of the drifts. Its hard to tell but it was a ton of snow!

Despite all the snow, we decided to brave the weather and roads and pack up and head out to Tulsa. We thought it was going to be decent by 1:00 or so but we were VERY wrong which we would find out later. It took about 45 minutes to make it to the Turnpike from our house. We saw well 100-150 cars abandoned on the sides of the roads between OKC and Tulsa and witnessed a few wrecks and close calls. People were driving so badly that day, they would blow by everyone and wipe-out. It was crazy! We had to pull over for one family and call 911 for them because they were injured and the other driver of the parked semi that they ran into didnt speak English!! People were driving so crazy that day I am just so happy and thankful we made it with minimal issues and no wrecks. And 3.5 hours later, we made it to Tulsa and didnt leave the house again until we came back to OKC on Sunday. This is how we spent our time there:

Lounging, watching lots of movies, playing in the snow and eating!!

While we were busy building a snow man, Lucy, Sampson and the Chihuahua's were playing in the snow.

Check out Shay's gloves...duct taped plastic bags over knitted gloves. She wanted something water proof and I guess it worked well :)

Second level completed.


Ta-Da!

The eyes were buttons, the nose and "sweater" buttons were dog bones, the mouth was licorice candy, the pipe was a dead plant and an old hat from my mom and a scarf I made last year.
By the time we left, the dog bones and licorice pieces were eaten by Lucy! Oops!

So that was the end of our traveling adventures that week and we made it back without any drama. In hindsight it was a poor decision to go to Tulsa but I am glad we made it safely and got to spend time with our family. It would have been sad to be without them this year.

Winter Wonderland Part 1

Let's back up to Christmas Eve...where the updating begins. We had been planning to leave about 1:00 pm to go to Tulsa for a long weekend, but as we all know, everyone's plans changed rapidly. Luckily Matt didnt have to go to work so he took me to work which wasnt that bad yet but was awful on the way back home. It took him 45 minutes to get to my work (4 miles) and 30 minutes back!! Since we weren't going to travel, we immediately began our snow adventures!! We thought it would be fun to go walking in the blizzard to the church with Lucy. Well it wasn't really that fun in the blizzarding sideways snow but at least we got to play some at the church.

Lucy loves pictures, cant you tell? If ever we get a good one of her, its because we tricked her or got lucky.

This is in front of the church on our way back home. It was a long walk to and from with the snow hitting our faces.

Christmas Eve night we pretty much just hung out and caught up on house stuff that I hadn't taken care of since I had some time. Also, we did Christmas with each other on Wednesday night since we thought we were going to be gone. Also, we watched my all time favorite Christmas movie and Matt's not-so-favorite movie, "White Christmas." He came up with a crazy rule this year that he is limited to one viewing per Christmas movie a year!! Sometimes Matt can be a bah-humbug about Christmas stuff :)

And also, we did a Christmas craft with our animals/kids. Last year, Deanna got me an ornament that you make in my stocking and I made it this year. See below:

After I molded the plaster stuff in the circle shape, Matt helped Lucy make her paw print.

Then I helped Jackie make his paw print. Then you just let it dry for a couple of days. I forgot to take a final picture but you get the idea. I might even decorate it more, I dont know. Anyway, I am sure they all loved it and will treasure the experience forever.

And the final fun activity of the night, we let Lucy play with her laser friend, Dottie, outside in the snow. Here is a video of all the fun:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Its been a while...Matt and I have been so busy as we always are but this time getting ready for Christmas and then the Winter Blizzard 2009 (bum, bum, bum) struck and we got stuck in Oklahoma City a little longer than planned. We made what in hindsight seemed to be a poor decision and head to Tulsa anyway on Christmas afternoon but we made it there semi-safely and got to spend some time with our family (stories to come in a later post). Then we braved the weather to come back, work for a few days, pack again, then headed out to H-town Wednesday evening which leads us to today. We are in Houston for the next few days to spend time with our family. We got in yesterday afternoon and spent the afternoon relaxing, opened gifts and waited for midnight to come by playing the ever popular paper-telephone game with some good friends! I actually stayed up this time which is an amazing feat sometimes. Which is more than Lucy can say for herself :)

Normally I dont make resolutions and keep them very well but I am going to this year and solicit the help of my friends to make sure I achieve these goals this year. Here is a list of some of the things I am hoping to acomplish this year:

1. Get my Etsy website and regular website up and running in full force. This time last year I said I was going to start an Etsy website "soon" and it has been a full year already and I am no where close. I have however made a user name and bought a website name as well. The Etsy use name is: shannonsknitnacks and my website name is: shannonsknitnacks.com at this moment in time unless I decide to change it :) I already have once! I have also been knitting up a storm this last year and crafting some other things as well. I have so many good ideas (I think) but not enough time to do them all. However, I think I have really improved my knitting a lot this past year enough to where I would feel comfortable selling things I make so I just need to get over the hump of designing a website and getting everything lined up to start selling online.

2. Update my facebook profile and stay better connected to friends on that and this blog much better than I have been doing. I am so behind on facebook that I havent changed my pic since we were still newleyweds and lived in our old house about 3 years ago now. Facebook is probably about to delete me because it suggested to my friends and my husband that they should try to "reconnect with me" by posting on my wall. I am so far removed that my mom and sister arent even my facebook friends currently. When I got an iphone a few months ago, I said I was going to get the app and update then and I still havent done that. So, I need to update that and stay better connected.

3. Try not to be so busy with work and too many commitments and spend more time with family and friends. I tend to make myself so busy that I dont get to do the things I would like for one reason or another. Or if I do, I am so tired that it is not as enjoyable as it should be. This year I didnt even make Christmas cards which was sad and I didnt put up our Christmas lights or any decor other than the tree which is very unlike me. But maybe it was just unavoidable this year. I have a more demanding job during the day that is not as laid back as the church job was and maybe it just takes some getting used to. Plus I have been really enthralled in my knitting and I pretty much knit anywhere and anytime. But anyway, I am going to try and be a better wife, sister, daughter, and friend this year hopefully. That's a big goal!

Merry Christmas from the Meredith's!