Cupcakes, Projects and Fun Finds

Is it still January? Hmmm, well here are a few things I accomplished so far in this warm/cold/wet/icy month.  The weather has been all over the place so far with ice storms and a flooded yard.  I am praying that the basement doesn't flood from the downpours we have been having.  When the ground is frozen like this there is nowhere for the water to go. So far so good.

When it's cold outside I want to bake.  Chocolate cupcakes with rich chocolate frosting and a sprinkling of stars brighten things up nicely.  Who else thinks winter was made for baking?

 Earl knows that these grey cloudy skies and the barren landscape can only mean one thing, cheer Kathy up with flowers.  He found these beauties at the grocery store.  Cream roses with the barest peachy pink blush in the center of the petals, mixed with white lilies.  This is just one of the reasons I will keep him forever, believe me, there are a million more :)

 To counterbalance the cupcakes and other winter baking, I am looking for new soup recipes.  I found this Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup on The Café Sucre Farine and it is a keeper!  I have already made it twice. My suggestion? Double the lemon ;)  This is a soup you can make in the crock pot, but I had some frozen cooked chicken and home made broth so I made it stove top lickety split.  It has a bit of Turmeric in it which is supposed to be a great anti inflammatory.  From the same website I also made the Beef Bourguignon Soup recipe and it was amazing.  Check out her website, so far everything I have made from her recipes is a keeper.

 And lastly, I think I mentioned we are in the process of buying a newfangled flat screen tv.  Everything around here is a process,  but first I had to move a large book shelf, which meant I had to find a new home for an extra dresser AND the old entertainment center that holds the old tv.  Now you know why everything takes so long, all that shuffling.  At any rate, the things that need to go have been spoken for and will be picked up soon, and when that happens I wanted something to go under the new tv.  I actually stepped into a furniture store and then stepped right back out.  A very poorly constructed console or server for under the tv would have been $1200.  If I had loved it I could have paid it, but after years of buying well made cast offs for a pittance I couldn't see shelling out that kind of cabbage for something that I thought was basically a piece of junk.  So off to the local antique emporium I went, and found the perfect solid mahogany sideboard for a small percentage of the junky new piece.  This server cost $250.  It's solid, I like the lines, the swoopy drawer design, the cabinet doors that came with a skeleton key (love!) and the price. 

It is cooling its heels in the dining room until the other items go to their new home. I told Earl that I reserve the right to paint it, because...

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I do love painted furniture and I might be leaning toward a pretty green.  Making my mind up is the hard part. 

We are also still working on the back entry refresh.  My darling husband insisted on doing some of the more heinous scraping and wallpaper removal.  I had peeled off the top layer of the old paper and the paper backing was left. The backing was tight and smooth and my first thought was to paper right over it, because #lazy.  It might have worked but we decided to do it the right way, (sigh).  SO Earl spent a recent Saturday on the ladder scraping.  My knight in shining armor.  I am working on getting the old green trim painted sparkling white and my wallpaper came this week, (yay!!!!) so I am hoping it will be finished in a couple more weekends.

That's my January so far.  Lest you think I am some kind of white tornado around here, I spend a good portion of my days sitting on the sofa with a cup of coffee trying to work up enough energy to get anything done.  Are you working on indoor projects too?