December 2013 Photo a Day~ Finish up

Okay, so we are nine days into the new year and I haven't yet finished up my Photo a Day from December. Time to finish that up so I can move into 2014 with a clean slate.

If you remember, Day 18 & 19, Christmas Tree and Christmas Jumper/Sweater were skipped in my last post. Since I never got a photo of my neighbor's Ugly Sweater, here are two photos of my tree, a traditional photo and one with an attempt at being more creative.

And for the rest:

Day 22: Nice

Day 23: Family

Day 24: Christmas Movie

Day 25: Lunch

Day 26: Tradition

Day 27: Hat... and Day 29: Red

Day 28: Work in Progress

Day 30: Winter (mess) ~ not actually taken on Day 30!

And yes, I cheated a bit. I doubled up on Hat and Red and I left off Celebrate. I just didn't get the camera out on New Years Eve, but that doesn't mean I didn't celebrate! Well... A glass of wine with dinner and staying up until midnight counts, doesn't it?

Happy New Year and Warm Wishes to you all,  Lilea

A rainy day and a little motivation

Yesterday, my sister and I had a great conversation about the motivational theory that you can become more organized and more productive by devoting "just ten minutes" to particular tasks that need attention in your life. Small bite sized pieces can add up and make a huge difference. As a bonus, those ten minutes you devote to a task can often (painlessly) turn into "more minutes" once you get rolling.

Today was a rainy, yucky day that had me feeling more like staying in my pajamas knitting all day than motivating myself to do, well, almost anything else. But, the guilt got the best of me and I eventually marched myself into the kitchen to make something healthy to eat. (There have been far too many carbs in this house over the holidays.)

It was really a day for making soup, but since I had all the ingredients on hand to make a Chick Pea Salad, that is what I devoted my ten minutes to.

Chickpea Salad Ingredients: 1 can chickpeas, 1 cucumber, 1/2 red onion, 2 plumb tomatoes, 1 roasted red pepper, 1 tbs. dried parsley, 2 tsp. chopped garlic, 3 tbs. lemon juice, 2 tsp. olive oil, and 1/8 tsp. salt.

Rinse and drain the chickpeas. Chop the cucumber, onion, tomatoes, and peppers and add to the chickpeas. I usually like to use cucumbers with their seeds, but for this I scooped most of them out. It's your preference.

Next, add the parsley, garlic, lemon juice, oil, and salt. Feel free to use fresh parsley and garlic. (I didn't have any on hand today.) Mix it all together and refrigerate for about 1/2 hour to mix the flavors.

While you wait for it to be ready, get out your yoga mat and do 10 minutes 30 minutes of yoga!

December 2013 Photo a Day~ Week 2 & 3

Okay, so posting weekly is apparently more than I can handle, so here are two weeks worth of my photo a day challenge.

Day 8: Cozy

Day 9: Cold (enough)

Day 10: Lists

Day 11: Scarf (The Dr. Who scarf finally photographed for the blog!)

Day 12: Wrapping Paper

Day 13: Snowmen

Day 14: Shopping

Day 15: Outdoor Lights

Day 16: Holly... didn't have any real holly. Forgot about the tree outside the back door.

Day 17: Treat

Day 18: Christmas Tree~
Omitted until I can get a photo with the tinsel on the tree.

Day 19: Christmas Jumper/Sweater~
Omitted until I can get a photo of my friend's Ugly Christmas Sweater

Day 20: Favorite Ornament~ Very old, it was my older brother's when he was a small boy.

Day 21: Naughty~ a miniature vignette.

December 2013 Photo a Day Challenge

There's nothing like a Holiday Photo a Day challenge to get me out of hibernation and start blogging again! Life has been happening around here and I'll be sharing some of it with you soon, but for now, this weeks photos...

Advent

A "Holiday Yarn"

Or, for more traditional Holiday Yarn

Hot Drink

Glitter

Candle

Mittens! (I love mittens!)

Something that starts with a "c"... Cocoa!

Knitting and Brunch with Friends!

You may remember I've written before that I belong to an awesome knitting group. We have such a mix of people, older, younger, male and female; and yet we are quite a homogeneous group and have a great time together. Two of our members we don't get to see very often because they live about an hour and a half from our meeting place.

These two great guys invited the group to brunch at their home this past Sunday and we had an absolutely wonderful day. We enjoyed so much yummy food, everyone brought an offering to the table.

There were mini blueberry scones. I wish I had eaten another one of these, but I just didn't have room!

Two different kinds of quiche.

The famous Ambler Donuts (that we hear so much about!) cut in bite sized pieces so we could sample them all. I loved the maple cream filled one. I did't try the peanut butter one. I wonder how that one was...

A wonderful fruit salad that everyone wanted the recipe for.We were told that because of the constraints of ingredients on hand, the dressing was an adaptation of the one in the cookbook. We all agreed we wanted the New Jeff Original recipe!

Some Ham Stuffed Rolls with a Maine Honey Champagne Mustard. I guess I didn't to get a photo of these after the basket was opened.

Juices, Coffee, and the most amazing Hot Chocolate made with real milk and large chunks of chocolate that melted in the mug of milk. (Again no photo.)

And then, there was the ever growing leaning tower of waffles! These waffles were the best! They were light and crispy around the edges. Oh so tasty!

Jeff slaved at the waffle iron most of the morning.

We were able to keep the Cook company as the guys have a huge kitchen with a great big table... clearly the hub of their home when entertaining!

After we stuffed ourselves, we retired to the living room (or as Will claims they say in Downton Abbey, "crossed over to the drawing room").

There was much knitting and spinning going on. We also discussed and planned for our next Secret Swap.

A knitter couldn't help but feel the warm and welcome in their home. Everywhere you look there were signs of fiber awesomeness!

Thanks for having us, Will and Jeff! I can't wait for our next outing!