Coming out of Hibernation

Now that spring has (almost officially) arrived, I am coming out of my blogging hibernation.  Really it has more to do with the fact that I feel my life is going at lightening speed and if I don't document what we are doing, I won't remember a thing.  Which is why I started the blog in the first place.  I am not going to try to recap everything I have done since my last blog post.  I'm going to start much more recently.  

 This is by no means a full account of what I have been doing.  Its just the things I have taken pictures of on my phone.  I am terrible about taking pictures with friends, so you won't see any of my social life here.  And neither of us care to see pictures of my school work.  Which is a lot more this semester. 

In no particular order...

Cooking. I do as much of this as I can.  I am not a crafty person so this is my domestic hobby.  I love the whole process- planning what I am going to cook, making the list, grocery shopping, preparing the food, and of course eating it! (Maybe not the whole process, doing dishes is the worst, luckily I have the BEST husband who does them a lot).  I have collected more cookbooks than I will ever use, plus the internet has infinite recipes, so rarely do I cook the same thing twice.  I should probably start blogging about what I cook so I will remember what I have made and whether it was good.  Below is a picture of quinoa with cranberries, carrots, apples and cinnamon.  It was delish, but second place to my favorite spiced quinoa recipe.  If you follow Michael on instagram he added a photo of a new dish I cooked last night off of my good friend, Melissa's blog.  Thanks Melissa for the Lemon Chicken recipe, its was INCREDIBLE!

Easter!  I try to keep a few small seasonal decorations in my house.  Its fun to change it up!

Terrible picture, but proof that I crafted.  This is hanging on the mirror on my mantle. 

One of my favorite times of the year is quickly approaching- planting season!  I don't usually plant seeds for our garden, we prefer to buy seedlings. But these little experiments are not our staples, so I thought it'd be fun to try.  There are carrots, sunflowers, dill (for home made pickles), and kale.  

Our garden.  Its a little bit of a mess right now.  But our spring crop of strawberries is quickly growing.  Today I planted some lettuce, spinach, basil, cilantro.  These do not like summer heat (except basil) so they do well as spring crops.  

I've been wanting a bird feeder since we moved into our house ONE YEAR ago!  I finally bought one.  They ate the entire feeders worth of seed in just a few days.  I am going to wait a little while before refilling.  We have so many birds in our yard anyway.  And I don't want them to be like stray cats and rely on me for food.  We can't afford to feed hundreds of birds. 

Spring time at our house is the best.  I'm always wondering how it is we get to live here.  Look at all that peace and quiet!

I have had a blank space on this wall since we moved in.  At first I was waiting to decide how to arrange the furniture.  Then I decided the furniture just wasn't right, so we bought a new couch ( thank you michael for your patience) .  Finally I bought some frames for the space, now I have to decide what to put in them.  Will it ever end?!

Hyacinth in our front flower bed!  This little guy sprung up very early.  It has a fun story- most saturdays from early spring through late fall we go to the farmer's market and Michael usually buys some fresh flowers for me.  One saturday last spring I picked a still planted (as opposed to cut) hyacinth and kept it potted inside.  After it died, I planted the bulb...and here it is.  Reincarnated.   

We went bowling last weekend with some friends. It was the first time in over a year that I bowled.  I'm not telling you what I scored, but it was a new low.  

Last weekend Michael was doing some garden prep, pulling weeds.  I saw these tops, and told him I thought they might be carrots instead of weeds.  And, obviously they were.  The strange thing is we planted carrot seeds last May and this is the first we have seen of the harvest.  Did they grow this spring?  Have they been down there since last summer?  Wouldn't they have rotted?  We don't know.  But we do have carrots.  

Another craft!  I wish I would have taken a before picture.  I bought the supplies for this last fall.  Its one of the projects I have put off for a long time because I thought it would be time consuming.  But it really wasn't. Glad to check it off the list. 

Planted some tulips!  My favorites.  They are coming early this year, just like everything else.  The great thing about these is you can plant the bulbs and have them in your flower bed next year.  If critters don't dig the bulbs up and eat them.  Which happened to my tulips from last year (I think).  I also bought a lot of pansies from Lowe's (on sale for $1 a package!) I'll take a picture once they are in full bloom.

I'd say thats a pretty good update for now.  I should have a fun update after tomorrow.  What started as a casual dinner with a few friends has turned into a St. Patrick's Day party at our house.  I hope the weather is nice, we will need the back deck to fit everyone!