Spring, yet not

It hit 70 with little wind so it was very warm to our thick blood from the winter
season. Even Sam is enjoying the fresh air coming inside and all of the bugs flying around!

We walked around outside for a little and found some very nice small flowers starting to come up.

Even the lupines are starting to come out. We hoped that these would flurish but it seems that only one batch our of a few is actually showing. Here's hopeing that more will come up :)

Scoops n cheese (and salsa)

We decided to do a little experiment with salsa and good mozzarella. You can always think of scoops and salsa but what about the cheese?? This crazy but very good mix would work well at parties!


How to make this great snack:
Start with a bag of Tostitos scoops,mild salsa (not shown), a fresh mozzarella ball and ideally a 4 cheese blend (as you can see we used Sargento).



Put a small dab of salsa in the scoop, cut up the mozz. and place a cube in the scoop (large enough but not too big) and then add the shreded cheese on top to get the picture below:

Now broil on low for about 8 minutes or until the cheese is melted. We have a small oven so this worked well and quickly for us. Times probably will be different in larger ovens. Dont let it stay in there too long! you dont want to boil the salsa or burn the chips -- you'll get soggy chips or very black chips, yuck!

Enjoy!

Past weekend we went to a Christmas tree showing designed to be a charity. We purchased a few tickets (as a donation) and then are presented with the option to win a few of the trees you place the ticket into. There were probably a few dozen or so trees set up in a large room, some of the neat ones are below

The trees have quite a bit of variety, some is theme based which includes the Red Sox and some are idea based that has cooking books/tools in the tree. It was fun going around and seeing all the different designs people donated.
Some have stuffed animals in it

Some are not trees at all! A cactus 'tree' setup

This tree reminds you of the beach with all the shells and pearls lining the branches
A greener decorated tree that has candy cains all over the place.
Glass ornament tree, The snowman was funny
Some are decorated with hearts
Another stuffed animal tree
Some with roses (not the real kind)

Afterwards we went on a walk around the area since it was a nice day!

Happy Halloween!

MeeeeoooooOOOWWWWWW!!!

Fritzy mad she can't have candy!

Walk in the woods

Earlier this month we were walking around in the woods and found this little guy sitting on a stick. We were in a park near by that could overlook our hometown. Couldn't see much except a few towers and lots of trees. It just rained the day before so the mosquitoes were in full effect that day and after being bitten multiple times we high-tailed it back to the car :)

Spring time continued

Spring continues into the season and the weather has been very nice for the past few days. We decided to browse though our yard with the camera to look at what's continuing to grow. The blooms are getting full and most are already at their peak. The bleeding hearts are past and is a large green bush now.

In front we have some Columbine flowers which look very nice. They are surrounded by massive bushes but stand out just as well.

Our Lupine flowers we got from a festival up north last year are coming along very quite well! We did get 3 of them but only 2 took from the harsh winter weather.
The Lupines in an early stage...
And then a few days later :)

The pansies are doing very well as well and growing like crazy!
Our Armeria flowers are looking very nice in front of the bushes. They are nice and tall so they stand out from the surrounding flowers.

And our cats.. well while growing they are curious as to what I'm doing outside and why they aren't there as well!
(picture looks funny but it's going through a double pane window)

Spring time!

So it's that time of the year again when the flowers are blooming and the bees a buzzing. I took the opportunity to take some photos of our plants before the petals are blown off, scorched or rained on and torn off. I'm glad that I did take pictures considering we had 3 record breakers in temperature within 4 days.
It was starting to get a bit dark but that also is one of the more ideal times since direct sun could make the plants look harsh.
Our tree out front tends to loose the nice blooms very quickly but when it does bloom it looks great!
These things we have all over the place but are very welcomed :)
The bleeding hearts are rather small at this point. Later in the season it tends to get so large the stems start to bend and break. At this point we wrap wire and add support to keep it in the air and looking beautiful for a very long time.