Spring had sprung - at least inside the house

Not sure if spring has arrived outside since winter just seems to want to hang aroundbut I have finally put away the snowmen and put out the Easter decorations.  I'm ready for flowers blooming and birds singing :-)

This is the board I gave my parents with cross-stitched ornaments for each month.  I just took down the St Patrick's ones.  It makes for a short Easter season when Easter comes in March. But I will gladly replace these with some May flowers after Sunday :-)

A fun little bunny family that I got when the girls were little.  Can't wait until the Baby Adelyn is old enough to play with them.  Having a grandchild (or almost - she is due in the next couple weeks) makes deocrating for holdiays much more fun.

Some cute little ceramic bunnies.  Some more little decorations that I picked up when the kids were small. 

Salt and pepper shakers.  I think I have a set for almost every holiday.  Some are from my mom or aunt.  Mom had lots of Christmas and Thanksgiving ones and my aunt collected them.  These I bought several years ago.  They are fairly large and I don't put salt and pepper in them because it would take months to empty them again.  Just for looks.

Another set of salt and pepper shakers.  The napkins have flowers, butterflies and bumblebees on them.  I made these for a Women's Tea one year.  I think I need to make some other solid colors to go with these :-)  I should iron them all but rolling them up like this you don't see the wrinkles so much.  The family doesn't mind the wrinkles.

And you can't have Easter without dying eggs.  These cups were my mom's.  We used them every year to dye the eggs.  They are stained and chipped but some of my greastest treasures. 

And some new fresh linens in the kitchen.  I got these as a gift and love the colors in the design.   They certainly brighten up the kitchen after the long winter.

All the Easter memories and thoughts of Mom - I decided to cook up one of her favorite recipes for supper.  She would make Oven Barbecued Ribs using her own barbecue sauce.  It is not a thick barbecue sauce like the bottled kind but it really makes the ribs tender and delicious.  She would mix up the sauce and pour it over ribs, pork steaks, or pork chops.  I have modified the recipe a little and it is now Barbecued Ribs in the Crock Pot.  We are having it with slaw and some applesauce. 

Google reader and Corn Muffins

First, if you follow my blog using Google Reader you will have to make a change before July 1. Google reader is being shut down. You may subscribe to my blog for email updates or find another RSS site. I am trying Netvibes but not sure I like it. I may just have to go to email. I use Google reader to read new posts from the 200+ blogs that I follow and I also tag items that I want to keep like card or craft ideas. Netvibes does not seem to have a tagging option. It was fairly simple to download all my subscriptions into a file and import them but all the posts are unread in Netvibes so I will be cleaning that up for months. I am also going through my tagged posts in Google reader and pinning them on Pinterest so if you follow me there you will see lots of card ideas
Corn muffins - have been craving some good sweet corn muffins sine our drive south last weekend. We stopped at Cracker Barrel for supper and had their corn muffins with our meal. Not the best. They were very salty and rather dry. But that did not stop me from eating 2 and then I checked the calories in My Fitness Pal and wished I could rewind my life. They were 270 calories each!!! They must use lard or real butter in them plus real eggs ??? I made my sweet corn muffins tonight with a big pot of chili. The perfect meal for the 6 inches of snow ( and still falling). I use the recipe in the Quaker corn meal box but double the sugar. I made 24 muffins from the recipe. They are on the small side but I wanted to cut down the calories. Each muffin comes to 78 calories and they are not any smaller than the Cracker Barrel ones. I used skim milk and egg substitute so guess
that made the difference.

A Surprise Grandma Shower

My co-workers surprised me with a "Grandma Shower" yesterday.  I was totally surprised and now I have plenty of goodies for Baby Adelyn.  She can come any day now :-)

 A couple of the ladies put together this bear on a tricycle made of diapers.  So cute!  I am going to have to take lots of photos so I can duplicate some day :-)  I know Adelyn will love the teddy and the receiving blankets, bibbs, diapers, socks and bottles will come in handy.

So - I had to make some more thank you notes last night.   I have made lots of baby thank yous but they were all for my daughter's shower gifts. This time I used pink for all the girly gifts.  I colored in some of the items and randomly punched circles, then mounted them on a slightly larger circle of Melon Mambo.

We are really getting excited for the grand-baby - hard to believe the 9 month wait is almost over.  Well we only had to wait 8 months since we did not know she was ocming until she had a month head start.  It has been a roller coaster ride with a couple trips to the emergency department in the early months.  Then gestational diabetes and premarture labor so several trips to the labor department for monitoring. 
So thankful God has watched over mommy and baby and kept them safe throughout all the adventures.  So blessed! 

Baby Thank Yous

Here are some thank you cards I made for my daughter to use for all her baby shower gifts.  The onesies are so cute and I had lots of them stamped up for the shower favors so it only made sense to use them for the thank yous too.   These all used Basic Gray and So Saffron card stock.   The Basic Gray ribbon was used for the 'clothesline' where we had hung the onesie cutouts spelling Adelyn's name.   The So Saffron ribbon was used on the favors. 
These were quick and easy but look pretty nice :-)

Low calorie meals

Before I head to the craft room this morning to make some thank you cards and play with some new toys, I made me a tasty little low cal breakfast to get back on track for Wellness Wins. After a road trip to Baton Rouge and getting a taste of crawfish, alligator and poboys, I need to really watch the calories for the next 5 weeks.
This morning I started with a delicious veggie omelet, dry toast and fresh strawberries. Even with a glass of milk (for the bones) it is only 320 calories.