'NAPLES' FINE CHINA MOSAIC CROSS

This is one of those spur of the moment projects.  I promised my sister that I would make a blue and white china mosaic cross for her updated bedroom.  Meanwhile, last year a friend approached me about broken china.  Her buffet shelves gave out around Christmas and she lost most of her good china.  I told her at the time that she had quite a few options.  One of them was a hanging wall cross.

Lo and behold, I couldn't find what I was looking for about 6 months.

  Hobby Lobby carried these and I bought 2 with a coupon.

Outside the weather was balmy and about 70 degrees.  I decided to take advantage of that and smash china.  In the following picture, you will see the china pattern that I will be using.  It is called Naples.  You know how very fond I am of the colors silver and gray.

Spray priming them was a breeze.  

The designing stage takes much longer.  Since the china had a slender silver band around the plates, I used that as the ends of the cross.  The middle was just filled in with the white and silver pattern.

Once I had my ends temporarily placed, I pulled out my tile adhesive and filled the cross.

The cross still isn't finished and I need to let the adhesive dry before I can grout.

ST. PATRICK'S DAY CARD 2019

It's that time of year again! 

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY

Wishing you the luck of the Irish!



Thanks to Aunt Terri, whose scrap booking supplies still abound!

AMAZING ITALIAN SOUP GOOD FOR THE COLD DAYS AHEAD

I found this recipe on the internet and tweaked it a bit to make it my own.

Here are the ingredients.

1 package of Italian sweet sausage links-cut open links and fry the crumbled sausage in a pot. 

1 32 oz. container of chicken broth
2 leeks-in the picture you will see a whole sweet onion, but I opted out for 2 thinly sliced cleaned leeks
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 bag of fresh spinach
3 T. tomato paste
1 T. Italian seasoning
2 thinly sliced carrots
2 bay leaves
1 bag of small bow ties-more about this later
2 T. minced garlic
1 can of cannelloni beans
*I decided to add one 1-11.5 oz can of V8 juice because it didn't have enough broth to my liking
S&P at the end to taste
Fresh parmesan for nests




First, I cooked up the sausage, leaving the great to sauté my veggies, but draining the cooked sausage on paper towels.

I originally cut up the whole sweet onion, but after buying fresh leeks at the store I decided to cut two leeks in place of the onion.

I sautéed the leeks, minced garlic and carrots in the grease from the sausage for 5-10 minutes.  Return the sausage to the pot with the tomatoes, V8, paste and broth.  Season with the Italian seasoning, by leaves and a good grinding of black pepper.  Hold off on the salting to taste until the end. When you're ready to eat, add the beans and spinach and bring back to a simmer for 30 minutes.  Taste to add salt, or any extra pepper

  Meanwhile, I boiled water to cook the pasta, drained it and kept it to the side. 

 Many times when you reheat soup with pasta, it becomes mushy.  This way, when I was ready to serve the soup, I boiled a pot of water and submerged the cooked bow tie pasta in it for 1 minute and then drained one portion at a time. While serving the soup, I put about a half a cup of cooked bowties in the bottom of the soup bowl and then a ladle of the soup itself.

Finally, I added fresh Parmesan to the top of the soup. 

***NEXT TIME, I AM GOING TO MAKE PARMESAN NESTS UNDER THE BROILER AND THEN SET A NEST ON TOP OF EACH BOWL.

This is an excellent soup for those snowy, cold winter evenings.



DECONSTRUCTING THE CHRISTMAS TREE

Because I waited until the end of January to take my Christmas tree down, I wanted to organize the ornaments and baubles and see how many were on the tree.  Here is the list:

Glitter stars-45

Ornaments-81

Garlands-4

Spikes-24

Special ornaments-30

Chrystal necklaces-3

Prisms-8

Snow globes-4

Mirror globes-16

Christmas morning, the tree was glorious.

Here the empty tree looks rather sad.

Now, all the decorations are up in the attic waiting for Christmas 2019.