I get inspirations and ideas from here and there.  I love ideas for a romantic Valentines day table setting.   From the above, the Lenox Butler’s pantry charger plate in the table setting is really neat.  Then the Vintage Tower by Spade dinner plate and the red salad plate picked up at Home goods.  I like the heart shaped doilly underneath the awesome little heart shaped bundt cake with a raspberry  jam heart shape topping.

I especially liked the heart-shaped bundt cakes.  Especially because the website that I saw it had the recipe for the bundt cakes and where to find the pan to make them.  The recipe was called 1234 Cake and was a recipe given to her by her mother-in-law.  I pinned the recipe on my Pinterest Valentines day ideas and I also printed out the recipe.

I just thought that they were super cute and would be fun and quite easy to make as well as something that would be impressive to make for someone for Valentines day.

They used a Wilton pan to bake the cute cakes in and it can be found on the Wilton web site and also on Amazon.  Someone also said that they found one at Michaels Craft store.  I want to get that pan.

I also like the Crimson Hock wine glass by Waterford.  So elegant and the color just is awesome with the tablescape.  The tea light candle holders are also Waterford.

The Vintage Tower by Spade plate is just plain pretty and just looks elegant with the charger underneath it.

There are so many awesome ideas for inspiration.  I like the heart-shaped red napkin idea just on a white plate and then the white roses in just a crystal color vase.  I put the tutorial for how to fold that napkin on my Valentines day ideas on my Pinterest.

I liked the envelope idea for Valentines cookies.  So cute and easy to make.  Just a rectangle cookie cutter that has ruffles on it. and piping a white line and using your favorite shortbread cookie recipe.  I have a recipe that I really like that was in a Better Homes and Garden cookbook from the 70’s for cut out cookies.

The cherry heart tarts are so cute.

I also like the letters spelling out love.  They have a ton of those letters at Michaels Craft store.  I like the LOVE idea.  So cute with a vase of red carnations in the middle.  I think I would put red and white carnations with a little ivy over the sides in a plain crystal vase.  I don’t particularly like the white design on the letters.  Just plain red would work for me.

I also like the Cherub candle holder.  So cute.

A glass of Champagne and chocolate covered strawberries.  I like that inspiration.

I like all the ideas for a dinner for two.  I put the links to the recipes on my Valentines Day ideas on my Pinterest.  I try a little bit from different places where I see ideas and it’s fun to try out recipes.  Sometimes they come out and sometimes it’s a disaster.  But it’s always fun.

The inspiration I got from the above is I like the shape of that vase for the red roses and the way the white rose looks with the white ribbon on the red napkin.

I like the simple, yet elegant look of white swirl frosting on a white cupcake recipe and the red heart.  I like stuff that looks artistic but is not so full of details that it’s not fun to make.  I like the box with the window pane idea.  Those boxes come in all sizes and I first noticed them from a pie stand where they tied a string around the box making the box look even cuter.

I like Valentine cut out cookies and am always looking for ideas to decorate them that are easy to do and look nice.  You don’t have to fuss with them and they are fun to make.

Just a little frosting and sprinkles is another inspiration.

So cute to package up and send with children to a Valentines party at their school.  When my kids were little, I used to love to make cut out cookies.  I never had boxes like the above, though.  I love that idea.

I saw an inspiration for Nutella Cheescake Chocolate Cookie Cups that sounded and looked good to me.

Then I saw a mini heart pizza that was made from frozen bread dough that sounded fun to make.

I love roasted beet salad with walnuts and goat cheese.  I saw a recipe where you roast shallets along with the beets and then marinade them in a balsamic vinegar for the salad.  I tried that last night and it was one of the best salads I ever tried.  I didn’t do the heart shape beets but that would be fun for Valentines day.

I love a nice cup of tea and Earl Grey is my favorite.

I can’t even imagine an elegant winter tea like the above.  Love the pink roses setting off all the white.

I think those little bundt pans that they have to make cakes in are just elegant looking.  King Arthur Flour has all kinds of the bundt pans in all sizes.

The above is my fondest inspiration.  It’s a Yankee barn home with open beams and I love everything about it.  It can be built anywhere because it’s a modular home and it’s more affordable then anything you can find on the market if you have a piece of land.

And that’s my thoughts for today.

I like the above photo of Peacham, VT.  So picturesque and pretty.

I like weathered barns in new fallen snow.  So Vermont.

Lanterns with snow falling is just so pretty.  Little Chickadees with their little black caps are just plain cute.

Winter can be really pretty, but it seems that this year we get a snow storm and then it seems to warm up to in the 40’s and rain.  The ground is frozen so even though the air warms up the rain freezes when it hits the ground.  Cold one day and warms up the next.  Kind of a strange winter.

I think that it’s supposed to snow tonight and the roads are going to be bad in the morning because of ice forming on the roads from freezing rain and then snow over that.  There is already postings of school closings.

Some people come up with really cute bird feeders.  I like the tea-cup idea.

Little critters can be cute.

I really like the above desk idea.  It reminds me of a Real Estate office that I worked in at one time.  The owner of the office furnished the office with actually furniture that she picked up second hand.  But the taste that she had was so awesome.  The place looked like a million bucks to me.  She grew up in New York City and her mother was an actress and her father was an artist from what I understand.  She traveled all over the world with her husband after she retired and then came back and opened her Real Estate office and her husband had the main office in another town.  Awesome people and I just adored working in that office.

I like artisan bread.  King Arthur flour has a recipe for a wheat bread that you make in a Le Crueset pot.  I pinned the recipe on my King Arthur Flour recipe board on my Pinterest.

The recipe for the bread is a sourdough bread which sounds really good to me.  They had all the ingredients that you could buy on their website to be able to make it.  I just love stuff like that.

I really like T J Maxx.  You can get some really cute things in that store that are brand name but with a low price.

The above kitchen looks like a million bucks to me.  It’s Martha Stewart’s Seal Harbor cabinets from the Home Depot.  That kitchen is my dream kitchen.

And that’s my thoughts for today.

 

 

A winter sunset is so beautiful.  I saw this photo on my memories from 3 years ago that came on my facebook page this morning.

In the memories photos, there was also the above photo of a female Cardinal at a bird feeder.  Winter birds are just so cute.  Sunflower seeds are messy as the outside shells get all over the ground.  But bird feeders are just great for keeping winter birds with an option for a food source.

A lot of people do not want to spend the winters in Vermont because the snow is just a little too much.  The roads get slippery as the plows can not keep up with the snow.  They have like a 2 hour loop that they plow and side roads and side streets are last.  Then it can get wicked cold.  But I like the four seasons.  I find beauty in each season.  Although there is extreme weather from being too humid in the summer at times and too cold in the winter months sometimes.

Snow can be really pretty.  On back roads when the snow weights down tree branches, it’s sometimes like a tunnel where the branches are weighted down over the road.

I like hot chocolate this time of year.  Whenever I go to Keene, NH I stop along the way in Walpole at Burdick’s chocolate and get a hot chocolate to go.  It’s like getting hot chocolate at a Cafe in Paris to me.  They make their hot chocolate like I’ve heard that they make hot chocolate in Paris.

I made some Vegetable Chili in my Le Creuset saucepan and it made a really nice lunch.

I like the fixings for Chili like sour cream, red onions and shredded cheddar.

I like soups for lunch.  Sometimes I just like a tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich.  I have a really neat recipe for tomato soup where I just use a can of diced tomatoes, herbs de province, half a cup of half and half and half a cup of chicken broth and put it in the blender.  Then heat it on the stove with a little pat of butter that melts in it and some fresh ground pepper on it.  Then I add a slice of Virginia baked ham and a sliced tomato to the grilled cheese sandwich.  Yum.

My son’s birthday was this week and he likes German Chocolate cake.  What a horrible time that turned into.  My exhusband’s  girlfriend also got him a cake which was a white cake and he was torn between two cakes.  Nothing like too much cake.  Oh well.  That’s life.

And that’s my thoughts for today.

 

 

I saw the above chair on the Wayfair website and just love the style of it. It’s on sale right now and I have seen chairs like it for twice the price.  It is shipped all assembled and the reviews on it are all positive.  There is a similar Anna Griffin chair at a little less price that is shipped unassembled and the reviews say that the paint is chipped on it and cracks and bad reviews.  It’s perfect to have for a chair like the Wayfair chair in a sewing and craft room.  Or for a desk chair like it is shown above.

I like the above sewing table that you can get at Walmart for $139.00.  It has a lot of good reviews and I’ve seen sewing tables like it that cost 4 times as much.  At that price, it’s a good deal in my opinion.  It is not solid wood but the ones that cost 4 times as much are not solid wood either.  They will ship it to the nearest Walmart and you don’t have to pay for shipping.

I love kale and I bought some really good looking kale at the Food Co-op this week.  I have a basic soup recipe that I make that starts with rainbow baby carrots, onions and celery sauteed in a little olive oil.  Then I add no salt vegetable broth, white beans and any veggies I have on hand and the kale.  It’s healthy and also tasty.

I also love my juice machine and the above ingredients are my favorite ingredients to use to make a green smoothie.

I have one of those machines that vacuums  the air out of food storage bags and I like the idea of making up ingredients for soups to put in the freezer.

I would like one of those spiralizers for zuchinni noodles.  There are some neat recipes out there for those noodles that look like fun to make.

I like to watch the Food network cooking shows.  The kitchen that Tricia Yearwood has is just a dream kitchen.  She has a warming oven along with a wall oven, granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances.  She owns a house in Nashville where her cooking shows are done.  Then she has another house that I think is in Oklahoma that is her and Garth Brooks house.  On this last Saturday she had healthy New Years resolution recipes.  The recipes are all on the Food network web page.

I also like the Barefoot Contessa on the food network.  Her library is full of cookbooks.  She gets inspiration from some awesome cook books.

The above are a few of Barefoot contessa’s favorite cook books.

Barefoot Contessa also likes Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking book.

Anna Pump’s Loaves and Fishes cookbook is also in Barefoot Contessa’s library.  I’ve seen Anna Pump on several of Ina Garten’s food network shows as she has a bakery called Loaves and Fishes in Long Island that the Barefoot Contessa is always sending her husband Jeffrey to pick up awesome bakery products.

The above cookbook is also in Barefoot Contessa’s library.  I would love that book, also.

The above cook book is also in Barefoot Contessa’s library.  I like anything French and I would like that cook book.

Yeah, I like anything French.  To visit Paris, France would be the ultimate of all ultimates.  Next to having a really nice kitchen that would be fun to cook in.

Another ultimate thought is high tea.  Can you imagine having afternoon tea with all of the above embellishments.  OMG.

Oprah has a new book out called “Health and Happiness”.  Sur la Table has a cooking class with all those recipes shown above.  Oprah has joined “Weight Watchers” and that is her latest diet idea.

Can you imagine visiting Paris in the winter time?  Wow.

And that’s my thoughts for today.