A dozen roses for me yesterday.  What a surprise as I did not expect them this year.  Sigurd has been really busy with keeping up with all he has to do, but he found the time to think of Valentines day in spite of everything.  Warmed my heart.

I took a ton of photos of the roses.

Love them.

I found a box like the above for Valentine cookies for Sig.  He loved them.  I also got him some chocolate covered strawberries and I made a photo card for him.  The card came out really good which was another surprise as it was not easy for me to make.

It wasn’t supposed to snow much today but the snow is coming down heavily and covering the cars and sticking to the trees.  Another surprise.

It looks like the above outside today but they predicted just maybe an inch or two of snow.

The Sugar Houses are making maple syrup already and have been for several weeks.  I saw a really neat recipe for maple sugar candy that looked really good.  They made the snowflake shape from silicone molds that you can buy on Amazon.  I pinned the recipe on my Vermont recipes board on my Pinterest.  The snowflake mold is on Amazon.

I saw a video where Martha Stewart visited the Harlow Sugarhouse in Putney, VT and made some of that Maple sugar candy.  I couldn’t find the recipe on her blog or website, but this is the recipe on the video:

Ingredients:

2 cups fancy maple syrup

1/4 teaspoon milk

Directions:

Bring the maple syrup and milk to a boil in a saucepan until the temperature is 242 degrees on a candy thermometer.

Remove from heat and stir while hot.  Pour into a mold and let it cool.

You can get those silicon molds in all shapes.  They had heart shapes, maple leaf shapes and sap bucket shapes.

I like the above dresser.  I had one that was similar to the one above that my grandmother gave to my mother and my Mom gave it to me.

I like the style of Aiken House & Gardens that is in Nova Scotia.  What a beautiful winter afternoon tea.

There is a tea house near Stowe, Vermont at the Trapp Family Lodge that Sigurd and I went to one time and they served afternoon tea out on the deck with a view that was just gorgeous.  They closed the tea house and I think I recently saw that they are going to refurbish the tea house and open it again.  If so, Sigurd and I want to take a trip up there this summer.  We had so much fun there.

They have cross country ski trails at the Trapp Family Lodge and in the summer you can hike along the trails.  Just a beautiful area.

And that’s my thoughts for today.