Spreading a Little Irish Luck!

I did a little bit of St. Patty's Day decorating! I'm half Irish, so of course I can't let March 17th go by without some festive decor! Last April, I found a ton of St. Patrick's Day merchandise 80% off at Hobby Lobby, so most of what I have came from there!

I seem to decorate this corner of the counter for every holiday. It's just such a cute little spot! 

The great thing about Christmas Hershey kisses is that you can use the leftover red ones for Valentine's Day, and then use the leftover green & white ones for St. Patrick's Day!

I love these little bears... I got them for like 80 cents each or something like that! 

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Lemon Ice Cream

You guys. Yesterday, I turned in the most giant paper ever. 80 pages of legal analysis and discussion, and 249 footnotes of substantiation. It's not the longest thing I've ever written, but it's definitely the most well-researched piece of writing I've put together ever. I have a three-foot-tall stack of articles and cases and statutes sitting in my living room (and that's just the things I printed out!). Today, I'm throwing the whole stack into the recycling bin. I've been working on that thing since October, and yesterday I turned in the finished copy. "Weight off my shoulders" doesn't even begin to describe it. 

Anyway, what better way to celebrate than with some homemade ice cream, right? Do you like lemon desserts? If you do, you've GOT to make this. It's just absolutely delicious and perfectly puckery and creamy and lovely. I think grow more in love with my ice cream maker every time I use it.

Recipe adapted from here.

Ingredients:

3 cups half & half

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (about 3 lemons)

2 tsp grated lemon zest (grate them before squeezing out the juice!)

Directions:

1. Combine all ingredients in a bowl and whisk until the sugar is dissolved and it's all mixed well. 

2. Pour the mixture into an electric ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer's directions, or until stiff (mine took about 40 minutes).

3. Store in a sealed container in the freezer. Freeze for at least 3 hours before serving.

(juiced lemons)

(mixed ingredients)

(waiting...)

Ta-da!

Enjoy!

Clarinet Photos, French Horn Photos, and Piano Photos

I'm working on a little project for the piano room. The project requires some black and white photographs of musical instruments. We wanted photos of a piano, a clarinet, and a french horn (because I play the clarinet and Jeff plays the piano and french horn). Sidenote: did y'all know I worked part time in college teaching 6th-9th grade band students? I taught a lot of them individually, and sometimes I taught big groups of them too. Best job ever. People complain about middle school kids, but I absolutely loved them. They were young enough to still be cute and funny, but old enough to have an actual conversation with me. Sometimes I think I should've skipped law school and just continued being a clarinet teacher. $30 an hour wasn't too shabby. I probably would've had to get a music degree eventually though, and I SO don't think that sounds like fun.

Anyway, my initial thought was to just do a Google image search and find some pretty photos and use those. I ended up finding some really beautiful images, and I was all excited. But, this project I'm working on requires me to print said photos in big sizes. Like 11x17 big. Random images from the internet aren't nearly high-res enough to work in 11x17. I probably could've just paid a few dollars for some high-res images somewhere, but I decided to try my hand at some DIY ones instead.

So, I pulled out my clarinet and Jeff's french horn, I covered our couch in a black sheet to use as an impromptu photo studio, and I grabbed my trusty little Canon point-n-shoot.

This is what the French horn looks like.

This is what the clarinet looks like.

And then I took pictures. All sorts of pictures. I took them all in black and white, and I just played around. I went in the piano room and took some of the piano too. Then I loaded them onto the computer, and they actually looked pretty decent. Then I edited them a little and revved up the contrast, and then they looked quite nice!

So, I'm going to go ahead and post them all here in their high-res forms. Hopefully the next person who ends up like me and needs a high-res image of a clarinet will be able to find these on Google images. Feel free to click to enlarge the photos and use them for personal purposes (but no selling them or using them for your business or anything... personal purposes only, mmkay?).

First, the clarinet photos:

LOVE this one!

Then, the piano photos:

Then, the french horn photos:

Isn't this cool looking? I had such fun taking these!

These are the photos where the clarinet and the french horn became friends:

Oh, and I took some of sheet music too just for good measure:

I took all of them with the camera on manual and set to black-and-white. Almost all of them were taken using the macro setting. I'm still not sure which ones I'll end up using, but I have a lot of good options. Also, I'm just going to complain for a second and say that I SO BADLY want a dSLR camera... I feel like I've outgrown my little point and shoot. I don't even remember the last time I took a picture using the auto settings. I take all my photos with the camera switched to manual and I adjust the white balance and everything, but my little camera just doesn't let me adjust some of the things I want to adjust! I need more control! Haha. Also I wish I could switch lenses sometimes... one day I'll get a fancy camera and be so excited. 

But for now, the little old Canon does a pretty decent job. So, which photo is your favorite? Hypothetically, if I were going to blow some up really big and put them on a wall, which one would you pick? Hypothetically, of course... ;o) Oh, and please don't laugh at us for being total band nerds. Band nerds who grew up and dedicated an entire room in their house to music stuff... no laughing!

Five Things

First of all, I'm terribly sorry to those of you who follow with Google Reader... I accidentally hit "Publish" instead of "Save" on a post I was starting on a recipe for Blueberry French Toast last night, and I'm pretty sure it went ahead and sent a blank post to all of your Google Readers. Oops. Don't worry though, I'll have that recipe typed up and posted soon!

Anyway...

It's finally Friday! I'll be spending my weekend finishing up a giant paper (the 80 pages that I've been working on since October are getting turned in for the final time on Monday!) and working on Law Review stuff, but at least I get to be at home while I do it!

I kept thinking of random little things to blog about this week, none of which were important enough for a post of their own, so I went ahead and stuck them all in one post together. Here are five (pretty random) things:


1. Plants
I get really sad when plants stop flowering. The flowers dry up and fall off, and I always feel like I killed the plant. Jeff reminds me that they're supposed to stop flowering eventually and that the leaves are still alive, but it still makes me sad. Plus, I end up with plants that look ridiculous:

This Flaming Katie plant (yes, I bought it because of the name) used to have a bunch of dainty pink flowers...

I've also been irrationally worried all winter that our crape myrtle tree is dead, even though every other crape myrtle in the city also has no leaves. I'll be really relieved when it comes back in the spring.

2. Valentine's Day
I forgot to take photos and blog about my Valentine's Day decor, and I already put it all away. Oops. We kind of skipped Valentine's Day entirely when Uncle Bill passed away, so it totally slipped my mind.

We did decide to have a "make-up" Valentine's Day last Thursday. Jeff brought me tulips (my favorite), we went out to a hibachi restaurant for dinner (where we both ate entirely too much), and then we had a Grey's Anatomy marathon to catch up on the last few weeks of episodes that were sitting in our DVR (aren't I a lucky girl to have a husband that likes Grey's?).

I love tulips!

3. Lent
What a wonderful time of year. I love having a season dedicated to refocusing my life on Jesus. I'm doing a few different things this year for Lent, but the one thing I'm "giving up" is music/radio in the car. This is the third year I've done it, and this year will definitely be the hardest because my drive to and from school is longer now that we're in the new house! It's about 45-60 minutes each way, so it's a great amount of time to use for prayer, reflection, or phone calls to family and friends that I sometimes don't talk to often enough.

Jeff's giving up Twitter. He follows a lot of sports writers and sports bloggers and he's gotten pretty bad about checking it on his phone all the time, so he went ahead and deactivated it until Easter.

Speaking of Lent, I've got some yummy seafood recipes coming up!

4. Bedding
I've been casually looking at bedding for our master bedroom. We're planning on redecorating it this summer, so I'm just starting to browse a bit. Here are some pretty ones I have my eye on so far...

I just love the pretty pattern on this one and the soft aqua color...

@ Bed Bath & Beyond

This next one is Robert Allen Home (like our current bedding), which makes me love it. I've been really happy with the quality of our bedding and the weight of the comforter, so I'd be happy to buy another Robert Allen Home set!

also @ Bed Bath & Beyond

The other one I'm loving is Pottery Barn's Lewis Paisley duvet cover:

(source)

(source)

5. Birds
The sidewalk in our neighborhood goes through a lake by our house. The other day, the lake walkway was completely FILLED with birds. There were so many birds that Jeff actually stopped the car on our way out of the neighborhood so I could get out and snap a photo. There were just SO MANY of them!

I scared some of them and they started to fly away...

But seriously... SO. MANY. BIRDS.

The next day, the walkway was covered in vast amounts of bird poop. We haven't seen the birds since. 

So, do any of you get sad when your plants stop flowering? Did you have a bird convention near your house? Which of those bedding options is your favorite? Are y'all giving anything up for Lent?

Champagne Punch

It's about to be bridal shower season, right? It seems like March and April are full of showers for all the summer weddings. This is my go-to champagne punch for bridal showers, Wednesdays, New Year's Eve, etc. It's. so. yuh. mee.

Recipe from Kroger.com, but it's not posted anymore.

Ingredients:
6 cups apple cider
2 cups cranberry cocktail
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 bottle champagne

Directions:
1. Mix apple cider, cranberry cocktail, and lemon juice in a large pitcher or punch bowl.
2. Right before serving, add champagne and stir lightly.

(ingredients minus champagne)

(juices mixed up)

(The recipe fills a punch bowl pretty nicely! I like to freeze a couple inches of water in a few Tupperware containers to use as giant ice cubes floating in the punch to keep it cold.)

Enjoy!