Soup Swap!

Did you know that January 21st is National Soup Swap Day?  I didn't either until about a month ago...So I went to my first swap today.  A group from out church hosted.  I helped by putting together the prizes.  Thiswas fun in itself!  On the suggestion fo the coordinator, I got "Chicken Soup"  Books and used wooden spoons for the "trophies".  OF course I ahd to put a crafty spin on it, so here is what I came up with...Pretty cute, huh?

Don't know if you could see, but one of the prizes was for most creative packaging...right up my alley! I had so many ideas...Here is what I settled on:

inside the bag...soup & a baguette

Completed bag with everything inside. 
Front tag is a recipe card.



Finally, to pick a soup....well, I really did want to try to do something so people would go home with new things. I have a lot of soup recipes....chicken tortilla, zuppa toscano, potato, etc. These were all good, but rather common, so....I decided on French Country Soup. It is one of my favorites and it makes the house smell wonderful! I found the recipe several years back...where, I really don't know...and I have modified it to fit our taste.

French Country Soup:

Ingredients:

8 ounces of dry navy, great Northern, or cannellini beans

6 cups water

1 pound beef or lamb stew mean, cut into 1-inch cubes

4 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth or stock

2 stalks of celery cut into 1-inch pieces

2 carrots cut into 1-inch pieces

1 large onion cut into wedges

2 cups dry white wine

6 cloves garlic, minced (1 T)

3 bay leaves

1 ½ teaspoon dried rosemary, crushed

½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper

Toasted French bread slices (optional)

Directions

• Rinse & drain beans. In a 4-quart stock pot, combine beans and the water. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat. Cover & let stand for one hour.

• Drain beans in colander; rinse. In a 3-6 quart slow cooker, stir together beans, meat, broth (or stock), carrots, celery, onion, wine, garlic, bay leaves, rosemary, salt & pepper.

• Cover; cook on low-heat setting for 8-10 hours or high-heat setting for 4-5 hours. Remove & discard bay leaves before serving. If desired, serve with toasted French bread slices.

I like to sprinkle a little fresh, grated Parmesan on top and serve it with the toasted bread. Yummy!

The swap was so much fun.  We had 9 soups to taste with only one repeat.  After tasting we all voted on the three categories.  We had plenty of time to snack and visit with one another.  Once the votes were in we gave out the prizes.  Then we swapped our soups.  I didn't come home with a prize, but I did come home with 4 delicious soups and some new recipes to make.  This was definitely a lot of fun...and I think we all decided we needed to find out when Pie Day is!

So many projects....

so little time!  There are so many projects that I would like to do that I hae decided to make a list and prioritize.  The first is to get my personal scrapbooks caught up, so....I have organized all my photos, made a list of all the things that should be scrapped for the past 5 years and cross referencing it with the pages I have actually done.  this will leave me a list of what i need to do...I am working year-by-year so, I am should have 2011 completely caught up by then end of next week...jsut a few more layouts to do.  I am also doing more hybrid layouts to help 'get it done".  Here are two I just completed:

I have also been trying to make use of the many already made pages I have...I have a stack of about 50 layouts that I made when I worked at the scrapbook store that just need pictures...here is one of them...Yeah! 

I also managed to squeeze in a quick trip to my girlfriend's since the beginnign fo the year.  We scrapped the entire weekend....I needed it!  I completed a mini album for my Dfor our 20th anniversary, colored a lot of digi images for future projects, made a set of cards for a swap, and did a layout for her daughter's prom.  Very productive weekend...really need one of those a month! 



Prom Layout I did for my girlfriend's daughter.



layout my girlfriend did for me "in trade"



Cards done two ways!

These are the cards I made for a swap...since each person will receive two from me I decided to use two color palettes.  The image is a free digi stamp from MelJen's Designs:   http://meljensdesignsdt.blogspot.com/p/freebies.htmlhttp://meljensdesignsdt.blogspot.com/p/freebies.html

Happy New Year

The new year is here...welcome 2012.  I have been working rather diligently on getting my photos and all craft things organized.  My goal for the year is to get those family albums caught up.  I know that this will be much easier if I have everything organized.  So,...

All old photos have been gone through, organized and pared down to one large box instead of the 8 photo boxes from before.  I have organized all digital photos as well...separating them into yearly folders and moving them onto the external hard drive.  Now, I need to organized all video and then I will be ready to move to phase two of this plan...figuring out what has/hasn't been scrapped yet.  That will be next week's project.  Once that is done then I can just start with a page a day & should be able to get caught up in the family albums rather quickly. 

My other goal for the new year is to put a little more focus on me...taking the time to work out, making healthier choices with food, allowing some "me" time each day, etc.  Obviously, i would like to loose some weight, but that is t=not the primary goal.  I just need to find me again.

The final goal I have is to do a major letting go...letting go of things, people, etc...anything that no longer makes me happy, brings me joy or is a positive influence in my life.  We just get so bogged down in today's world with things and people....so, my new philosophy is this...if you do not bring something positive to my world, then you are gone....person or thing.

I will be posting crafty stuff next week...going to Brandi's for the weekend and hoping to get a few projects done.