Our (not so great) Easter

By Vicky Nardone

So as Easter's go, this one was not so great.  It started being not so great last night around 2am when Matt got the flu.  He had the chills and spent a good majority of the night shaking.  Needless to say neither of us had a very good night's sleep and my Easter started out with a trip to the grocery store to buy a combo pack of dayquil and nyquil for him.

Easter Gifties

By Vicky Nardone

Matt and I are so lucky - we got two wonderful Easter gifts in the mail from our parents today!!  I should include that our puppies are lucky dogs too because the gift from Matt's parents had a lot of stuff for them.

Orange Chocolate Easter Muddy Buddies

By Vicky Nardone

I have always associated orange chocolate with Easter but tonight my husband Matt told me that's apparently just me.  My mom used to buy the orange chocolate miniatures from Niagara Candy (not sure if that's just a Buffalo thing) when I was growing up.  Anyway, in honor of Easter I'm making a twist on an old favorite of mine that my babysitter when I was growing up used to make me.  I got the inspiration to make these from +Alyssa Adams with her Andes Mints Muddy Buddies which I definitely plan to try making next time I make muddy buddies.  These are orange chocolate muddy buddies with rainbow sprinkles.  Although actually a lot of the rainbow sprinkles melted so they didn't show up as well as I would have liked.

Fleece-lined Knitted Hat Giveaway and Pattern

By Vicky Nardone

I can't wait for Spring to come!!  Here in Buffalo we've still got snow on the ground.  For that reason I've decided to do my first giveaway with a hat I just knitted with one of my favorite knitting patterns.  I actually got this pattern for free at Michaels in the yarn aisle.  I'm also going to share the pattern (from Loops & Threads) with you.  I've lined this hat with fleece as well for some added warmth in the cold weather.  It's super soft, cozy and warm.

New Purse Made with New Sewing Machine

By Vicky Nardone

So I decided to try something new.  I've been really impressed with the sewn projects that I've been seeing on other people's blogs and I really wanted to learn how to make a purse similar to the one that I got at a craft fair over the summer.

I was so excited when I found a pattern that I loved for only $3 at Joanns.  I started off using this old 1950s sewing machine that I inherited from my grandma.  That worked for about half an evening and then then the machine which probably hasn't been used in 10 years started giving me trouble.  I decided after looking a new sewing machines and seeing how many more attachments and features they had over my current one that it was worth the invesment.

Piper's Knitted Sweater

By Vicky Nardone

As you may have ready in previous posts, we recently adopted a dog from the Buffalo Animal Shelter and named her Piper.  She's been recovering from spay surgery and a cold so we've been putting her in sweaters to make sure she stays warm enough.  She's also super think because she was neglected by her previous owners and left outside a lot.

Irish Soda Bread

By Vicky Nardone

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!  Today I'm going to be sharing one of my favorite St. Patrick's day recipes with you - Irish soda bread.  My earliest memory of this bread goes back to second grade.  We were reading about bread as part of our reading unit and everyone had to have their parents help them bake a bread that we could bring in and share with the rest of the class.  My mom suggested we bake Irish soda bread and it was a hit!  People were coming back for seconds and there were no leftovers.  My mom is coming over to have St. Patrick's day dinner tonight and this was my contribution to the meal.

S'mores Cupcakes

By Vicky Nardone

Our friends Mel and Andy are coming in for a visit this weekend!!  Mel recently moved to Detroit and Andy has lived in California for almost two years now.  Andy surprised Mel by showing up in Detroit on Monday and the two of them are making the drive from Detroit to Buffalo as I write this post.  In honor of their visit I thought I would whip up a batch of s'mores cupcakes.

Enchanted Inc.

By Vicky Nardone

So I was looking through some other people's blogs today and I came across Tessa's blog Tessacotton.  She has set a goal for herself of trying to read one book a week this year.  I think that's such a cool idea and I read a couple of the reviews she wrote of the books she's been reading and they look really interesting!  Anyway, I hope she doesn't mind that I borrowed her idea but I thought it might be fun to review the things that I've been reading once in a while.

Homemade Green Machine Juice

By Vicky Nardone

Matt and I are big fans of making our own homemade juice and smoothies as you may have seen in my previous post on how to make your own mango smoothies.  Matt has this obsession with wheat grass and we have never been able to find it in the supermarket before yesterday when we tried a new Wegmans.  It was the one missing ingredient that we needed to try and replicate this green machine drink that he loves from Wegmans.

Veggie Flatbread Pizza

By Vicky Nardone

One of Matt and my favorite lunch spots to go on Saturday's is the local olive oil place, D'Avolios because they make their own delicious Roman style pizza that you can customize with your favorite toppings, meat and sauce.  Of course whenever we find something we really like, we immediately start thinking of how to reproduce it ourselves.  So below is our recipe for how to reproduce this pizza.

Dough Ingredients (makes enough for two pizzas)

• 1 tablespoon active dry yeast
• 1/4 cup warm water
• 3 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flur
• 3/4 cup cool water
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons salt

Topping Ingredients

Knitted Doggie Sweaters

By Vicky Nardone

As people who are close to me know, I love to knit and I especially love to knit things for other people...or dogs as the case may be.  Our Jack Russell/Beagle mix Maggie hates wearing any type of clothing so I thought when I made the above sweater for her about 2 years ago or so, it was never going to get worn.  However when we got Piper, the sweater got a second chance.  She doesn't seem to have any problems with it whatsoever and it looks so cute on her.  I got the free pattern for it here.  She got sick on Tuesday and it's really helping her to keep warm and hopefully fight off the infection.

Tuscan Tomato Pasta

By Vicky Nardone

 

When I was in college I used to love to make this dish.  It's evolved a little since then (I married an Italian for goodness sakes!).  It's really pretty simple to make and it tastes good.  Here's what you need:

Key Lime Cheesecake Cupcakes

By Vicky Nardone

I decided that it was time for another round of cupcakes.  I was going to make pina colada ones but when I went to the store they only sold huge containers of pineapple juice and they were completely out of coconut extract.  When I was browsing in the juice section, I noticed that the were selling Key Lime juice.  I had gone on a vacation to Key West when I was a sophomore in college and one of my favorite things there was the many varieties of key lime pie.  I believe Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville has a cheesecake version of it and theirs was my favorite.  I have a favorite cream cheese icing recipe that I used in my chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes so I figured I could make an awesome key lime cheesecake cupcake.

Monkeying (and puppying) around

By Vicky Nardone

My little cousin CC's birthday party is tomorrow.  She's turning 6!  I remember going over to my cousin Caron's house when CC was first born and she was sooo tiny.  She's grown into quite the cute little girl from being quite the cute little baby.  She and my other cousin Jilly were the flower girls in my wedding over the summer.

CC is the one with the brown hair and Jilly has blond hair.  The wore little replicas of my dress.