Oatmeal Cream Pies

One of my husband's favorite treats are Oatmeal Cream Pies.  These are NOT little debbie's!  I went on a hunt for a copy recipe I could make at home, and boy did I find the most perfect recipe.  Using a larger cookie scooper ensures perfectly sized and uniform cookies.  Everyone raves about these, and cant believe I made them :)  Try them yourself, they are delicious.

Recipe HERE from Honey and Jam.

Sage

My granny at the local store.

My great grandmother grew sage in her yard and would pick and dry then save a bunch for my Mom to come and get to use for our Thanksgiving dressing.  All I know is she would dry it on newspapers in her attic.  When she passed away, our Thanksgiving dressing never tasted the same.

Fast forward to today when I went to the garden to pick TONS of sage to dry myself and save for Thanksgiving.  I sat on a stool picking the larger leaves off each large bush.  I ended up with a small pail full and decided I would try to make the rubbed sage two different ways to find out which way was the best.

The first batch, I grouped together about 24 sage leaves and using a rubber band I wrapped each bunch by the stem end.  You should hang each bunch in an area with no direct sunlight and with adequate ventilation. I chose the area above my kitchen sink.

I took some twine and clothes pins to hang each bunch.  Look, decor!

Like I mentioned above, the second method I used was drying the sage leaves on a newspaper in a single layer.  Since I dont go to our attic, I place the newspapers and sage on top of our bookcases.

When the sage is dried out, I will continue on the next step (rubbed sage!) and post about that in the future.

An addiction.

That's right, I have a new addiction.  Pinterest.  I can sit here while watching tv and pin all night long.  It's bad for my mind because Im not reading through blogs anymore...but so much easier to find things, crafts, outfits, decor, recipes, etc that Im looking for.  Some of my very favorite decor photos I have found on pinterest:

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Graduation Candy Gram!

I came up with this candy gram for my sister's college graduation, thanks to Pinterest (my newest addiction).  I came up with a poem that would fit her graduation day, and the accordinating candies.  I bought a poster board at the Dollar Tree, used duct tape to attache each candy, and a sharpie to write the words.  It was very easy and fun to do :)  Everyone loved it!

Garden pics, finally!

I think the rain is finally done drowning us here...we had April and May filled with rain practically every day and hit some records being the wettest ever.  So with all that rain over, we finally planted our family garden!  

Watering the tomatoes:

As you can see, our first step was planting all of those tomato plants.  They look so little!

At the end of the garden, we still needed to till up the soil and let it dry out some, because it was way too wet from all the rain.  Jalapenos, Pumpkins, Watermelon and beans are planted in that area now.

Garden currently:

The pics might be a little dark, I took them this weekend.  The garden is almost complete from planting, Im still waiting on my beans to get a little larger to transplant them, then it will be finished!

Below are 4 brussels sprouts plants I started from seed.  Still quite small:

And, there are 8 zucchini plants here I also started from seed:

Look how much the tomato plants have grown (in the middle left in the pic), and to the right are all pepper plants.

We have gotten a couple strawberries, but hopefully will get more and more as the years go on (and we continue to add more of them to the garden).

It's hot!

Well, April and May gave us TONS of rain.  But, this Memorial day weekend gave us lots of sun and warm (hot) weather.  The garden has finally been able to flourish and hopefully will start growing from the much anticipated sun.

So far, one plant hasn't worked out so well.  I had purchased some strawberry "roots" from walmart a while back and we had planted them in April.  Unfortunately they never came up.  My grandma bought us a few strawberry plants that had greenery and were grown, so we had planted those as well.  They are flourishing and even have a few berries and buds on them!  We are all very excited to have a strawberry patch and over the years add on to it to make it larger year after year.

We still have a few things to plant, which we plan to do so tomorrow- corn, beans and zucchini (all from seed).  Since we finally had great weather, starting some things from seed (beans, zucchini) worked out very well!  It's much cheaper and was pretty easy.  I re used some plastic cell packs leftover from my parents house (Mother's day flowers) to start the seeds.

I hope to show pics this week, I have been so busy!

Antique Mall shopping.

One of our favorite things to do is to go to a favorite local antique mall and walk around.  It's free to look, until you find something you fall in love with or you just can't pass up.  Of course, we go in search of an antique sideboard every-time, but haven't had any luck with finding one just yet.  

So, below is my recent antique mall find at a price we just couldn't pass up.  For $17:

I keep it by the entry to use to put my purse on, and to sit and take our shoes off.  

I love the color of the wood!