Say you have folks coming around for dinner. You want to whip out your nice linen napkins but discover they’ve been jammed into the drawer of your sideboard for six months. Ugh! Guess you’ll have to get out your iron and your ironing board.
Nope! Just follow this little tip and you’ll have wrinkle free napkins in moments!
Boo! Wrinkles!
Fill a spritz bottle with warm water.
Lay your napkin on a soft surface. I use my couch cushion but you can lay down a towel.
Lightly spritz the napkin with the water. You want it to be damp not soaking wet.
With both hands smooth the damp cloth until the wrinkles disappear and the water dries mostly at your touch.
Fold in half then spritz and smooth again.
Fold in quarters then spritz and smooth…
Spritz and smooth…spritz and smooth!
Easy right!
How was your holiday everyone? Were there lots of leftovers? Allow me to suggest this soup to try.
Most of what I used was leftover from my Christmas feast, what wasn’t I had stashed in the freezer.
That’s the beauty of soup! Broth, a few veggies, some leftover protein…Boom! Dinner.
Vegetable Beef Soup
6 cups Beef Stock
1 tablespoon Mixed Dried Herbs
Corn Starch Slurry (1 tablespoon cornstarch + 2 tablespoons cold water)
4 cups cooked Roast Beef
1 cup cooked Carrots
2 cups cooked Potatoes
1 cup frozen Corn (thawed)
1 cup frozen Green Beans (thawed)
Salt & Pepper (to taste)
Dice or shred the beef and set aside. Prepare and measure all the veggies and set aside.
In a large stock pot heat the stock to a boil and add the herbs.
Whisk in the cornstarch slurry. Stir until slightly thickened.
Turn the heat to low and add the meat and veggies.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Heat through the meat and veggies in the soup.
Serve with crusty bread or rolls.
Hey there!
2014 was an epic year for the blog, thanks to you! New commenters speaking up, as well as many new subscribers.
Thank you guys, it’s so nice to hear from you. I love blogging, and to have an actual audience after 5 years of mainly talking to myself is inspiring.
I tried a few new things this year. Adding a new crafts page to the main directory with Weekend D.I.Y. Also a new feature, with a monthly post featuring “real world” fashion that, according to stats, you really liked a lot.
In the coming year we’ll have more of what you liked, and a few changes that will make WFH a worthwhile place to spend your free time. Let me know what you’d like to see more of on WFH!
Here’s to a great 2015!
Happy New Year,
Kathy
Here’s a quick look back at what we got up to in 2014:
Friday Photos were a lovely addition last year. I hope to do more of these in the coming year.
Formerly “Sunday Surfing” the new Link Love was a reader favorite. I hope you all stayed in your jammies and grabbed a nice cuppa and had a leisurely look at the fun side of the internet.
We were introduced to many inspirational bloggers this year with Meet a Blogger. Many more to come next year I assure you!
We learned a few new things about packing light when we traveled to Maui this summer.
Mid August I added Watch This! to the blog line up. Trendy, fun, informative, and just plain mind-blowing videos from around the world were another reader favorite! More this year! Stay tuned.
Probably my favorite feature last year was the monthly Bookworm series. Come by Goodreads and let’s be friends!
This book resonated with me strongly. Her childhood, her coping with loss, and the realizations she had while on the trail were ones I had during similar life experience. I also admire outdoorsy people like her and those she met on the Pacific Crest Trail. Alas, the tall spires of trees I hike through are library shelves.
“I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.”
“The father’s job is to teach his children how to be warriors, to give them the confidence to get on the horse to ride into battle when it’s necessary to do so. If you don’t get that from your father, you have to teach yourself.”
“The thing about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, the thing that was so profound to me that summer—and yet also, like most things, so very simple—was how few choices I had and how often I had to do the thing I least wanted to do. How there was no escape or denial. No numbing it down with a martini or covering it up with a roll in the hay. As I clung to the chaparral that day, attempting to patch up my bleeding finger, terrified by every sound that the bull was coming back, I considered my options. There were only two and they were essentially the same. I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go.”
The most requested candy at Christmastime! Makes a great gift too.
Caramel Corn
3 full size bags Microwave Popcorn
2 cups Dry Roasted Peanuts (optional)
2 cups Brown Sugar
1/2 cup Light Corn Syrup
1 cup Butter
1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Vanilla
Pre-heat oven to 250 degrees.
Divide the popped corn between two recyclable foil roasting pans.
Try to pick out as many of the un-popped kernels as you can.
In a large heavy bottomed pot, combine the brown sugar, butter and corn syrup. Heat the mixture over medium high heat, stirring well.
Bring to a boil and continue to stir constantly for 5 minutes.
Remove the caramel from the heat and stir in the baking soda and vanilla.
The mixture will pouf up and be foamy. Immediately pour over the popcorn in the pans and stir to coat.
Bake in the oven for 1 hour, removing the pans and giving them a good stir every 15 minutes.
Line your table top with parchment paper and dump the corn out, separating the pieces. Allow to cool completely.
Store in zip top bags.
Or, you know, eat it all right now.
We don’t judge.
Don’t let tempering chocolate scare you! My method is super easy and fast.
I switched up my recipe so I could put it in mini muffin cups. Makes for a sweet treat to hand around at the end of a meal or as a parting gift for party guests.
Crush your peppermint candy and measure out 3 tablespoons. Set aside.
Line a mini muffin pan with mini muffin liners and set to wait for the chocolate.
Line a cup or mug with a piping bag (or sandwich bag) and fold the top over the sides of the cup. Note: Shown above, I’ve used rice to illustrate how to fill and then use the sandwich/piping bag. I forgot to take a picture of it with the chocolate in it. Sorry.
When you’re all set up, now you can melt your chocolate!
Place half the bag of semi-sweet chocolate into a microwave safe bowl and microwave on high for 30 seconds, stir and place it back in for 30 more seconds, stir.
Repeat the process until the chocolate is JUST melted. Add the rest of the chocolate chips to the melted portion of chocolate and stir until all the chocolate is melt and homogenous.
It takes a bit of patience but don’t put it back into the microwave or you’ll lose your temper. That is to say your chocolate will be too hot and won’t firm back up at room temperature. Then you’ll really lose your temper. Heh.
Spoon the melted chocolate into your piping bag and snip a tiny bit off the corner.
Pipe about a teaspoon of the chocolate into the bottom of each mini muffin cup.
Repeat the melting/tempering process for the white chocolate (see above).
Note!: White chocolate melts much quicker than regular chocolate. So after the initial 30 sec in the micro, melt at 10 second increments until JUST melted.
Pipe a teaspoon of the white chocolate to cover the semi-sweet.
Sprinkle the peppermint candy over the top.
Set aside to firm up for about 2 hours. No need to refrigerate them if we’ve tempered our chocolate correctly.
Keep in a covered container or zip top bag until ready to serve.
Christmas morning, late morning now that my kids are in their late teens and early twenties, is what we wait all year for! Presents, stockings, and a big mug of “cawffee” with a cinnamon roll and maybe a glass of champagne.
Kathleen Rear 