Dangling shiny objects

I am making progress on my quilt, but have been taking other random pictures in the meantime that I feel like sharing because it does not require much thought to post them. Lazy? Sure, but what ever. :-)

CF visited two weekends ago and we spend several hours putting this puzzle together. I literally had to ask him to stop working on it and keep me company while I put some dinner together. I needed to coach him to work together. Funny thing is, every time we switched spots where we were working, we could get huge sections put together. Team work does work.

I picked up some stick-on nail polish. It works pretty well, actually. I do not think you can tell the extent to which this color is fluorescing pink. It is though. I guess the reason it was on clearance was the polish strip in front was extremely faded to make the unknowing purchaser think it was a nice pale pink. Tomorrow I am going to work at a Habitat for Humanity house, so it will get ruined anyway.

 

My mom special ordered soldier beans and shared them around. This particular type of bean is difficult to find (although maybe not in Maine), but it is the specific type of bean that is supposed to be used in the family's baked bean recipe. I used this one two pound bag to try the recipe in my crock pot, and it came out quite well.

A recent trip to Tar-jay revealed these candles to me. I highly recommend them. This one is citrus-y, and I suppose citrus equals happiness?

While some may not, I TOTALLY get Pinterest and love it. I have bookmarked stuff in the past and never think to go back to it. Or when I have a hankering for a recipe, I spend time searching various food sites for it. I have made a lot of things from my pins though. The most recent was this brownie recipe. Usually when I crave baked goods, it is brownies I want. This is a healthier alternative. Next time, I will probably skip the "caramel" topping and add some apple sauce/caramel flavor/chocolate chips/other to the brownie part. This time around, I also used ~ 1/4 c of honey instead of the fake sugar.

 

I have been buying myself flowers. CF does this a lot, but I just tossed our Christmas poinsettia and the rose plant he had given me when I moved into my current apartment. I saw these calla lilies and couldn't resist.

Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food, and medicine for the soul. ~ Luther Burbank, American Horticulturist

Then I started getting all creative and  put out what is probably my favorite song to play on my flute. (That is not me playing...)

 

Last, but not least, my tea is always inspirational...and apparently I have been drinking it since grad school.

I also wonder if this tea is why I was so tired all of a sudden yesterday evening. Maybe the relaxing of the tea works better than I realized?

One time, my grad advisor made some comment about undergrads being easy to work with because you just dangle something shiny in front of them to distract them. Then the undergrad in the lab actually batted at the keys said advisor dangled in front of him. No joke.