Marshmallow Peeps

For Easter this year instead of getting store-bought marshmallow peeps, we thought we would make our own.    Using a simple recipe and some Easter-y cookie cutters, we now have enough peeps to see us through August at least.  Guess that is what happens when you start dealing with bunnies and chicks.

Making  marshmallow peeps is pretty easy.  A quick tutorial, since we took pictures. 

Just a few ingredients.

Add in some flavoring.  We used saffron for one batch and pomegranate juice for the other.

While the gelatin blooms,

heat up the sugar and honey,

and beat some egg whites.

Then add all those together and mix for 10 minutes.  

Gotta have some colored sugar for the coating if they are going to be peeps.

Pour into a pan and let them set up at least 4 hours or overnight.  

This is the hardest part, the waiting.

Once set,  just use cookie cutters to make the shapes.

Add some decoration, and they are done.

Here they are being used as decoration on our Easter centerpiece.

And here they are waiting to be the main culprits in many a future sugar high.

Our Garden (Work) Party

Spring-like weather has been slow to make an appearance around here.  Even the natives are complaining about the lingering cold and seemingly endless drizzle or rain.  Getting our garden started for the year seemed like the perfect antidote to the lackluster weather. So we got our hands dirty!

We have a plot in the Poulsbo P-Patch, just up the hill from our house.  

We already have some onions and garlic sprouting that we put in over the winter.  

And we planted some peas a few weeks ago.

For everything else we take a short cut and use starter plants.  Here are a few of the things we started with:

This is how it looked when we were done.  Neat and orderly rows full of promise!

 We have high hopes - here are pictures of last year's bounty.

And when we went away for a few days, we came back to find this zucchini.

We also learned that Baylee isn't a very big fan of zucchini.

Now when it rains, at least there's an upside - the garden gets a good watering!

fun with pictures

Found a cool website, Photofunia.com, that has provided us with some indoor entertainment during the rainy season here.  It is a photo editing site that offers a variety of photographic templates with either a scene or a special effect.  After selecting one of the templates, you upload one of your own photos, and the template and photo are then merged to create a whole new photo.  

Here are some that I did with a few of our old photos:

Each one of these was done with just a couple of clicks on the computer.  Incredibly easy, fun, and free. 

Now, if we could only see the sun again...  

Going Green

 St. Patrick's Day is coming up.  Such a fun day. Between both of us, Matt and I are only 1/8 Irish.  But add an apostrophe to our name--O'vios---and suddenly we are speaking in brogue.   Nearby Bremerton had a parade and we had to go.  While it was a little underwhelming, the Irish spirit was in evidence despite the umbrella weather.

The bagpipe band was the highlight of the parade.

The requisite leprechaun look-a-like.

We liked that all these girls wore their green.

Spectators were invited to join the parade. We declined, preferring to take pictures instead.  That was until we discovered there was really nothing else to photograph.  Nevertheless, who doesn't love a parade?

We carried through with a home-cooked Irish-themed dinner.  We experimented with traditional Irish soda bread recipe using only flour, baking soda, salt, buttermilk, and caraway seeds.

This is before baking. 

The finished product.

We thought the traditional recipe resulted in something more like a cracker than a bread.  But it seemed very authentic!

The Irish stew that Matt cooked up was excellent.  And pretty, too.

Dessert was Guinness-infused chocolate pudding.  Very tasty.  And it's good for you!

Erin go bragh!

Early Signs of Spring

While the temperatures may belie it and budding trees are hard to find, we have started to see a few early signs of spring.  And it doesn't take much to get us motivated to start getting ready for warmer and (hopefully) sunnier days ahead. 

Here are some pictures of things that have us thinking spring.

A robin searching for dinner.

Daffodils ready to bloom.

Local gardening suggestions.

 Colorful tomato cages for the garden.

Baseball practice!

Tulips, tulips, tulips.

So, while we are still waiting to see the temperature above 50 degrees, we've seen enough to get started on our spring preps.

Ready to plant the peas.

Carol's pedicure for the upcoming sandal season.

Matt trying to coax one more season out of the aging grill.

And getting the sails ready for spring sailing.

Hope you are seeing signs of spring where you are too!