Eating Vegetarian Feels and Tastes SO Good!

Tonight's feast...


Tofu Quiche (tofu, spinach, asparagus, fakin' bacon, herbs and spices, and cheddar cheese)

Top reasons why I eat vegetarian:


1. Because animals value their lives just as much as humans do.


2. Because it has opened me up to eating so many more foods than if I was still eating meat.


3. Because it helps me maintain my weight.


4. Because it makes me feel strong and healthy.


5. Because I get so many less colds and other illnesses than I did when I ate meat even though I am surrounded by germs daily at my job.


6. Because it tastes SO good!




xoxoxo

True friends, like ivy and the wall, stand together, and together fall...

To me, the worst feeling is to know that another being needs my help and yet I cannot provide it... I have felt helpless in this way when I would tour shelters and know that I could not take another animal with me. When we moved to our very own home, we adopted our puppy, Barlow. It felt so good to give a puppy in need a home. In December, we found ourselves in a position where we could again give another animal a warm, safe home. It also appeared to us that Barlow was ready for a friend. One late night browsing on Petfinder, I came across this cutie...

I don't know if it was those little white paws, or the thought that such a sweet dog was living in a cold, concrete pen, but I just knew that we had to rescue her if we could. So, I contacted The Rescue Express of Media, PA.

This sweet pup was currently living in Georgia and needed to be transported to PA for us to adopt her. So, we waited...and waited. And boy, was she worth the wait. The week before Christmas she came home.

This is Ivy in her crate the first night. She was very frightened and whined furiously if I left her sight. Understandably, the poor pup did not know if she was going to be abandoned again. The rescue informed us that she was found in a shelter about to be euthanized and they offered her a second chance. She was then placed into another facility and cared for until a forever home was found. Once we contacted them, she was transported all the way from Georgia to meet us. And then she was sent home to this new, strange place. All of these transitions and only 1 year old! It's no wonder she was scared!

The next day, we were off to the vet. You can see in the picture above (on her ear) that she had a skin condition when she came to us. The vet diagnosed her with a mild case of mange... scabies! You can tell from the picture below that she was underweight... (mange and worms - which she had plenty of too- seemed to contribute to this)...

We separated her from Barlow, so that the scabies didn't spread. And here she resided in our kitchen for two full weeks, with plenty of walks, ball play in the yard, and hikes to break the monotony. She enjoyed big meals and lots of treats to fatten her up!

Just this weekend, she seemed healthy enough and ready to join the rest of her new pack.

Ivy, enjoying the comforts of the living room...

And enjoying running with Barlow and chasing a ball in the backyard...

Finally, Ivy with her new forever family...

If you are looking for an animal to be your companion for life, please think about adopting. Here are some facts about animals in shelters (from www.aspca.org):

• Approximately 5 million to 7 million companion animals enter animal shelters nationwide every year, and approximately 3 million to 4 million are euthanized (60 percent of dogs and 70 percent of cats). Shelter intakes are about evenly divided between those animals relinquished by owners and those picked up by animal control. These are national estimates; the percentage of euthanasia may vary from state to state.
• Five out of ten dogs in shelters and seven out of ten cats in shelters are destroyed simply because there is no one to adopt them.

If not for rescues like The Rescue Express of Media, PA and La Mancha Animal Rescue of Coatesville, PA (not to forget Morris Animal Refuge of Philadelphia, PA - where we got our sweet kitty, Squash) our darling girls, Barlow and Ivy, would have just been a very sad statistic.

Don't buy...Adopt!

xoxoxo

Punk Rock Flea Market

So... yesterday Mary, the ridiculously awesome knitter chick, and I had our very own (half) table at Philly's R5 Punk Rock Flea Market. This was our first time at any type of craft market! Being the "pro-craft-inators" that we are, we were exhausted, but proud, as we hawked the goods that we created during the late night before the market and in the weeks just prior to the big day. The sale was kind of a bust, as people only seemed interested in buying used clothes and VHS (don't ask me why) tapes and not well crafted and unique finds, but we had fun!

Here's some of the goods we had on sale:

Mary's Ridiculously Awesome Knitting

And here are my assorted goods:

Yummy Vegan Treats

Monkey Bread

Chocolate Truffles

Mary also represented Northern Liberties Soy Cafe with their delicious Vegan chocolate chip and oatmeal-cranberry cookies. Yum!

Embroidery

Clothes

Thrifted purple velvet skirt from Goodwill with hand-made fabric flowers from my fabric stash (seared at the edges) and embroidered... it didn't sell, which I am actually happy about as it will now have a home in my wardrobe...

We had a talented digital artist by the name of Kristin Grossi from Marilla1918.etsy.com as our neighbor. It was dangerous to have her as our neighbor, as we basically used any of the $ we made on her designs. Mary got this crazy cute robot framed print and I got her Woodland Friends and Octopus prints to decorate our house. She was also super sweet. Check her out on Etsy for some handmade goods for the holidays.

xoxoxo

I love Fall!

As you might have guessed by the title of this blog, I love the fall. It is my favorite season, hands down. When I lived in California, I missed the fall. They have fall, but it is just not the same. No crisp, cool Autumn air, no crunch of the leaves under your feet, no smell of a fireplace.

Some of the best things in my life happened during the fall. I was born in the fall...I guess this is the best thing of all! I married the love of my life in the fall and I adopted the feline love of my life (Pumpkin - the name also gives away how much I love the season) in the fall. My favorite holiday is in the fall. And all the best foods are in season in the fall, pumpkins, acorn squash, and of course, pumpkin pie!

So, to celebrate the Fall, I've started making some Fall crafts. Here is the first:

I feel as though this wreath truly embodies the season: the warm chocolate yarn, the flowers the colors of the falling leaves.

This fall wreath will be going to someone very special in my life...

xoxoxo

Babies!!!

Lots of friends and lots of family members are having babies lately. I can't bring myself to purchase any old gift from Babies R Us. What fun would that be? So, I've started making diaper cakes. Not only are they useful at the party (i.e. as decor) but they are, so I've been told, a very useful present after the baby comes home.

Here are some cakes I've made:

My first:

My most recent:

xoxoxo

Bean Burger ... Bazinga!

I plan on whipping up these deliciously simple burgers to chomp on while I watch the season premiere of The Big Bang Theory...

The ingredients...

Mash 1/2 can of canneleni beans and 1/2 can of black beans. Add 1/2 onion diced, 2 cloves garilc minced, 1/2 pepper diced, 1 cup bread crumbs, 1tbsp crushed tomato, one egg, 1/2 tsp oregano, 1 tsp parsley, salt and pepper to taste and mix together.

Now here comes the fun part... divide the batch into six equal parts, rolling into balls and then flattening into patties. Since I don't eat meat, I've never made hamburgers or meatballs. This part of the recipe is surprisingly fun!

Fry the patties up in a bit of oil... I used olive oil but you could certainly use the spray to cut the fat.

Add some melted cheese or any toppings of your liking. Here I added cheese and avocado. So as not to waste the remainder of the beans, I've also made a black and canneleni bean hummus which made a delicious spread for the burger bun. I used the flat bread buns here, but any bun will do!

Enjoy!

*note to self - do not choke on Bean Burger while laughing hysterically at BBT*

B is for Bear...

I've been on an embroidery kick for the past year. Last year around this time, I started on a very special project for the newest little one in my life, my beautiful nephew Braydon. This project took me a long, long time... to be exact, the length of the entire first three seasons of Heroes streaming from netflix! I must say, the first two seasons were definitely the best, the show seemed to go downhill after that....

Anyway... the time spent was well worth it just to see the look on his parents faces when they opened the gift at Christmas.

Without further ado...

To make the project even more of a challenge, my nephew just had to have the letters "y" and "n" in his name. Actually, the "y" panel presented much less of a challenge then "n" did. Just try finding an animal that starts with the letter "n" that a small child will recognize... I dare you.

The panels were constructed entirely of felt. Each piece was drawn by hand, then cut, and hand-sewn onto the panel. I added some touch & feel components to each panel too, including a silky fabric for the fish and the carrot, a fluffy fabric for the cloud, buttons in the shapes of airplanes, a duck, and apples, and some plastic under the alligator and the moon to give them a crunchy sound when touched. All of the panels were then bound into a book. The binding was also stitched by hand. I was a bit tired by that point, and I think it might have even been Christmas Eve, so a picture was never snapped of the book after binding.

The project was inspired by a post I read on Craftster.org, one of the best crafting websites around.

xoxoxo