Whose seriously handsome husband is this?!

Oh, that's right. He's mine :)
This is just one in a long list of favorites from our we-take-Florida-by-storm adventure. More and more and more coming...

Snow!

I've shared pictures like this a dozen times, but I never, ever get tired of sunny, snowy walks, tromping around in our snow boots and mittens, just the two of us.

Gus and the birthday bone

It's no secret that we're great, big birthday celebrators around here, and when your very favorite puppy turns 2, what else is there to do but find the biggest bone on earth and let him go to town? I'm convinced it must have come from a triceratops or something, but my parents, buyers of the bone, assure me it did not :)

Sugar for your sugar

It's 4 days after Valentine's Day, the sun is shining, and I'm trying like crazy to avoid the mountain-sized pile of laundry that needs folding - all fantastic reasons to bake some muffins, don't you think?

Vanilla Muffins

4 c flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
2 c sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 c milk
2 lg eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 c unsalted butter, melted
1 Tbsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 400. Coat several mini muffins tins with nonstick cooking spray. Sift flour - salt into a large bowl. In a separate large bowl, whisk milk - vanilla. Add wet ingredients to dry and stir until just combined. Fill muffin tins 2/3 full. Bake 15-20 minutes or until brown on top.

These are more like cupcakes than muffins, which increases their value 10 fold, at least for me. Since these were baked for our sis and bros, I made them a little more fancy-pants by dumping in chocolate chips. And, because I didn't want to mess with a gazillion mini muffins, I used a standard-sized tin and baked them at the same temperature for 16 minutes; they were perfect.

Up

Just when I was beginning to be a little too big for my britches, thinking that our Washington winter skies have cornered the market on impossibly stunning, we hopped on a plane and spent a week in Florida under this:

So good to be reminded again that there's beauty everywhere we are and everywhere we look. More coming on our Florida adventure, just as soon as we shake the sand out of our shoes and put our snorkels and swimsuits away :)

Team Living the Dream

"So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, run the rivers and breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air. Sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space."
- Edward Abbey