Today​ I want to share with you one of my favorite Mexican dips.  Many of you will be attending or giving a Super Bowl party soon and you will want to include this dip in your menu.  Trust me, it will be a huge hit with the spicy crowd!

Why would you want to wrap gifts without bows, you ask?  Well, there are several reasons, but why I had to do it was because I have a feisty 10 month old orange kitten that simply won't leave bows alone.  So unless I want a bunch of bedraggled, ripped and toothmarked Christmas bows, I had to go another route.  Another reason would be to save money.  Ribbon is expensive, even bags of premade bows are as inexpensive as they used to be.  Going without bows saves money!  A third reason is that it is impossible to stack gifts for transport if they have bows on them.  You can try, but I guarantee by the time you get them to the desired location, they bows will be mashed, ripped or missing completely.  Do yourself a favor and go bowless!  With a little ingenuity and glue, you will have gorgeous packages and the recipients will be amazed!
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​​It's getting to be that time of year.  Cold, snowy and just a difficult time for our fine feathered friends outside.  I imagine it's hard for a bird to find food during winter with no plants blooming and no worms spending much time on the surface of the ground.  Having snow on the ground would make it even harder.  This is why I always keep my bird feeders full during cold weather.  When I have time, I even make little bird cakes to hang on the trees.  They love them and the fat they are made with helps keep the birds plump and well insulated from the cold.  I have four recipes that I like to use to make my bird cakes.  They are all easy and pretty quick to make.  Making them is a great family activity, perfect for the holidays.
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If you are like many households, you are drowning in candy after Halloween.  Whether it's from your children's haul or left overs because you bought to much or didn't have many kids, you look at all that chocolate and think "what am I going to do with all this?" Well, I have a great idea for what you can do with all that chocolate candy, though I have to confess, it's NOT any less fattening, it's creative, pretty and really delicious!
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​Everyone that cooks has had that moment when you are making a dish and realize that you don't have one of the ingredients.  You have two choices:  pack yourself off to the store and get it (not a great choice for me as the closest grocery store is at least 10 miles away) or you can try to make due with a substitute, not knowing how it will make your dish turn out or taste.  Neither solution is ideal.  What if I told you that sometimes there is a third option?

​I love making Halloween decorations!  I have to force myself not to make them the whole month of October, because if I did that, I would have to start renting a storage space just to house them!  That being the case, I have to carefully choose only the coolest crafts to make, and this one definitely qualifies.  I saw this on You Tube and I immediately knew I had to do it.  The ghosts are adorable to sit or to hang!  The shirts are really spooky and great to sit in the corner of any room.  This is how to make them.....

​I know it seems hard to believe but summer is coming to a close. The long, hot, lazy days have already gone bye bye for many people and the cooler temperatures are taking over more and more frequently. Autumn is arriving and even though that is exciting, have you said good bye to summer?

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If you have ever tried a Magic Eraser Sponge, I bet you were amazed.  I know I was.  At our old house (before we moved to our homestead) we had a shower enclosure in the second bathroom. The bottom of it was always dirty from my husband showering after work.  He is a diesel mechanic and many times he arrives home quite black, and it seems that most of that black ends up on the shower floor.  I tried so many things to clean it and it just took old fashioned elbow grease to scour it off.  The older it got, the harder it became to get clean.  That is, until I tried a Magic Eraser!
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Fall is my favorite time of the year for crafts.  I know its not really fall yet, but I can wish, can't I?  I can also get an early start in making some end of the summer and autumn projects.  Nature is just full of things that are great to use for crafts like pine cones, branches, leaves, pussy willows and my personal favorite:  corn husks.  
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