Karen Clare

 Every so often, I love to pull out the tea set that I got at the Biltmore Estate in Ashville, North Carolina back in 2004 during a road trip with my best friend, Dori. The Biltmore Estate was the Vanderbilts' summer home, and after touring the huge estate, we went into the gift shop. It was during September, my birth month, and I ended up getting myself this tea set, which is a replica of a set that was owned by the Vanderbilts.  Afternoon tea has three courses. the first course is sandwiches, so I made cucumber sandwiches: white bread, spreadable cream cheese on both sides of the bread, very thinly-sliced cucumbers (I used a mandoline), salt, and crushed celery seed. I cut the crusts off carefully, and then I cut the sandwiches, some into rectangles and some into triangles.  The second course is scones with jam and often clotted cream. The scones I got were store-bought from Publix, and I had some lingonberry jam -- which, if you've never tried it, tastes like cranberry...

 Today was the first day I turned off my heater because the weather finally warmed up -- pleasant and sunny.  I have decorated a bit for Valentine's Day. I don't do much for it, but the decorations that I have I keep up all February. I did break down and get a few inexpensive things from Amazon, which only totaled around $30. The other things I already had from last year and the year before: My electric fireplace mantle. All three of the things I have hanging from it were from last year: The pink heart wreath on the viewer's left came from World Market last year, and the middle wreath came from an Etsy shop called Blessings And Boxwood last year. The tin and wood heart on the right I believe came from Hobby Lobby two or three years ago.  The bottom picture is of the kitchen hutch that I got back in October that now serves as my coffee bar. I've been really enjoying decorating it. And here is where the new stuff is: the sign at the top, and the concrete hearts that I mad...

 Well, the last month of winter began with a freeze, This morning I woke up to a temperature of 32 degrees Fahrenheit. We were supposed to possibly get some snow flurries, but no flurries were spotted where I live. Today was still very cold to us Floridians. This past week was rather... crappy. Nothing major, just stressful at work and then on top of that, I woke up on Friday morning with suspicious bites on my side. Three in a line, and I was thinking, "Please, do not let this be what I think it is. Please do not let it be bed bugs." I convinced myself that it must be something else, but no. This morning I woke up with a few more bites, and I stripped my bed completely and washed everything, right down to the mattress -- dust ruffle, mattress protector, sheets, coverlet, duvet, shams, and pillow protectors. I put everything through the dryer (high heat for a full cycle will kill the bed bugs and eggs). Sure enough, I found some dead ones in the lint filter, and also some mo...