Making Winter A Little More Bearable

Now that the holidays are over and winter is fully upon us it is easy to get a little bummed but. I know I have. Lately I've felt like there is not much of anything to look forward to. My job is going well but I'm trying to save what little vacation I have/accrue on a monthly basis for a big trip that Jason and I want to take this summer so the months until spring seem a little never-ending at this point. And I've been a little down/grumpy/in a bad mood this week as a result. I've been trying to focus on the little things that make me happy these days and thought I'd share some of them with you.

1. Dried Cherries
These are my new favorite snack/ingredient. I bought some for a recipe a few weeks ago and ended up eating most of them myself. I'm not sure why I am so obsessed with these at the moment but they are just so good....tart but sweet and have some nutritional value to boot. I've started sticking them in my lunch and incorporating them into meals left and right. Last night I made a roasted pear salad with dried cherries, goat cheese, and pecans to eat with Jason's specialty-- seared salmon (recipe for both to come soon-- I want to make a few tweaks to the salad before I share).

2. Amaryllis Blooms
Every year my mom gives me an amaryllis kit (bulb and planter) around Christmas. We started ours in mid-December and it is now in full (and glorious) bloom. We lucked out this year with a double bloom which makes it even more beautiful to behold.

3. American Pickers
This is a TV show on the History Channel that Jason and I recently started watching. We came across it randomly at my parents' house on Christmas Eve and Jason in particular was hooked. Thanks to a couple of holiday marathons and the fact that Season 1 is available for streaming on Netflix, we've been watching it a lot lately. It's about these two (slightly goofy) guys in Iowa who travel around to different parts of the country "picking."  Basically they find people who "collect" old things and see if they can buy stuff from them that they can turn around and sell for a profit. Old bikes, old signs, old oil cans, old motorcycles...pretty much anything that they see as "rusty gold." It's strangely fascinating to get a peak inside some of the homes of the collectors and even more so to see how much money they can make off of things that I would deem to be junk. It's Hoarders meets Antique Roadshow.

4. New Ways to Eat Leftovers
Y'all know I'm not big fan of most leftovers. But lately I've noticed I like them more if I can find a new/different way to eat them. When Jason suggested using our leftover meatballs to make meatball subs for dinner one night I was a bit skeptical-- I've never really eaten a meatball sub before and the idea was not all the appealing. But he was so excited by the idea I decided to give it a try. Maybe I was just starving after work but it turned really well and was appreciated more than if we'd eaten them on more spaghetti.

5. My New Kindle
I am now the proud owner of an Amazon Kindle (thanks to the generosity of family members this Christmas) and am a big fan. It looks pretty cool (or as Jason would say has an awesome form factor), is easy to use and is perfect for my daily reading on the metro. I used it to read "Just Kids" (this month's book club pick which I'd highly recommend) and am now reading "Home Buying for Dummies" and "Mortgage Ripoffs and Money Savers."

I'm hoping that focusing on these fun little things will help make the doldrums of winter go by a little bit faster!