A Cherry Lime-Aide Spring!

Is there anything that says “Spring” like Cherry Lime-Aide?   My daughter and I have been hooked on Ginger Ale  for the last few months and so I made my own version of Cherry Lime-Aides using Ginger Ale and wow are they yummy.    My precious grand-daughter, Jillian, is spending the night with us tonight so she helped me make some for supper.   

Be sure to run to the store right away and buy the following ingredients:

Ginger Ale (I like the Schweppes brand)

12 ounce bottle of Lime Juice

Limes

Maraschino Cherries (any brand will do)

1 cup sugar

I like to make my own lime syrup - it makes these things taste SO yummy.  Here's how:  in a small saucepan pour in the entire 12 ounces of lime juice and a heaping cup of sugar.  Bring to a boil over medium heat and boil one minute - just long enough to dissolve the sugar.  Stir with a whisk.  I use a funnel and pour this syrup right back into the lime juice bottle.  Cool in the refrigerator.  (This syrup will go a long way, so you won't have to do this step every time you make cherry lime-aides!)

Okay, now for the fun part.  Fill a quart size mason jar with ice to the top.  Add about 1/4 cup of the lime syrup and 1/4 cup of cherry juice.  Pour Ginger Ale on top of that.  Its starting to look like a real cherry lime-aide now!

Throw in a few cherries (and eat a few while you're at it)!

Then add a few lime slices, stir and drink immediately!  (If you don't like cherries, you can leave them out and make a plain lime-aide instead.  Just as yummy.)

 

As my husband and I are building our home and living the travel trailer life, these just seem to fit right in with grand-kids spending the night, animals under foot, the sounds of spring in the air, and supper on the picnic table.

Absolute perfection!  Hope your Spring is the best ever!

 

For your convenience you can click here for a printable recipe. Enjoy!

Give me color!

I love all things colorful and these dishes are some of my favorites.  They are Heller dishes made by Massimo Vignelli in the 1970's.  This is what Vignelli said about these dishes when he designed them:  "I like design to be semantically correct, syntactically consistent, and pragmatically understandable. I like it to be visually powerful, intellectually elegant, and above all timeless."

I was given an eight place setting of these dishes for a wedding gift in 1982.  I absolutely loved them.  My husband and I used them for every meal for years.  When other, more subdued dishes came into style I put these away.  Then I had children and realized what great dishes these were for little ones, as they do not break and the kids loved picking a different color every meal.  So I drug them out again and they were used all during my kids childhood years. 

They were originally made in Italy primarily in bright yellow in the 1960's.  But when production came to the United States in the 1970's a range of bright colors was introduced.  I remember when I first saw these dishes when I was a teenager in the late 1970's and there just wasn't a lot of color in plastics at that time so these were pretty awesome. 

There are large dinner plates, small salad plates, bowls, and mugs.  They all have a little lip on the bottom that makes them wonderfully stackable! 

A number of years ago, after the dishes had been put away and not used for years,  I contemplated getting rid of them.  But there was something that kept holding me back.  Probably memories more than anything!  So, I hung on to them.  Then one day I realized these would make the BEST dishes for outdoor use on the picnic table.  They stack and carry easily, they do not break, and they just scream of picnic cheerfulness!  I pulled them out, did an inventory on what was missing (probably a few bowls left out in the sandbox by my kids umpteen years ago).   I got on ebay thinking that they would be a dime a dozen and WOW, they were expensive and hard to find.  I needed a couple bowls and a couple mugs in certain colors and in order to get what I needed I ended up buying a lot more.  The good thing?  I have a full service place setting of 12 now.

 

My husband and I have recently retired to a hundred acre farm in Tennessee and we are living in a travel trailer while we are building our house and I have found these to be the best "camper dishware" ever!   Hard to believe that 30 years later, my husband and I are using these dishes for every meal again!  I guess what Vignelli said was completely accurate:  "... visually powerful, intellectually elegant, and above all timeless". 

Whether it is the colors, the memories, the cheerful table that can be set with them, or simply the ease of use - I LOVE these dishes!! 

This is my grand-daughter, Jillian, and her "friend" Chloe, playing tea party on a

 beautiful Sunday evening!

Thanks for stopping by to visit ~ I hope you have a wonderful week!

From Tumbleweeds to Shade Trees!

About a year ago, my husband retired and we moved from the West and the home we’d lived in for over 25 years to a 100 acre farm in the South.  I don’t think there could possibly be countryside that holds so vast a change as that!  These last 11 months have brought about so many changes in my life and so many adjustments but every day I am so very thankful for our new life here.  There are things about the South that I love;  like walking barefoot in the grass (instead of sand being so hot you can’t put your bare foot in it) and having a garden and not watering one time all summer (instead of watering day and night for months and getting a few tomatoes and a few squash), driving a few miles to pick fresh strawberries, blueberries, peaches, and apples (instead of not having that option at all).   Where we lived in the West was very beautiful and there are people that would choose to live there in a heart beat.  But for me, I’ve decided that I belong here in the South and a southern country girl is what I am!  I hope you’ll enjoy my photo tour showing the change in our lives this last year.

Two thousand miles between the road out of our property in the West

into the one leading up the hill to our farm in the South!

From tumbleweeds to shade trees.... what a shock!

This old jeep was our son's from when he was a teenager and it actually made the move with us. 
Not sure if it looks better in the sand or the grass!

The change....  from our animal's point of view!

My husband built this swing out of an old leaf spring from a car and attached it to another turning car part with a swing on each end - our kids could really get that thing spinning! 

We weren't able to move it with us and that was sad - but what is more fun than a huge swing that goes way out over the hillside?

We absolutely loved the world famous lake that was just minutes from our house.  We raised our kids boating and swimming on that lake.  But now we have a different sort of lake not too many miles away and we moved our same old boat, so now we'll enjoy watching our grand kids grow up swimming and boating on a different lake.  After all, water is water right?!

The desert has some very pretty flowers and it is amazing to see them growing right out of the sand with little to no water and very poor soil.   But one thing you will rarely ever see is a green background behind the flowers!

Every single year I would try to grow a garden in the desert and every single year I would cry with frustration when there was very little fruit for my efforts. Here in the South?  I had a garden with very little effort and NO water (other than the rain) and I had vegetables in abundance.  You cannot imagine the excitement to pick bushels of cucumbers every couple days! 

These were all views from just minutes from our house in the West.  It is some of the most beautiful  country that you will ever see.  People come from all over the world to see it.
But when you desire to get back to the basics of a simple life and live on a farm, this is a very harsh, almost impossible, environment in which to do that. 

This is now the view that I see out my window every morning.  I recognize that there are many
beautiful places in the world in which to call home.  But for me - I'm thankful that this lush, green countryside is my home now and I wouldn't trade it for anywhere else!