Tomato Flowers, Overflowing Compost, Vegetarian Goodness, and Springtime Skeinlets

I had such an excellent time this past weekend. It was around 20 lovely degrees, and honey and I got tons of stuff done in and around the house. I finished painting our kitchen, which was half painted for the last month or so (between getting a bit of a cold, and the stiffness I felt doing the first half, I was doing some major procrastination!) It is just plain and simple white now, which highlights some of the artwork I hung up, and all our lovely plants.

Meanwhile, my honey was working his butt off outside, getting our garden ready. He's also been doing lots of seed starting indoors, and we discovered that some of our tomatoes already have flowers coming!!!

I am not sure this is a good or bad thing, as it's going to be a while before we can plant them outside. We also discovered that our compost heap was getting so big that it was actually caving in the side of our shed and moving it off it's base... (here is what it looked like after some of the compost was removed)

Oops! Luckily the thing is on it's way out, thanks in part to our neighbourhood squirrel who has burrowed and hides his stash under the subfloor; (and who coincidentally lives in the abandoned stove/oven inside).

It was nice enough to have dinner outside, so I made a lovely vegetarian dinner- baked brown rice and red lentils with tomato, basil, thyme, and white cheddar, as well as a lovely spring salad with some shaved zucchini (one of my fave ways to eat raw zucchini), spinach, and orange peppers, and some crisp pickled asparagus on the side. Topped off with some lovely brown ale. We had received this beautiful set of dishes for Christmas, and I hadn't opened the box until this weekend:

I call them my foodie dishes, now I can pretend I'm up there with my fave chefs Jamie Oliver & Michael Smith (small confession- in the winter while I craft, I'm usually tuned into the food network). aaanndd to finish off... we had strawberry pudding- i didn't get a pic cos we ate it too fast- but I think I discovered how to make a really good pudding- I'll have to share the recipe sometime. We love going to Indian Buffets sometimes for the mango custard. I've realised I'm not a very good baker, but I think I can make a pretty good pudding.

Oh, and somehow I did manage to spin up some little skeinlets (my term for small skeins of yarn) out of some bright bits of fleece I had hanging around just asking to be spun up. They are just 2 small skeins, perfect for some embellishing or a small project:

Here's to great, sunshine-filled, productive, but fun-filled weekends!!!