Ham and bean soup!!

Now that the weather is getting cold and winter is upon us I find myself carving warm soups. One of my personal favorites is ham and bean. I remember my mom making it, not only on cold nights but as a way to reuse ham before it goes bad but in a way that is different than eating it straight off the bone.

Normally I would also try to use leftovers, however I live by myself so I didn't want to go out and buy a whole ham just for some soup. I did find a small chunk of it on sale in the meat section and figured it was a sign.

I also bought beans (personally I like red kidney beans, pinto and navy but really almost any bean will work), chicken stock. salt, pepper, cayenne pepper and curry.

All I did was chop the ham into bit size pieces and throw all the ingredients in a pot together. Heat it to a boil and let it simmer for a while to really get all the flavor from it.

I added some tobacco sauce to my serving because I like a little bit of heat. You can also play around with different spices. I have used Italian seasoning, parsley, and basically whatever else catches my fancy and it usually still turns out good.

if you find yourself with a lot of leftovers, this soup freezes great!

Co worker Christmas Gifts!

This year I am happy to say that I work in a department that is mainly women, which is exciting since I find it much easier to buy gifts for women than men.


So I decided to do a tumbler that was filled with cute little surprises. I really took advantage of black Friday sales and got hand sanitizer and hand lotion from Bath and Body works. I then picked up a chap stick from Wal-Mart and some candy canes.


I put all of these little items into tumblers from Gordmans, along with some tissue paper for filler and wrapped it in a cellophane Christmas bag.


All in all it was a very quick, easy and cheap gift and so far everyone loves them!


Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures before I gave them out but hopefully it is a pretty easy gift to imagine.

Dollar Tree Wine Glasses

A few girlfriends of mine are obsessed with the St. Louis Blues, so I decided to mix one of our favorite girls night activities (drinking wine) with something both they and their significant others love. Thus the Blues Wine Glass was born!


I started by going to dollar tree for glasses because well it's cheap and the glasses are actually very nice. At first I was going to get the ones that look normal until you realize that they can fit half a bottle of wine (trust me I own several of those) but while perusing I came across these that were already tinted a very pretty blue. Since the Blues colors are blue and gold I figured it was a sign and bought four.


Next was applying the note. There are several ways you can do this:
1. Glass paint.
       You can get some cheap at Wal-Mart or Martha Stewart has a great line at craft shops. Follow the instructions on the bottle and paint away.
2. Modge Podge and paper.
        I did this once with a beer stein. It works great, as long as you remember to hand wash and don't try to heat it up in the microwave.
        Print the note out on paper, cut and Modge Podge it to your glass.
3. Vinyl
     This is the route I went since I recently invested in a vinyl cutter. For this you simply download the image from the internet and cut and place. Easy peasy.


I am probably going to spice them up a little by adding chevron or some other pattern to the bottom but for a quick and cheap gift I think these are perfect.