Snowy Days and Rainbows

I have always wanted to hold a clothes swap, and this past week I had my first (of hopefully more) clothes swaps at my house!

  

There are many different ways to hold a clothes swap. With mine, I invited friends to bring clothes that they hadn't worn in awhile or weren't their style anymore to swap for something of someone else's that was more to their liking. Everyone was fair and fun :). I moved around some furniture, hung up clothes and put up different tables for shirts and pants. We took turns grabbing and trying on what caught our eye. Whatever was left over we all went thru and had fun helping others pick out outfits. We had drinks and snacks and caught up with each other. When it was over, we all took something "new to us" home-FOR FREE! I am hoping to have another one in the spring for a new batch of items.

Now that it is snowing out, my body is telling me it wants some down home country food. Which makes me automatically think of biscuits and gravy! I have been a vegetarian for almost 3 yrs, so this has been something I haven't had in awhile! With a recipe suggestion from a friend, I made THE BEST vegetarian friendly biscuits and gravy. It was sooo simple too. Here is what I used:

  I put a tablespoon of butter onto the skillet (I would usually use Olive oil, but since it was my first time making this, thought it could use some more "grease" to country it up).

I had never eaten the Morningstar Sausage Patties, but upon suggestions, I used them over the sausage crumbles because they were said to be more flavorful. And they were so much tastier!

Once the patties were cooked, I broke them into pieces so they ended up looking like crumbles. I put in the Country Gravy mix, added 1 cup of milk and 1 cup of water, brought to a boil, then let simmer a bit, and it was done! It really did taste like the "original" country recipe that uses real sausage! YUMMY! Is all I can say!

I have been working on making the Twenty Minute Totes that I posted previously about to use instead of wrapping paper on gifts this Christmas. My son's school is having a fundraising school shop so I am going to try to help them raise money by selling them there too.

Here are the finished products. Hope they sell well. Wish me luck.

I gave myself a Christmas present and got a subscription for my fav magazine BUST! Instead of heading up to Barnes and Nobles every few months and getting it, I just have to brave the cold and grab it from my mailbox! I literally devour every page of this magazine. I read every article, every book and music review, and get inspiration from so many pages! Check out BUST.com for tons of stuff for you to read. Check out their shop too- super unique, fun stuff in there!

This song has been popping up everywhere around me lately. On NPR this morning, they reported that the singer of this version passed away recently at 33 years old. Here's to you Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwo'ole, may you rest in peace wherever your somewhere over the rainbow is.

*As I was looking for Somewhere Over The Rainbow, I came across this video and what he says and the song he sings is really touching.