janice's mash-up

key lime love

We are planning a little trip to Florida next spring. We've been to Orlando but want to spend some time seeing the more natural side of Florida...the everglades, the keys, the beaches, etc. When Neil and I went grocery shopping on Sunday, I happened to find a bag of little cute key limes and picked them up to make a dessert. I didn't really want to do a key lime pie so after some searches on pinterest, I came up with a filled key lime cupcake.

I made a vanilla cake with some graham crumbs added as well as a good heaping tablespoonful of key lime zest and three tablespoons of key lime juice (for 12 cupcakes) which gave the batter lots of zing. 

I found an easy key lime curd recipe and mixed 3 parts curd, 1 part softened cream cheese and 1 part icing sugar to make a creamy filling for the cupcakes. I topped them off with a lime-infused buttercream. Luckily, there's enough key lime curd leftover for Colin and I to enjoy it on toast this week!

spring planting

Saturday was absolutely gorgeous here...it felt like spring and I finally took a few hours to get outside and get the garden ready for planting. I added many bags of sea soil to the vegetable garden and planted some pea, carrot, radish, purple carrot as well as rainbow carrot and edamame seeds. I had started some edamame seeds a couple of weeks ago and added those seedlings to the garden. For the first time, I planted Russian blue seed potatoes and we're trying two large pots to grow them in. 

   

   

The quince tree is in full bloom...

the blueberry bushes are starting to flower...

the strawberry plants have some blossoms...

the herbs have all come back...

   

and the rhubarb is growing.

 

Last year was a bit of a disaster with my vegetable seeds so here's hoping for better luck this year!

weekend wrap-up

Saturday was beautiful here and I was able to spend a couple of hours in the garden. Bleeding hearts are one of my favourite spring flowers and I love the little wooded corner in our yard that they pop up in every spring.

On Saturday evening, we drove out to Boundary Bay to celebrate my mom's 75th birthday...that's a lot of cakes over the years!

On our way home, we were able to see the Super Moon coming up over the horizon. It was a stunning orange.

Sunday brought cheers for my sister who ran her first marathon, a guitar lesson, homework and grocery shopping. I also made some key lime cupcakes...

We had friends come over in the evening to plan our spring break trip for next year. Can you guess where we're going?!

taking a break

We would do well to slow down a little, focus on the significant and truly see the things that matter most.

~Dieter F. Uchtdorf