and the Sugary sweet winner is!....

MICHIGAN! Go Blue!!! only took us one overtime, so take that little brother!!!

It is oh so sweet to be a Michigan Wolverine!!!

Always and forever!

<3
Suzy

El Nuevo Ano!

Happy New Year to all my followers and readers!!
I'm not big on resolutions, although I do think they are a good thing for people to do, if they actually stick with it. I fall more into the school of thought that I don't need 1 day a year to set goals to improve myself.  But if you have resolutions, more power to you and I'd love to hear them!
There is, however, something I have been wishing for for the past few months.  Usually it shows up in this area around this time of year but for some reason the weather does not want to deliver my wish.  I am  one of those "snow lovers"  a rare breed of people who love the cold, the snow and all the fun activities that come with it!
Yes, I got snow on Jan. 2nd!  Up at my lake house in northern MI we got about 8 inches. unfortunately i was leaving to drive back to southern MI the same day and didn't get to ski, but I did get to run around in it, play in it and  watch it fall!

This is the view of it from the back door of our cottage!!! It started snowing on Jan. 1 at night!  So my sister her boyfriend and I went for a walk!

This is how covered I was during that walk!  Still hugging trees of course!

Then the next day I had to leave but snapped a few stunners!

Gorgeous stuff!
So now my tiny new car is LOADED up with ice skates, cross country skiis and my snowboard.  I'm ready at the drop of a hat to do some sort of activity, only it will all melt on Thursday :(

Hopefully we get slammed again soon!

Tonight my school plays football!  I'm heading over to the local bar right now to watch it since I don't get it on my rabbit ears...
GO BLUE!

Hope everyone is having as lovely a new year as they hoped for!  Keep up the positive energy and enthusiasm this year!

<3 Suz

Christmas Postpartum

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and is ready to begin 2012 with positive energy and good grace.  As you can tell by my lack of entries, the season has kept me very busy!  I am not back at work for a couple days between Christmas and New Year, which most people have off or they just don't want to do work, and therefore have some free time this week!
I thought I'd do a silly photo blog of some of my Christmas blessings! This includes activities and gifts!
Here we gooo!

My letter to Santa, written with my left hand for authenticity!  Also a plate of the homemade sour cream cut out cookies we made on Christmas Eve starting at 10:30 pm!  Delicious! We had lots of willing decorators to help our with the frosting and sprinkles!!!

Captain loved to pass out in front of the fire and dream, so we painted his nails!! poor poochie!

Me in my wonderful new ski coat!!! I couldn't be happier with it!

I bought the wonderful poopers real cow bones from Local's sustainable meats in New Buffalo, MI.  I also bought flank steak for our Christmas dinner and myself discovered that no, grass fed beef is not tougher than corn-fed, in fact everyone told me it was the best flank steak they have had and that it was super tender!

I made Caprese but also my sister for a fish eye lense for Christmas!!! This photo shows how great it is, along with the next photo of our whole living and dining room at the cottage packed with people!!!

 My parents found me this awesome retro popcorn kettle!  I can't wait to use it!!

 This summer granny and I went to the Saginaw Art museum and met this artist and loved his work and its ties with Saginaw even though he is from Japan!

 I love to knit so this yarn has me all excited to start several new projects!

 These light up needles might attract a new kind of knitter with that catch phrase!

All in all we had a lovely Christmas at the lake!  As you can see above, the weather was gorgeous, not the ideal snow storm, but at least there was some sunny beauty and not just the drabby overcast.
Hope you liked your peek into the Morley Christmas!!!!
Happy New Year!  I'll probably catch you then!
<3 Suz

Time for the Holidays!

I can't believe it is already December!  I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving, stuffing your face full of delicious home made goods!  I help out every year by making the green bean casserole! I've also recently started to help out with the pies as well!  But once the turkey is all gone, it is time to start thinking about Christmas!
  My family is pretty big in Christmas traditions. We have a lot of them and they are important to us.  Last weekend I brought a tree to my apartment along with my ornaments box which is an assortment of ornaments I made in the 90's, my baby ornaments, the ornaments my grandma gets us every year, and other random decorations and nativity sets.   My parents have saved this for me since I was an infant, and I'm pretty grateful for it.  I think my tree looks great with all these miscellaneous ornaments on it!  Some of my favorites were my beauty and the beast bulb, the big bird that you can see in the bottom of this picture next to a wonderful picture of Santa and I from 1996!  I'm working on getting a tree skirt to complete the look!

Our family is also good on making lots of delicious treats to give away to friends and family.  Normally I'm at home to do this, but this year I wasn't sure when I'd be home to do all of this, so I tried one of our favorites and specialties, peanut brittle, on my own!  Apparently it is kind of odd that we stretch our peanut brittle, but that is how I was always taught to do it, and I like it not being so thick that I bust my teeth.  Here is a close up of my final product of making peanut brittle for the first time without my dad!

and yes, it is as delicious as it looks!  That batch was PERFECT! I'll post more about my family Christmas Traditions!  There will be many more in the coming weeks. I'll be conquering them either alone or with my family due to the fact that I have no vacation days yet so I will not be spending the 2.5 weeks I'm used to spending at Higgins Lake with my family.  So to feel involved  and in the holiday spirit, I can take some of these on by myself!

Also wanted to show you my new ride!  My old ride was great! but it started costing too much to keep up with repairs, so we sold it in 3 days and I got this gorgeous Honda Civic on a lease.  It has a computer in it that took a half an hour tutorial to learn how to use!  Big thanks to my parents for helping me out on this wonderful ride.  I'm so thankful for it!

What are some of your favorite holiday traditions?

Take care!
Go Blue!

First Snow!

I always look forward to the first snow of the year!  this year it was a little later than most, because we usually have at least one snow in October!  That was not the case this year!  This is from today, Nov. 10th and I would run outside practically every time snow started falling from the sky!  Each time, my co workers would moan about how its already snowing!  This picture, for instance was taken with me outside and my co-worker inside.

Some might call me cold, but I always have said if you don't like winter, then by all means leave Michigan and quit complaining!  The season's are one of the best attributes of the area, besides all the water!

I'm fighting off a cold I got at the beginning of last week...tonight might be the hardest to sleep because all the mucus is draining causing me to cough a lot... I've been living off dayquil, vitamin D3 and tea with some white licorice in it!

I had a lovely weekend last weekend with a lot of great people, as busy as I was!  Wish I could give more details, but not enough time and I'm trying to keep my uber personal life out of this.  

BUT I did cook an amazing meal and I would love to share it since it is also in season!

stuffed acorn squash!!!

cut an acorn squash in half, scoop seeds and guts out and make the holes nice and sizeable!   

In a mixing bowl mix up a stuffing of your choice, below is my stuffing but you have a lot of wiggle room to change vegetables or grains!

couscous

Zucchini

1 egg

onion

minced garlic

dried cherries

salt, pepper, parsley sage

Once you have the perfect stuffing mixed, put it into each hole of the acorn squash!  Bake at 375 in a making pan with water in the bottom and/or brush butter on the exposed acorn squash.  Both these techniques prevent the squash from getting too dry.  It needs to bake for about an hour.  then, enjoy!  I put cheese on the top of mine after it baked for 30 minutes and it added a nice crunchy topping!!

Until next time!

Wrapped up in Fall!

   I've been so wrapped up in fall and integrating myself into my new community, I've hardly had time to talk about it!  I am in one of the best locations for fall, like I've been preaching all summer, due to my location.  I am in a great area to easily obtain local, fresh food!  Last week, to get my pumpkins, I drove about 10 minutes out of my way home from work and stopped at a patch.  I also grabbed some acorn squash, butternut squash for good seasonal cooking!
Tonight I finally carved those pumpkins as a self Halloween celebration, then roasted the seeds my favorite way and made a facial mask with the guts!  Talk about multiple usage of a product!  Also all the ingredients in my home made face mask were from within 100 miles!  I must say, my face does feel soft, but having a food processor would have made the mask more applicable and less messy. Here are the ingredients I used:
Pumpkin
honey
apple cider
milk
an egg
using mainly pumpkin put all ingredients in a food processor and blend,  get it to a think enough texture to apply it to your face without it running.  Leave it on for about 20-25 minutes (or longer if you want) until it is dry, then just wash your face!

Try it, let me know what you think.

This weekend I'll be experimenting with the acorn squash and stuffing it.  Similar concept as stuffing a pepper, but a co worker was telling me about it and just cut it in half and mix up rice and whatever else you want in it then put some cheese on top and bake it!  Yumm! I'll let you know what I find!

On a not to local food note, I bought a harder goat's cheese at Zingerman's in Ann Arbor that I am ecstatic about to pair with a pinot noir that a colleagues son made.   The cheese is from Spain, but well worth the travel....
Last weekend I finally made it to Ann Arbor!!! I miss Ann Arbor desperately and the amazing friends and family who live there!  I will need to be going back more often!  My Halloween costume from Saturday is far superior to my Friday costume.  See picture below.  I hope you can see that I was some sort of abstract, exotic bird

 Below is my flapper costume with my good friends from my dorm hall freshman year!  Love them all!

 Billy and I went to the football game!!! Go Blue!

 If you are easily offended, do not look at this picture of my friends' costumes!  This is me with some of my amazing friends from Nicaragua trip!  Love you all! including those not pictured!

 Billy and John were Zombies for Halloween.  They look super creepy and amazing!

Rally

Well tomorrow the new country girl heads off to a new city!  Yes I get on the train to go from New Buffalo, MI to Chicago, IL and finally ending up in Milwaukee, WI.  I've never been to Milwaukee, but I loved Madison!
Land Trust Alliance is a national organization for land trusts that offers many services to land trusts like accreditation, training, advocacy etc.  Every year they hold an event called Rally where all the land trusts gather to train, network and share ideas and experiences.  Tomorrow I venture to my first Rally to learn more about my job, and network with other professionals in my field.  I have two seminars and 4 workshops packed into my 3 days I will be at Rally.  Unfortunately I will not have time to see much of beautiful Milwaukee, but maybe it will entice me to return!  Can't wait to report back about this adventure!  I'm sure I will meet a lot of great people and learn about some of the other crucial land protection projects going on around the U.S.
  Last week I had a dinner party at my new apartment, Suzy's Kowa-Bungalow!   I made my grandma Sue's cabbage rolls with soy sausage in a home made tomato sauce with a side summer salad with a home made strawberry basil vinaigrette.  For desert I made my grandma LaCroix's pumpkin brownies (pumpies as Johanna and I call them) with a home made cream cheese frosting and apple butter to put on top.  It was a very lovely party.   I prepped all week for it...
I also  thought I should mention my dream property that I have been on twice int he last week.  A gorgeous parcel owned by a lovely couple.  It is up in the rolling hills of the Valpraiso Morraines, their house sitting on a hill with a lovely wrap around porch that over looks their alfalfa field, a small pond that geothermally heats their home, and a pasture with a beautiful pet dairy cow grazing.  The off to the right is a beautiful forest with trails through the woods and a hidden sedge prairie.  They also have a barn for the cow in the winter.  It truly is a beautiful parcel of land.  I was drooling during the whole property walk....
Well my computer keeps shutting down again, and I'm saving up for a new one but for now this is why my blogs are short and scarce.  I've had to restart it 4 times already due to freezing.  Not even going to try to upload pictures.
I'm glad the Tigers and Lions are doing well.
Also GO BLUE!  (we play State saturday....)
Have a great week, I hope you enjoyed the nice Michigan weather, because its over....
<3 Suzy