It's the little things

A few things around the house are making me really happy these days.

For starters, these daffodils, that I got for a crazy good price on a whim at the grocery store, are one thing...

I've wanted some cacti for my kitchen window for a LONG time and have just finally gotten around to getting them.  Todd put them in this old planter of mine and I just love, love, love them!  The poor cactus on the left had a hot pink flower on top that broke off in the bag due to the wind whipping it around.  Sad.  But overall, the whole arrangement makes me very happy...!

A toilet seat.  Yep.  It brings me great joy every day - and several times a day, too!  You see, it's a new toilet seat, replacing the old, puffy, cushioned kind that a lot of elderly people seem to have in their homes.  The old seat was here when we moved in and was in kind of poor condition then.  Gradually, the small hole in the cushion got larger and it was unsightly, not to mention unsanitary.  This seat might be harder, but it's a whole heck of a lot nicer...! 

The front entry's tiling!  Isn't it amazing?  It's almost done - it just needs grouting.  But they are laid and they are beautiful.  Todd and I figured out the design, then Todd cut all the tiles himself and laid them with a little help from his friends Mike and Jeff.  We looooove them...!

Our new duvet.  It just makes me so happy every time I crawl under it.  I can't wait to get our bedroom moved upstairs and to start accessorizing with rugs and curtains and paint.  I spend a lot of time looking at ideas that will look nice with the duvet...

This new pan makes me crazy happy.  It is the first of hopefully many nice, chef quality pans I hope to have.  I'm so tired of the random assortment of pans I have that are mostly non-stick, which makes me NUTS.  This baby is stainless with an aluminum bottom for even heat distribution.  I want to cook with it every day...!

My food processor.  I've never had one.  In December, I used my bridal shower money to pick out this baby.  It's big...but it's awesome...!

It's nice to have things around the house that make you happy, isn't it?  

Meat

It's been a hot topic around our house lately.

It all started with Todd's antelope that he got last fall.  It's been in the freezer just waiting for us to do something with it.  That something was jerky and a few days later, sausage.

Todd did all the work.  He sliced the meat, whipped up the marinade, hauled out a smoker from his parents' house that he'd never used, then learned to use it...

Little chunks of antelope becoming jerky...

Isn't this just the perfect picture of a Wisconsinite?  A man with his Miller High Life, dogs, some meat on the grill, and all in shortsleeves in the dead of winter...

Next, Todd tackled fish.  He entered an ice fishing derby last weekend and, as a proud aside, he took second out of 624 fisherman! Here's a photo of his winning fish.  This fishy fetched him $400...!

Every fish he and his fishing buddy caught ended up on the smoker - except one that I pan fried for dinner.  We now have more smoked fish than we can shake a stick at.

Then came sausage.  Tucked away in a pile of "want to try soon" recipes stached on my kitchen counter is one for making your own sausage.  It's remarkably, amazingly simple.  I never would have thought homemade sausage could be so simple.  It sounds so daunting, doesn't it? Before seeing this recipe, I thought making sausage would involve a lot of grinding, squeezing, probably some casing...but this only involves grinding, which we can easily do with our KitchenAid.

Todd doing his thing... 

The KitchenAid doing its thing...

Look at that freshly ground meat...!

The spices were added after the first round of grinding, then it goes through the grinder one more time...

And...the finished project...several pounds of fresh, tasty, homemade sausage...

The antelope went from being frozen as whole pieces of meat to frozen sausage.  Fun!