Kombucha tea

At our last Herb meeting our speaker spoke on Kombucha tea. I never heard of this and I still don't know enough but here are a few things I learned.
Kombucha tea is a probiotic meaning "for life" containing micro organisms such as bacteria and yeast, giving health benefits to the host, which is you and me. This tea is a living food, which contains acids, enzymes, and vitamins aiding in digestion, boosting energy and strengthening the immune system.
It has been drunk for hundreds (thousands) of years.

The health benefit claims are too numerous to list.

The process to make kombucha tea begins with a starter (like when we use to share sour dough bread starter). It kind of looked like an amoeba. I'm not to sure about this.
Along with sugar, green teas and the starter you brew up the tea.
If your interested there is a YouTube video titled: Kombucha: how to make a 1 gallon batch.

A lot of the members are all ready using this, one brought in kombucha finger jello with raspberries to share. They tasted pretty good.
If any of you drink or know about this please let me know what you think.

I went to a lecture at our art museum, the speaker was Bob Friese, AFID floral designer and coordinator of Nature's Creative Edge, the outdoor floral art exhibit.

The museum brought him and his assistant in to do a Nature-Inspired art demonstration. It was wonderful, the following are a few pieces.

A large glass vase, a few river rocks in the bottom, a interesting branch from a tree and two large tropical flowers.

Bob started with a piece of drift wood and moss, two vases into the floral foam,

a few correctly placed flowers and you have a beautiful arrangement. I wish I took a close up of the green puffy flowers, they are a new variety of carnations! They look so different.

Bob carved this rabbit out of green floral foam and covered it with dried moss. A few fresh flowers and it's ready. Wish it was going on my Easter table.

This was the trunk and roots of a dead bush, he keeps it outside in his landscape on a iron pole, says it beautiful especially with snow on it.

Bob also carved these birds out of foam, covered them with moss and formed branches around them into bird shapes.
Well, that's the fun stuff happening in my life, have a good week.

Herb Conference

Last weekend I attended the Michigan Herb Conference, this "Bee" display greeted you when you came in and lets you know "Springs on the way".

They have lots of wonderful educational displays.

A large one on the importance of milk weed.

This was an interesting fact.

I don't know if this is good, it would take a lot of seeds to using as stuffing. How would the plants reproduce without them and then what would the monarch butterflies live on???

The "Herb of the year is Savory". They used the plants for center pieces on the banquet tables.
There are two types of savory, winter and summer. This is the summer variety, it is the most popular.

Little place markers made from old wooden thread spools, vintage lace and a button.
Love these.
 

A few health benefits from savory besides the wonderful flavor it imparts to food.

More medicinal benefits.

Winter savory is much more bush like, more like rosemary.

One of our speakers talked about gardening and crafting ideas. This is a good one. She purchased two containers from the dollar store, a plastic basket that will fit inside a plastic pot.

Take them out to harvest your vegetables in the garden, then you can rinse them off outside and just bring in the basket.

Our speaker does a lot of crafts and every year comes to the conference with wonderful "flower" purses and accessories. This was one of her apron ideas.
To make a no sew garden apron, cut up a pair of jeans only leaving the waist band and back pockets with a little leg fabric left. To use, button the waist band in back and the pockets go in front for garden tools, seeds etc.

This was her Hosta purse for this year.

Made from green polar fleece.

Last year was this wool poppy purse.

Another year was wool roses and a necklace to match.

A rose purse.

A needle felted and felt wool purse.

Necklace to match.

Knitted then felted wool purse.

Her accessory for the second day of the conference, hand made jean and fabric flowers.

Besides savory I bought a new variety of scented geranium called Sweet Mimosa. The flowers are suppose to be bright red and suitable to pick for a bouquet. We'll see this summer.

Here is a recipe to make your own Herbes de Provence made from dried herbs for cooking.

Snowman Sampler quilt

Our temperatures here for the next two weeks are going to be in the high 40's! Yea, Spring is just around the corner. Before it's gone from sight and mind I wanted to share with you a couple of new blocks for my friendship Snowman quilt. The first block from my girlfriend (photographed on my antique quilt) Jody.

The next, I embroidered this cute snowman skiing from a pattern from Crab Apple Hill.

These are all the blocks for far, some appliqued and some I embroidered.  Next Christmas, my quilt bee will have another snowman block exchange.

This is the next block I'm going to embroidery for my quilt. Another design from Crab Apple Hill. They have the best designs with many different quilt patterns available.
This one is so cute, who would ever think to design a snowman hanging candy canes on a clothes line!
See you next week, I'm off to the Herb Conference this weekend, leaving winter behind and dreaming of Spring.

Starry night

Our local Art museum hosted a painting class titled " Starry, Starry Night, happy hour painting".

All of us beginners were going to recreate Vincent Van Gogh's painting?? in 2 hours:)!  You have to laugh at that but with a glass of wine and wonderful appetizers we were ready to have fun.

 

Our teacher gave us a few basic instructions some acrylic paint and off we went.

It was very relaxing, playing with paint and canvas (which I had never done)  but not nearly enough time for me.
I could have used a couple more hours to finish.

A class picture on the marble steps of the museum.

My picture. You can see I loved painting the sky and ran out of time for the little village and fields.