I love to poke around in the gardens in the Spring and see what seedlings are coming up, and there are usually lots of reseeders. Some plants make a few seedlings, some literally make hundreds. Agastache, Cleome, Catnip, Pokeberry, Rudbeckia, the Black Cherry tree, etc. make so many seedlings I have to weed most of them out. Cleome grows bigger and fuller if you give it some space anyway (and pinch). Some plants reseed moderately and make nice fillers like Dill, Cilantro, and Verbena bonariensis. The California poppies and Alyssum self-sow thickly but then end up filling in nicely along the garden edges. I have to remove a lot of Pokeberry from the neighbor's ginormous Pokeberry hedge makes hundreds of seedlings and they seem to grow huge in one season. I am merciless about eradicating the non-native invasive plants that are growing in the yard like Norway maple, Oriental bittersweet, and Buckthorn, etc. If your Bittersweet is the Oriental type, that is one you should definitely pull. It is a horrible invasive in the northeast, and the vines are so aggressive they can strangle and topple large trees, which has actually killed people in their cars on the Saw Mill Parkway in NY. Here is a link that might be useful: After Tree Kills Couple, A Search For Answers

Latkes for my Jewish side. I just can't justify the mess and time more than once a year. BF is a cheesecake junkie but he only gets to justify his addiction at holiday times. Eggnog too, but we do the soy kind and rather like it. Regular eggnog was always too rich and cloying for my taste anyway. Before I became lactose sensitive I thinned it with 2% milk. And ditto the chocolate covered cherries! Wish BF would get me some for Valentine's day! As it is I have to snag them when I visit friends' houses at the holidays. Mom always insisted on fudge and stollen, but she is diabetic now and can't do fudge. I always found fudge to be too rich for my taste, but I'm trying to start a tradition of making my own stollen. Don't know if I will be able to do it this year as I have been sick with the flu. If it were up to me I would make those great rolled cookies with the set of Christmas cookie cutters I inherited from my Grandmother, and I would have a lot of fun frosting and decorating them. Probably not going to happen this year, I'm sick with flu and too busy. I'm posting a photo of some I made two years ago with my best friends at our cookie decorating party. My best friend died suddenly ten months later. She was alive and vibrant one day and gone the next, from a massive brain hemmorage. I miss her tons still. Glad we always enjoyed our times together when we had them!

Quartz countertops. Bookshelves for cookbooks. As wide an induction oven as my layout will allow me! The other thing is... the contractor has in our contract that I'll be getting a stainless steel double sink. I'm going to be changing this -- it would look terrible with a log exterior, medium wood finished cabinets, black major appliances, aged bronze fixtures and pulls, sage green interior walls, white (eco luna white) or green (silestone olive green) quartz countertops. It would be cheaper to just grin and bear it, but I'll hate it.

I play games daily & prefer puzzles, word games & hidden object adventure games. Lately, it's mostly word games and solitaire. But I don't feel guilty, so does it still count? I play Wordscraper on FB - a Scrabble clone that allows fantastically high scores, but only works on my desktop, and WordBrain, among other things, on my phone. And lately, I've been reading everything I can find by Diana Wynne Jones that I haven't already read - mostly YA/Youth. Luckily, she was very prolific! It's total escapism into well crafted fantasy and there's always a happy ending. I also read 'How I Live Now' in 1 night after watching the movie. I was a bit surprised by how very different from each other the book and the film were, but both are very good. Something about books & stories for and about young people that provide a feeling of hopefulness... P.S. If you want a game that's not a word game, try World Of Goo. It's quite unique and really stretches your mind.