This and That for Wednesday

 Hi everyone. Here in New Hampshire it's  another very cold temperature day, and it's supposed to be bitterly cold tonight. We had a little relief yesterday so I went outside to enjoy the winter day, because today I'll chose staying warm inside the house. 

 I'll start my post with a tag for Valerie's Steampunk challenge over at Tag Tuesday. Steampunk is something I need to do more of because it is such a fun theme. I dug some steampunk and masculine stamps  off the top shelf, and after dumping them onto the floor, I had fun mixing and matching.

Here's the tag I came up with. 

I stamped this gear/blueprint image first, and then rubbed brown and grey ink pads to color my tag.  The heart is an ancient image from Chocolate Baroque. I stamped it in red, and then used metallic markers to color the wings and the gears. I also colored the heart a deeper red with a Sharpie.  Have you noticed that when it comes to red markers is that it is hard to find a red that you think of as true red? I know we probably all have our own idea about true red, but for me, Sharpie's are the best true red. 

Once colored, I lightly ran a black ink pad over my image to make it a bit aged. Then I outlined the gears with a black Sharpie and added some pen dots to make the gears looked pinged and old. Finally I added the small gold paper wings.

I also added a gold paper key and a bit of tissue scrap at the bottom, and finished off my tag with the black paper trim and also the stamped quote. It's hard to read but it says "being lost is worth being found".

I also want to share some soup I made the other day for Kathy's Food Wednesdays, over at her blog Hummingbird Studio at the Lake.  I ended up with one of those soups you make when you clean out left over veggies, but it actually started with me wanting  to make some bean soup.  This soup is not quite vegetarian as I had a few pieces of bacon that I chopped up and added, as well as using low salt chicken stock. 

The leafy greens in the soup is some kale that I grew last summer in garden and had been blanched and then frozen.

 I picked up this bag of mixed dried beans , but I forgot to take a photo of the beans in the bag. 

However, I did get a photo of the beans rinsed and put into the stainless steel pot in my Instant Pot. 

I think this is a fun photo. The beans have great colors, and there's an interesting reflection.

I have an Instant Pot back from my working days, and it is a great way to quickly soften dried beans. You put them in  with water and a teaspoon of oil (it cuts back on the foam) and set the Instant Pot to pressure cook for 1 minute. Before you start the pressure cooking push the keep warm button and have the beans sit in the stay warm mode for an hour. After that hour I drained the beans and cooked my soup in a big pot on the stove. 

It was yummy, and since my husband won't eat beans, I have my lunch prepared for several days.

I also mentioned that I went out yesterday to enjoy our slightly warmer winter day. Maddie was at doggie daycare so Pete and I went for a ride down to the beach. Yesterday I went to York Beach, in York, Maine. I like the fact that there is an open bathroom there.

The clouds were interesting; the beach was basically  empty, and even though it was a little chilly, I got to go for a nice walk (as did Pete).

I love the reflections.

And I love the happy face on Mr. Pete.

I hope your week is going well. Stay warm, and thanks for visiting.