Our plans for the holiday weekend were altered the other day…after much debate, we chose to stay put and give our attention to some home projects that had been side-lined for too long!  With our weekends pretty much consumed with kid activities and games, our poor old house has been severely neglected!  So our thoughts are with all of you who are basking in the sunshine, enjoying a reunion, watching sunsets over the water, firing up the grill, and relaxing with family and friends…while we don our paint clothes and roll up our sleeves preparing to get down & dirty!  But don’t feel too sorry for us…spending time doing projects together is often an enjoyable task!  And the best part?  We can still hang together at the end of each day, savoring the results of our hard work!  (and maybe sneak in a cocktail or two with neighbors!)  When we returned from our quick trip to DC a couple weeks ago, we walked into our kitchen which was filled with the odor of natural gas…not a welcoming scent!  It turns out that we had a faulty valve in our oven…and are still without it today!  Obviously one of the projects on the “honey do” list is to replace the valve with a new one so I can actually cook.  In the meantime, I hauled out the slow cooker and have been searching for alternatives for our small collection crock-pot recipes.  Well, I found some that not only sound delicious but will cook themselves all day while we scrape, paint, clean, weed, and fix ovens!  And after checking off the long list of “honey do” projects, we’ll serve ourselves up a “honeydew” treat!  I’d like to share where to find these yummy recipes–and after a long weekend of work, or play…serve up a meal that cooks itself!

slow cooker=more time for the “honey do”