Winter Again – Ugh!

It’s getting cold here at night and snow is expected tomorrow morning. They are predicting a dusting or up to 5 inches.  I’ll go with the dusting, please.    I am a summer loving  girl and surviving winter to me means staying comfortable and warm. My kids don’t like the cold, either. We tend to stay indoors as much as possible once the temps get below 50 degrees.

My go-to comfort foods during the winter include meat loaf and mashed potatoes, chili, and homemade soups.  There is nothing nicer on a cold winter day than the fragrance of something yummy cooking in the kitchen, or something like bread or cookies baking in the oven. The kids don’t even mind helping. Yes, I tend to add a little weight during the winter eating all of this comfort food, but I will shed it in warm weather when I am more active.

During the worst 3 winter months I live in fuzzy socks and usually can be found in my robe (even over my clothes).

I used to have a fireplace.  That was really cozy and warm, and I miss having one.  This has been a very cold winter so far, so I’ve had to add a space heater, electric blanket and flannel sheets.  This makes it difficult for me to get out of bed knowing I will shiver when my feet hit the cold floor.

Do You Have a Favorite Coffee Mug?

All of my friends know that I must have a cup of coffee in the morning before I can function. I like to tell people that it takes a least 1 cup of coffee and half a Poptart for me to even be human.

I make a pot of coffee in the kitchen each morning with a little 4 cup coffee pot. I used to have expensive coffee makers, but they never lasted more than a year or so. When I switched to the cheaper Mr. Coffee brand coffee maker, it has lasted for almost 4 years now. *knock on wood*

I have a favorite coffee mug at home. There is a short story behind how I got it. I was dating a guy who worked at the Clear Channel studios downtown as a radio producer. That is a fancy title for a boring, tedious job of working on a computer in a tiny soundproof room. And if anything goes wrong, it is up to the producer to fix it – fast.

Besides getting free tickets to just about every show in town, this guy had access to a whole closet full of radio station swag. There were tee shirts, nerf footballs, pens with radio station call letters and logos, bobble heads, baseball caps and……coffee mugs in all colors, shapes and sizes. There were a few coffee mugs from an older radio format that had been switched by management, so those mugs were obsolete and about to be thrown out. My boyfriend grabbed 4 of them and asked me if I wanted them – I said, yes.

As it turns out, those four mugs are my favorite coffee mugs. Not because they came from the radio station or because my boyfriend – at the time – gave them to me. I love them because they are made from ironstone, have a comfortable handle, and they are a cone shape, so that the top of the beverage cools quickly and the bottom stays warm longer. The ironstone is a good natural insulation and they are dishwasher safe. These mugs are perfect, and it would break my heart if any of the ever got broken, as there is no way they could ever be replaced.