I Love Fridays!

I don't like to set myself up for failure and for this reason I stopped making New Year's resolutions many years ago. With that said, I have resolved to become more organized in my blogging techniques and I resolve not to fail at this attempt. I love blogging, but sometimes I get a bit overwhelmed. There is so much out there to see and read and often ask myself how will I ever keep up?

I take part in two memes — Outdoor Wednesday and Foodie Friday. I've done both of these since I started my blog in May and I have no intention of stopping. BUT, recently I have found two new ones that intrigued me and they both happen to fall on Friday. What's a blogger to do? I think I have this figured out, but for today my post will be a bit all over the place. I've tried to tie three memes together cohesively, but let's just say I didn't hit the nail on the head.

I need your advice!

This is it folks, my Three-In-One Friday posting. Thanks for bearing with me today, hopefully I'll figure out how to do this differently by next week. What do you think? Three different posts on Friday or spread them out over the week and link up that post to its meme on Friday?

Next week will be better, I promise. Please bear with me today as I participate in:

Foodie Friday with Michael @ Designs By Gollum

Art Work Friday with Dee Dee @ D Dzine

Finding Beauty with Claudia @ Dipity Road

To try and make this a bit easier for those here to see my entry for their favorite Friday meme, I've broken this post down by headers. You can skip down to your favorite or read them all. Next week, I'll do them separately, I promise. The one good thing about them all landing on Friday is that I don't post over the weekend, so I have plenty of time to get to everyone's posting. For today though let's start with

Foodie Friday

This recipe comes to us from Adam Stein at The TerraPass Footprint, the blog for TerraPass, a website devoted to reducing your carbon footprint. I received this via email and while I haven't yet made it, the recipe sounds delicious and I wanted to pass it on. I love Brussel sprouts and have never made a recipe where they weren't kept whole.

viz

Brussel Sprouts with Mint and Apples

• 1/2 lb brussel sprouts (or more — go crazy! Wooo! Brussel sprouts!)
• 1 tablespoon fennel seeds
• 2 tablespoons chopped mint
• 1/2 an apple
• olive oil
• salt
  

1. Shred the brussel sprouts: cut them in half through the base and lay the halves on their flat sides. Slice them crosswise into thin ribbons. Discard the knobby bit at the base.
2. Julienne the apple into matchstick-sized slivers (here’s how).
   
3. Over medium heat, toast the fennel seeds in some olive oil until fragrant.
4. Add the shredded brussel sprouts to the hot oil, salt liberally, and cook until the leaves become tender but not too soft (about five minutes).
5. Take off the heat and stir in the mint and apples.

Visit Adam's blog for his variations on this recipe.

Art Work Friday

There are so many amazing artists out there in blogland and I'm not one of them! I consider myself more of a designer, so today I'm going to share a customizable family cookbook binder I designed for my Zazzle store. I never blog about my designs, I don't have a lot of confidence, but I think its time for me to start taking some (constructive) criticism on my work. Be kind, but tell me what you think.

As my family's genealogist I've explored various ways to make it interesting for other family members and discovered that collecting favorite family recipes is not only fun, your children and future generations will love it! The photo on the cover happens to me with some of my cousins, two aunts and an uncle. The design is set up to be fully customizable with your family photo and family name.

I like the idea of a binder for this purpose, because recipes can be added as time goes on and by using sheet protectors you can just insert the recipe as the family cook sends it. In mine, I've added recipes as my grandmother had them written down, along with her photo at a family dinner. I love seeing the recipe in her own handwriting, instead of neatly typed out by me.

Friday — Finding Beauty

Shorehouse chic.: Help for Haiti

You can find beauty everywhere, if you take the time to look. This week I found beauty in a gesture by a fellow blogger, Laura of Shorehouse Chic. Laura came up with the brilliant idea of auctioning off a tote bag she made recently to raise money for the victims of Haiti. You can read more about how it works on her blog and find a link to another blogger who joined in on this worthy cause, but I love how she decided to send it to the winning bid. That person will make a donation to the organization of her/his choice and then send a copy of the receipt on to Laura who will, at her own expense, mail the tote off.

Since I know the people of Haiti will need help for a while, I've decided to make something and do the same thing Laura has, maybe some of my seashell angles. Just maybe you'll be inspired by her also.

Be sure to click on the links at the beginning of this post or on the headers to visit those memes of interest to you and don't forget to leave your advice to me on how to handle so many Friday memes in your comment.

Have a fabulous weekend!