Vintage Luggage

Today as I was browsing through a shopping website called ThisNext I found the vintage looking PAN AM luggage shown above. I got a little carried away. I started looking up vintage luggage. I LOVE the red mini bag by Samsonite, they have an entire line of vintage looking pieces...who knew! A quick seach on Etsy reveals dozens of genuine vintage pieces that are affordable too. I also found a blog article where a girl bought a white leather round case like the cornflower blue one above for her wedding. That would be such a cute bag to carry when heading out from your wedding reception!

L-R: PAN AM Explorers Bag $90.00, Samsonite Red Mini Bag $129.99, D'Aosta Loggia Vintage Luggage Set $800.00, Vintage Overnight Kelly Green Carry On Bag $39.00, Vintage Hot Pink Train Case $64.50, Vintage Cornflower Blue Hat Box $25.00.

Vegetable Couscous

Vegetable Couscous is our favorite new dish to make for a quick healthy dinner. Couscous cooks so quickly it still doesn't seem quite real to me yet. Not only does it cook in 5 minutes instead of the 20 minutes needed for rice, but it is much healthier too as it has more fiber. (I just can't do brown rice!) 1 cup of cooked white rice has only 0.6g of dietary fiber where couscous has 2.2g. See the calorie count here.

It's also fun and easy to pack the couscous full of fresh veggies and herbs to make a filling and flavorful dish. Try mixing up the vegetables and herbs to incorporate your favorite flavors. Add a green salad and dinner rolls and you have a meal!



Vegetable Couscous
Serves 2

• 1 zucchini or yellow squash
• 1 bell pepper, yellow or orange are mild in flavor
• 1 crushed garlic clove
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 1 cup dry couscous
• 1 Tbsp Italian parsley, chopped
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1/2 tsp salt
• Olive oil

Cut vegetables into bite sized pieces. In a saute pan, cook vegetables in olive oil over medium heat until just softened, about 5 minutes. Turn heat down to low, add crushed garlic and cook 1 minute longer. Remove from heat.

Meanwhile, in a saucepan bring 1 cup water, butter and salt to a boil. Remove from heat. Add couscous and parsley. Cover and let stand 5 minutes. Fluff couscous with a fork, add cooked vegetables and lemon juice. Mix well.

Serve immediately.

Poetic Wrappings

I like to try and do something originally romantic for my husband on Valentine's Day. One year there was Valentine's Week where I gave him something small with a love note each day for a week. One year I made a hand-quilled card (finding quilling paper turned out to be much more difficult than I expected!) This year I might try this Poetic Wrapping paper as it looks simple and inexpensive. However I think I will trying running red paper through a printer, rather than using an old typewriter or stamps! It's easy to find romantic poetry online, just Google "classic love poems" and you'll find many online resources.

• http://www.theromantic.com/
• http://www.lovepoetry.com/
• http://www.lovepoemsandquotes.com/