Just~One~Donna

Cream of Mushroom Soup If you are a fan of mushrooms you are most likely a fan of mushroom soup as well.  No, not the kind of mushroom soup that comes in a can, but the kind you make lovingly yourself.  It's a special treat. Do you think it is hard to make cream of mushroom soup?  Not at all.  It's actually a pretty quick soup to whip together and takes just a few simple ingredients. The star of the soup, of course, is the mushrooms.  I used a mixture of white button mushrooms and baby bellas, the small version of portabellas.  You can use whatever you have on hand or even use a fancy wild mushroom mix.  Whatever you choose, it is going to be good.  Trust me. Gather together your cast of characters.  You'll want to be sure you have a little sherry on hand.  No, you can not use cooking sherry.  I'm sorry if I'm sounding a little bossy here, but this, my friends is the secret love ingredient.  Sure, you can leave it...

Last week I told you about a brand new toy, my orbital sander, and that I intended to put it to good use refinishing the stairs in my house .  Well, today I am happy to report that the project is well underway.  When last we left this saga I had completed three hours of prep work on three of the twelve stairs needing refinishing.  I chose the flight of three stairs above the landing as my starting point thinking the landing was an appropriate separation point for the work.  I'm expecting this project to take a few (maybe several) weeks to complete.  It makes sense to divide the work into multiple parts. Those three stairs got another hour and a half of sanding and then some dings and holes in the treads were filled with wood filler. Not being certain about whether my prep work was sufficient, I decided to go ahead and stain just one stair as a test.  That way I could assess how the stain would take to the wood, whether the stain color wo...