Well.. what do you know!!!

Even a blind pig can find an acorn every now and then!

I promised you all the salmon spread.  And then guess what?  I found it and then remember that it was repulsive to make.  Have you ever bought canned salmon?  It literally looks like they took a fish and put it in a blender and then canned it.  There is skin and bones... And you had to meticulously pick through the stuff to get the meat out.  No thank you!  I started the recipe once and just quit.  Stopped when I got to that step.  So the next time I tried it I had a bright idea.... I would use smoked salmon! Or perhaps even grill my own salmon and use it.

But now, because the salmon people decided to make our lives easier, we have these glorious little things.

God Bless Chicken Of The Sea!!!!

I'm in love.  filleted, boneless, skinless fish.  AND it is smoked.  So that changed up the old recipe a little.  Or.. that's what I told myself so that I could change the recipe.  It's what I do you know.

You need:

2 packages of smoked salmon (and really you could even do 3 if you want)

1 package of cream cheese, at room temperature.

Juice of one lemon

horseradish

liquid smoke

and

course ground mustard

AND... Dill. (last minute decision)

Basically mix up your cream cheese with the lemon juice, then add one teaspoon of the next 3 ingredients: horseradish, liquid smoke, and course ground mustard.  Then mix in your salmon.  

After I had this made and decided the portions of seasonings were good I decided that it looked awfully plain.  It needed color.  So I threw in some dill.  Depending on how much you love dill you can add more but I used about a teaspoon.  

THEN.. 

Because I was feeling all creative I decided to try something else.  I took the cheese ball  I made yesterday and divided it and kept half of it plain for my friend that doesn't eat nuts.  Then I decided to try something new.  Instead of using pecans like the recipe called for I decided to use these:

These are awesome.  It has pecans, pistachios, peanuts, almonds, and other nuts.

And it says heart healthy right there on the box. :)

I believe we can call this a heart healthy cheeseball. 

It has been dark here for hours.  Since about noon it's been so dark I had to turn on lights in the house.  Then later I looked at the radar to see if we were going to get any rain and way up in Kansas there was pink on the radar!  SNOW!!!!  I got all excited.  Even though we won't get snow.  I still was excited. And I decided that it's time to light the pilot light on the fireplace.  But in order to do that I had to move a bunch of stuff out of the way.   

Then it hit me that I could decorate the space above my cabinets in the living room.  And so I got my boy to help and we (he) hauled in the ladder from the garage and this is what we came up with.

By George, I think we've got it!!!  

I hope you like it.  It was Amy and Evan approved.  :)