This & That

Yesterday's Project

I'm getting ready to teach a card class to a group of older ladies on Tuesday. So yesterday The Girl and I ventured to Michael's to grab some cardstock and when we got home, I spent the afternoon cutting and cutting and cutting patterned papers into strips and square of various sizes. I wanted to make this as easy as possible for the ladies so they could finish both cards off easily. Hopefully that will be the case. I will show the finished cards after the class is over. I'm really loving the Bo-Bunny snow paper, though.

Pomegranates Are Labor Intensive

The Girl has decided that pomegranates are one of her new favorite foods.  Why is it that they always like the stuff that is the most work? I think they are OK, but I'm not a huge fan of horrendously seedy things. She eats them seeds and all. I also think it's a lot of work to pluck the seeds from the darn things. That's why if she wants to eat them, she gets to do that work....with her own two little hands.  It's good for her.

A Dilemma...and I'm Taking a Poll

So it's time to make song selections for the annual Christmas voice recital.  Yes, along with several of my boys, I, the middle aged chubby woman, have been taking voice lessons for the past few years. Why? Well, I had hoped that it would make me more comfortable singing in public on the random occasions that I have been asked to do such a thing. And to a certain extent, it has.

My teacher usually keeps her adult students and under-18's performances separate, except at Christmas. Then she just mixes us all up in a beautifully candlelit Methodist church, and lets us go at it. I end up playing for a few of the kids and then I have to get up and yodel through whatever piece I've picked. Usually, I have known way ahead what I want to sing, but this year for some reason I'm waffling.

I am very well aware what kind of music my voice is best suited for, and that would be fairly straight forward, somewhat classical-sounding music. That doesn't mean, though, that I don't enjoy trying out different types of music....just because. My summer work has been to try some pieces that are a little lower than I usually sing and a bit more jazzy sounding.....things like "Small World" from Gypsy and the Big Band standard "Sentimental Journey". Definitely different than what I'm used to singing, which has run to things like this. 

So, my dilemma....I need to pick a song for the Christmas recital and I've narrowed it down to two. Both are related to my lower, more "pop" summer's work but I just haven't been able to make a choice. The first one is White Christmas.  It's one of those perrenial Christmas favorites and that's what I like about it. My family is pulling for this one because my DH says, "When I go to a Christmas concert, I want to hear Christmas songs I know."  And I get that. I usually agree with him....he and I agree on a lot of things.

The second is a song called "All is Well"  and is definitely what you would call a "pop" song. It has a lovely lyric which really relates a lot to the stage I'm at in my life and has a little more "wow" factor with the sort of big second have return to the chorus. So, friends, keeping in mind that I am neither a 1940's crooner nor a black gospel-type singer, but also knowing that both songs are in my range and will stretch my perfomance chops, so to speak, what's your vote? 

S'mores Brownies

I tried these brownies the other day reasoning that if my kids like regular, campfire s'more, they might like these as well.

S'mores have become part of the outdoor experience for our family.

To almost a ridiculous extent.

These are really good, and qualify as Mom food because any kind of bar cookies, the kind that mix up quickly, spread in a pan and head to the oven in less than 10 minutes, are a Mom's friend.

S'mores Brownies (from the Crepes of Wrath blog)                                                                                                         Makes a 9x13 pan

• 1 1/2 cups (yes, that's 3 sticks), butter, melted
• 3 cups white sugar
• 3 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 eggs, room temperature (I never remember to get eggs out to warm up, so I just put them in a bowl of hot water for a few minutes)
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup graham crackers, roughly crushed (there should be some chunks about the size of a nickel)
• 12 large marshmallows

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9x13 pan.

In a large bowl, blend melted butter, sugar and vanilla until combined. Beat in eggs one at a time until combined.

Add the flour, cocoa and salt and mix until smooth.

Fold in your graham cracker chunks. Spread the butter into the prepared pan. Place the 12 marshmallows in rows in top of the batter.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until brownies begin to pull away from the sides of the pan. Let cool completely, then cut into squares. 

Teenagers of All Kinds

This past weekend when DH was in the hills, he hauled along horses. When he came home, he brought an extra one with him. Meet Sundance. He is a gelding that actually doesn't belong to us. My niece and nephew own him, but don't have enough winter feed where they are for him, so he's going to come live with us for the winter. He's about a year and a half old and The Girl thinks he is wonderful. He's not fully grown yet, so he's a little less intimidating that the other, bigger horses. She and her dad got acquainted with him in the pasture, equipped with apples for making friends. 

Now, horses are herd animals and there is a definite pecking order in the herd. Because Sundance is the newest horse and is also smaller, the resident members have set about showing him who's boss. Look at the poor, little guy.....all alone in the big pasture, no friends, all the bigger horses chasing him away from the hay. 

And here are some of the older, bigger guys...."Yeah, you little pipsqueak varmint. You don't get hay until you earn the hay."  (You have to imagine Jack Nicholson saying it or it doesn't give the right effect.) DH has since started giving Sundance his own little pile down at the opposite end of the pasture.

And because it is so rare nowadays, and because I had my big zoom lens on and could take this one fairly unobtrusively, a shot of The Girl. Strangely, she didn't mind having pictures taken with the other teenager in the pasture.

Leaf-ing Left and Right

My birch tree last week:

My birch tree this week:

I am a little sad that the golden glow into my room is gone, but that's the way of the seasons. This past weekend, the Littles and I were on our own. DH had taken Eldest Son to Wyoming to  be in the hills (you all realize that a euphamism for hunting, right?...it is that time of year for my family).

Preemie Boy was taking another crack at the ACT and that left The Girl and I home on a blustery Saturday morning. My plan was to sweep and gather up as many of the birch leaves as we could. And The Girl didn't even really argue with me about it, which was really pleasant. There was the occasional remark about how cold she was on the breezy, 50 degree day, but then she is bird-boned. 

We had a conversation about the time of year and how beautiful the leaves were. She said it always made her sad when they fall off the trees, because then everything looks dead. I said that for me it was more a time of sleeping and hibernation, so things could come back in the spring and that the bare branches were beautiful in their own way, especially when we can get a dusting of snow on them.

I'm not sure she's buying it.

A New Class

I signed up for BPS's last quarter class. I mainly did this because Ali Edwards was teaching it and I was really hoping to live in her head a little to get a glimpse of the process she uses for putting layouts together.  I'm behind, with all the things that have been going on here, but I started plowing through things and have got the first layout finished. 

 

Couple of problems I'm having with the class. First, it's exclusively in a 12x12 format. I almost always scrap in an 8.5 x 11 format so I can color copy my layouts easier to put in my kids albums. I can live with 12x12, but it just pushes me a little out of my comfort area. Not necessarily a bad thing, but there are only 12 layouts in the class. Not enough to fill an album for me. I'm puzzling this out.  The other thing I'm finding is that the whole process is very "zen." Whatever we want to do is fine, however we want to do it is fine. Everything is FINE! I just need someone to say, "Put it here because it looks good." That I get.

My guess is this class will be very good for me because it won't be quite so much explicit direction, but more exploring the whys and wherefores. So I"m reserving judgement.

Entering Another Sketch Contest

There's another contest running over on the PageMaps blog. This is my take on the offered sketch. If you feel so inclined, head on over and take a stab at it. :)

 

You can click on the image to make it larger. I started doing these challenges to give myself deadlines for getting something done. I work well with an end in sight.

Never Underestimate the Mom Powers

This is a fairly long, somewhat convoluted post with no photos (because San Diego Boy has been slacking a little in that department), so if you decide to check out now, I understand, but I wanted to get this recorded for posterity.

When the Eldest Son went on his church mission to Russia, he injured his knee significantly enough that he had to have surgery on it when he got home. Did he write and tell his loving parents about it? No. We found out a couple of months later from his best friend who spilled the beans.  Despite his best efforts to keep it under wraps (to his credit, he says the reason he did it was so that we wouldn't worry, but still...) Mom found out.  Same with that one time when he said he was going to be one place and his dad and I just had a feeling we should check on him....and he wasn't where he said he was going to be, so we drove around until we found his car in front of a girl's house. Yeah, you should never underestimate the Mom Powers.

So let me take you on a little Mom Powers trip today. Stay with me, there are a few twists and turns along the way.  So Monday I got my usual weekly email from San Diego Boy. He and his companion have been in a bike area and last week he fell off his bike. The version I got said that he was fine, but he'd ripped his pants and had to get a new pair.  End of story.

Now we introduce my FIL, who lives in Utah. He is assigned in a leadership role, along with a few other men, over a group of LDS congregations in his area. Yesterday he called to tell me that he got a phone call from a man who happens to be in charge of San Diego Boy's area. He oversees the missionaries in that part of the state. He had called my FIL to tell him about one of the missionaries who had to be hospitalized for dehydration and he hadn't been able to get a hold of this boy's parents and was asking my FIL to make a physical contact to let them know what was going on.  Still with me?

So my FIL says to this man, "You know, you have my grandson in your mission." They make that connection and the mission president is very complimentary (always nice to know that your kid is performing well in public without your supervision). Anyway, he ends his comments with, "And his elbow is going to be fine." Huh? Elbow? Yeah....apparently when he took that tumble off the bike, not only did he rip his pants, he also broke his elbow. Not seriously, I guess since he's in a sling, not a cast, and didn't have to have surgery. But did he write to his loving mother, who just sent him home-canned peaches, pears, applesauce and salsa? No. Did he tell his mama, who sent him cookies along with the requested Crisco-thick lotion for his sensitive skin? NOOOOOOOOOO. Is his mom going to give him a very large piece of her mind in this Sunday's letter? You bet your life. That is, after I get control over my emotions that are swinging from tears because I'm not there to take care of him, to relief that it doesn't sound horribly serious, to wanting to shake him for not wanting to "worry" me.

You should never, ever underestimate the Mom Powers. We are Momniscient.

Crafting in the Season

I spent some time last weekend going over my Christmas organizer and getting it ready for the coming season.  It is about this time of year, when I start seeing Christmas displays going up before Halloween, (and getting really irritated about it) that I start to panic just a little bit about the holidays.  When DH and I were starving students, I hand-crafted gifts all through the year and was usually ready by now for gift-giving.  Not so much any more. 

Be that as it may, that isn't the subject of this post. I spent the afternoon yesterday making these:

And I was really struck by how pleasant it was to do some crafting for a season, in that season rather than being way ahead or way behind and not really being able to enjoy it.