This & That

The Fruits of the Labor

A couple of weeks ago the youth group at our church went to a couple of the elderly members of our ward (congregation) to do some service. At one house they scraped the paint from a shed, prepping it for repainting. At another house, dandelions were dug out of the ground, fence posts were set, weed mat and gravel was put into flower beds. At this particular house, even after all that was done, there was a large pile of wood and prunings to get rid of. We asked the owner if the girls could come over and have a bonfire with it, as a reward for working so hard in the yard. So last week, we all gathered there, hoping it would rain on our plans.

We had our very own fire marshall to supervise. This is Bud. He's 89 and is a retired fireman. He came over early and started the fire and then stood like this all night watching over the fire and the girls, making sure nobody got hurt and the fire didn't wander where it wasn't supposed to. I love Bud.

 

The fire was still a little hot when we got there.

So hot that it was hard for the girls to stand close to roast marshmallows. They devised their own system.

Which the leaders quickly adopted.

The girls roasted interesting things....like Peeps.

And Starbursts....who knew?

Don't ask me where this came from, I have no clue.

We played a hilarious variation on Musical Chair meets Fruit Basket called "Do You Love Your Neighbor?" And ended the evening with a rousing round of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" played on kazoos. 

And a group hug. I love these girls.

 

Orange Muffins with Brown Sugar Glaze

The Girl has had a thing for citrus lately....and strawberries, but that doesn't have anything to do with this post. She made Lemon Bars this past week and ate 2 or 3 of these muffins when I made them for breakfast last weekend. They are really good, but then again, they come from the Pioneer Woman website. The original recipes calls for them to be baked in mini-muffin tins, but I just did them regular size. I also made half the recipe since I just don't have that many bodies around. Half the recipe makes about 10 muffins.

Orange Muffins with Brown Sugar Glaze

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup buttermilk (if you don't have buttermilk, add 1 Tablespoon white vinegar or lemon juice to just under 1 cup milk)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups flour
• Grated rind of 2 oranges
• Juice of 2 oranges
• 1 cups brown sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degree. Cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs and mix well. Dissolve baking soda in buttermilk; pour in mixing bowl. Add 2 cups flour and orange rind and mix together well. Fill mini (or regular) muffin pans 2/3 full and bake for 12-17 minutes or until light golden. (The regular muffins took about 14-15 minutes. Remove from oven.

Combine 1 cup brown sugar with the juice from the two oranges. Stir together, and drizzle over warm muffins. Remove from pans immediately and eat warm.

This Week's 12

Oh yes, I know you were waiting for it with bated breath, lol. It's a little like being caught in someone's living room looking at their vacation pictures, isn't it?

This is the Seasons layout for the month. I really like to have seasonal wreaths on the front door. Of course, my family will tell you that I'm a sucker for anything seasonal at all. These were last year's wreaths.

This is the layout for the Fun category. I really wish you could have heard the dialogue that went with these pictures....my boys all speaking in fake British accents as they entertained my grandgirl with trains and cars...hilarious. IMHO, this is what the scrapbooking thing is all about....catching relationships and connections between people. The design is the left side of a 2-page sketch by Becky Higgins that appeared in the 3/2009 CK.

The Things Category layout. My kids and now my grandkids have always really enjoyed our Fisher Price toys. In this layout you can even see a photo of The Girl and her friend at 16 playing with them. The lower left photo is AP Boy at 2 1/2 on Christmas morning with his new Fisher Price zoo set. We still have bits and pieces of it. The design is a Becky Higgins sketch that was in the 2/2008 CK.

And lastly, big number 12....This is probably one of my favorite layout from this class, not because it's the best layout I've ever done, but because of the story it tells. The design is a BH sketch from the 3/2009 CK. This documents some of the gifts the boys...mostly LS Boy....have given The Girl for Christmas. They are always related to whatever the current heart-throb boy is and ranged from a Jonas Brothers jigsaw puzzle, to a Justin Beiber calendar with custom captions written in. For example on the bottom calendar page on the right, the caption reads, "Are your legs tired? Because you've been running through my mind all day..." Very cheesy but fun for all of them. And the interesting thing is that she has kept them all. 

There will be no 12 installment next week. I'm going to be out of town at a scrap retreat. Not sure if there will be magic techno posts while I am gone. I'll just have to see how the preparation goes for leaving. The Girl's first words were, "What are Dad and I supposed to eat??" I suggested she could cook and she looked at me like I had suddenly gone insane.  

I Lost

Sigh.

Starts

My walking buddy couldn't go with me yesterday morning, so I decided to take that early morning time to do some weeding in the flower beds as well as plant some iris starts my SIL had brought me from her yard in Utah. These are supposed to be blue-ish and kind of ruffled.

If you remember, a few years ago LS Boy planted some yellow starts from a friend down the street. They are doing so well, I'm going to have to refine them a little so they don't take over my flower bed. That same friend gave me the rhubarb plant start I have in my garden now. It thrives on neglect.  I think it's interesting how sharing things makes them multiply and grow in all kinds of different spots.

On the garden front, DH and I are disagreeing on how to downsize our garden now that we don't have so many children at home that we need to feed, freeze and can for. I'd like to set the whole thing up in raised boxes. He thinks if it ain't broke, don't fix it and wants to stick with our old under-the-plastic system, but dividing the area into thirds so we only use 1/3 of the space per year. That means that by the time we reach year 3, I'll have a weed mess from things coming up through the cut plastic from previous years, since he is not here in the fall to pull up plants and hoses. I'm not going to win, so I should probably just resign myself to a messy garden, but I'd really like a nice, tidy, smaller patch with several boxes that I could manage.

A Bit of Type Casting

SD Boy has been doing some volunteer work at a local hospital and he and some other volunteers took an anti-obesity campaign to a local elementary school where he jumped rope with the kids "for like 2 hours straight" and told them how awesomely good carrots are. 

Yes, he was chosen to be the carrot. A bit of type-casting, don't you think?

The Difference a Year Can Make

It's just stunning to me how the grandbabies can change and grow in such a short period of time. I don't think I noticed it in my own kids as much because I was around them all the time, but when you don't see them like that, you really notice it.

One of my grand-girls recently turned one and I just couldn't believe how she's gotten from this...

To this so quickly. Really. 

And she reminds me a little of her daddy at the same age...at least the hair does....and the smile a little bit as well.

Chocolate Chip Toffee Bars

These. Are. Deadly. Really, really deadly, and they come from the Sadie's Kitchen Adventures blog.

Chocolate Chip Toffee Bars

• 2 1/3 cup flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup butter, soft
• 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips, divided
• 1 can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 package toffee bits, divided

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

Whisk together flour, salt and brown sugar. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender or fork until the mixture is crumbly. Add eggs and mix well with a wooden spoon or your hands. Mix in 1 1/2 cups of the chocolate chips. Set aside 1 1/2 cups of the dough. Press the remaining dough into prepared pan. Bake for 10 minutes. 

Pour the condensed milk evenly over the crust. Top with all but 1/3 of the toffee bits. Place pieces of remaining dough over the top. Sprinkle with remaining 1/2 cup chocolate chips. Bake for 25-30 more minutes or until golden brown. Sprinkle the remaining toffee bits on top. Cool completely before serving. 

12-ing

This week's layout for the 12 class. DH has been in Kansas and Nebraska this week. You can see that I got quite a few layouts done. I also did 5 weeks of catch up on my 365 album. Just goes to show what can happen when nobody messes with my schedule. Click on them to make them bigger.

Also, an FYI for Pam, who asked if I saved my magazines from 2005 and just marked layouts I want to lift. No...I rip pages out of magazines and keep them in an envelope by the number of photos on the page. Then I rifle through them when I want to look for a design that would work.

The Me category layout, comparing The Girl and I at similar ages. Yes, sometimes life isn't fair. The design is a recent BG site sketch.

This one is for the Holiday category. Easter last year, and it makes me a little lonesome for PB. The design is a fairly recent Sketch Support sketch.

The title of this one--"Laurel Appreciation"-- requires a bit of explanation. The oldest group of girls at our church youth group are called Laurels (so, The Girl is a Laurel and I teach the Laurels at church). Each year the corresponding age of boys has an "appreciation" night for them where they present some kind of program or event and have some refreshments. The years that PB was that age, they did a singing/band kind of performance because, well, PB could sing. This is my Rituals and Traditions layout for the month and the design is a tweaked lift of a layout by Erin Clarkson that appeared in the F/M 2009 SB Etc. I printed the whole photo block out at once as a collage from PSE.

Here is the Places category layout. This place is about a 5 minute drive from my house and during high water years it's a sight to behold. We try to go in the spring when it's really roaring. When it's booming like this, I can go on my back patio and see the mist cloud and faintly hear the roar of the water going over. The design is a Becky Higgins sketch.

And finally, the Family Stories category layout. The design is from the BPC 28 Sketches class (I think). 

 

The Burning Pile

Every spring it seems we accumulate a large pile of prunings that go on top of the Christmas tree out in the pasture. In days gone by when we had all the kids at home, one of the first real signs of spring was burning this pile...and roasting hot dogs on it for our dinner.

 We don't have anyone home now who is up for that so mostly is just needs to be done to get it out of the way.

 When LS Boy was home over Easter weekend, he and DH took it upon themselves to burn the pile so they could move the snowmobile trailer to the back 40. One person shuffles the pile with a pitchfork to get everything burnt and the other mans the hose to make sure the fire doesn't move somewhere it's not supposed to....like the neighbor's pasture, or the hay stack. You can also see that Ollie doesn't like the process much, but he likes being with people so badly that he's willing to tolerate the scary fire, and the scary hose just to be outside with people.

Poor dog.