Our little Cleo cat died yesterday. She apparently got on the wrong side of one of the horses. I grew up with a cat around the house and we've had one since we've lived in a place with hay and mice.
She was a really good little cat....quite sociable and loved to play with Ollie. She would hide behind a tree and when he would go by she would execute a flying leap at his tail. Then they would chase each other all over the yard. She was a good barn mouser and was even fairly tolerant of the grandchildren.
Since my kids have left home, I've taken to chatting with her and Ollie. They have kept me company when I was outside working in the yard, and Ollie follows me from room to room to be with me...except when I'm running the vacuum. He's terrified of the vacuum. She wasn't with us very long, but I will miss her.
It's probably time for a missionary check in with my daughter.
She was made a Sister Leader Trainer soon after her transfer to Kansas. Basically she gives trainings to the sister missionaries in her area and goes on companion exchanges. Here's one of the other sisters in her area.
She is so good to send me pictures almost every week. This little gal was recently baptized and my daughter loves visiting with her.
The missionaries do service at a place called the Farmstead. She loves this because she gets some outside time and there are sometimes animals involved. She said she's held a baby goat and has fed a calf with one of those big milk bottles. On this particular day, she and Sister Kang manned the General Store for a while. She says she was only mildly embarrassed to be walking around like this. I thought the tennis shoes were a nice touch. She tells me that after this, she went out to collect eggs in a basket. Maybe I'm going to have to get the trendy chicken thing going here, since she already knows how to get the eggs.
Finishing up with a picture she took of the Kansas City skyline.
I spent a very large chunk of last week's play time working on the Simon Says Stamp card kit that I mention in last Saturday's post. I'm a big fan of kits, because I know everything will go together. Combine that with the card-making instant gratification and it's just very satisfying. It's an added plus when I really like the papers and/or color scheme of the kit, which was the case with this one, so I decided to see just how far I could stretch. it.
It turns out that I was able to stretch it pretty far.
I ended up with 30 cards of one sort or another.
The kit came with a package of these wrap-top envelopes (if that what you call them??) in a couple of different sizes that matched the papers. These are just the size for a gift card. Just a little stamping, a little row of embossed hearts on the black one.
For the bigger sized envelope, I made single-layer cards that will slip into the envelopes. I stamped the sentiment with white Stayz On ink on the black plastic "chalkboard" pieces. Some of the designs here are lifts of those done by Kristina Werner on the example sheet that came with the kit.
I have a plan when I work on these kits. I start with cards that use large pieces of the papers.
There were some fancy-border cards included in the kit like the one on the left. That's a Kristina Werner design.
Then the papers start getting smaller...
...and smaller...(The left cards in the two previous pictures were my take on cards by Stephanie Klauck)
...until I get to what I call the shreddies....those last little bits of useable papers. I went through my card stash and pulled out cards with designs I really liked and duplicated them with these papers. Some of the kits have papers in them that I struggle to work with, but not this one. I was sad when I was done with it.
In my quest for leftover Easter ham recipes, this was one I tried this year that I had on my Pinterest board. It has officially moved from the "Breakfast" board, to the "Tried It and Liked It Board." I found the recipe here.
Ham & Cheese Scones
3 cups flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
8 Tbsp butter, at room temperature
1 cup plus 1 Tbsp milk
1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
½ cup Canadian bacon, diced (I used leftover Easter ham)
½ large onion, diced
Preheat oven to 400º. In a large mixing bowl combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Cut in butter with pastry cutter or the tines of a fork. Add milk and mix just until incorporated. Fold in cheese, ham and onion. Turn dough out onto a floured surface. Knead gently for several minutes. Press dough into a 1½" thick circle and place on a cookie sheet. Cut into 8 wedges and separate slightly on the baking sheet. Bake at 400º for thirty minutes or until golden brown. (Mine didn't take quite this long, but I cut the recipe in half since I don't have that many bodies to feed here.)
It looks like the lettuce and spinach survived and are thriving now that we have the soaker hose replaced. That's spinach on the top and lettuce on the bottom. I planted another short row of each this week, along with some carrots.
I also planted a few more onions. Not only were what we planted 2 weeks ago looking a little worse for wear because of the lack of water, but it just wasn't looking like there were enough.
The peas are just deciding to make an appearance, although my new neigh-bor has been hiding.
I spent some time recording a song for camp and then getting it onto my phone so I can start camp music with the church girls tomorrow. I am an "unknown artist." I also spent some time with them at their mid-week activity answering their questions about camp. I found a pair of size 56 pants at the farm-y store which I brought with me as a visual, saying that everyone who comes to camp needs to find their big girl pants so we can all have a good time. I'll just say that the visual was very effective. :) Those things are going to be flying like a flag up at camp.
I pulled out another card kit to work on this week. My desk looked like some variation of this from Monday to Thursday. I was really loving these papers and trying to stretch them out as much as I could. The sheer number of cards will get its own post.
This layout was done with some really old and really bad pictures of some of the boys. I really need to get back into my Library of Memories habit of sending pictures off to be printed so I have a ready supply to work with.
On the grandchild front, the only thing I have to share with you this week is this video of James, who apparently thinks his dad coughing is hysterical. Edward called me this week to tell me that Roger has an ear infection and Isaac is getting adjusted to their new place.
My sweet friend, Irene, has been having some increasing hip pain over the last little while. Some testing this week revealed a hairline fracture in the neck of one femur which she had pinned yesterday. She came through the surgery like, in her granddaughter's words, a "rock star" and has some recovery ahead of her. My church visiting partner, Gail, and I are headed to the hospital to visit with her this morning.
This post is for my boys...my boys who are no longer here to take things that I've ordered out of the boxes that UPS leaves on the step, and put them together for their aged mother.
I ordered a spinner thingie for the back flower bed and the darn thing came in pieces. I don't know what I was expecting. I guess maybe a very large box with the thing already assembled inside it. Yeah, that didn't happen. Now, my husband is really amazing at a lot of things. Putting together spinning thingies for the flower bed that I have ordered does not rank really high on his priority list, especially when he's mentally gearing himself up for the spring turkey hunt.
There was a stiff breeze blowing yesterday and I really wanted to see that thing spinning in my flower bed, so I dragged the large but flat, square box, obviously not holding my already put-together spinning thing, out onto the back patio and dumped out all the pieces and parts. I figured, I'm a college graduate, how hard can it be, right? There was an instruction sheet with a kind-of helpful diagram and a message that told me it should only take about 20 minutes to get it done.
Just for fun, I took out my phone and started the stopwatch app. Here is the spinner half-way assembled. At this point I had put the first set of paddle things on backwards and had to take it off and start over. You want to take any guesses as to how long it took me to get it all done?
There you go. (ETA--I'm thinking that I need to state that it was 3 minutes, not 3 hours.)
And just to prove to my boys that not only did I get the parts together, but the thing actually works:
Next, I just might tackle putting together a compost bin. Just don't ask me to mess with any of the remotes, ok?
I was in the garden last night with my husband. We were watering the potatoes and replacing the soaker hose that is supposed to be watering my onions and newly-sprouted lettuce. They were looking pretty sad out there. I imagined them clutching their little necks and coughing for lack of water. Hopefully we took care of the problem soon enough.
Anyway like I said, I was watering potatoes and when I looked over the fence into the neighbor's pasture, this is what I saw.
It was almost dark, so these are really bad photos, but it looks like there's a new little one next door. I will try to get better photos when the sun is actually out.
This recipe has been in my family for a long time now. So totally Mom Food...comes together pretty quickly and is freezable. It's a favorite of a couple of my boys and a good vehicle for Marc's Guac.
Burrito Pie
2-3 Tablespoons vegetable oil
4 (8") flour tortillas
1/2 lb. ground beef
1 medium onion, diced
1 minced garlic clove
1 (4 oz.) can diced green chilies
1 (15 oz.) can refried beans (I use what I think is a can's worth of Homemade Refried Beans)
1/3 cup salsa
1 1/2 cups grated Jack or Colby-Jack cheese
1 medium tomato, diced
sour cream
salsa
In a skillet over medium heat, fry tortillas in oil, one at a time, until lightly browned and blistered. Drain on paper towels and discard remaining oil.
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Brown beef, onions and garlic. Removed from heat and stir in chilies, beans, salsa and salt.
In a 9" pie plate, place 1 tortilla, top with 1/4 of the beef mixture and 1/4 of the cheese. Repeat layers with remaining tortillas and cheese. Bake about 30 minutes. Garnish with lettuce, tomato and sour cream. Serves 6
This freezes very well in a couple of different ways. You can just double the recipe and make two complete stacks, then wrap one in foil and freeze, then thaw it and bake as directed when you want to eat it.
Or you can put the doubled meat filling in a freezer bag and put the stack together on the night you want to make it.
Around here this week, the first planting of peas is tucked in. My husband also decided to cut down some dead trees in the yard and I discovered what it was like to be a slave boy as I hauled small branches to the burning pile and big ones to the firewood pile. We spent a good chunk of last Saturday doing it and I can tell you that I really felt it the next day.
That said, we have one heck of a burning pile. We need to have a really big bonfire and get rid of it. It's taking up too much pasture real estate. As an aside, you can see how chilly our mornings are by the frost on the pasture under the sprinklers.
In other random and joyful news, camp prep continues and I think we finally got the huge hurdle of the porta-potties solved...great rejoicing in the land. The solution after you've called multiple times? Have your husband call. For some reason the male voice carries more weight and the call will be returned within the hour. *eyeroll*
The pansies and violas are in, so I guess spring is officially here.
We had Bryce's birthday cake on Sunday when my mother came over for dinner and, of course, we had THE CAKE. The candles may be confusing, since he is not turning 5, but 23. I have 2 at one end of the cake and 3 at the other....for 23.
My daughter checked in with an additional photo taken on her birthday. It looks to me like she's pretty excited about turning 20, and man, I wonder if my baby forsythia is ever going to look like that hedge behind her.
I finished off her senior year 180 Days album. It was nagging at me, so I'm glad to cross it off the list. I was going to cover the front with something....I don't know what, but in the end decided, "Yep, I'm totally good with it like this."
I used some Tim Holtz distressed letters for her high school initials. I painted them white and then just barely rubbed a navy ink pad over the top to pick up those swirls. I embossed the wooden "13" for her graduation year white.
I put a kindergarten picture along with a graduation photo, along with her initials and the year inside the back cover. Done and DONE.
