I got a few vintage style bottle brush trees from KD Designs and plan to embellish them for boxtop scenes.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Christmas Crafts and Cookies
I got a few vintage style bottle brush trees from KD Designs and plan to embellish them for boxtop scenes.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Christmas Decorations
This year we did not cut down our own Christmas tree. The fam allowed me to put up my two white trees and they let me have a PINK Christmas!
This is a pic of a little set I found at a flea mkt last summer for $5. The little elf is so cute, holding a snowball with the other arm wrapped around her dog.
This is an AWESOME vintage store poster that I got last year at the thrift store. There were two and I got them both for a couple of bucks. The frame was $10 at Salvation Army.
Below are just a bunch of pictures of some of my favorite ornaments:
I love this little girl because she reminds me of the doll on the Island of Misfit Toys.
10 cent Santa!
I love bottle brush trees.
I hope everyone has a safe and happy Christmas. Don't forget, it's really Jesus' birthday! Merry Christmas!
Shhhhhh! Don't tell Dad....
Friday, November 14, 2008
November Blessings
Blessing #1) Work on the cottage continues. Here are my helpers painting the porch. It's getting a little chilly now so the rest of the painting may have to wait for warmer days. I now have an electrician and a plumber lined-up to get the last of the major repairs done. We have to be ready for inspection by January in order to get the construction loan changed to a mortgage. I pray every night that the Lord will work out this time-table! And so far, He has been doing great, by providing me with willing workers!
Blessing #2) Earlier this month we were able to see Sarah Palin at one of the "last-ditch" republican rallies. She is quite a woman.
Am I a Senior Citizen Already???
Sunday, October 19, 2008
October-FEST!
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Break out the PB & J! It's school-time!
Because I didn't win any of the summer auctions for Core 300 on Ebay, I was delayed in ordering our schoolbooks brand new (OUCH$$$) from the publisher. But they finally arrived and school has started! That's "Pudd" (as in Pudding) in the photo with our FedEx delivery. She's not the only one who is a little disappointed that summer is over!
We all know that with school comes PB & J sandwiches. Guess what! I tried my hand at jelly making for the first time last week. My next door neighbor has a mulberry tree just dripping with bunches of grapes. Huh? Well, previous tenents of that home planted grape vines and they have since been uncared for and have grown up wild inside the adjacent mulberry tree!
Well, my son and I took a few minutes to pick some bunches and brought in a couple of plastic grocery bags 1/2 full. I plucked and washed the grapes then went to the internet to google for recipes. Here is what I used: http://www.pickyourown.org/grapejelly.htm
That recipe called for 5 lbs of grapes and I only had 2! Oh, well. I figured I'd just cut the recipe in half...or so...I'm not too good at math.
The first thing to do was mash up the grapes.
The next thing to do was boil them and mash them some more.
Then you get this gross purple paste that you have to seive the juice from. WARNING: Any drop of this splashed on your 1940's antique red & white inlaid formica table will stain it! Yikes! Wipe it quick!
You should now have 5 cups of pure organic grape juice...well, I only had 1.25 measley cups. But that didn't stop me! I was gonna make this work!
Next you put the juice back in the pot and add some pectin. I figured about 1/2 a box would do. Then add the sugar. The recipe called for 7 cups sugar added to 5 cups of juice and that sounded to me a bit much. So I did some quick ratios in my head, ("Hmmm, let's see...7:5....2:1 1/4 ...ya, that sounds about right...") and poured about 2 cups of sugar into the bubbling mix. It got nice and gooey and I poured it into two little jelly jars that someone gave me last year. I DID sterilize them in the dishwasher.
I screwed the metal lids on them and let them cool before putting them in the fridge.
Now take a look at my breakfast this morning!
Isn't it lovely?! And it tastes as good as Welch's! OK...It didn't come out perfectly...it's more like sticky jam than jelly, but it spreads wonderfully! When I told this story to my friend Jennifer, whom I affectionately call "Martha Stewart", she kept interrupting me saying, "You can't DO that! You can't DO that!" Well, I did. Now where's my peanut butter?