It is......

A totally awesome NEW camera!! Yipeeeee!

and....my hubby surprised me with a nice get together of my very good friends, some whom I haven't seen for a few months. What a nice evening. Everyone brought some food and we had some nice wine.

The funny part is, we did have shrimp and pasta! I didn't have to make it. My dear friend brought some great Italian food over.

Thanks hubby honey! I love you...

Tomorrow I'll post some really good pics!!

I'm 35 today....

And what a day it is.

My dear husband's grandfather passed away to be with Jesus this morning.

My father-in-law just got out of the hospital last night, and my hubby is taking a 2 hour drive back and forth to help him out. (Isn't he awesome?)

My sister is (over)due with #8 any minute, seriously. And she lives all the way out in Montana! (I'm in PA)



My children made me breakfast! (No, not the papaya, it's just a pretty picture of fruit...)

We are having ice cream sundaes in the middle of the day.


I just bought myself a Senseo coffee maker and enough coffee pods to last me a year, a hair dryer and hot rollers with my birthday money.

I just love Amazon.com. Free shipping and lots of cool rebates, gift packs, and $10 off deals. I got a lot for very little!! Thanks family!
(I'm just drooling for that coffee...)


We are having a shrimp pasta dinner. In the words of Rachel Ray "YUMMO"
and watching a good family flick. That's our favorite family chill out time lately, dinner and a movie.

And I'm so excited to open the "mysterious package" hubby got in the mail for me.

I'll let you know what it is soon!



I'm so thankful to make it to another birthday. It's been a long 8 months since I've been sick. God is GOOD and His mercies are EVERLASTING, great is HIS faithfulness!

The healthier shortening

I want to share with you a healthier alternative to the regular old shortening everyone uses. My hubby can't have butter (lactose intolerant) and so I use shortening for pie crusts and some cookies so he can continue to enjoy these treats.



Shortening is normally made with hydrogenated oils. Spectrum makes one without.


"Partial hydrogenation is an industrial process used to make a perfectly good oil, such as soybean oil, into a perfectly bad oil. The process is used to make an oil more solid; provide longer shelf-life in baked products; provide longer fry-life for cooking oils, and provide a certain kind of texture or "mouthfeel." The big problem is that partially hydrogenated oil is laden with lethal trans fat.

One of the reasons that partially hydrogenated oils are used is to increase the product's shelf life, but they decrease your shelf life.

Trans fats cause significant and serious lowering of HDL (good) cholesterol and a significant and serious increase in LDL (bad) cholesterol; make the arteries more rigid; cause major clogging of arteries; cause insulin resistance; cause or contribute to type 2 diabetes; and cause or contribute to other serious health problems."

To sum it up...READ LABELS ON YOUR FOOD!



It's being put into just about everything...Bread, crackers, cookies, cakes.

Fast food is loaded with it.


Take control of your health by educating yourself and reading what goes into your food.

(info and quotes from www.bantransfats.com)

It's a sad sad thing....

My camera broke. Yep. It did.

I am now unable to capture anything! Boo hoo, snik.

Of course the camera that I want to replace my old one is like, uh, 400 bucks...
That's not even a birthday present! So, for now, I will have pictureless posts and will have to rely on my amazing descriptive abilities (or not).

I have a few pics stored on my computer for future posts, so I may bless you with those from time to time.

Snik.

Snik.

(click on my ads! maybe I can make enough money that way!)

What is THAT?

Ewww... doesn't this look gross?




Well it kind of is....
It's chicken bones, skin and fat floating in water.

Contrary to the "American Diet" chicken fat and all that good stuff IS actually good for you and has very beneficial properties.

Obviously, everything in moderation, but it is a healthy broth and best of all YOU know what's in it. There are no additives, just good ole' broth and a little sea salt.

If you cook it for a couple of hours you get this beautiful stuff.




I strain it into some plastic containers when cooled and pop it into the freezer for future soups or sauces.


I'm all for economizing these days.

No waste and it tastes SO good!

Dead Batteries....

Why is it that my camera batteries always die at the most inopportune time?



I managed to snap a few of the topiaries that I made for the featured artist show at Thirstade.

Thirstade Fresh Cafe is found in West Reading, PA on the main street going through town. They have the best coffee ever! and hot cocoa, smoothies, yummy wraps and sandwiches.

Mark, the owner, now features a different artist every month to support the local arts. He kindly has allowed me to feature my topiaries for the month of October.


You can see the yellow rose topiaries in the front window (if you look very carefully, there is also a square dark boxwood topiary in the other window)



These are several of the topiaries on small shelves on the wall. Since my batteries died, I wasn't able to capture my big topiaries in different parts of the store.



















Since it is an "artist" show, we decided to name the topiaries.

"Blueberry Tea"




















"No Smoothie for Me"

(get it? it's a store that sells smoothies...?)

(Other names are "Very Vine" "Rosey" "Feathers" "Mr. Who" "Fall Fiesta" but they didn't make it into the pictures, batteries, sigh...)

Oh, and the pink trees. Yes, they will soon be replaced by some kind of fun topiary or branch sculpture designed by me! They are in front of the cutest sweet shoppe that bakes cupcakes and cookies.

My first picture-less post...

Hi ya'll. No food or decor or boy post today.

I'm busy getting ready for my topiary show as a "featured artist of the month" at a local cafe. I'll try to capture some pics of the topiaries I'm putting in the show and post them soon!

Happy October!

At last...My bathroom gets a face-lift

This post is for my mom! (Hi MOM!) I know you can't drive all this way to see my bathroom makeover so this is the next best thing! I love you and miss you both (hi DAD.)



My bathroom...



Out of all the rooms in the house, the master bath room was the most atrocious. Here's the reason...




The hideous "doctor's office" wallpaper!



This paper has not one, but TWO layers. The second paper one had to be removed by wetting it and scraping.
Here's what was under 2 layers of "marbled" wall paper. It's terra cotta (which by itself could be alright) but it was sponge painted with GOLD!

I found some "oops" paint at Lowes for $5 last year....





Before....
After
I decided to do this project (after it had been on my "to-do" list ALL summer long) while Bill was on an overnight business trip. It's more fun to do all of this work if it's a surprise.



We've been ripping wall paper off slowly over the past 8 months or so. This is our ugly bathroom with one layer off.
The before before look. Hmmm...I can understand the concept of covering this paint job with wall paper, but where'd they get this wall paper from? This is not an office space folks!
After

(I couldn't get the fan cover to pop back in!)
Before
and after.
Before...


After...



I really love the contrast of the white trim and accessories with the green paint.
My bathroom feels like such a sanctuary!
Here's a good before shot.
and after
I (bravely) removed the mirror and put it back on all by myself!


I'm trying not to spend too much time in here now....











How's that for a $5 make-over?

Scrippito...

Here's another fun thing we did at the Hay Creek Festival.

Scrippito.

Scrippito is carving on two layers of rolled out clay exposing the darker bottom layer.

The lady running the both had some very beautiful pieces and showed the boys how to carve.Each child was allowed to draw in one square.

Logan made a sunflower.

Lance made a design, top right hand corner.

Liam taking a stab at it.

His is the viney one in the center.

It was fun to see what designs they came up with.

Ahhh...PEARS

There's something idyllic about pears...


So beautiful!


OH, yeah, anyway, pears. Where was I? Today, I will show you my favorite way to eat pears. I like them fresh, but they are even better poached in cinnamon and spices. This takes me back to my childhood. Having been born in Holland, I have a plethora (I love that word!)of favorite dishes that I really miss and don't get to eat very often. I've found some recipes on the internet over the years so I can replicate them. This isn't the exact recipe but it's pretty darn close!


You do need to peel the pears and core them. I use a melon baller kind of thing to scoop out the innards. Make sure your pears aren't too ripe, just barely. They will get cooked anyway and need to be firm.

Do you like my blue gloved hand? My hands are SO dry and I'm trying to keep from having to wash them with soap too often. I digress...but thought I should explain.


Place the pears in a large pan. The size depends on how many pears you are using. I like to use apple juice, you can use cider as well, I just didn't have any on hand.

Use 100% apple juice, let's keep it healthy folks! Add a couple of cinnamon sticks, a shake of cloves, nutmeg, whatever floats your boat. Oh, and vanilla. A good teaspoon or more. (The real stuff!)


And then just simmer on low for a while. The longer you let them sit the more they absorb the flavors.

Okay, you need the amount of time? Maybe an hour, more or less is fine. Then let it cool down completely if you are putting them into plastic containers. (Me and plastic don't mix when it comes to heating it, BAD for you...)

Remove the cinnamon sticks.


I put mine into two quart glass jars, I still can't believe that all those pears, and all I have show for it is 2 stinkin' quarts...and those boys eat them so fast!

I'm the mean "canner", I don't let anyone touch the canned stuff till it's all WAY out of season.

These are outrageously good. Dessert quality.

Enjoy Fall's bounty.