A Few Things I've Been Working On

It's been a busy 2008! I think I'm finally getting caught up at work. Of course, it's the weekend, and when I get to work tomorrow, I'll be behind again! hehehe Oh well, that's life!

Mike's cousin, David and his wife,Mary, came for a visit this past week. They're from Wisconsin and we had met them briefly back in 1988 at a wedding. We tried showing them a real Texan time! Mike and his brother, Pete, took them to Frontier Texas. That is really a great place! Pete took them to a few other places of interest and then we all met at Perini's Steak House for dinner. What a great meal! Texas at it's best!!! I think we even got Mary to say ya'll a few times. The weather was great (I think we broke a record with 85°) and when they got home she said the wind chill was minus 40°! Here we are having dinner at the steak house.

I've been working on a few things for an auction for my granddaughter's school. I doubt if they'll bring much, but I enjoyed doing them. The first picture are some burp cloths and a blanket for a baby girl and the second one are some for a baby boy.

I have bunco at my house this Tuesday, so don't know when I'll get to post again!

Breakfast for Dinner

It's not unusual for us to have breakfast for dinner. I'm not one to eat when I first wake up. In fact, I have a hard time eating a big breakfast in the morning. But, I do like having breakfast in the evening. Here's a good recipe for Buttermilk Syrup. Now, you may have to get past the name. When I tell people about buttermilk syrup, they nearly always turn up their nose. Here's all you'll need:



In a medium saucepan, stir together the sugar, buttermilk, butter, corn syrup, and baking soda.


Bring to a boil and cook for 7 minutes. Now, hopefully, you started out in a good size saucepan. See how it expands???? That's because of the baking soda. It will turn from this white foam :

to a pretty golden amber like this:


Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla.



I like to serve this over french toast, waffles, or even homemade fluffy biscuits. It's a good, but very rich tasting syrup. Hope you enjoy it




Buttermilk Syrup

1 1/2 cups withe sugar
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup butter
2 tablespoons corn syrup
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a medium saucepan, stir together the sugar, buttermilk, butter, corn syrup and baking soda. Bring to a boil and cook for 7 minutes. Remove from the heat, and stir in the vanilla.

What's Above Your Cabinets?

I'm discovering all kinds of neat decorating sites in this wonderful world of blogland! One of my favorite sites is Kari & Kijsa's blog. They are two sisters that have so much talent!!!!! Anything they touch or paint is fabulous! They did a fabric transfer of a bunny on a pillow that is just toooo cute! I wish I had just a little bit of their talent!!! I could go on and on about their amazing abilities, but instead just go over and visit their site. Next week their first issue of their newsletter, "Designing for Life" will be published. They are taking all kinds of decorating questions. I asked them for advice on decorating the tops of kitchen cabinets. (Not realizing they had done a full post on this just 10 days earlier. I've been busy lately so I'm behind on reading my blogs.) My ceilings are ten feet tall and I have different heights of cabinets, so there are really a lot of different things I can do. I'm not very creative and I'm just now getting around to trying to do some things to my kitchen.





Here are a couple of pictures to give you an idea of just how much help I need! Like I said, I think I have some great cabinets with a lot of different possibilities. I've thought about a collection of some sort. But, small things are hard to see, so it would have to be something large. Here's where you come in. What do you think I should put on top of my cabinets????

Flowers

Look what I got today! You want to know why???? My dear, sweet hubby sent them to me for our anniversary. Isn't he just the greatest??? 32 years ago today we were married. We've shared a lot in those years. Good times and bad, happy and sad. The birth of two wonderful children. The birth of two beautiful grandchildren. The loss of a father. We've lived in nine different apartments and homes. (I almost didn't count two of those places since we only lived in them a short time while we built our homes). I can't even begin to count how many vehicles we've owned in only 32 years. Anyway, I received these lovely flowers today just for loving a wonderful man. Isn't that great? Wish you could smell them!

Where Were You When The Lights Went Out?

.....I was in the shower. We lost our electricity this morning at 6:30 when I was taking a shower. Let me tell you, it's dark when all the lights go out!!!!! There's no glow from alarm clocks, no lights peeking through the windows from landscape lights, no light anywhere. Luckily I had already gotten the shampoo out of my hair. While groping for the towels, I kept telling myself to be careful and do not slip on the floors! I lit some candles and then looked outside to see that the outage was throughout the development. I started getting dress and tried putting on makeup by candlelight. You know, everything really does look better by candlelight! By candlelight you really couldn't see all my wrinkles. In fact, you really can't see much makeup, so I kept applying it. Okay, maybe I better not be putting on my makeup by candlelight anymore.

You really don't know how to appreciate something until you loose it. No hairdryer, no curling iron, no coffee. NO COFFEE, wait, I better go pour myself another cup before it gets cold! Cold? Uh-oh, no heat. It didn't take long before it started getting a little cool in the house and there I was with wet hair! This day was not getting off to a real good start. I decided to just go ahead and pack my makeup and hairdryer and head to work. Wait a minute, I can't raise the garage door with no electricity! I'm being held prisoner by my dark, unheated house!

I kept calling Mike to keep him updated of the situation . (If I was going to be inconvenienced, then so was he!) After about an hour and a half, the electricity came back on. I finished getting dressed and went to work. I am such a creature of routine and when life throws you a curve, I don't always handle it well. While driving to work I kept thinking, did I remember to unplug the coffee pot, turn off all the lights, close the garage door ......... Wait, did I even remember to put on deodorant?????? Boy, I hope I have electricity tomorrow!

Left Overs

Another good thing about weekends is that I've got more time to cook. Yesterday I fixed roasted chicken breasts, new potatoes, green beans and french bread.

And since I had extra chicken left over, I got to fix an easy meal tonight after work. We had chicken noodle soup. There's no comparison between homemade chicken noodle soup and canned soup!



Tina at Cherry Hill Cottage posted a good butter spread last week and I tried it on the french bread. It's butter, paprika and celery seed. It was really good! I love all the new recipes I'm finding on the different blogs.

Now, for a little bragging on my son. Be sure and check out Kellie's and Brandon blog. Brandon is making Kellie a nice piece of furniture. Sure wish I could twist his arm to make me some furniture! I could use some new accent tables, hint, hint.

Weekends

Weekends are a bit like rainbows; they look good from a distance but disappear when you get up close to them.


There just aren't enough days in a weekend!!!! I get to where I really cherish the days between Friday and Monday. No matter what we're doing, the hours in a weekend are so different than those during a work week. Even when we spend it working in the yard, cleaning out the attic or just relaxing, it's a completely different feeling. You would think that I don't like my job, but I do. I have never minded working, I seem to get such a feeling of accomplishment when I do my work well. But, that being said, I live for the weekends!!! We were suppose to meet J. and N. this weekend and let them test out their new travel trailer. The weather was just too cold to attempt that. I'm really looking forward to when we can get away for a short camping trip. I hope we're along when Kaylee gets to sleep in her trailer for the first time away from home! Would love to make s'mores with her. But since we weren't able to go, I did get to do a little sewing. Here's a few things I made:




Two of J's college roommates just had babies. A girl and a boy, so I made some burp cloths for them. I enjoy sewing, but I really need to find some time to get my sewing room organized! I had this Murphy bed made for it:

I had it made so that I could have the space I needed to do all the fun things I wanted. It was completed last January. Here it is a year later, and the room is still not set up the way I would like it to be. I've had a few things happen to sidetrack me, but I am determined to get my scrap booking, pictures and sewing organized. Now that I've confessed this, maybe I'll get in there and sort things out. When I do, I'll be sure and post some finished pictures.

Not Enough Time

It just doesn't seem fair. January is my busiest month of the year! A normal January is spent trying to close out the previous year's accounts, filing taxes, doing new payroll tax tables, getting out W2's and so on and so on. So a normal January is always busy. Add to that, a new computer system at work! Which means learning a whole new way of doing things and it really gets hectic! By the time I get home (even if it's my regular time), my mind is completely fried! My sweet husband gave this to me for Christmas:


I can hardly wait to start finding out what all I can do with it. But, like I said, my mind is pretty frazzled by the end of the day. So..... I guess I'll have to wait a little longer. The times I have tried to do some stuff with it, I've failed miserably. So instead of thinking that it's way above my head, I like to think it's just because I'm tired. Maybe in February I'll get to play with it and the other neat Christmas presents I received.