Your Mother Should Know ...

Scrapbookin'

I have a few layouts that I haven't shared yet.  Most of these were done during my weekend crop last month!  Thanks Kim, Andrea, Pamela, et al, for having me.  I had a wonderful time and look forward to doing it again.  

I threw this one together pretty easily -- Fancy Pants kraft papers and my current favorite subject! 

Then, I'm not sure how it works at your house, but two people use our camera but only one [me] downloads the images to the computer.  I'll find images that I know I didn't take; it takes just a second or two to figure out that DH has been snapping pics.  This layout is about what I found on our camera card one day.

Family and friends may recognize this area -- it was taken during our last trip home.  We did a very small portion of the Spoon River Festival, and these were buildings are in London Mills.

These photos were also taken during our Illinois trip -- Arcola IL.  Not so unusual to see the Amish village, but seeing the horses grazing on the highway side of the guardrail was definitely unusual.

This layout is truly amazing.  It was a round robin we did at the crop weekend.  Nine wonderfully talented women worked on this layout.  Each had five minutes, and that was it!  All I did was start it off with the polka dotted Bazzill cardstock and the black and white photo.  It was returned to me like this, and I truly love it!

I also created some layouts with the Dixie Pieces' November kit, but those will need to wait for another day.  It's time for me to hit the sack.  My "day off" is over, and I need to return to my regularly-scheduled [work] program tomorrow morning.

Favorite breakfast

 
Breaksfasts when I was a child included whatever my mom put together quickly -- she worked, was a single mom, and had three kids.  As I grew older and was able to take on my own care, I passed on breakfast and slept instead.  That continued on into adulthood, but somewhere along the line, I started eating breakfast again.  It was the quick stuff -- pop tarts, donuts, McD's bacon egg and cheese biscuit; not healthy!  This year, my standard breakfast is a piece of fruit, one boiled egg, and oatmeal or oatmeal toast.  Much healthier.  But my favorite breakfasts are those from my childhood.  Those that my mom made on weekends or holidays.

The breakfast we had on Christmas was called kuchen.  It was a homemade sweet dough, more bread than cake.  When it had risen sufficiently, Mom poked holes in the top and poured cinnamon and sugar and real cream into the holes.  It was good!  Somehow we've lost the ability to duplicate this treat -- maybe because we don't get heavy cream like that anymore.

More regularly, she fixed us breakfast rice.  It's a long-grained rice, boiled until almost done, then butter and sugar is added, and it steams finished.  Very good.  My kids enjoyed this but guests or those who have married into the family think it's unappetizing at first.  That's okay though because it leaves more for the rest of us.

My all-time favorite is Mom's fried corn meal mush.  She uses yellow cornmeal to create the mush -- it's like thick and sticky hot breakfast cereal.  Then she fries it in the skillet until it's crispy on both sides.  From the skillet to the plate, add butter and syrup (just like  pancakes), some crispy bacon and a glass of milk.  I could eat this stuff until I'm sick! 

I've never fixed it myself.  It's a lot of work for breakfast, and we don't do those often with our schedules.  Plus it was nice having my mom make it for me the few times she's done so over the last twenty years.  She cooks for her adult children and their families because it's how she shows her love for us, and we eat it because it tastes wonderful!  But we also love her back.

Yep!  Definitely my favorite breakfast.  It's not all about the food either; it's about the love and the memories.

Dixie Pieces' 1st online class starts Monday

Dixie Pieces welcomes Tammy Malone, who offers the DP first online class. And it's free!  Tammy is a published paper and mixed media artist. She is currently on the PK Glitz manufacturers' design team, the ScrapFriends design team, and has guest designed for both Flair Designs and Dixie Pieces.

This one-week class will begin on October 19th and include a lesson each day. The first of three projects in this class will be a napkin ring, and Tammy will cover three unique techniques that she used to create this lovely piece of home decor. She will cover each of the techniques over a three-day span, but you could easily create several of these in one afternoon. Once the napkin ring is complete, we will make a very simple fall card that is sure to amaze your friends and family. We will finish the week with one of Tammy's all-time favorite techniques: making your own embellishments!

To register, list your name in this post, and we will provide you access to the class forum. We were unable to get the store item it work well and have changed registation to this post.

 

So here's the deal!

When a person (that would be ME) has a blog, the person is supposed to POST to the blog!  I have things to post about; really I do.  I just don't have a lot of time right now.  For instance, I received the most beautiful and positive email today from a woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer a year ago and beat it.  Tomorrow she is facing another surgery -- preventative in nature but somewhat related.  If you read this blog and believe in the power of prayer, shoot one up about 1pm PDT for Nanc.  And, Nanc, just so you hear it again: you are amazing and inspire me in many ways!  Go, girl!

Then there's my darling 3-year-old grandson who ran his first jog-a-thon this morning.  DD, we will be happy to drop a check in the mail for more than promised; just tell us who to make it out to.  We are very interested to hear how he did.  And see pictures of course.  :)

Then there's this:

On my gosh, I am in 7th heaven!  I can have four decent sized windows displayed at once -- or two windows and a movie played on widescreen.  :)  And in case you're wondering, the color on the left monitor is just as vibrant as the one of the right but I took the photo without flash and had a desk lamp on just out of the photo on the left side.  So cool!

And for my scrapbooking friends, there's this layout.  It's one I completed with the October Dixie Pieces kit.  The tag you see was one we created at Summer CHA at Donna Downey's make-and-take table.  Autographed, too!  :)  Donna challenged us to use it, and I've done that!

Okay, that's it.  Let's see if I can post again before the weekend!  :) 
 

New Scrapbook Kit is Up at Dixie Pieces

and you can preview it on the Dixie Pieces site or watch the video here:

We picked the last of the blueberries!

We picked the last of the blueberries this weekend.  We being the "royal" we (thanks, DH).  That's five quarts of blueberries that have been frozen one cookie tray at a time and then bagged for the freezer.  I see many blueberry smoothies and bowls of oatmeal with frozen blueberries in our future.

We offered to share but didn't really have any takers.  Not true, of course.  I think our neighbor may have picked a few.  And we had one call from a darling young man asking for blueberries from "Damma Sherry's" garden!  Now that would have gotten a response from me -- "okay, dear D, did you want them right now?  Can I go pick a few and drive them up to you today (1.5 hours one way)?"  But, I wasn't home when he called.  His grandpa was and took the call.  And promised D that he would have his blueberries; Dampa Wabert even picked them himself.  Such a surprise, really, that the man I married 28 years ago is a sucker for a three-year old.  I LOVE it!  Now D has a matched set of devoted and sentimental suckers for grandparents!  LOL 

Dear D, Damma and Dampa love you, and you can have all the blueberries you want.  I'm sure they'll be perfect after momma cleans them for ya.  She has the magic touch; we just pick em.

It Finally Bloomed!!

We bought a hibiscus later in the season in 2006.  We knew we wouldn't get any blooms until 2007, but we thought we'd see something!  All we saw was a stick in the ground.  Nor did it bloom in 2007 or 2008.  Much of that may have been our fault -- too much sun, not enough water, we moved it, we planted with our left hands instead of our right during the dark side of the moon.  Who knows!  And now we don't care because it finally bloomed this weekend!  And it is spectacular!  And it's a hot pink; who knew?  Check it out.

Stepping Stones

So my DD's MIL was enjoying a tour of West Seattle gardens when she found some stepping stones that she liked.  She investigated and learned there was a lovely woman who taught stepping stone classes, and that led to a girls night out!  We left the men to their own entertainment choices and headed off to class.  This scheduled event was somewhat interrupted and definitely overshadowed by the official adoption ceremony earlier in the day, but that's another story for another time!

Here's what I made with some help from my friends!  It's in my garden; but I haven't picked a permanent home for it yet.  I think I'd like to make a couple more. 

 

My impressions of the process:  it's not hard but you have to work quickly before the mortar sets up.  I think it would be fun to put some "found" objects in it.  Although I didn't actually do it, it appears to require some arm/upper body strength to mix the mortar (thanks, Krista, for mixing my mortar for me).  And it takes almost a week to re-moisturize your hands after making one of these!

If you're in the Seattle area and would like to try something like this yourself, email annette.iverson at hotmail dot com

Summer Breeze

I was reminded of this song on Thursday night and realized I hadn't done a Thumpin' Thursday for a while.  It took me 30 minutes or more to remember the artists' name!  LOL  Enjoy this oldie from Seals and Croft:

Who are you and what did you do with August?

What in the world happened?  I blinked and six weeks of my life disappeared!  LOL  Let's see if I can catch up. 

1st week:  Left the last week of July for CHA in Orlando.  I can describe the trip in one word:  HOT!  For those of you wanting to hear about CHA -- I'm sorry.  My head is above ground now, but it's old news.

2nd week:  When we returned, I was sick for a week but didn't take care of myself so

3rd week:  Spent another week recovering and listless.

On the 17th, Dear Damien's adoption was official, and we celEbrATEd!!  Cameras were in hand and we were all taking pictures.  That little darling is wealthy in the grandparent department.

4th and 5th weeks:  I spent the last two weeks of August putting my energy into the final push of a work project.  At night, all I wanted to do was vege!

This last week was spent picking up bits of project tasks at work and working a little at night on DixiePieces stuff.  I would say 90% of the product we ordered at CHA is here, and is sure is fun to see all that stuff.

What can I say?  My life is FULL.  And apparently I like it that way because I just keep adding more! I'm not sure how things get done.  Well, I do know!  Sometimes, blogs have to come off the list, and you only have time to deal with those things on fire. ;)