Beautiful Skies

I have so much to post, but its already after 10:30 my time and I'm tired, so this is a sampling of the last couple of weeks in my life.

Today I'm just going to share the skies. They have been moving me and inspiring me with gratitude all week.

We spent the last week in Newport Beach.
Love, Love, Love, this part of S. California!!!

We had a wonderful time. Thanks to Aunt Jan for introducing this resort to my parents, and to my parents for inviting us to join them there. Quite hard to leave. Seriously.
These next four pictures were all taken on different days and at different times, either in Laguna or Newport.

These next four pictures are from Colorado. Love this place too!  The bottom one is a side view of Pike's Peak. The first three are recent photos, and that one is from last summer. Since "America the Beautiful," feels like the theme song for where I live, it just felt appropriate to add it in.

I had a humbling conversation with the clerk at Trader Joe's on Thursday. (Yes, it was bliss to go there again. We went twice! Yay! And all my glass bottles made it home safely in my suitcase, even after TSA inspected them. Double yay!) I felt the need to explain that I was stocking up because I don't live close to a Trader Joe's anymore, and when he found out I was from CO he said, "Everyone thinks its so beautiful to live by the ocean, but I think it would be beautiful to live by the mountains too." He'd never been able to see the Rockies. He only knew what it was like to live by the ocean. I told him that both were beautiful but in different ways. I realized how blessed I have been in my life, to live by both the water and the mountains. I have gotten to sample some pretty amazing skies and they continue to inspire me. We live on such a beautiful earth! O Beautiful for spacious skies!

Basketball

Last week of basketball. It got a little intense last week, three afterschool games, but I go to them all.

He's the one closest to us, with the orange stripe in his shorts. Isn't he getting tall? I think he's growing about an inch a month. I had to buy him new Sunday pants again last week and I have to look up to him when we have a conversation on his way out the door.

He has made some shots and he's had games where he's shotless. (Is that a word? My computer doesn't think so.) He likes it best when he makes his shots, but even when he doesn't, he still likes to be there after school.  It gets him playing with his friends, keeping busy, being physical, which I'm convinced all boys need, and having fun. Its most fun when he plays against his friends. Afterwards they text each other for a half hour about their shots and others' and who's really good and they tease each other. Typical boy stuff.

This is an intramural league, and so far, he's only lost one game. A couple of their wins were really close. Last week one went into double overtime!  Anyhow, Its been great and I think he'll be sad its coming to an end. His buddies are joining Track and Field which starts after Spring Break. He can't decide if he wants to run that much. We'll see.

Western Pemberly

http://i1251.photobucket.com/albums/hh546/Ladybugmontyy/CTMH.jpg

Sorry that photo was just too big for the page that I had pasted here, so copy and paste the link above to see the cuteness I'm talking about.


Cowgirl, this is for you - some super cute pages made using the Old West Cricut cartridge and our Pemberly paper pack. Of course, I thought of you. This was made by another Close To My Heart consultant who clearly knows how to make her pages FUN! This year the convention is in Dallas so there's a Western feel to it. Its not a paper packet I would have thought of for Western photos, so just goes to show you that there are always lots of options out there.

Good Recipes

A couple of weeks ago I bought a few too many tortillas. Don't ask me what I was thinking. I have white, wheat, and corn. So, what to make to use them up?  I found what sounded like a good recipe for chicken tortilla soup but it didn't have any tortillas in it. Mmmm. So, I decided I needed to make some adaptations.  It also served 8-10 and I only needed it to serve 4, so I cut it down, then I modified it as I went, tasting with each addition, until I have my own version of:

30 minute Chicken Tortilla Soup


1 can Costco chicken (Rotisserie would be wonderful, but I didn't have any)
1/2 red onion, diced
2 T. olive oil
3 T. butter
3 T. flour
2 cans (14oz.) chicken stock
2 c. half and half (fat-free, light, or whole)
1 T. chili powder
1 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
2 cans cannelini beans
2 cans (4oz.) green chilies
1 cup mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
3 corn tortillas, chopped in small 1/2 inch pieces 


In stock pot, cook onion in butter and olive oil. Add flour and whisk until mixed well. Then add liquids. Bring to a boil and simmer until thickened. Turn to low. Stir in seasoning. Add beans, chilies, chicken, and cheese. Cook for 15 minutes. Add tortillas and cilantro and cook for another 5 minutes. Serve to rave reviews! My Mike loved this!!! We all did. Serves 5.




A couple of weeks ago my mom and I went to Liz's house to learn how to make bread. Both she and her husband have been making it for years. Now I have made bread many times, but at 7000 ft. its just not been behaving the way I wanted it to. It was always too flat and just didn't taste as delicious as I wanted it to, so when Liz told me she makes it all the time and offered to come show me how, I said, just whenever you're going to make it, give me a call and I'll run on up and watch the expert in motion. It was a wonderful demonstration but I didn't have any dough enhancer. That came on Monday, so I was excited to try it out.


Liz's Whole Wheat Bread - from Bosch
3 1/2 cup warm water 
1 T. salt
1/3 c. canola oil
1/3 c. honey
1 1/2 T. dough enhancer
1 1/2 T. instant yeast
2 T. vital wheat gluten
7 cups whole wheat flour (not an exact amount. I used up all 6 cups I had in my pantry then added a couple more cups of white bread flour.)


Add water and several (4) cups of ground whole wheat flour to mixer with dough hooks attached. (This works well with a Bosch or K-Tec mixer that have the plastic bowls.) Mix water and flour with a few brief kneading rounds in the mixer. Then add salt, honey, enhancer, yeast, and gluten,  and mix briefly on high. Now knead on low speed, while slowly adding flour until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. You don't want to add too much, so you have to watch it at the end until  it just starts to pull away. Knead for 8 -12 minutes in mixer until it gets smooth. Form into 2-3 greased loaf pans. Let rise in warm place til double in size (this only took about 40 minutes) and bake at 350 for 30-40- minutes. Brush butter over the tops when it first comes out. Let cool slightly then remove from pans.

Note that when you first put them in the pans that you've sprayed with cooking spray, I was told by Liz to take the side of your hand and put a dent in them down the middle. This way when they rise, they are more level.

They turned out wonderful after only 30 minutes of baking. Love the flavor. Love the texture. Love that we now have bread again though it may not last that long. Homemade bread is more like a treat at our house than anything. Maybe if I start making it regularly the novelty will wear off. . . . we'll see.

Craftiness Ahead

I sent out four cards this week. Here's one, using colored chalks to color the card. I love the watercolor effect they create. I have a serious ribbon collection/hoarding/addiction, whatever you want to call it, thus most cards I make have to have a piece somewhere. As the colors were muted for the background I thought a brighter ribbon would draw the eye to the center where the design and sentiment are.

MyGirl is breaking out the knitting needles again for more dish cloths. They are the perfect weight and absorbency. Lucky the recipient who receives these!

The last block of my quilt is not going well, so I took a break this week to scrapbook some 2011 activities. Here is our October pic of the farm. All the photos I think I've posted before, but notice how this has a flipflap on the left side.

This is how the page looks at first, so you can see how easy it is to use the flipflaps to hide more photos. I recently started this with two friends who came over to see how interactive pages work. They were excited at the possibilities. The Close To My Heart "Magic" how-to book teaches how to make lots of these kinds of layouts, but its being discontinued soon. In fact as soon as they sell out they're gone. If you're interested, I've included a shopping link on the right side of my blog. Just click and it should take you right there. If not, then go to sumscrapbook.myctmh.com for the website. Go to "Shop Online," create a fast account, and you're ready. The best part, though, if you go to the bottom of the shopping area, it will have a section called While Supplies Last. There you can find items up to 80% off the retail price!! They're only there until they sell out as well, so check it out if you're interested in crafting bargains!

When I typed up the journaling it was the same size as the background. I'm going to go back and cut a larger background space for that, but today, this is just laying on top.

Here is Thanksgiving. Notice the large floral spaces and then the layout of the pictures. Because the photos move you from left to right, at a downhill slope your eye notices the flowers, but doesn't get stuck there. Darker colors fade while brighter colors pop out.

Thus, the title is set in the white space to draw your attention to it, accented with buttons. If I don't use ribbon, you can be sure I'm using buttons. Those are my "go to" embellishments. 

I like to have photos in order of events when I put them in rows, thus the beginning of the clean-up is followed by food to be put away, the kitchen when it is cleaned and the games that were played afterwards. Telling the story is really the point of scrapbooking, and I like things chronologically organized.

This is my birthday. As MyGirl doesn't like her picture taken often, there isn't a lot of use of pink around here, so this was fun to make. I kept it very simple.

I wanted to remember most how my sweet mother made this day special for me, so I accented our photo, which is isolated,  together with a mat around it, and kept the rest of the pictures lined up in a row.

For the title, I started adding a little bling, then more  and pretty soon it was just surrounded. Oh well, it is my birthday. I also stamped on my pages, which doesn't happen a lot, but here I used number stamps to create the look of a button, with my age on it. Sad to see how big that number is getting.

Here I stamped in chocolate ink then used colored pencils to fill in the cake with the colors that coordinate with the rest of the page. The balloon and string are also inked, the balloon using Tulip ink.

Now for an update. Over five years ago I created this canvas wall hanging for our family picture. With our newest family photos in, I swapped out the photo. So glad I had used repositionable adhesive (Hermafix Dotto brand) and it was easy to replace. This photo's colors were perfect. The "family" letters on top are chipboard, with just a little Desert Sand ink sponged on a few and also adhered using respositionable glue.  I left off the quote tag on the bottom. I can't decide if its going back on or not.

And, I finally got a large sized family photo. This is 18 x 24. My photographer came over yesterday to bring it by. The 8 x 10 picture above has better smiles, but I just loved this red barn background, and the large branch overhead. The photographer and I had talked about how this would make a great background and it did. Our family doesn't take fantastic photos, as a rule, and I've made peace with that. However, I wanted to remember this time when it was cold and we were getting ready to send our boy to Brazil. Its the last full day we were all together, so its a precious memory for me, and I absolutely love it and actually I think this is a pretty good picture of us all. I think this weekend would be a good time to get it hung up in the dining room, don't you?

Indoor Activities

When its cold outside we find indoor things to do. Last week we had a day off of school which was surprising because they'd just had President's Day and a teacher workday and then yesterday they had another teacher work day. So, the kids have been home a lot.

 MyGirl decided to do small braids all over her head last week. She and I put them in and spritzed her hair with water and let them dry for 24 hours. This is what they looked like the next day. Cool! But, she hated the front, so I'm forbidden to show that picture.

 I made buttermilk bread in the bread machine and it turned out at this altitude. Yeah! As you can see the loaf was half eaten by the time I took pictures. It was yummy. Then yesterday I learned how to make homemade whole wheat bread at this altitude.

Right now I'm taking a break from my "filing project." Yes, the one I've been putting off for 13 months. I started two days ago. I don't think I'll be done for a couple of weeks, but the first drawer is half of what it used to be, and this is good. Very good! And, as you can see, after two days, I have now found other ways to procrastinate even while I'm in the middle of it, like blogging, going to quilt guild and bread making.

We've seen horses out behind us recently. A fun change from the cattle, though they're all mixed in with each other and don't seem to mind. 

Littlebuddy is now a basketball player. He's had two games and loves it. However, the photos I took of the first game, he forbid me to put online. The second game he made 5 points and one was even a hook shot, but I forgot the camera that day. Of course! And, I'm still behind in learning how to download from my phone, which is in constant need of being changed. How smart is a phone if it can't even hold a charge longer than 24 hours? I have my doubts. No smarter than I am, clearly. Last night, while I filed, he watched TV, in a football jersey, because that's just the way we are. Equal opportunity sports wearers.

So, while its been cold and we've had some more snow, I can't complain - Those poor folks in the Midwest with all those tornadoes. Last I heard 78 in one day. Scary stuff. So sad for all the families who lost loved ones. Life is so fragile. Gotta just keep loving the ones we're with every day.