Can You Believe it???

Can you believe we have already gone through the month of January?  It was here, and now it is gone. I just finished a 3 week digital art journaling class from my favorite website of all time... http://www.jessicasprague.com/.  It had to be one of the most challenging, but fun classes I have ever taken.  Take a look at some of my pages...which I cannot wait to get into a book.

Journaling prompt: Escape
On this escape page, I scanned in an old Western Union telegram I found in Jane's old things.  You can see it on the left hand side of the page.  The photo frames are from old pictures of hers as well.  

Prompt: favorite
I truly miss my cat.  I notice Pioneer Woman had a post about her great cats.  I will match mine to hers any day

prompt: found
This is my heart for sure...thank you, Lord for your grace and mercy.  I am nothing without You.

Prompt: friend
There is no friend like my friend Pat... on the left...me on the right.

prompt: halcyon

The bikes are in honor of my man who finds his halcyon on a bike.

prompt: inherit
My parents.  I added a touch of blush and color to her lips just for fun.

prompt: time
There is never enough time--so it seems. 

prompt: journey
 I want adventure!

prompt: listen
We all need to listen more.  Luke used to tell me I never listened...but he does talk a lot.

prompt: song
I loved this quote from Ronald Reagan.   

prompt: strength

I get my strength from my God and the man he gave me.  I love Warren. 

prompt: travel
Thank you, Jane for making sure I have more pages in my book.

prompt: fear
The verse says it all!

This art journaling class finished, and I have started a new one called "Flash of Brilliance" which is how to use an external flash.  Tomorrow will be day 3 and already I have learned so much...mostly on how little I know.  Truly, I did learn a lot in that first day.  I will be stalking friends and family to use as subjects for my assignments.  Poor Warren has already been "shot."  Beware!

The Big Pantry Clean-up

Warren and I had to go out to eat lunch yesterday.  Why? Well my kitchen was a total mess, disaster, and obstacle course.  In keeping with my word for the year, "purge," I had decided to tackle the cleaning out and organizing of my pantry.  This was not a spur of the moment decision.  If any of you have read the Mitford series by Jan Karon, you know of the dreaded armoire story.  Cynthia, one of the main characters, has to prepare her husband, Father Tim, a whole year in advance for moving their armoire.  It became known as the 'dreaded armoire' of which she would occasionally remind her husband throughout the year was happening on such and such date.  I followed her example in deciding a date in advance (not a whole year though), and then prayed nothing would come up to thwart my plans.  Nothing did.  I pulled everything out of my pantry and when I got everything out, I looked around in amazement that all this stuff was inside that little, tiny area.  My whole kitchen floor was covered with spill over in the dining and living room.  Truly an embarrassing sight... to think I had let it get so bad!

With all this, can you believe sometimes I couldn't think of a thing to fix to eat!

Some of the spill over.

Rather than reline my shelves, I patched worn out areas with green duct tape.   Green and yellow...Baylor colors!

I thought I would have this task done by lunch time, but I was just fooling myself.  It took me all day.  I finished the last detail as Warren walked in the door at 5 p.m.  Whew!  I love opening the door now and gazing upon my newly cleaned and organized pantry.  I even made labels so Warren would know where to find things...well, and me too!  Now to keep it that way.

The After... left side...

and the right side.

Now the next major area to tackle will be the garage.  I do not plan to do that by myself.  In keeping with the Mitford 'dreaded armoire' tradition, I have warned my man that the 'dreaded garage clean-up' will take place in April or May, depending on how long our March winds hang around.  I am loving my new word for the year! Purge.

Power outage

Yesterday, I came home from church, drove into my driveway, hit the garage door opener, and nothing happened.  I hit it again.  Still nothing.  Warren and I went to church in separate cars since he had to make rounds at the hospital, so I thought he might be home.  I called our land line.  No answer.  I called his cell phone, and thank goodness he answered it.  I asked him where he was..."at home."  Hmmm.  Why did he not answer the phone?  It seems it did not ring.  Then he noticed all the electricity was off.  Why do men not notice the little details?  We were deciding what to do for lunch...peanut butter sandwiches.  No.  He did not like that idea.  He thought we should go to Zen diner.  Just as we were getting ready to leave the electricity came back on.  Yeah!  I wanted to stay home anyway since we were having hurricane gale winds outside.  And that's just what we did, for which I was so glad because there is nothing I like more than to have Fluffle for my noon meal after church.  Some of you may be asking, "What in the world is Fluffle?"  It is the most wonderful, puffy, much like french toast  breakfast dish.  It is easy and great tasting.  And it doesn't just have to be for breakfast.

I make it in a cast iron skillet, but you can use any 9 "pan.  It puffs up really tall, then collapses after it is taken out of the oven.  Serve with fresh fruit, maple syrup, and with a sprinkling of powdered sugar.  Yum!

Here's the recipe:
Heat oven to 425 degrees
In a blender beat 4 eggs- 2 minutes.  Add one cup of milk, 1 cup of flour, 1 TBS. sugar, 1/4 tsp. of salt.  Blend well, scrape sides, blend again.  Put 1/3 cup butter in a 9" pan and place in hot oven to melt.  Watch this closely or the butter will burn.  When melted, take the pan out of the oven, pour in batter and bake 20 minutes or until nicely browned.  Serve.

Tonight I have been warned that I have to start getting ready for bed at 9:30.  I have to go...it is 9:40 and I am being informed of the time.  Later everyone.

The Sleep Over

I will admit I am a tad behind getting this posted, but better late than never.  Right?  It all started on January 13th.  I wonder if my thinking was a little off because of the date...Friday, the 13th.  Probably not.  I had this brilliant idea of having the grandkids over to spend the night for several reasons.

1. We didn't have them over on our normal weekly time.  I had a workshop I wanted to attend.

2. I wanted to give Ian and Laurie a break from their children.  All parents need that now and then.

3. It was an experiment to see how they would do on a sleep over.  If all went well, we'd do it more often.

4. I was insane.

5. Warren said it was okay.  

Do I look insane?  

I decided it would be best to have a very healthy meal.  So I got all the ingredients to have a "build your own pizza" entree.  Warren started helping them, so I had to tell him that he wasn't allowed to help in any way.  This was a kid night, no matter the mess.  We did have some cherry tomatoes to go with our pizzas.   How healthy can you get?  Of course, we had to have the finest, healthiest drinks to wash down the healthy pizzas, so we had orange soda pop.  It has to be made from oranges doesn't it...the FDA would surely not let there be any false labels.  We followed all this with healthy "build your own sundaes."  They scooped their own ice cream, crushed their own Oreo cookies, and added chocolate syrup to their heart's desire.  We did have one problem...their bowls were too small.  I could tell by the fact that Oreo cookie crumbs were right up to the brim.  One dip with a spoon, and it would be all over the table.  So we just got larger bowls.  While they were eating their desserts, Pawpaw read the devotional and asked questions.  Reid was concerned it would be really long, and was relieved when it only took about 5 minutes...and he liked the story.

Reading the devotional

Next up was movie time, which pretty much lasted the rest of the evening.  They were going to share the same room, but Reid was ready for bed and Erynn was not.  Reid went to Ian's old room and was soon fast asleep.  Erynn was another matter.  That girl can stay up with no problem.  We finally all got into bed and the McKelvy household was fast asleep.  The next morning, Pawpaw found them in the room Erynn slept in watching a movie, but they were dressed and had their beds made.  I think the sleep over was a smashing success.  At least, we think so.  You'll have to ask Erynn and Reid yourself to see if they liked it.

See, I told you we had healthy food.  

Making pizza,  watching the movie, and the ice cream sundae is all gone!

Christmas 2011

Good golly miss Molly, am I ever behind in getting Christmas pictures posted.  I decided I had to get something done today or it will be Christmas again before you know it.  We had a huge snow storm settle into our town on December 23, which was the day Amber and Mark were to fly in.  All flights in were canceled, all roads in and out of town were closed.  Mark and Amber went back to LA and I was one sad Mom.  Thank goodness Mark was determined to get here.  They rebooked a flight into Albuquerque the next day, rented a 4-wheel drive SUV (thank goodness Obama has not gotten rid of them), and made it in. (the road had opened the next day).

The snow did make for some pretty nice pictures.  Warren was a good sport and went out to let me get some pictures of him...but I was told to hurry up, which I did.  I loved my pictures of my awesome man.

It is really snowing hard, yet his toleration is remarkable.

 This is one of my favorite shots.

 It is really cold out here, can you get on with this?

 I don't want my hat ruined because of the snow.

 I have things I gotta do.

Like shoveling the sidewalk.  Where are my boys when I need them?

Snow means snowball fights and snowmen.

 Reid is rolling the second snowball...the first one is on the left.

It takes two to lift it...Ian and Mark.  Reid supervises.

 Now for a nose...no carrots, but we have lots of icicles.

 Erynn brings one arm...icicles too.

 And Reid brings the other arm.

 Kind of looks like a President Nixon move with the arms!

This is the gang that built it, minus the photographer who made the bottom snowball.

 Amber looking good.  She has her sunglasses on in a lot of pictures.

I think Mark's getting ready to plaster me with a snowball.

 The family picture that is so hard to get.  Everyone complains about posing.

 Concentrating on a game of chess...boys against girls.  I don't remember who won.

 This is a pretty good picture, but Mark moved, so he's a little blurry.

 This one is in better focus.

 No sunglasses.

Mark getting plastered with snow.

 And he had a birthday too! 29 years old.

One more Christmas shot, and we are done.  I know.  There are a lot of pictures, but at least you don't have to read an essay from me, just look at pictures.