Slobs!

As you may know, it's been snowing a lot in Pullman lately.




The snow is halfway up to my knees. I can tell you this because today I jumped out there in my socks. I know, yuck. I had to though. I saw this truck that had just visited their storage unit slow down and stop in the driveway. I was thinking, "Oh no, are they stuck in the snow?" But no. I watched in disbelief as this slob pulled a big box out of the back of the truck and tossed it on the ground. And that's when I jumped out on the deck to yell at them, but they were too fast and drove away. So I changed my socks, and then ran outside (with shoes on this time) and followed their snow tracks to the only unit with tons of footprints in front of it. Then I went to the office and called the person. The guy said that he had just sent a couple friends to his unit for him, so I said, "Oh. I just watched your friend throw a box on the ground and leave it on my property. You can come back and pick it up or I can charge you $50 to pick it up for you." Ha! He said, "Oh, they will be right back to pick it up!" Then I watched smugly from my window as they drove back up, grudgingly got out of the truck and put the box back in the truck and drove away. They won't be littering on my watch! It's funny because they had no idea that I was watching them toss that box, and they probably don't know how I knew which unit to call. I didn't explain about following the tracks of course.
That was very satisfying.
The End.

Tis the Season for Singing!

Snow!

Yes, it's that time of year again, and we haven't got our snow tires on yet. (It just started snowing about an hour ago.) Greg will put them on tomorrow morning. He's at school right studying. It really is pretty when I'm in my warm home baking cookies or bread, but it's nasty and cold and wet if you're out in it. I have a mixture of excitement and dread as I remember last year's snow and what a pain it was. It's only fun when you can stay home and play, and just go out because you want to. I'm glad at least that I don't have to go drive to my job. This is when it's nice to work at this storage place, and the people come to me.



Well I hope everybody's enjoying the beauty outside and being safe! Happy Snow!

Tile Picture!

Hello! I just finished my tile picture. I was kind of nervous about doing it by myself, but I looked back at Summer's blog when she explained how to do it and that helped a lot. I just put the frame on and now I just have to wait! I was glad to do my own tonight--I will be helping my friend make two of her own in a couple days so I wanted to really know what I'm doing.





I painted the cracks between "tiles" the same color brown as the frame so it all ties together and looks really good! It doesn't really look like it in these pictures, but the brown is also very close to the color of her dress. I'm excited for it to cure so I can hang it on the wall!

I just thought it was funny

The white board at the Institute building was covered with various Christmas-time drawings, so Greg added his own.

Curtains!

I'm working on my curtains again. When I was visiting with Mom, she gave some ideas of how to sew them and I felt motivated again to work on them. I just finished one panel. There will be two panels on each window. I think this looks way better than the bath towel we had there before. Ha!


The open position:



The closed position: (And pretend the second panel is there on the other side)

Mom and Dad's--another day

This morning I played Hairdresser and colored Mom's hair. That was kind of fun. It's really not that hard to do, especially with short hair. It turned out really good!


In the afternoon Greg came home (from his parent's house) and went with Mom and I to go see Twilight! It was really good! They did very well sticking to the story. I never thought, "That's not what happened in the book!" or "They did that part wrong," like I did at Harry Potter. I just got kind of uncomfortable in the kissing scene. I was nervous about how far it would go. I thought the cast was really great though. They all played their parts pretty well.

We got a Cinnabon after the show, and then picked up Dad. We're gonna play Scrabble again tonight!

Visit at Mom and Dad's!

We decided to spend the majority of our time with my parents for Thanksgiving break since they won't be around at Christmas. They are going to see Summer and her new baby, so we might see them one evening just before Christmas.

So the first day I got to Mom's in the morning and we just had fun talking and showing each other our projects and things we've been working on. Mom has a lot of fun sewing projects, and I got to show off my new scrapbook pages I did at Summer's. Then we had lunch and headed out to Costco. There's no Costco around Pullman, so we always try to pick up some bulk things while we're in town.

We picked up Dad from work and went home. Dad had a trailer full of wood that needed to be moved and stacked down in the backyard, so I thought it'd be fun to help him. We worked together really well and got the job done quickly. I love having a real fire and am excited to have a fireplace with wood stacked outside our own home someday.

After that, we came in a had a nice dinner while we played Scrabble. I'm not the best at that game, but it was fun to sit around together and do that anyway. Dad won that game.

Leavenworth!

This year will be our second anniversary in December. I wanted to do something fun, but December 16th is right in the middle of a bunch of exams for Greg and choir concert rehearsals and Enrichment at church...etc. And Leavenworth happens to be kind of on the way to our parent's house, so I thought it'd be a fun surprise to take Greg there on the way to our Thanksgiving visit!

I secretly made the hotel reservations and a map (google maps are great!), and then told Greg that I would drive the first half and he could just sleep until I was tired of driving. This is was a little scary for me, because he is the navigator and always tells me what exit I'm supposed to take and looks at the map for me. I had studied the map a lot though and learned the names of the cities we should be driving through so I thought I'd be ok. And everything was fine until I passed a sign for Ritzville. It was pointing off to the right and said Ritzville was 30 miles away. Greg was just barely falling asleep by then, so when I pulled over to quietly look at my map and try not to panic Greg woke up and said, "Hey, what's going on?" I almost had to tell him we were going to Leavenworth, but I was trying to still keep it a secret, so I said, "Well, Mom always says it's better to go through Ritzville so that's what I wanted to do. I made my own map and was trying to do it by myself so you could just relax." But going back to Ritzville didn't really make sense and was out of the way, as Greg explained, so I had to just say, "Greg, there's something you don't know. Go back to sleep." Hahaha! He kind of got the message that something was up and just let it go.

He woke up again when we got close to Wenatchee and we had fun looking at the big dam and driving along the river. I wanted to just pull up at the hotel and let him figure it out when I got our room key, but I couldn't find it. It was too hard to watch the road and search all the buildings on the side at the same time, so I told him and then he helped me find it. He was really exciting and glad for the fun surprise to just have a day to be together just us. It's been kind of hard lately with all his school study groups and things that he's involved in.

So we got our stuff set up in our room and then went to Leavenworth around noon. We spent the day walking around poking around in little shops. I liked to see all the Christmas things, and Greg really liked the hat shop and the Australian shop. And yes, the Christmas lights were up too! I think they had just gotten the lights up recently because there was a line of big trees in the park, and they were just putting the lights on the last one that day. It was pretty impressive!

One thing we got was a chunk of really good peanut butter chocolate fudge. We had little slivers of it later for a treat before bed. We also had a nice dinner at a restraunt that looked like a wood cabin inside. They sat us next to real fire (not a tv screen with video of fire--like in one of the shops we saw.). Our server was really nice and had time enough to take care of us. We colored the kids menu while we waited for our food. We both got fancy burgers (well, mine was chicken) that tasted great. Then on the way back to the hotel we stopped and got hot fudge sundaes. Yum!

The next day was Sunday, so we had some banana bread and coffee cake (that I had made at home) for breakfast. We had a nice leisurely morning and then hit the road around 11:30am towards Gig Harbor.

Happy Anniversary Darling!

Yummy Spice Cookies!

My friend made these for mutual the other night and they were SO GOOD! They go really good with apple cider. So I got the recipe and will probably make them every year around this time.

Ingredients:

2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons ground ginger

1 teaspoon baking soda

¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon salt

¾ cup margarine, softened

1 cup white sugar

1 egg

1 tablespoon water

¼ cup molasses

2 tablespoons white sugar (for rolling)



1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Sift together the flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and salt. (I don’t sift and it works fine.) Set aside.

2. In a large bowl, cream together the margarine and 1 cup sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, then stir in the water and molasses. Gradually stir the sifted ingredients into the molasses mixture. Shape dough into walnut sized balls, and roll them in the remaining 2 tablespoons of sugar. Place the cookies 2 inches apart onto an ungreased cookie sheet, and flatten slightly.

3. Bake for 8-10 minutes in the preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing.

Summer had her baby!

Summer called me this morning around 8:30am to say she was on her way to the hospital and having contractions every 5 minutes! She had the baby around noon. Jack weighs 6 lbs 15 oz and is around 20" long. I'm excited to see pictures of him!




(I don't have any pictures of the baby, so I just thought I'd give you this picture...the baby is in the picture. Hehehehe!)

Kids--Amended

At church we recently found a reason to laugh until we cried in Sacrament meeting. It was the primary program and all the kids were up there. There's so many kids that they overflow the whole front area and spill down onto the floor and front row of seats and off to the sides in front of the sacrament table...etc. We enjoyed hearing them sing and try to say their little talks. We laughed at the kid that sang extra loud and then got the words wrong and stopped singing for a while. But then we got distracted by this little girl across the aisle from us. She's super cute at about a year and a half. She has long dark eyelashes that look like she's wearing mascara, and pretty red lips. She just looks like a little doll! So we hear this little sound and then we hear her mom whispering at her to come back. And this is what we see...



HAhaha! I said I could hold her so her mom let her go and she ran to me. Greg was laughing so hard that he had to put his head down to hide the tears and red face. But she was so happy to sit with me. I hope our own kids like me that much!

I forgot to say the big reason why it was so funny. Because I've never even talked to her or held her before. I knew the parents of course, but the little girl hadn't really gotten to know me before. (And yes, Ali, her mom really is a doll too. I almost feel uncomfortable around her because she is SOOOO pretty) Greg drew this picture but I don't know what program he used.

Bisquick Pizza!

I had some left over spaghetti sauce, so I decided to make a little pizza and it turned out really good!



I just used Bisquick to make one batch of biscuits (I think it was about two cups of Bisquick and 2/3 cup milk...it says on the box anyway.) As I was mixing that up I put a bunch of pizza seasoning in with the dough. I had to add a little bit more milk (just drips) because the dough was kind of dry.

(Pizza Seasoning: Oregano, Basil, Marjoram and Garlic)

I used spaghetti sauce, cheese and slice lunch meat ham (it's what we had in the fridge) and made a delicious pizza! Yum!

More Applesauce!

When I went to Summer's house Glen and I got to talking about canning and making applesauce. I told him how I wanted to make some more chunky to mix with the super smooth we made, and he said his mom had some apples I could use. So tonight for the fourth time this year I made applesauce. The apples were a little bit old and kind of soft, so I cut them in large pieces to get the core out. Then I threw them in the pot with a little water in the bottom and cooked them til they were soft. I used some tongs and easily plucked out the skins of the apples. They came right off! That's a lot easier than peeling them all! It didn't work as well with newer and firmer apples though. I had a picked a few that were kind of wormy and gross, and tried using my new technique with them but it didn't work as well. I had to really pull the skins off...that was kind of a pain.

Thanks Chandlers for the apples! Now we have 8 jars of really good super chunky applesauce to mix with the smooth! Yum!

Cute chocolate mouse!

A lady at church made lots of these cute little mice for a Young Women activity tonight. I thought it was so adorable. I don't like chocolate with cherries though, so I didn't eat any. But if you do like that, this is the treat for you!



It's just a chocolate covered cherry for the mouse's little body, and a Hersey kiss for the head. I'm not sure what she used to make the eyes--something like cherry goo.



And the tail is the stem of the cherry, and the ears are sliced almonds. So cute! I thought my mom would like to make these for something. It's a lot of meticulous little work though. I don't know how she made 50.
This would be a fun thing to put on Christmas cookie plates too.

Our Wedding!

Please notice I put together a little slide show of our wedding on the sidebar. There's about 10,000 more pictures that I didn't use, but you get the main idea. I've been admiring Ali's and other people's lovely wedding slide shows and wanting one for my blog too. It's fun to look through all those pictures again. I was just scrap-booking the end of our wedding at the little "sister retreat" at Summer's. Looking at the pictures makes it feel like just yesterday. (I know that sounds so cliche, but it's true.) Oh, and there's music on it too. You just have to un-click on the sound button.

Plumb

You can listen to all the songs here: http://www.pushplayer.com/plumb/b/

It plays about half of the song to give you a good idea of what it sounds like. She also talks about each song and why she wrote it. Just thought you might like to see.

My Sisters!

I just got home from a fun visit with my sisters! Summer is going to have her baby any time now, and Wendy is due in January, so we had a get together at Summer's last week. We had a really nice time just taking it easy and doing fun things together.

We scrapbooked a lot...



Played BLOKUS,



Ran errands and played with Ginger.



The first night I was there we watched Pride and Prejudice (the newer one). That's a fun movie to watch with girls.



I made matching baby blankets for Summer and Wendy with cute nursery story print on one side and then pink or blue clouds on the other side. I thought they (or Summer) might open it at the shower but they just wanted to open them right there. So it was almost like Christmas when I first got there because we all had gifts to open and trade. Well, and I brought the Christmas presents for Wendy's family so it really did feel like Christmas!



Mom sent us all a CD by PLUMB, called Blink. (That's another gift we all got to open when I got there.) We listened to it while we were scrapbooking and doing things around the house. Then I listened to it all the way home (4 hour drive). And now I just want to listen to it all the time! I really love the music, and also it makes me feel like I'm somehow still with my sisters. I really don't like being so far away. If we lived closer we would have scrapbook nights and watch each others kids and just do fun things together all the time.



Friday night was Summer's baby shower. There was a really good turn-out! I was glad to see some of the ladies I met at the canning activity last year so I could ask them some more questions about canning. They were fun to talk to.





We also drove up to "Lover's Point" and got some pictures of the beautiful view.





The last night we went to dinner and met the Chandlers there. The tables were small so Wendy sat with Glen's parents and brother and I sat with Summer and Glen. Ginger had fun running back and forth to visit everybody.





The last thing...Mom got Ginger this little purse. It was so cute! Ginger loved it and would carry it all around the house.



It was funny when she found her sunglasses and wore them around the house carrying her purse and looking so grown up. Hehehe! What a cute girl!

Can't figure it out

I was trying to fix my blog and put a background on it, but photobucket decided to make it a post instead. So just pretend this picture is in the background.

Our Halloween, 6 hours later...

Greg woke up later and then we made homemade ice cream and watched the De Vinci Code on tv. That was fun. Well, that movie is a little creepy, and I felt shocked at some of the quick acts of violence. I'm not exposed to things like that very much so it kind of upset me. The story part was interesting though. Of course it is just a story, but it was entertaining. I wonder how many people have gone to that place at the end of the movie looking for Mary.
Anyway, I was just glad to be home with Greg even if we weren't doing traditional Halloween stuff. I miss him a lot when he's busy with school so much...it's just nice to be together whatever we're doing.


For the big finale of the night we sat on the floor and laughed at the stupid people on the Suze Oreman show. It was 2am and people were calling in to ask her if they can afford things. They would tell her about this outrageously stupid thing ($130 cat stroller, $6,800 artificial grass for the back yard, $10,000 watch...) and they'd have to explain all their income and debt and she would say yes or no. We laughed and laughed, and remembering the SNL skit ("If you don't have any money, you shouldn't buy anything.") we thought they should show that on tv more often.

Happy Halloween!

This was our exciting Halloween night. We made it through dinner while watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and that's about it. We were going to carve some pumpkins and then go out with painted faces for dessert. I guess two mid-terms and studying until 2am or 3am most nights of the week will do this to you. I fell asleep too for two hours and I'm not even in school! I guess we'll find out how long face paints keep.

FREE CHOCOLATE!!!

http://www.haydeechocolatier.com/gourmet_chocolate.php

My Mom just sent me this link. All you have to do is give them your address and they'll send you a box of 8 fancy chocolates. You might end up with some spam too, since they want your email address too. I think it's worth it though. (Not the "mechanically separated chicken parts" kind of spam...I mean junk mail of course.)

I found this on their Chocolate Blog. I'm going to try it tonight for my date with Greg. I'll let you know how it turns out!

Dangerous Chocolate Cake-in-a-Mug

1 - coffee mug (microwave-safe)

4 T. - cake flour (plain, not self-rising)

4 T. - sugar

2 T. - cocoa

1 - egg

3 T. - milk

3 T. - oil

1 - splash of vanilla

3 T. - chocolate chips (Optional)


Add dry ingredients to the mug; mix well with a fork. Add egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in milk, oil, and vanilla, and mix well. Add chips, if using.

Put mug in the microwave, and cook for three minutes at 1,000 watts. Cake will rise over the top of the mug -- do not be alarmed. When finished, carefully remove mug from microwave and allow to cool a little. Tip onto a small plate prior to serving, if desired. Yields one generous serving or two "more virtuous" servings.

The answer to save our economy!

Hahaha! This is so funny. I got this from Kaela blog. They posted it awhile ago but I just saw it tonight. HAhaha!

http://consumerist.com/consumer/clips/snl-skit-dont-buy-stuff-you-cant-afford-252491.php

Halloween Cookies!

I got some new cookie cutters recently and have been looking for a reason to use them. (They are pumpkins and leaves...I know, it looks like Christmas trees but they're not.)


I decided to make sugar cookies for mutual and let the girls decorate them for their treat. My sister also sent me these cool stencils, so I brought them to try out. They are a little tricky to use, but Greg figured out how to do it pretty well. I made some more cookies so we could decorate them too.

I did this one. The eyes got kind of goofed up when I took the stencil off. I tried to shake off the extra sprinkles, but of course they just got stuck on other parts of the cookie, so you can't really see the eyes very well. It's a cute face anyway.


Greg did this one. He spent a lot of time carefully placing the sprinkles in the stencil with a toothpick. It looks pretty good!



These are all the cookies we did. You can see the cool little stencils and my cookie cutters. There are about 10 different stencils to use.



If it weren't for all the orange and scary pumpkins, it would have felt like Christmas!

Applesauce

We made applesauce today at a friend's house. She has this really cool applesauce maker. You cut the apple in fourths, and cut out the stem and blossom on the end. That's it! You don't have to peel or core or make tiny pieces. Then you throw it in a pot and cook it. When the apples are soft and mush easily, you pour them into the top of the contraption and start turning a crank. The core and seeds and peel gets filtered and spit out one direction, and smooth nice pure applesauce comes out the other side. It makes the process very easy and fast.


The only problem is you can't make chunky applesauce that way, and chunky is the whole reason I like homemade. So we a couple pot-fulls of apples that were sliced and cored and peeled with the other tool we got, and then just mixed in those chunky pots with the smooth. We made 25 and a half jars, and canned them with her pressure cooker. Ta Da!

Canning Season!

I picked a whole bunch of yellow plums at a friend's house last week and have been working on pitting them and making jam out of them. I did this last year, but forgot just how many plums I can really handle. I had to give away a box because I wouldn't be able to finish the work before they went bad. They are very tasty though, and make great jam!



My next project is to turn these grapes into juice and can that. I have 4 big buckets full that I picked at another friend's house last week too. It's just kind of overwhelming because there are so many--I've had a hard time getting started on that one. The grapes are really sweet though, so it will make good juice.



Tomorrow I plan to make applesauce with another friend. I already made a batch of applesauce this year, but that supply is dwindling quickly, so I want to take advantage of all those free apples that are just hanging around waiting to be picked, and make some more! I got tons of nice jars for free from another friend, so it will only cost a little sugar and my time!

The Lord Bless you and keep you

I sang this one in high school too. We used to sing it at the end of every concert, and we all loved it so we sang it really beautifully. I'm going to be singing it with a couple people at a wedding on Saturday night. (These people sing it a bit slower than my choir did.)



I loved this song so much that I practiced all the parts and made a recording of me singing it. It's sounds kind of funny--a whole choir of Holly.

Vote against same-sex marriage

Sorry, I couldn't get the actual video here, but this is the link. Copy and paste it in your browser.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1815825713

My Mom sent me this video today. It made me feel sick to think about the little kids being taught such awful things in school. I plan to home school my kids--at least while they're young. The world is becoming a scary place and I'm afraid for when it's time to bring my children into it.

The Garden Harvest

This is the rest of what we got from our garden. I think these peppers look cool, with some of them turning red, purple and yellow. (I guess the purplish one doesn't show. One of our sweet banana peppers was turning purple. Greg put it in the salsa.)


This is all the ripe tomatoes we got before the freeze. They are chopped up for our last batch of "Garden Fresh" salsa for the year.


These are the green tomatoes that I'm trying to save. This is about 2/3rds of what was on the plants, but I just couldn't get it all. It's hard to know how many will ripen, but I'm keeping hope that some will. Especially the ones that are kind of orange right now.


These are tomatillos. They make the salsa really good. They are good chopped up and charred for mixing in the salsa. They are also really good fresh chopped on salads, or you can make chip dip. It's the main ingredient for the salsa verde. (That's what makes it so green.)


These are the onions. We have white globe onions and green onions.


And here's the pumpkins. I think these are the coolest thing from the garden. I carved one of them (on a previous post) and the rest I hope will finish turning orange. I will bake them and can the good stuff. Then I can use it to make pumpkin pie! Yum!



That's all folks! Please join us next year for Holly's Garden Adventures!