We have had lots of struggles and challenges in our lives, but we've had even more blessings!

Friday, December 5, 2014

'Recipes I'd like to try'

   The other evening, Brian had said that he'd like to find a new good recipe for a certain food product. I had replied that I knew I had some on my 'Recipes I'd Like to try' board on Pinterest. He was sure I did too. o;-p  I remembered our conversation the next day and went looking. My search revealed two different things.
   First - That in the end, we're going to end up making our own specialized recipe. See, after looking at several, I found one along the lines of what he wanted, so I copied and pasted it to an email to send him. Then I kept looking. I found first this then another recipe, which was kind of similar to the first, y-e-t ... So maybe if we replaced this product in the first recipe, with this one from this other recipe. Oh, and maybe if we also added this ingredient to the first recipe from that fourth recipe. Yup, I think I have the possibilities fine tuned to a recipe we're going to try making. And he thinks he got the just of it from the explanation in the email. Gonna try it out ourselves before we plan to serve it elsewhere. 
  Second - That my board needed some help! Often, like many other pinners, I just re-pin something one of the people I've chosen to 'follow' has pinned. The pictures look yummy, like something somebody in my little family would like, etc.. Occasionally I'd click on the pin so that it opened another window to the source of the pin (recipe) and verify that we actually would like it (or that with slight tweaking we should). That 'occasionally' needs to change to a habit of always doing so!
     I am literally mind boggled by how many recipes led me to a notice from Pinterest, stating that they had "blocked" the link due to spam, nudity, etc.. Mind boggled. Reportedly, x-rated web sites often draw visitors to their sites, by attaching their web page/site to pictures of things which have nothing what-so-ever to do with what their site is actually about. But to have had that many "recipes" on my board which weren't recipes at all.... mind boggled.
     So I decided to take the time and one by one double check each and every one of the pins on that board. Quite the undertaking, seeings how I had over 700 pins on it. (and yes, that first sentence does sound rather redundant, so did this task.)
     In the process, I found that I had duplicates of about a dozen pins. I was impressed that it was that low. I deleted the duplicates. Or at least I 'think' I got all of them.
     A couple of other times I thought they were duplicates, but it turned out they were from different sources and different recipes. I kept both in case I try one and it doesn't pass the test.
     I was surprised to find that I couldn't actually access certain recipes, unless I signed up to some recipe site/blog. While the pins pictures looked appetizing, instead of signing up, I deleted those pins. I just prefer it that way. Other times I was informed that viewing the blog was by "invite only". didn't realize their were private cooking sororities on line.
    Quite a few times, I found that instead of leading me to the recipe itself, the link led to a web site. Sometimes I was successful in finding the actual recipe, deleted the original pin and then pinned the actual link onto my board. Other times, my searching was unsuccessful and I ended up just deleting the pin altogether. 
    One time I got quite the surprise. The pin stated that it was for a chicken dish that Olive Garden makes. I figured it led to a 'knock off' version of their recipe. Instead, it lead to the restaurant's on line - carry out ordering page. :-p  Here's that link in case you wish to use it -  http://www.olivegarden.com/menu-listing/pronto-lunch.
    There were a few that got deleted just because. I had clicked on it, got to the recipe and said "nope, I don't want to make that".
     Then there were the ones that led to a picture somebody somewhere had posted on Flicker.  No recipe link any-where, just a clearer view of the yummy goodness.  :-[
    Okay, I will admit that I did keep a couple of the pins that led to pinterest blocked warnings. The reasons that I kept the couple that I did, was because there was enough of the recipe included in the pins description itself that I could work with.
    For the record, w-a-y into the process, I realized that instead of deleting the original pin, I could just delete the 'source' of it (click to edit pin), thus redirecting where you go when you click on it. Technology, I'm slow, but eventually I catch on.
    That board has now been totally edited/checked. Can't believe that the number of pins on it dropped down to 600 (601 if you count the recipe Benson sent me and I added last night).
    "Do you ever plan on trying all of them?" you ask. As a matter of fact, we have come up with a 'plan'. We are going to start trying recipes off of it at least twice a week. Once, during the week for dinner. The second one will be as part of Sunday's dinner, albeit the main course, side dish or dessert. Or maybe we''ll do all three and get further faster :-].
    You are hereby invited to go browse through the board yourself and try and all recipes you find intriguing. http://www.pinterest.com/cherylbz/recipes-i-d-like-to-try/

Friday, October 24, 2014

Our Etsy Shop is up and running ....

The Fall Wreath Section of my Etsy shop, "Crafted by Pink Bunnies" (without any spaces between the words) is now open. If you click to follow me, you will automatically be notified when I add additional sections and later on, additional creations.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/CraftedbyPinkbunnies?ref=hdr_shop_menu

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Sunday was FUN!!!

     The play [Menopause the Musical] Robin P. treated me to Sunday, was wonderful! It definitely is a secular play, so there were some spots we just shook our heads at, but overall, it was downright spot on about Menopause.  And being in a theater with LOTS of women who are also laughing, in great part due to relating to the subject matters = reassuring (aka: it's not just me!). So attending the play was GREAT!
    Spending time with one of my closest/dearest friends - What A Blessing! When I suddenly got very overwhelmed by the thrust of the departing crowd, her touch and reassuring words helped so much! When I was talking over dinner and stated "That word that I just had, but it suddenly went flying out the window" and in a bound she leans forward to get a better look out the window and states, "Man, it was fleeing fast, I couldn't even catch a glimpse of it" - wonderful combination of hilarity and acceptability! :-D
     The theater itself was BEAUTIFUL!!!  LOVED all of the architectural detailing! Got quite dizzy climbing the stairs to the balcony, due to my awe struck gazing at the ceiling. 
    Overall, or should that be 'lots more frequently lately' (?), my vertigo symptoms are a lot lower and thus easier to deal with/accept. Sunday's outing pushed them all way up again. I am still literally reeling from it. But I'm not really complaining, because the time spent with Robin and the laughter therapy of the musical, makes dealing with the current symptoms worth it!!!

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

'Lucy' here,

    A few weeks ago, I spent a week at Grandpa 'Honey's' house, totally for some R+R time. I left with more than I had arrived with, due to taking some silk flowers etc. out of his basement, to use in future wreaths (yes, I had full permission to do so). 
   We arrived home, played with our GRAND children (who had arrived around midnight the night before), went on about living life.  I was headed out of town the following weekend and wanted to wear my tennis shoes due to the weather predictions. But try though I did, I could NOT find them!! WHERE in the heck were they?  Thankfully, I had recently uncovered an old pair of loafers, so I wore them instead.
   Upon arrival back home, I searched again. And I asked other family members. And I inquired if they were out in our van. I KNEW I had not left them at dad's... I had tripled checked all the rooms before leaving.... where were they?!?!?!   I had no clue. Finally gave up the search out of sheer aggravation. Sigh.
  Fast forward to this now past Sat.. I wasn't feeling too good. The GRAND children were again here, and I wanted to be near them.. if I work on a wreath they won't climb on me as much (that proved wrong ;-p). So I got out the small wreath frame I had purchased for a specific idea, then went upstairs to look through the flowers I had brought home, to see which ones I wanted to use. As I'm pulling various plastic bags of flowers out of the paper bag lined plastic bag, I discovered my tennis shoes, sitting at the bottom of the bags. "Oh, now I remember..." (insert eye roll here).

     This now past Sunday, we hosted our son Benson's 30th birthday dinner at the lodge (just our little family and a couple of the cousins he's always been closer to). Brian dropped me and all of the ingredients off, before heading over to the church to run sound for the Praise Team practice, etc..  First, I started the Oatmeal Carmelita's. Once their base was cooling, I started the hamburger towards the Yum-A-Setta.  While that was browning, I made a sign (out of paper hand toweling) to wrap around a chair and put out by the driveway, letting the attendee's know to park along the side this time (reason being, small children traveling back and forth from the lodge to the play set).  Broke the hamburger up a bit more, then headed outside to set up the sign. Once the mission was accomplished, I attempted to open the door and re-enter the lodge. But it was locked. Solid like. And did not give despite my repeated attempts to convince it to. "BOTHER!", as I palm slapped the door frame.
     Deep breath, turned around.... I 'could' take the path through the field, over the bridge and rail road tracks, up the hill and go get the keys from Brian... Two things - #1) the oven was still on waiting for the second part of the Oatmeal Carmelitas to be baked and the stove still had hamburger browning on it.  I LOVE the lodge, no way what-so-ever did I want to be responsible for it burning down!!! Sigh. #2) I had not traveled said trail in a l-o-n-g time. What if I didn't take the right path? Various pastors and people of the church are always encouraging the congregation to go on nature walks through the various paths... I could just see me (aka: Ms. Vertigo) getting all turned around and wandering for hours. . .  .  Sigh.
    So I chose option 'B'. Walk up the ever so steep hill driveway (NOT exaggerating here!) and go to the "W's" house (people from church), hoping they hadn't left for church yet, hoping they were even in town. 'Nother sigh. So up the hill I went. I swear to you that somehow that thing has both lengthened and steepened since the last time I had done thus!!! Whew!  Finally got to the top of it and started towards "W's" house, only to remember it was a bit further that I had originally thought. First, I had to cross over..., then pass "G's" old house, then finally... Sigh. Off I walked. 
    A short distance later, a car approached. I waved my arm, palm up, to try and get it to stop. The guy pulled into the middle of the road, sped up and passed me in a hurry. sigh.  Walked on. Soon another car approached and I tried again. This time the elderly lady waved at me as she passed from the middle of the road. sigh. Yet again, in today's weird world, I couldn't say I really blamed them. . . but the distance I had yet to walk, seemed to grow longer and longer in my mind. The third car did stop. The window came down maybe a third of the way. A female voice called out, "do you need help?" (or something similar). "Would you make a phone call for me?"  The window went to half way down. "Sure" the pretty lady (maybe early thirties?) stated, as she picked up her phone. I told her Brian's number while she dialed. "Hopefully he'll actually get it and answer it" I commented with a chuckle.  The window went the rest of the way down and she handed me the phone. I had expected her to keep the phone, but smiled warmly at her. Suddenly, the back window started to come down. The lady strictly informed the person sitting back there to leave it up. I heard a very young laugh and my smile grew. The back window went back up and stayed up. :-]. 
    Via a true miracle, Brian answered his phone. He does not get reception inside the church building itself (it's built into a hill). A-n-d, he usually turns the ringer itself off once he arrives at church, so it doesn't go off while he's passing a door or something.  He said he was in the middle of the sanctuary, when his phone shocked him and rang. He didn't recognize the number, but he felt this nudging to answer it. THANK-YOU Lord! "Hi, somehow I locked myself out of the lodge and there's hamburger browning on the stove, would it be possible for you to send somebody over with your keys to let me back in?" "We'll get it handled"  "THANK-YOU!"
   I handed the lady back her phone and thanked her, then started to back away from her car. "Would you like a ride to the lodge?" she asked. "No, that's okay..." "But you looked wore out, won't you let me give you a ride back?!"  I climbed in while stating my gratitude. Once again down at the lodge, before exiting her car, I invited her to stop back down in a couple of hours (telling her we'd be there all afternoon) to get a couple of thank-you Carmelitas. While she had said it sounded like a good plan, she never did reappear. But I had thanked the Lord for her while standing there waiting to re-enter the lodge. My knight in shining armour of a husband, himself came to my rescue. :-]  I held out my hand, "Hi, I'm Lucy"  He laughed while unlocking the door, then headed back to church. The next time I exited the building, I propped the darn door OPEN!!! 

    Yup, still wondering about myself. . .  
This is 'Lucy', signing off.

Monday, August 11, 2014

A ride of wonder

    Several interesting things happened on our ride home from Brian's dad's last evening.  The first, was this thing, out in the field, what was it? As we got even with it, we realized it was a crane (the bird type), in the middle of a field of soy. ?!?!  A bit later we spotted some deer. Those we are use to spotting, well at least we are unless the guys are actually out hunting for them. 
   We stopped at the MickeyD's in Wayland. "What use to be there?" we questioned each other, about the now empty lot next to it. Neither one of us was sure. Turned out, both of us had an idea, but didn't share it because it couldn't have possibly been that, right?! We were right in our unspoken guesses. They had completely taken out the Speedway station. The one that had at least three cars at it, no matter what time of day or night you passed by. 'If it was always so busy, why in the world would they take it out' we questioned. According to the sign on the front of the fencing, a new one would be replacing the old one soon. "Awww.....".
   As we were approaching the 54th Street exit off the highway, Brian pointed to two buildings along the side. I wondered why they were being taken apart that-a-way. Certainly not the usual way to demolish a building. Turned out that it was due to them first being victims of the recent tornado. The tornado itself had been the slightest of blips on the radar screen, and it was gone the second time the scanner passed over that area, so they hadn't rung any alarms. But it had definitely been a tornado. The proof is in the evidence it left behind. Now true, compared to lots of tornado destruction paths you see on the national news broadcasts, this one didn't do much. But it did enough.
    Brian got off at the exit and drove me around to see the spots where it had caused havoc, lifted up, then dropped lower again. I said "OH  MY  WORD !!!" a whole lot during our drive. I had seen some pictures of the damage on line. In-fact, one of my brothers had stopped by the house he use to live in in that area, introduced himself to the current owners, and gotten permission to enter the property and take pictures. We had lived there with him for seven months after our house fire, so I knew the area. Oh my word is it not the same looking now!! And it's not because of the years which have passed since we lived there. The evidence to the difference is in all of the tree stumps which now show where all of the huge, wondrously shady trees use to stand between him and the houses on the street behind him, houses that we had forgot were back there because you couldn't really see them due to the trees. The evidence was in there no longer being a three season porch on the back of my brothers old house, it had literally been ripped off. The evidence is also in how many homes have tarps covering parts of their roofs, or are missing parts of their garages or houses. The evidence is in the insulation caught way up in the trees by and in, what use to be a beautiful wooded park. While we weren't able to access the park itself, we could see for quite a distance, and all we saw were toppled over trees. Not sure if a single one was left untouched. The owners of one house we passed, were installing an electric meter to the side of their house. Others were working on framing in sections. It was just all too surreal. 
   Brian then treated me to Dairy Queen :-]  Their waffle cone turtle sundae is good! yup, yup, yup! We were sitting on the bench, enjoying the wonderful evening air, enjoying watching people. Two pretty girls in their twenties were walking our direction, when this moped went down the street, with the helmet-less male driver standing straight up on the pedals, arms spread wide. We laughed. The girls laughed. Brian inquired if they'd been impressed. They exchanged a look, looked at us again, then their laughter became kind of the embarrassed type. My puzzlement must have registered on my face, because one of the girls walked over, put her hand on my knee, leaned in and asked, "you don't recognize us do you?". Awkward. "You do look familiar, but I don't know from where." They laughed joyously. I was all the more confused. Then (of their own accord) they told me their names, twice. Finally it dawned on me, they were my cousins! Well technically, my cousins daughters, making them my second cousins. But it was them!! They were out for a walk enjoying the evening air. They said they had already passed us once and had been quite sure it was us.... .  It was good to see them! One of them has two kids and they said that their sister is due for her third any day now. I had no idea any of them lived any wheres near us. We laughed. We hugged. What a neat surprise in my evening! :-]

Monday, July 28, 2014

2013 Cooking and Baking Directory -

   This is a directory listing of sorts, of the "Cooking and Baking" postings we did in 2013.

                 (update 2014 - never got letters to submit, still wishing for one)


Sept. 17, 2013 - The Bz's D-E-E-P Dish Pizza

    Doing these directories, helps me find when and where it was I had posted something. I'm sure you other bloggers never have that problem o;-p.
~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;-> ~ ~ ;->
You might also enjoy these postings:
  


Sunday, July 27, 2014

2012 Cooking and Baking Directory -


This is a directory listing of sorts, of all of the "Cooking and Baking" postings we did in 2012.

Jan. 18, 2012 - Pie Crust 
     step by step directions and pictures

Jan. 19, 2012 - Blueberry Pie 

Jan. 20, 2012 - Toll House(R) Pie

Jan. 21, 2012 - Pecan Pie

Jan. 22, 2012 - Pumpkin Pie

Jan. 26, 2012 - Brownie Cake

March 21, 2012 - My Spaghetti Sauce 

March 22, 2012 - Pasta Pie


March 26, 2012 - My Lasagna Recipe

    Doing these directories, helps me find when and where it was I had posted something. I'm sure you other bloggers never have that problem o;-p.
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You might also enjoy these postings:
 

~ 2011 Cooking and Baking Directory

2010 Cooking and Baking Directory

2009 Cooking and Baking Directory

Sunday, June 1, 2014

Wisdom in statements -

My father-in-law and I had many wonderful talks while I stayed with him. One day I was commenting about my on-going Vertigo, how I do seem to be doing better most of the time, yet I truly wish that it would just disappear from my life. The combination of the type of smile he was wearing with the sparkle in his eyes, told me he was thinking something and I really wanted to know what. So I pushed a little. Finally he said," that he thinks it's not so much that my vertigo has diminished, but rather that I have learned to adapt". He went on to say, "that there are two types of people; those that take "life" and learn to adapt to it so they can keep going on and doing things, and those whom not only throw themselves a pity party, but also choose not to come out of it."

So much wise truth in his words! 

I had then got to thinking (and sharing with him) about the saying I 'oft quote from my "great grandma" (Dora Hawkins). "Age is a thing of the spirit. Now, some mornings you have to convince the body, but age IS a thing of the spirit." I have witnessed so much truth to her words over the years! 

And then the saying Brian and I live by came to mind. "you can either laugh or cry at "life", we choose to laugh". 

We (Dad and I) decided that those three statements go hand in hand with one another. I was humbled by his compliment and redetermined to keep striving forward to be the positive side of all three of the statements.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Sunshine

Seeing the new snow out the kitchen window this morning, wasn't really surprising. As I was standing there missing the sunny sky, a memory came to mind. A wonderful memory, which warmed my heart and made me chuckle.

Due to the sun actually shining, I had opened all of the living room curtains, two weekends ago while the GRAND kids were here. At one point, Mr. Elliot was standing next to me up on the yellow couch. He leaned out towards the bay windows and was looking around. Suddenly, he literally pops back in towards me and with scrunched up eyes and a puzzled expression asked me, "Grandma, who turned light on? Who turned light on?!". With a gleeful laugh I had answered, "God did. He turned the sun on." "The sun on?!?" he asked, with even more puzzlement in his adorable little face. "Yes, the sun is shining. We haven't seen a lot of it around here this winter, have we?" He had then leaned out towards the windows again, but only took a quick look before popping back again, then while climbing down off the couch, started asking where his 'glasses' were. Very quickly he was back, with his sunglasses on (upside down of course ;-p!) leaning towards the windows again. "Better!" he declared.

Oh Mr. Elliot, you yourself are a ray of sunshine. Just that memory of you, is warming my heart this morning. Counting down till when they are here again. . .