Gone to the Dogs!!

We are a family with dogs - not necessarily a dog family!  I grew up with medium sized inside dogs, my hubbie with big shedding outside dogs that came inside sometimes.  So coming to an agreement about a dog for our family has proved to be interesting to say the least.  To add to this, our youngest daughter is sensitive to lots of things and has allergies to deal with so we didn't want a dog to add to that problem.

Finally a few years ago, H and I convinced Kevin to get a dog.  We looked and looked and found a darling pup at a local shelter.  Brought the dog home, within a couple of hours we were all sneezing and itching -- dog had a bath, stayed for a few days -- finally decided he was the culprit and took him back.  So the search for a terrier was made.  My folks had a westie, H loved the dog, so we found one and so began H's love story.  This sweet boy was a wonderful resident of our house for several years.

 

Problem was, he was not "fixed."  He had been a stud dog, although a well loved pet, he insisted upon staking his claim with the girls and I.  Kevin was not amused by all the marking and it became a real problem.  Basically, it was the dog or Kevin - Toto went much to H's dismay.  There was much mourning in out house and finally promises were made to bring another dog into our house, this time a female.

 

After putting her off for a couple of years and also looking for another westie, I came across this sweetheart at a shelter in TN.

 

She also had a brother and so Kirby and Kivey were added to our household.  They have made H's day each and every day since they have arrived!!  So this last weekend, while R was gone, H decided to make something special for them.  Pumpkin dog treats!

She assembled the ingredients

All in the bowl ready to go

 





A soupy mess awaiting brown rice flour

 

 

Ready to be rolled out

 

We had hearts, flowers, and acorns

 



 

 

Kirby very patiently waited and watched.  H would talk to him while she was working and occasionally reach down and pet him, so he stayed very close during the process. 

 

No finished product -- camera battery died -- but the dogs LOVED them!!  and we haven't had any negative side effects like some of the store bought doggie treats!!

 

 



Chowder, Soup or Stew ???

Today was a delightful rainy day.  Perfect for cozying up with a skein of yarn and my favorite knitting needles, which is a good thing because I had a sample I needed to knit for the class I'm teaching!!  Yes, I did get the job and am now an official knitting instructor for JoAnn Fabrics and Crafts.  Tomorrow is my first class -- if they had enough sign up - won't find that out until tomorrow morning.

So back to the rainy day -- what to have for supper -- what else but SOUP!!  One of my go-to favorites that I never go to because my children don't like it.  Oh well, once in a while won't kill them. I've had enough beans and pasta lately, so decided to go with potatoes -- another one of my children's non-favorites. 

As a kid growing up, we had potato corn chowder all the time and I loved it -- add some cornbread and you're talking total comfort food.  Well, I knew that my girls wouldn't eat only potatoes, so I had to come up with something different to add to it -- chicken takes center stage.  I just happened to have some of these in my frig.

I'm not a real true recipe follower and this one especially for my mom's chowder was all in my head, so I forged ahead with my handy dandy helper H (hoping that if she helped, maybe she would be willing to at least try a bite)

I sliced half an onion, sauteed it in some oil till translucent, added about 1/3 of a large red pepper, diced as well, let that cook and soften a little, added the chicken strips, roughly chopped, stirred it all around and then added 4 cups of water and 3 medium sized potatoes, roughly chopped, with some salt.  I'm not consistent with my potatoes, in fact, I purposely leave some of the larger, so that by the time they are cooked through, the smaller pieces have turned mushy and helped thicken my soup. 

Let that all bubble away, probably 15 minutes or so, just until the potatoes were barely fork tender, then I added a can of creamed corn and some milk.  Gave it all a good stir and then started seasoning away. I started with some celery seed, a little white pepper, and some nutmeg.  Let it cook a little more and then because of the creamed corn it seemed sweet so I added a little paprika and some dry mustard.  All the while tasting --

When I got it to my liking, it really didn't take that long, I served it up alongside some crackers and of course added some cheese cubes for the girlies.

Here's a closer view --- the only thing I would change next time is to rinse the chicken, the seasoning on them was super peppery -- it almost overpowered the mildness of the potatoes and corn.

Back in Business

Realized the last couple of days that I have totally neglected my etsy business.  I have so much success on Facebook selling watches and also word of mouth sales, that I haven't spent much time on etsy.  So tonight I decided to change that.  I've spent the last couple of hours posting some, okay in reality not even half, of my watches!! 
If you're so inclined, go check it out.
WorthWhile Creations

Watch Tutorial



The first thing you will need is a mat of some kind to lay out your materials.  A simple washcloth will work, it will just keep the beads from rolling away and give you a good place to work.  On this watch, I laid out some of my beads, but don't do it all the time, just depends on how I feel :-)

 

This watch face came with a loop - not a problem, it just needs to come off.  A simple pair of pliers will do the trick, or sometimes I can even use my thumb and finger to twist it off.  If you look at the ring, you'll see a little split where it joins, you want that split to be just to the left of your pliers or fingers.

Grab hold and twist the hand holding the ring forwards toward you. If you notice in the first picture my thumb is on top, kind of parallel with the face, then after I twisted it's on the bottom, more perpendicular. The ring will twist open and you just pull it out.

You're now ready to go -- cut a piece of stretch magic -- I usually make mine about 16 inches, gives me enough room to do whatever design and enough to tie.  I know how much I need to work with to tie it off, but I would leave a little extra for the girls - so 16 inches is probably good, even though their wrists are smaller.  Thread one end through the loop on the watch -- the nice thing about the stretch magic is that it's stiff enough to use by itself -- don't need to tape the end or anything.

 

Pull the ends even (the silver rings are only to show where the ends are)

Start stringing beads

 



 

 And more beads

 

You can try it on occasionally by holding the ends together and just wrapping around your wrist -- or you can measure the wrist first and measure the strand while you're working on it.

 

This one is finished - you can see between my two fingers how much cording I have left.

 

 

Now comes the fun part!  I like to leave the main part of the beads laying flat and bring my watch face over to where the ends are.

 

 

  Thread one side through the loop on the top of the watch face.

 

Pull the cording until the beads are tight against the face loop.

 

 

Now bring the other side up and tie an overhand knot.

 

 

 

Take the ends and finish tying the surgeon's knot

 

Pull the ends tight and take the end closest to the watch loop and slip it back through -- so that you have one piece of cording on either side of the watch loop.

 



 

Pull it through and then stretching it a little so that you can get to the knot add a dab of glue.

 

 

 

Once you have the glue, pull on each end of the cording, so that you are pulling the knot tight, but also slipping the knot inside the loop on the watch face -- that way you won't be able to see it.

 

Let the glue dry for about 5 minutes and then take a pair of sharp tiny scissors and cut as close as you can to the metal loop of the watch.

 

Easy as that -- you have a finished watch!!  Trust me, it will take longer to read this post than it would to string the beads, well at least for some of the girls who just "go for broke."  Seriously though, it's really not that hard.  Have fun!!

 





 

 

 

 

Hurray for Friday

Once again -- I'm so thankful for Friday and Sabbath.  I wish I could go to sleep about 8:30 and not wake up until noon tomorrow :-)

Seems like the days I'm the most tired are the days I need to get the most done.  Maybe because I keep pushing and pushing because I know if I slow down, I'll just quit.  H was up several hours during the night, which  means mommy was up as well.  And then it was cleaning house, straightening her room, which took as long as the rest of the house!! Then I decided to make bread, so am now waiting for it to bake and then off to the grocery store....

Like I said -- bring on the Sabbath!!  Plus it's a Sabbath with homemade cinnamon bread -- can't get much better than that.

UGH .... for sunshine!!

People think I'm crazy when I say I don't like the sun and it makes me sick, but today is even more proof!! 

The girls and I went down to my parents this long weekend.  Well technically we went on Sunday and came back on Tuesday.  The girls didn't have school on Monday or Tuesday so we took advantage of it and all went to a water park in Greensboro.  We had a blast -- spent the whole time riding one ride -- but the downside of it is not I'm paying for it.

I don't have a sunburn or anything to show for it, just exhaustion.  It's almost like I have the beginnings of a flu and the only thing I can attribute it to is the sunshine.  Happens every time.  Oh well, the girls had a great day and it was worth it.

The upside of it -- I've spent the day creating!!  In October I'm partnering with a local business to support breast cancer research so I'm busy making watches galore to get them ready!!  Here's a couple of pictures of what I've done recently.

 

Menu Plan in Action

I finally have this up and running and thought I'd share!!  It turned out pretty good, although I don't think I'd print double ideas again.  It just makes too many magnets to find storage space for.  There are a couple that I would do twice, the ones that I know we eat often -- Hannah's cheesy rice being one!!  That child would eat cheesy rice everyday if I would let her :-)

After I came up with the list, I put it on a Word table and then printed it out on magnets sheets.  I have never done that before and when I went to get the magnet sheets, I got the thinner ones that say you can print pictures on them -- I think next time, I'll get the normal thicker sheets.  Anyway, learned a little bit, mainly, leave the paper on the bottom as you run it through the printer and help it along a little bit so it uses the whole sheet.  The first sheet I did I could only use part of it because it printed weird.  Oh well, lessons learned.

Once they were printed, I used highlighters and colored the categories I had decided on.  Then cut them out.  It took a little bit of time, but I was in a church board meeting, so had time to spare!!

Found some pretty paper tape at Target, it even matched my kitchen!!  Had to experiment a couple of times to get the dimensions right, but that wasn't too hard, just ended up cutting one of the tapes in half. 

All in all, this turned out to be a super easy and mostly inexpensive project.  I think it cost less then $15, and I have lots of tape left over and a bunch of highlighters!!

So here's the finished result!!