Still doing apples!

Well, here I am, still doing apples! I thought they would be done by now, but I don't seem to be making much headway! This is going to be a short post because when I get off this computer, I'm doing applesauce. Really, I am going to do it this time! And some apple pie filling, too.

Lots of apples!

Have you got one of these handy gadgets? I borrowed this one from a friend.

It peels, cores and slices the apples all at the same time!

There you have it! The core is still on the gadget, the

 peels are under it and the apple rings are to the right.

Pretty handy, huh? Hubby runs the gadget while I catch the rings and put them in a bowl, ready to cook down. Gotta go get busy! See you later.

Friday Friends!

Wow! It's Friday already!Time for some new Friday Friends. First up is Alisa Burke. She has a very nice blog that's a combination of craft, fashion and photography, a little of this and a little of that. While you're there, browse her whole blog. You'll find some great ideas! She's also going to be giving an online class called Create Daily. It's 30 days, a post a day, of simple ideas, projects and lessons, and it only cost $30! $20 if you register by Oct. 31. Anyway, the project I picked for you today is a wreath made from canvas circles and it's one that I definitely want to make for myself! So go on over and check out http://alisaburke.blogspot.com/2009/11/canvas-layers-holiday-wreath.html and see for yourself.

Next in our line-up is Lynn Stevens from Trash to Treasure. If you go to her site right now you will see some of the most amazing Halloween stuff. She participates in a lot of swaps and posts really nice photos of what she sends and what she gets in return. If you scroll all the way down to the bottom, you'll find her archives and you can dig around in there and find some outstanding ideas. I found one in November of last year that I thought was really beautiful and I would love to make it if I can find an old ice skate. http://trashtotreasureart.blogspot.com/2011_11_01_archive.html

Our next friend is Julia at Vintage with Laces. Her site is an eclectic mixture of home dec and craft, and it's truly lovely. As the blog title implies, she uses a lot of vintage laces in her projects and makes some gorgeous items. The one I picture here is one I especially like. Go visit her and be sure to leave a comment. Bloggers love comments.

And our final Friend for today is Julie Ann Shahin over at Julie Ann Shahin2. Her blog is full of paper crafts and art journaling and things that are interesting. I found a Smash book that I really like and that's what I'm sharing today, but go browse her blog and you'll find all kinds of goodies. http://julieannshahin2.blogspot.com/2011/07/homemade-smash-book-its-okay-just-smash.html.

Well, that's it for today. I hope you will visit all our friends and leave comments telling them you saw them here. Comments are good for them AND for me! And remember......the greatest artist was once a beginner, so don't be afraid to try anything! Until next time,

Taking life as it comes.....

I have been using this week to catch up on some projects! I had quite a few swaps to get ready for Swap-bot, tomatoes to bottle, apples to dry and tomorrow I will be making applesauce and apple pie filling! I have two food dryers running as we speak, full of apple rings.

This is what my kitchen table looks like right now!\

A huge square dryer and a smaller round dryer.

Nice looking apple rings.

Here are a few photos of some of the Swap-bot items.

Book page and postage stamp ATC.

(ATC= Artist Trading Card)

Christmas ATC #1

Christmas ATC #2

A spoon lady with extra items to hold in her arms.

I don't know if you can tell but she's made from a wooden spoon.

Christmas tag #1

Christmas tag #2

Christmas bookmark

I also started decorating the house and yard this week. I know, it almost Halloween already, but a lot of the decorations I do outside are more Fall than just Halloween. Hehehe.....except for the headstones I'm making. This is the first year we've done this, but we are going to have a little mini-cemetery in the front yard. And we'll probably add more headstones every year. This is what we're starting with:

The lighting in our kitchen makes everything look yellow!

The cornstalks are actually from our own garden!

This is the first year I didn't have to buy them.

This big spider web lights up.

I'll post more photos when we get the "cemetery" done. Well, that's it for today! You can see that I've been busy. And it's not all done yet, either, but I will keep on pluggin'.


Thanks to all who are still reading and didn't give up on me. Life sometimes gets in the way of living, but I'm still here and plan to be for a long time. After all........either you run the or the day runs you!
Until next time,

Oh da lolly golly what a last few months!

Well, hello! It's been one heck of a last few months! Here's the short version: surgery on both hands, a trip to southern California, southern Nevada and northern Nevada, doctor's appointments by the skads, a mini-stroke, or TIA, arthritis and joint damage for my hubby, and diabetes, bulging disks, narrowing of nerve canals in lower spine and into the legs, and fibromyalgia for me. So you can see how I didn't have a lot of time to blog for a while. But I really am back now, and I will stay back!

The trip to California and Nevada was to visit family, mainly my mother-in-law, who is very ill. We spent two weeks with my husband's sister and family, making daily trips to visit his mother and do what we could to help his sisters get all her affairs in order and her "stuff" cleaned out and taken care of. I think she still has a good long while before she will be "checking out", but it doesn't hurt to be prepared. We had some nice visits with her and enjoyed taking her shopping. She's a hoot sometimes! She knows what she wants and that's that! It's the longest amount of time I've ever spent with her, and I really did enjoy it.

 

My husband, Chuck, and his mom, Thelma.

 

Then we visited the little valley where we lived for so long. Our youngest daughter and her two boys live there again, and we stayed with them for a few days. Two of our other grandsons live there, also, with their dad, and we got to go to soccer games with them. We also got to visit with my husband's brother and brother-in-law (his wife was in California with her mom) and had a nice family barbecue.

 

Rafferty and Cyric in front of their school.

Hal and Isaac at their soccer games.

 

 

 Then we headed north to Elko, where our two oldest kids and their families live. We stayed there a few days, went to another soccer game, saw the beginnings of the balloon light-up, and then headed home.

 

Cody and Jason in front of a character they drew,

It was from a video game or movie, something like that?

Hannah (in the pink) with her sleepover friends,

 and our youngest grandson, SJ.

 

Madison and Kacey, the daughters of my

oldest daughter's boyfriend.

 

 

It was a long trip and we were so glad to get back home to our own bed! We did have a good time, but 3 weeks is a long time to be away from home.

 

I am in the process of making plans for both my blogs and hope to be totally up to speed by Monday. I have a few projects in the works, plus a few that I did during the summer that you haven't seen yet, so I will see you again soon. And remember....."Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling." Margaret Lee Runbeck. Until next time,

Surgery is done!

Well, my surgery is finally done! I am having a hard time being good with this one, because I'm not as scared this time. I know what I can do and what I can't. My biggest problem is that I got used to using my left hand for everything after the surgery on the right hand, and so I go for the left without thinking and then I yelp when it hurts!

You can tell that I haven't been such a good girl. Boy is that bandage dirty!

But I get to take the ugly bandage off tomorrow and the stitches will come out next Tuesday. Yay!

Before the surgery, I started a post about Pinterest. I LOVE Pinterest! It is addicting and fun and you can learn a lot of stuff there. And you can get mega ideas! So many ideas it's hard to choose what you want to do.....I guess that's why there are boards you can pin the ideas to for later perusal. Anyway, I decided to start a Pinterest Challenge for myself. Every month, I will choose something from Pinterest to make for myself or as a gift. I will show you the pin and then show you how I made it. I hope you like this idea, because I think it will be fun. So, my first Pinterest Challenge is this:

A Girl's Survival Kit. I found it on my friend LoriAnn's board and the original is here, on the Tidy Mom blog.

The pinned item was mad from a lorge potholder with a pocket on one side. I couldn't find a hot pad with a pocket, so I just got a regular extra-long hot pad at Wal*Mart. It cost me 97 cents. A bag of snack bags was about $3, and some black grosgrain ribbon I laready had. The cost of the goodies to go in the pockets will depend on whatever you put in them. I already had a lot of the stuff, so I didn't spend too much.

Decide how many pockets you want. I put twelve snack bags, 6 on each side, so the friend I'm giving it to can add other things if she wants. I lined them all up and pinned them in place. I left about 1/4" space between the two sides, because it gives more room for the stuff in the pockets. Use a zigzag stitch to attach them to the potholder.

It looks pretty good as long as your stitching is straight, but I like to cover it up anyway. I used a length of 1" wide grosgrain ribbon, cut 1/2" longer than the width of the potholder. Turn under 1/4" on each end and stitch it to the back of the potholder. Be sure to move your bags to the side you are NOT stitching on, or you will make you bags too small to hold anything.

Now it looks more finished! Add a large button on the side with no loop and line it up with the loop so your clutch will button straight.

There you go!  All finished and ready to use or give. The one from Pinterest used the outside pocket on the potholder to hold a little notebook, but I just put mine inside. At least I think I remembered the notebook????? Oh, well, she might just have to get her own.

That's enough typing for today. One-handed typing is a real bummer. I hope you liked this Pinterest Challenge, and I will be doing more in the future, so keep an eye out. And remember this.....the greatest artist was once a beginner, so don't be afraid to try everything! Until next time,

Christmas in July!

I can't believe it's been almost a month since my last post! I have been enjoying the summer and doing some volunteer work. I volunteer in the community garden every Tuesday and Thursday, and I volunteer at the library on Wednesdays. Plus I have my church obligations and the family and the records transcription for family history, etc. etc. etc. I didn't realize I was so busy until I wrote it all down! And I just got a new church calling.....I am now the Relief Society mid-week activity committee chairman. I have a really good committee, although we need a couple more to replace the two we lost, but that's probably the easiest of all my responsibilities. We just had a Christmas in July meeting that was so much fun! We made Joy blocks.....

and thumbprint Christmas cards.....

and Cinnamon Stick Nativities....

and yo-yo Christmas Trees!

Click on the links and it will take you to instructions for the projects. They are all from my Twelve Days of Christmas 2012 except for the cards. I got ideas for those all over the Internet, but the link will take you to Squidoo, where I found the most ideas in one place. And I don't know what's going on with my pictures, but some of them won't let me make them bigger. Sorry!

We had Christmas cookies and milk for refreshments and everyone had a good time. That's what a good committee will do!

Anyway, that's what I've been up to since we last talked. And next Tuesday, I will be having surgery on my other hand, so it will probably be another few weeks before you hear much from me. You all take care and keep crafting!

A great recipe!

When my children were really young, we lived for a couple of years in Grantsville, Utah. There are some really super people there, and we enjoyed our time there. One of the ladies in our ward (LDS church group) had a daughter coming home from her mission, and I volunteered to help her at the after-report reception. We don't do these any more, because they became a we-can-do-it-better-than-you kind of thing. but this was back in the day. Anyway, she served this wonderful dessert called Trifle, which I had never heard of. She got the recipe while she and her husband and family were in England, and she was more than willing to share it with me.

It's a beautiful, easy dessert. For my family, who eats this like it's going out of style, I use two small boxes of instant vanilla pudding, one yellow cake mix, two baskets of strawberries, 3-4 bananas, 1 pkg. frozen raspberries (or fresh, if you have them), 1 box Danish Dessert or 1 tub of strawberry glaze for making pies, and one large tub Cool Whip. Start by baking the cake in a 9x13 pan and letting it cool. While the cake is cooling, pick the tops from the strawberries and slice them. Add just about 1/4 cup sugar. Don't add too much because it will make the filling too juicy. Slice the bananas and add them, with the raspberries, to the strawberries. If you have Danish Desert, make it according to the instructions on the package. If you have strawberry glaze, us it as is. Add the glaze to the fruit and stir well.

 Last of all, make the pudding according to the directions on the package. Now break the cake up into small crumbles and start layering the ingredients in a straight-sided glass bowl, or Trifle dish. (They really do make dishes meant for trifle!)

Start with a little bit of the fruit mixture, just enough to moisten the bottom. Now your layers go like this: cake, fruit mixture, pudding and Cool Whip. The fruit should always go on top of the cake so that the juice will soak into it and not juice up the pudding. (My bottom layer is backwards, but the top layer is right :0 ) My trifle dish has disappeared, so I had to use more than one dish.

When you get it all layered, it will look really beautiful! Serve it to your family and listen to the compliments roll in. It makes a splash at parties and potlucks, too!  I hope you will try this recipe and let me know what you think. I like to have this for my birthday instead of a cake.

Until next time, think about this: Birthdays are good for you - the more you have, the longer you live! Happy summer and good eating!