More Digi Pages!

Here are a couple of pages that I did when Becky, Cheri and I got together last week at CJ Bagels.

This is my mother's older brother Joe. The photo is his graduation photo from East High School in 1944.




This photo was taken by friends of the family when they were over in that neighborhood.




Thanks for looking!

The last of the Christmas 2008 pages!

YEA! I'm done.

Biggest Loser Recipe Challenge

This week we tried the Pineapple Teriyaki Pork Chops and the Contemporary Peppered Chopped Steak.

The pork chops were okay. Fred like them better than I did. It was a super easy recipe. Bake your pork chops, at the end of baking, brush on some teriyaki marinade and top with a slice of pineapple. Put under the broiler until done.

Fred had a baked potato and I had a baked sweet potato to go with and I made up a chopped lettuce and vegie salad also.


The Contemporary Peppered Chopped Steak was really good. We had my Dad over for dinner last night and to watch the Iowa Hawkeyes play....SIDE NOTE: WAY TO GO IOWA FOR STUNNING PENN STATE 21-10!

Sorry, I had to get that out there....lol

The chopped steak was covered in caramelized onion that you used grape juice when caramelizing. We served it with mashed potatoes, french cut green beans and Fred and my Dad has an ear of corn.

I don't think we have one of the recipes on the menu this week but I can't remember right now. All in all, the cookbook has been worth the money.

Thank you for the birthday wishes and some not so good news

My birthday was interesting to say the least this year. Friday (my actual birthday), hubby took a day off to spend the day with me and my Aunt came out to take me out to lunch. Shortly after she arrived, I received a phone call from my sister that my Dad had called and my Uncle Dic (my dad's younger brother) was in the hospital and not expected to ever make it back out. The original message from my Uncle's wife was dire and my Dad was distraught. My cousin Jennifer (my Uncle's daughter) lives in San Diego and the message she got was dire also, so both she and my Dad jumped on the first planes they could back to Iowa.

The news isn't good. My Uncle Dic is not going to come home from the hospital. It's just a matter of time. He's in heart failure (COPD, congestive heart failure, his pacemaker is doing 98% of the work), he's in kidney failure and needs dialysis for 3-4 hours a day and his leg needs to be amputated because of the gangrene, but his heart is not strong enough to withstand the surgery. He is also battling MRSA everywhere. I feel so sad for our family, especially my Dad and Jennifer.

There is nothing that anyone can do except wait.

I have not been down to the hospital, his visitation hours are limited and frankly because of the MRSA, I'm hesitant to expose myself. At this point, I'm here for my dad and cousin and will make sure that there visit is as comfortable as possible. Jennifer is leaving tomorrow as she has school and a job to attend to, but will be back when the time comes. My Dad is staying with my brother right now, but will probably come out to the our house to stay at some point.

I'm not a praying to god type person, but those of you that are, prayers are requested to make my Uncle's journey peaceful and suffer free will be appreciated.

SIDE NOTE: My Aunt took me out to lunch at Uncle Bucks Fish Bowl at the new Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World that opened in my town a month ago. The food was excellent, but because it's located in the bowling alley, it's pretty loud. The store is fabulous and I know where I'm going to do some Christmas shopping this year.

Later.....

Chicken and Noodles

Chicken and Noodles is a dish that has a lot of meaning in my family in so many different ways. It's the dish that my brother and I both request for birthday dinners (and for those of you who don't know, my brother and I share a birthday) and it is a dish that we both love so it was a no brainer for our mom to fix for both of us as we were growing and then into adulthood.

Chicken and Noodles take on a whole new meaning within my own family as Fred has never jumped on board the Chicken and Noodle train. I don't know if it's because he is not from the midwest/Iowa, but he doesn't understand the whole chicken and noodles over mashed potatoes or even eating just a big bowl of the noodles. Too bad for him. So over the last 22 years, he has had to "tolerate" the dinner where this is served. My family kids him quite a bit over it as my hubby isn't known to shy away from food except for a few things.

Guess what is on the menu tonight? LOL

I make an awesome pot of Chicken and Noodles and I think my secret is to use chicken broth and water to cook the chicken. I also use chicken breasts on the bone and chop up a bunch of celery, leaves and all and onion and add that to the pot. (SIDE NOTE: Those four HUGE chicken breasts....$3.91 for the pack. When Hy-Vee has them on sale for 77 cents a pound, I stock up.)





Once the chicken cooked, I take the pieces out of the broth, cool it and pick the meat off the bone. I usually cook more than I need to be used in a second meal.

I then bring the chicken broth back up to a boil, add my frozen Reame's noodles (no homemade for me, these noodles are great and they save a tremendous amount of MY time) to the broth, cook according to directions and then the last 5 minutes, I add the chicken meat back into the pot and there you have it. A big batch of yummy Chicken and Noodles.

A dish that invokes many memories and emotions within my family.

Hope everyone had a good weekend. Mine was quite surreal.

It was a good day!

Finally, after feeling lousy for about a week dealing with an abscessed tooth, I woke up this morning feeling pretty good. The tooth is still tender to bite with, so I'll avoid doing that for awhile, but the pain is gone.

Spent the day cleaning house, doing laundry and watching the Iowa Hawkeyes hand the Iowa State Cyclones their ass at home. A big sorry to my dear Cyclone friends. Even my house is divided as Fred and Connor are both Cyclones fans and even my brother and sister are Cyclone fans. I am the lone Hawkeye fan and I alone relish in this win...LOL! In case you missed it: Iowa 35 Iowa State 3

Fred and I went to the gym in the afternoon for a 40 minute workout. I did 15 minutes of cardio and 20 minutes of strength training and I really pushed myself. I was sweating like a pig after doing the exercises.

On the iPod playlist today:
Blame It On Fate - Jude Cole (an all time favorite off the Start the Car CD)
Holiday - Green Day
Give It To Me - 3 Doors Down
Little Things - Bush
Pulling Teeth - Green Day
Free Your Mind - En Vogue
Six Hours - Alice Cooper
Devour - Shinedown (all you hard rocks fans, this song is for you! Love it!)
Home In My Hand - Foghat

Going to spend some time in my craft room tonight. I want to finish up the Christmas pages so I can move on to something else. I also need to start power planning some pages for the crop that I'm going to the first weekend of October. I hate it when it creeps up and I don't have anything prepared, then I start grabbing everything and I usually don't like what I've brought once I'm at the crop.

Here's a random kitty photo that I took today. I had laid one of the kitties favorite blankets over the arm of a chair and Oreo decided to climb up underneath it and peek out. He stayed there for the longest time.



Tomorrow morning, Fred and I are going to go on a bike ride instead of a gym visit. I think it's good to mix it up sometimes.

Later....

More Christmas Pages.......

Here's a few more Christmas pages. I'm *almost* done with Christmas 2008, just a couple more.





I used a musical lighted gift card that Fred received as an embellishment on this page and then put instructions next to it to "push the bulls eye"








Except for just a couple of new things, I used up quite a bit of older Christmas supplies. I dug out all of my Basic Grey past Christmas collections and there are some letter stickers on the page of Chloe and Santa that I KNOW are at least 5 years old....I knew I'd use them one day...LOL!

Thanks for looking!

We must never forget the victims and heros of 9-11

Premium Me Award & a recipe review.....

My friend Becky has bestowed this award on me and I must comply.

The rules are that I must post 7 things about myself and then award 7 more of my posse.

Completely random things. Here goes:

1. I have a wicked sense of humor. Sometimes appropriate, sometimes inappropriate. I probably could have gone down the stand up comedian route.

2. I never thought I get married, let alone have any kids. I was perfectly content (or so I thought) at being a gypsy with no ties, nothing to hold me back from just doing my own thing. I pictured myself single, living a fabulous single life with a gorgeous man on my arm at all times. Well, I did get the gorgeous man and as a by-product a gorgeous son who I can't imagine life without.

3. I could eat pizza EVERY.SINGLE.DAY.

4. I was such a groupie back in the 80's. Not that I slept with rock stars (well at least not ALL of them....lol), but I sure liked getting backstage at concerts and meeting them. Made some very fun friends and had A LOT of fun times and I'm very glad that digital photography and camera phones were not around. I'd NEVER be able to run for public office....lol!

5. Scrapbooking is the longest I have ever had a hobby. I alway liked doing artsy fartsy things and even scrapbooked back in high school, but my "art" would ebb and flow depending on what I was into, such as pastels, ceramics, stained glass, watercolor, painting. I've stuck with scrapbooking the longest.....13 years.

6. I am a closet fashionista. Life has played a cruel joke on me. When I was younger I had the body to wear ANYTHING, but no money. Now I have the money, but my age and my body have betrayed me.

7. I'm a beauty product junkie....shampoo, bath products, skin care, makeup. I love trying new things and I rarely stay loyal to one brand. I'm not a snob about it though, as I will use drugstore products as easily as higher end lines. My favorites:

Shampoo: Suave, Garnier
Bath Products: The Body Shop, Bath & Body Works, Basin
Skin Care: Olay, Kiehl's, Jergens
Makeup: Revlon, Nars, Smashbox and Maybelline.

I've been working from home this week as I have been nursing an abcessed tooth and won't be able to get it fixed until tomorrow morning. The dentist put me on antibotics and gave me some heavy duty pain killers to get me by until tomorrow. Needless to say, I shouldn't be driving when medicated, so I've just worked from home this week. It's better than having to call in sick and just lay around and waste sick time, I'd rather use that for when I'm really really sick, like fever, cold and flu sick.

I felt good enough to go to the gym with Fred tonight. We did 30 minutes of cardio, me on the elliptical and Fred on the recumbent bike and then we came home and made Szechwan Beef & Broccoli from The Biggest Loser Family Cookbook. It was really good. Very, very easy.....lean beef, fresh broccoli, onion and szechwan sauce. We paired it was sticky rice, which is not a healthy choice, but I love sticky rice and haven't had it in a long time, so I'm not beating myself up over it.

Forgot to mention when I weighted myself Monday, I was down 2.5 pounds. I don't know if Fred has weighed in or not.

Look who has to be wherever I am...always.... the infamous Mr. Tucker (photo taken last weekend when I was playing in my scraproom)



Now I will bestow the Premium Me award on: Cheri, Janalee, Joellyn(who needs to update her blog..lol), Gina(who REALLY needs to update her blog), Judy, Janet and Becky.

Thank Goodness for 3 Days!

I feel a whole lot better today than I did yesterday. Sinus headache is finally gone and it's not making me sick to my stomach. I have a runny nose, but I can deal with that.

Couldn't sleep in this morning, so I got around 7:00, got into my exercise clothes, made a pot of coffee, retrieved the paper and sat down to enjoy both.

The weather is so nice, I decided to bike to the gym. Did a 15 minute round trip bike ride, 25 minutes of cardio and 25 minutes of strength training. Feels good to get back in the rhythm. Fred took a day off, but we both intend to go tomorrow morning.

On the iPod playlist today:
Everybody's Fool - Evanescence
Like You Do - REO Speedwagon
You Wretch Me - Tom Petty
Ain't It Heavy - Melissa Etheridge
Crash Into Me - Dave Matthews Band
Everything Zen - Bush
Rock Candy - Montrose
Forever - Papa Roach
Colorful - The Verve Pipe
Ordinary - Train
Strange Ways - Firefall
Blurry - Puddle of Mudd
Don't Stand So Close To Me - The Police
I Want to Take You Higher - Sly & The Family Stone (covered by Tesla)
Shooting Star - Bad Company (covered by Tesla)

I've had yard work that I needed to do today, but I didn't get to it. I'll get it done tomorrow morning. My boys went to see Gamer this afternoon and came home saying they liked it. I adore Gerard Butler, but it's not my kind of movie so I'm stayed home.

I'm trying to finish the "Photo Editing Workflow" class I signed up for at Jessica Sprague's site. It's only been 6 months since I signed up for the class and I'm only on Lesson 3 or 5. I promise that by the time I go to bed Monday night, I will have this class completed.

I also worked on organizing my digital scrapbook stuff. I figured since I did a purge and organization of my traditional scrapbook supplies, I should do the same with the digi supplies. Ya got ta love ACDSee Photo Manager for that!

I wanted to share a a project that I put together last weekend. I've had this haiku that Connor wrote back 2005 on my inspiration board in the scraproom but I wanted to do something with it, so I had an unfinished frame I purchased at IKEA and I took my Zig markers and decorated it. It's now in hanging in the guest room.



It's one of my favorite pieces of schoolwork Connor has done.

My flowers are still looking good, well at least, the flowers in the ground and in some of my containers. The hanging baskets are starting to look worse for wear and that's one of the things I need to do tomorrow.

Here's my wave petunias going to town in the front of the house



Believe it or not, I DID NOT place these lavender petunias, there must have been some seeds down in my rock garden that liked it there, because here they are -



Hope your weekend has been nice! Thanks for stopping by!

Scrapbook Page and Photo Share

I haven't shared any pages in a while only because I'm lazy about doing it. I've actually done some things in the last couple of months, but I've been bad about getting them uploaded on to my computer. The other night I sat downstairs while watching Project Runway and put about 40 pages in albums. THAT was a job, but it felt good getting it done.

I've been cutting my flowers from my perennial bed the couple of weeks and bringing them inside. I hate cutting them in spring and summer because I like them in my beds, but come this time of year when things are winding down, I'll bring them in the house.





I've also been harvesting tomatoes like a mad woman. Last weekend, I had so many I had to make an emergency batch of salsa...LOL! I also have had the cherry tomatoes coming out my ears (although they didn't get very big, I think I'm going to have to change their location next year).



Random cat shot (Gizzy)



Okay, enough of that...here's a couple layouts I did when I was digital scrapbooking with Becky last week:





The first page was totally random and I used some techniques I haven't for awhile, such as recoloring a element and adding text to an element. The layout of me was done with a template and masking. Probably the easily damn thing in the digital scrapbook world. You just choose what you want for each layer.

For those of you who might be curious, that photo of me was taken at my oldest and dearest friends wedding in August of 1983 in Water Works Park. I was living in Scottsdale, Arizona and came back to be the maid of honor at the wedding and I have such fond memories of that day from that photo. Another note, I made my dress. Diane didn't want me spending money on a dress, she just said, wear something light and summery.

I can't remember if I shared the card that I sent out to Kendahl, my cousin Jennifer's daughter for her 4th birthday a few weeks ago. The card accompanied a tea set that our family (including the kitties - Kendahl loved our kitties and had tea parties with them when she stayed with us).



Here's the first of the Christmas 2008 pages that I've done -







If you want to see them up close, just click on the image.

Thanks for looking!

Biggest Loser Recipe Challenge #1

Well, my last blog post said that we were going to try the Pineapple Teriyaki Pork Chops last week, but we didn't get to it, so they are back on the menu for this week, along with one that Fred wants to try, Szechuan Beef and Broccoli. Today, though Fred made the Today's Tuna Sandwiches for lunch. It was yummy! It had chopped celery, onion, with low fat mayo, pepper on whole wheat bread with slices of tomato (out of the garden) and cucumber (out of the garden).

So 1 for 1 in the recipe count.

I woke up not feeling well at all and have mostly just rested, read, watched a bit of TV, surfed the net for a bit and folded laundry in bed. Since I did nap so much today, of course, I'm wide awake now. Figured I'd take advantage of feeling better to work on some more scrapbook pages. I want to get Christmas 2008 done, so I can move on...

Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday weekend. The weather here is gorgeous, unfortunately not feeling well today I wasn't able to take advantage of it, but I'm going to tomorrow if I'm feeling better. I have some gardening I need to do and with the weather this nice, it's a shame if I don't go for a walk or a bike ride.

Speaking of exercise, I got Fred to the gym Thursday night and he even went back BY HIMSELF this morning. I'm going in the morning for strength training only and I wonder if he'll go with me. Weigh in is Monday morning.....one a week on Mondays.

The start of a month.....

and my birthday month at that. September has always been my favorite month of the year and not just because of my birthday and the presents....lol! Usually the heat of the summer is over and the anticipation of fall sets in, which is my favorite season of the year. I like getting my jeans and sweaters out and the smells of fall and autumn are my favorite of the year also.

On today's agenda....a bike ride to the gym and a workout. I'm also going to talk to Chris about a trial membership for Fred and I want to have him re-measure me. It's been almost a year since my last measurements, then I'm coming back home to play some more in my scrap room until it's time to go get Connor at school.

He has a orthodontist appointment at 1:30 to get his bottom braces on, so that's going to take a while. I've got my magazine(s) ready to go.

This afternoon, I'm just going to be chilling....it's LOST night at the Botts. We gotta get caught up before Season 6 starts early next year.

I have a bunch of scrapbook pages to share, I just have to do some resizing, so I'll probably share them later today or tonight.

Have a great day!