PAD 4/27/12

Well, hello there! Can you believe I'm posting my photo on time? Me either, but here I am on a Saturday afternoon with all of my house work done and dinner in the slow cooker. It's too chilly to get out in the garden, so I thought I'd update the journal and then do some crafting. My stash of cards is getting low, time to start stamping. :o)

Anyway, yesterday, Michelle had her Keeper's of the Faith meeting and we had two of her friends come over to spend the night with us. They had a blast up on the trail with the new fort Michelle made for herself. I had to hike up to check on them several times since I still worry a bit about the possibility of bears roaming through, but with the amount of noise they were making, I don't think there was a wild creature within 3 miles of the place--except them. :o)
 

Michelle built this herself using the branches Mike was trimming near the trail. I suggested using the sheets verses adding any more branches as I was afraid the two supporting trees wouldn't support much more weight.

This little one knows no fear. She was climbing all over and didn't seem to mind heights at all. We have a lot of downed trees in the yard and the girls were climbing across them and jumping off. When I mentioned to the littlest that she was kind of high and the branch might break she said, "And I'll probably break a bone." Yep, no fear.

I will post today's picture later on since I haven't taken any yet. Time to go get some stampin' done. :o)

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

PAD 4/22/12-4/26/12

Update Part 2

Well, the last update posted fine, so here's part 2.

4/22/12

Look who followed me home from the store on Sunday. Isn't he cute? He was on sale and he simply had to come home with me. He seems quite happy in the flower bed. :o)

4/23/12

Click on the picture and you can see the details better. 

OK, so this is what happens when you're a perfectionist. I had NO time to make these cupcakes. I had so many fun ideas to decorate for the baby shower our church was hosting this week, but, unfortunately, as I mentioned before, I didn't come up with these great ideas until Sunday night--the shower was Tuesday. There wasn't enough time to ask others to help me, but I just HAD to do them. They were too cute not to. I thought a "showers of blessings" theme would be fun, and since we had 2 babies to celebrate, that led me to think of Noah's ark, which totally goes with the shower theme. So, I spent most of the two days designing on my computer, cutting out and hand crafting the decorations. It's funny, I will think and think about an upcoming project and not have any ideas, but as soon as I buckle down and spend some time praying about it and asking the Lord's guidance, POOF! it's like a flood of ideas (no pun intended ;o) Anyway, as I was saying, I had NO time to make these cupcakes for the party. I kept trying to think of alternative, faster things to make instead, but once I made a couple of the heads, I just couldn't quit. They were too stinkin' cute!!! I think I squealed a few times in the kitchen. :o) I only wish I had more time 'cause I had a bunch more animals I wanted to do.

4/24/12

Here's a shot of some of the decorations. Thankfully one of my friends came by and helped Michelle and I put them up. She punched out all those raindrops for me. I didn't get a great picture of it, but the raindrops over the food table spelled out the word "blessings".

I even pulled the shower theme to the middle of the cupcakes. See the puddle and the raindrops? Saw this idea on the internet and thought it would be fun.

I have to say that while I enjoy making the decorations and cakes and stuff, my favorite part of the shower is knowing the two new little ones in our church. I will continue to pray for them and can't wait till they're in my Sunday School class. :o)

4/25/12

After a week and a half of baking and crafting, my house was a mess! We're all pretty used to the kitchen and craft room being messy, but this week seemed to have exploded into the rest of the house. Poor Mike was fishing clean socks out of the basket because they never managed to get folded and put away. So, I promised him a clean house and a home cooked meal when he got home. We almost accomplished that. The upstairs got cleaned, but we never made it to the craft room. I did make Creamy Chicken Enchiladas and home made cheese bread for dinner, and since the bread maker was already out I decided to use it to make the dough for cinnamon rolls. YUM! I would post a picture of them all baked, but they were eaten before the camera managed to make it upstairs.

4/26/12

 Michelle and I may not have gotten much of our history lessons done this past week, but we did start a new science module. We're learning about plants. Here's our "lab" and some of our "babies". The juice carton is acting as our little incubating room right now. Next week it will become our greenhouse. I really like the TOPS science books. Lots of fun, broken down into easy steps, and lots of learning happening. Those are simply pinto beans and popcorn from the grocery store growing. Who knew?

Well, I think that just about does it. I'm all caught up again. Yay! Hopefully I'll do a little better in the time management department, especially since we have a Ladies' Salad Supper coming up in a week and a half and I'm doing the decorations. Maybe I should spend some time on that tomorrow. ;o)

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

PAD 4/17/12-4/21/12

It has been a CRAZY week here! I had 234 cupcakes to do for a library fundraiser, and a baby shower to decorate and do a cake for. The baby shower would have been easy if I had had my brainstorm earlier than 2 days before the party! I could have had all the decorations done well in advance and just had to make the cake, but that didn't happen. No, I kept thinking, "the baby shower isn't until after the library fundraiser, I can think about it then." I didn't realize it was only 3 days after the fundraiser. Time management--not my strong point.

Anyway, here are my photo updates for the last week and a half.

4/17/12

The first tulip about to bloom in the garden. I love this time of year, and I love the new bed we put in closer to the house, and right outside my office window. I often stare at it and the bird feeders while I'm typing in my prayer journal in the morning. God's creations are so amazing!

4/18/12

 Well, there really should be a picture of me here, since this was my 43rd birthday, but I was so busy in the kitchen making cupcake toppers and I didn't exactly look camera worthy. Thinking back, I probably should have had Mike go ahead and take a picture of me in my apron, hair pinned up, powdered sugar in place of make-up, since that's how my family sees me most of the time anyway.

Instead, I have a picture of Angel. Sort of. She's under there somewhere. I was so sick on her birthday that I really didn't do anything to make her feel special so I decided to surprise her on my birthday since she was home. I put money in 18 balloons and blew them up and put them in her room before she woke up. Well, I tried to get them in there before she woke up, but I forgot to put Layla in the laundry room and she jumped on the bed while I was trying to be sneaky. Needless to say, it's kind of hard to stay asleep with a dog licking your face. :o)

4/19/12

Another picture of my pretty flowers. I took this when I took Layla out for a walk. She still likes to take off into the woods so we have to go out with her and watch her. :o( At least it gives me an excuse to get out of the kitchen for a couple of minutes and enjoy the sunshine.

4/20/12

 These are the 234 cupcakes I worked on for the library. Here they are packed and ready to go. There's another box in the front seat. I actually took this picture Saturday morning, but you really don't want to see what my kitchen looked like on Friday. Honest, you really don't! Poor Michelle did most of her school work on her own Thursday and Friday. We'll definitely have some catch up work to do later.

4/21/12

 Here's one of the cupcake displays. The convention center provided the display stands. I will post some more shots of the cupcakes over on the craft blog. There were seven different flavors of cupcakes and each one had a different topper. I had a Dr's appointment after I delivered these so I was out for a good part of the day. Michelle played and Mike worked on the final for his current class while I was out. I'm happy to report that he got an A on it. :o)

I was hoping to get completely updated, but this post is pretty photo heavy and I don't know how well it will load, or if blogger will even let me post something with this many photos. So, I will call this Update Post 1.

Till Post 2
God's love and blessings!

PAD 4/15/12-4/16/12

Boy, finding quiet time to update this journal is not easy! Anyway, here's my photos for the last couple of days.

4/15/12

This is how I work at my desk quite often. Both dogs insist on being in the chair with me. It works fine until my leg goes to sleep. :o)

4/16/12

I have a bunch of pictures for today. First, a picture I took Saturday afternoon...

Now, the same picture taken Monday morning.

Such fun weather we have here in WI. This time of year you really never know what to expect. Saturday was 70, and Monday we didn't get above 40. Here it is again later in the afternoon.

As the snow melted off the roofs, it was still pretty cold out so it refroze on whatever it landed on. I really wish I was better with my camera so I could get better shots of God's creation. My pictures never come close to what they look like in real life. God is so amazing!

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

PAD 4/13/12-4/14/12

So, it's time to catch up on the PAD Journal. I actually already posted a picture for the 12th, but I have two more to add just for Nick. Because of our harsh winters, we have several restaurants that are open seasonally. The weather has been so nice that the Drive-Inn opened a little early this year so we had dinner there Thursday evening.

4/12/12

My personal favorite thing on the menu--their french fries! So yummy!

4/13/12

I got a picture of Michelle playing with her Calico Critters after her school work was done. I was having fun playing with the manual settings on the camera. Love her cat doing a hand stand. :o) Later, Michelle and I met Daddy in town to get our taxes taken care of. Glad that's done. And, Angel made it safely home for the weekend. :o)

4/14/12

I have lots of pictures for Saturday. It was beautiful out so we spent much of the morning outside getting some yard work done. I played in the flower beds while Mike and Michelle cleared some more of their trail. Then I took Michelle and two of her friends to the park for a picnic while Mike headed over to his Mom's to help her out. Unfortunately, Angel had to work and couldn't go with us. I took a bunch of pics, but these are my favorites.

The girls were collecting these little guys to bring home as pets. (*o*)

I spent the afternoon finishing up a baby dedication cake and then we went to our friends' house for dinner. It was so sweet, they even surprised me with a Birthday cake and a gift. Completely unexpected. This is the cake I finished for little Savannah.

Well, I have more pictures for yesterday, and today, but I am going to close here so Michelle and I can get some school work done and spend a little time with Angel before she heads back to school tomorrow.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

PAD 4/12/12

It looks like we had a visitor last night. This used to be a bird feeder. Not anymore. I guess the bears are awake now. Our "watch dogs" never even heard him (or her). Time to keep the garbage can in the garage.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

PAD 4/8/12-4/11/12

I knew it would get behind on posting these sooner or later, but at least I kept up on taking the pictures. I've just been too tired to post them. This cold just keeps dragging on and taking all my energy with it.

Anyway, here's my pics for this past week.

4/8/12

Here's Angel with her new "do" finding an egg on our egg hunt. I tried to get a bunch of pictures of her that day, but most of them came out too blurry. I think we were giggling too much. :o)

4/9/12

Michelle and I stayed home and worked on school work for the day. It was too cold to go outside, so she played with her new legos after school.

4/10/12

In between school work and taking a couple of naps, I finished this cake for a friend's grand daughter.

4/11/12

On the way to piano lessons, we dropped off food for some new parents from church. Since I'm still coughing, I didn't get to hold the precious little one, but I did sneak a couple of pictures of him. Welcome little Matthias. I can't wait till you're in my Sunday School class. ;o)

I better go now. Michelle and I have some science to finish up today.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

PAD 4/7/12

I already have a photo for today. :o) Michelle and I colored eggs this afternoon. I love coloring eggs. I know that colored eggs really have nothing to do with Christ's resurrection that we will be celebrating tomorrow, but they are just plain fun to do. This year we added a little bit of vegetable oil to a couple of the color cups and made some cool marbled eggs.

 

Aren't they pretty? I wish we had more family living close by so I had an excuse to color more eggs. :o) Anyway, I am going to close this here as I have lots to do before church tomorrow so I really need to get off my bottom and away from this computer. 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings!

PAD 4/6/12

Today was a fun day. Mike was off and it is his Mom's birthday, so we met them in town to take her out for lunch. Before that, Mike and Michelle decided to take the lawn tractor through the woods and create a hiking path for us. After we got home, the two of them took me along the trail to check it out. Here's a couple of shots from our walk.

It looks like the previous owners must have had some trails already through the woods because they were able to create a pretty good trail just by mowing and moving some dead fall out of the way.

We detoured off the trail down to the creek where Michelle had fun on the fallen logs. We had very little snow fall this year, so the creek isn't flowing at all, just a few puddles here and there.

I guess that's about all for now. I'm hoping the weather stays nice tomorrow so I can get out into the garden a bit. Till next time...

God's love and blesssings!

PAD 4/5/12

Here's a photo for the 5th. I didn't get to post last night because Michelle and I got home late from a swimming party. I forgot to take my camera with me so I didn't get any fun swimming photos, but I did get a photo of my baby veggies and flowers. I hope to be able to get them into the garden in a couple of weeks.

Since I'm late, I'll close this here. Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

PAD 4/4/12

I took lots of pictures today as Michelle and I finally got to have the picnic I promised her last week. But, since it is late, I am only going to post one of them. Here is my smiling girl who was so happy to have a chance to be outside and play at the park after a week of Mommy being sick.

We definitely had a full day today...a picnic at the park, piano lessons, mowed the pasture, bathed both dogs, made pita bread for chicken gyros for dinner (yum!) and I only needed a 15 minute nap after dinner to have enough energy to teach class at church this evening. Yep, definitely feeling better. :o)

Well, I'm going to go get Mike off his computer and make him get into bed as he is still battling this a bit. Till next time...

God's love and blessings!

PAD 4/3/12

So far, so good. Of course, it's only been 3 days, but that's a pretty good blogging record for me. :o) I'm happy to say that by about 5 o clock this evening, I was feeling much better than I have in about a  week. So good, in fact, that I was able to do this...

That, my dears, would be raspberry jam, still boiling and ready to go into cans. I noticed the leaves opening up on the berry canes this morning and realized I should probably get busy canning the rest of the harvest from last summer. I used 1 1/2 of the 6 bags of berries in the freezer for this batch. Looks like I still have a bit more canning to do, but I've got to go get more cans. I think the next batch will be raspberry topping and some syrup. YUM!

My canner only holds 7 jars, so the big jar in the back was the extra from the batch. It will go straight into the fridge. Hmmm, I'm thinking maybe some toast and jam for dessert tonight. ;o)

I'm so glad to be feeling better. Just in time to take care of Mike now too. :o) Poor guy, he had some kind of cold before I caught this nasty thing, seemed to get better, but now he's feeling bad again. I hope he has a better immune system than I do.

Well, I'm off to figure out what we need to do to catch up on the school work we missed while the teacher was sick.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

PAD 4/2/12

I have 3 photos for today. I started out the day feeling much better than I have in almost a week which was great until I looked around my house. It was a mess! Not really a mess since my family is pretty good at cleaning up after themselves, but the carpets desperately needed vacuuming and you could write your name on most of the furniture. So, Michelle and spent a good part of the morning getting the house cleaned up and looking better. Angel was home, but she had a headache, and since it is her one day to sleep in, I didn't want to bug her.

Here is my favorite shot of the day. Those are my grandmother's frames she's wearing while she's dusting. Isn't she just stylin'? 

These next two are of Layla. She was favoring one of her legs this weekend. We had no idea what she did, just that she did not want to put any weight on it, so Mike took her into the vet today. Xrays showed nothing wrong, but she tested positive for Lymes. The vet wasn't super sure that was causing the pain since it usually doesn't manifest itself in just one body part, but he didn't have any other answers. So, she got some pain meds and antibiotics and is already doing better. As you can see, she doesn't have any trouble chasing the ball with Coco. :o) Glad to see her up and moving about again. 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings

Starting over...again

Yes, once again I've proven that blogging just isn't my thing. Sometimes I think I should just give it up, but then I go back and read past posts and relive that time all over again. So, I'm going to attempt to start over with this blog as our family journal. Hoping to use it as a place for our family and friends to keep up with what's going on here.

For the month of March, I started a Photo A Day (PAD) Journal on my Facebook page. I enjoyed it for several reasons. First, it was an easy way for me to share with Nick and Angel some of the little things going on here at home while they are gone. Secondly, it forced me to get my camera out every day and figure out something to take a picture of. I even took my camera off the auto setting! And you know what? I actually did it! I might have been a day or two late posting the pic, but I did take them and get them posted, except for the last 6 days when the nasty cold that has been going around finally caught up with us. I've spent the better part of this past week trying to sleep it off. I still have a lot of congestion, nasty cough and no energy, but the chills, body aches and fever seem to have subsided (I think).

Anyway, I've decided to move that journal to this blog. This way if I want to give more details to the photo I can. Also, I have a few family members that aren't on Facebook, and now they will be able to keep up with us as well.

So, without further ado, here's my pic for April 1, 2012

Today's picture was an easy one to figure out. My beautiful Angel turned 18. She has turned into such a beautiful young lady. Although the last few months have been difficult with her being away at school, I enjoy the weekends when she comes home and I love to hear how much she is enjoying the career choice she's made.  I could get all sappy on here about how great and wonderful she is, but since I'm still not feeling well, and I tend to get all teary-eyed anyway, I better stop here. Crying does not help a stuffed up nose. Nope, not one bit. I love you, Angel! (Too late, here come the tears.)

Ok, now I need to go find another box of tissues. 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings