Do You Dream?

Last night I had the weirdest dreams. I must have been hungry....I was dreaming that I was cooking. I made chocolate chip cookies shaped like rectangles, burnt toast just the way that I really like it, a crock pot roast that was just perfect and smelled divine! Who knew I could smell things in my dreams?? I also made the thickest pasty yucky split pea soup! I do not like split pea soup so how did that get in there? Any how I woke up starving at 7:15 and by 7:25 I had visited the bathroom, went outside to get the newspaper,washed my hands and made scrambled eggs with sausage (leftover from Fridays breakfast) and whole wheat toast just the way I like it with butter and grape jelly :). Impressed the hubby on that one!

OINK

Look what I found today! No one in my family thinks it's a good thing...lol. They all just think I'm a little weird with my fetish for pig stuff. This big guy is about 18" long and9" wide and about 10" high. He is a piggy bank and I know it's a he because it's blue :)


Now I just need to find the other four that go with it so I will have the whole nursery rhyme. My daughters are reading this and groaning with dismay! I haven't counted them but I have lots of piggy banks. I have 10 grandchildren and for each child I have 4 piggy banks for each of them. They are filled with coins and it's their inheritance, teehee. They like to go in and look at them and ask which ones are theirs. They have definite preferences about who wants which one! I have to write names on them so there won't be a huge fight over them :0. Course I'm hoping they have to wait a long, long time to collect them!

Yardsale Bargain of the Week

Just about every Saturday morning during yard sale season you may spot me pawing through other peoples junk. I love a good sale and I love it even more when the husband is manning the sale! :) I got 2 brand new never used large stamps for 50 cents apiece and a, not even put together yet, set of Stampin' Up stamps for 75 cents. So for $1.75 I got $35-$40 worth of stamps....LOVE IT !! My next bargain was a whole lot of brads and clips and metal frames. I am totally addicted to stamps and embellishments. No, I am not a scrapbooker, lol. I make greeting cards with them. Randy probably thinks I have enough "stuff" to open my own store and I just may have. Another time I will post some cards I have made and when I can see the tabletop in my craft room I'll post that so you can see the junk :0 Although I gotta tell you my room does not even compare with my niece Laura's room!

Brownies or Cookies?

I absolutely love chocolate! Randy found this yummy recipe on lifesambrosia.com and we decided we just had to try it. Since we live at a high altitude I used the lesser amount of water called for and it took a little longer to bake...about 2 minutes more. Check out the web site and get the recipe!



I used my medium size scoop from Pampered Chef and got 31 cookies. Probably could have gotten one more but I ate it raw!
Can't resist cookie dough :)



I have two daughters and an ex son-in- law who will love these and one daughter who will say ewww gross! We found her in the cabbge patch...LOL! I love making cookies and usually tweak recipes to my liking but when I try a new one I always do it the way the recipe says. One of my pet peeves is people who review a recipe and say I added this or I changed that and I'm going to give it this many stars. They are not judging the written recipe they are judging their own tweaked one! Anyway I liked this recipe and give it 5 stars.

Another Friend

This is a candid shot of Dedie sitting where she often sits...in front of a sewing machine. She makes Christmas dresses for her 7 and counting grand daughters and has made wedding dresses for her daughters. She makes quilts and Halloween costumes, tablecloths and napkins. A few years ago she made super hero capes for all her grandchildren. Red for the boys and pink for the girls. So of course I had to have them for my grandchildren too. She came to town and drew the emblem and gave me a pattern and even helped with the cutting. What a great friend! Dedie and I have been friends since we were about 19 years old. That's at least an era or two ago! Our children played together when they were young and one of hers lives near us so we get to still be close. I am Auntie Barb. Though 600 miles separate us we still manage to see each other and spend time together at least twice a year and sometimes 6-7 depending on what's happening. We enjoy a lot of the same things and always have a good time when we get together. You know what I think? I think the oldest friends are THE best :)

Friends

Vickie and Barb 2007

Where would we be without our friends? This is Vickie. We have been friends since the 8th grade at Havermale Jr. High. She still lives in Spokane but I moved away 30 years ago. For 4 years we were pretty much joined at the hip. We did everything together from playing softball with all the neighbor kids to the card game War with just the two of us. My folks even let Vickie go back to North Dakota for vacation with us. Neither one of our families were big on birthday celebrations so we spent them together. Vickie's mom thought I was a bad influence on her so occasionally she would ground us from each other. That's when we would use our "special" code and meet at the little deli in our neighborhood grocery store and have an ice cream sundae. One of us would call the other and say "salt" and the other would say "pepper" if she could go. If not we would say it was a wrong number....I wonder who we thought we were fooling? Anyway we let a boy come between us and break that hip lock. We have kept in touch all these years and I finally made it back to see her a couple years ago. Aside from cutting off her hair she hasn't changed much at all. We both still enjoy ice cream but we both have to be careful now, our metabolisms just aren't what they used to be...

Mother's Day....

the grandchildren

is a bittersweet day for me. My own mom passed away nearly 7 years ago and hubby's mom is in a care facility. She will be 96 on her next birthday if she lasts that long. Her eyesight and hearing are gone along with her will to live. She spends her days and nights mostly sleeping and barely if ever recognizes any of her family or friends. When I get to that point, if I do just take me out to the pasture and shoot me! On the upside of the day we went to the oldest daughter's house for dinner. Her hubby grilled duck, chicken and salmon for us. Us? That would be his mom and two sister's and families and me and my 3 daughters and families. With 22 people it was a good thing that the weather was nice so we could be outside. We love to get together and eat, eat and eat. We always have plenty and often have extra people who we've invited or they've invited themselves. Did I score any gifts? But of course :0 I got a new purse, a fun cookbook and a gift certificate for a pedicure...three of my favorite things! Can't wait to try a few new recipes. This cookbook is called Worldwide Ward Cookbook. It has 440 recipes from LDS cooks around the globe. I collect cookbooks and my favorites are the church and community ones. They have the best and the tried and true recipes in them. In this book the recipe I think I'll try first is the cinnamon roll recipe made with a cake mix!! That ought to be interesting.

Ouch!

So I'm in pain today....went to the dentist this morning. All in all I really like my dentist, My married children like my dentist and go to him too. Technically I guess you could say he is really my oldest daughters dentist and the rest of us go to him too. Anyhoo it was not a fun visit today. I had to have a crown replaced which means a shot. I HATE shots and he had to give me 2 count 'em two shots today. Then to add insult to injury he nicked my lip with his drill. Not a good day for him either. Then when his chair assistant was fitting my temporary she pinched my gum with her grabber tool. Like I said pain and not a good day. I go back in 3 weeks to get my permanent crown and the whole thing starts again with tooth number two! Ugh....Wonder if I could take a muscle relaxer next time?

Do you Pogo?

I love Pogo. It costs me 40 dollars a year which works out to be about 10 cents a day. That's pretty cheap entertainment if you ask me! I like the challenges that they offer weekly. Some are very hard but to me that's what a challenge is about. I like watching the chat and learning all kinds of trivia about people I will never meet. I think it's funny when people get their panties in a wad about someones innocent comment that they took offense to. I like being able to play a game with my sis who lives 700 miles away, makes it seem like we are in the same room. I like winning all those totally useless tokens! Okay maybe they're not totally useless, you can "buy" things for your mini and display it on your profile page. I like the gems but I wish you could win them. I refuse to pay for them :0

My name is Barbara and

I have an addiction....or two. Okay well maybe I have more than two.

Let's see there's:

• Reading, Pogo, crossword puzzles, sudoku, and M&M's
  
• SHOPPING for scrap booking stuff, card making embellishments and rubber stamps
  
• Certain television shows, Food Network, yard sales, traveling,
• Collecting magnets and pigs and recipes and cookbooks.

I used to be addicted to Diet Coke but I kicked that habit four years ago.
Now I drink water, water and an occasional swallow of milk. Gotta have
a drink of milk with my pancake!

Can I do this??

A lot of people are doing this blogging thing so here I am coming in in the middle of it all to see if I can do it. I'm usually a day late and a dollar short when it comes to doing anything. Hopefully I'm going to share my thoughts and a few of my projects and won't bore anyone to tears.....That's funny... :0 who'll read it if everyone is bored? I enjoy doing a little bit of a lot of things hence the name of my blog. I'm going to practice and do a few blogs before I even tell anyone I know that I'm doing this...just in case I change my mind