Category Archives: weather

First major snow

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Flag in the snowFinally, winter is showing her paler color! Unfortunately Sean had to drive the 23 miles to PSU as he had a test today. He only has 2 classes on Tuesday and Thursday. From my window, the roads look ok for now and people are traveling by at a normal speed-fast! Bri usually just goes to the closest office in this kind of weather instead of going down the twisty turny roads of Lancaster County.

I have the crock pot on with a Marie Callendar chicken noodle soup mix. I’ll be tasting it and maybe adding to it. It’s a good soup day. I also have the butter and yeast out of the fridge to try making my own loaf of bread without using a mix.

Coca bread!
Yahoo-made from scratch-coca cola, flour, yeast and butter-that’s it!

 Keep warm and cozy.

Oh my mama

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To me you are so wonderful and confusing. My mom is a really lovely woman, but the way she is living right now is very upsetting to me. She loses things like crazy. Early last year it was her cellphone. She swore she left it in my car. Jim, her boarder found it this week under the sofa in the living room. He looked there because my mom misplaced a big bundle of money-and I mean a big bundle! It was my uncle’s stash moola that he told her to get out of his house when he was in the hospital during the summer. Well mom would borrow from it, put money back and now can’t find it. She had a miserable cold to begin with and now she is making herself mentally frustrated. She is definitely bi-polar either really up or really down. I asked if she wanted me to come clean and she said no as she was up until 4 am looking for it. I think she put it somewhere else and forget where she put it. Her vacuum has been broken for almost a month and so that means her house needs attention that way. I have to get her a new one. I can’t live her life, I do what I can to help, when I can, but it’s hard to clean her kitchen for 3 hours and go back a few weeks later and see it in bad shape again. She’ll be 77 in September, so I don’t know if she is able to stay in her big house too much longer. She can’t part with her ‘stuff’ and there is a lot of it.

On to more calming things-my pals over at tribe are artsy folks. We are going to do a few more projects together. The next one will be an Art card trade. These little cards are 2.5″ x 3.5″. They’re rather small, but you have to think in a ‘big’ way I guess. I was reading up on them. I have to make 3 and then I will get three back that are total surprises. I won’t say much about what I’m thinking of doing in case anyone on tribe reads my blog, but I have some neat old books I’ll probably be utilizing for this project. We still have to make a St. Paddy’s day poem (original) to hang up. We all get our turns to chose what to do. My choice was for Valentine’s Day. I found 4-5″ foam letters for the letter of each gals first name (one was wooden as I forgot her the day I was buying them & found the wooden one at Target) and decorated them with ribbon and 3D items. Each recipient got a handmade Valentine that the original poem was glued to. We have one male in the group and he got a decorated card. My verse for him said that may his true love be standing before him on this day without him knowing until this very day. Like meeting your true love on Valentine’s Day. What could be more romantic?

It’s still windy and bitter cold. I am running down to Big Lots for a few things that I need and forgot to get at the store. I’m hoping they still have the string or better yet hemp!

Heroes-who’s your daddy?

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The real daddyI did watch Heroes last night and they waited until the last few minutes to ‘reveal’ who Claire’s real daddy was and it was Nathan-Adrian Pasdar (my mom has a crush on him). If you look at some of the bio pages for Adrian, it says he lived in Powellton, PA. He may have at one time, but he graduated from Marple Newton HS which isn’t near there at all. I wasn’t sure if they would introduce a new character, but deep down I thought no. Adrian grew up about 5 miles or so from me in Delaware County. I mentioned this before. Wonder if he ever shopped in ‘Two Guys’ department store near where he use to live? Danny Bonaduce, also from around the same area, of course moved to Hollywood as a kid. Talk about changing from lovable Danny Partridge to steroid addict real life grown up Danny.Danny grown up I hope he is doing better as his reality show scared the ‘you know what’ out of me (caught it a few times when Bri was channel surfing).

Back to the homefront-my poor sinuses are bothering me as is my tummy. I think my choice of meals have been too acidity and rich lately. Those fat pink mints work wonders! The heat is running all the time because it’s only 10 degrees outside! I try to take precautions and they help a bit, but that forced dry air heat is taking it’s toll on all of us. Because we had a mild December, I wasn’t affected as early as I usually am. I hope I feel better by 3 when I go to the dentist. Sean was also getting on my nerves as he has a short summary due on wacky Penna laws and had trouble finding something. He was on dumblaws.com and it turned out to be his best bet. Did you know you can’t use dynamite in PA to catch fish? Or you can’t sing in the bathtub? Hmmm….

Cold doesn’t describe our weather

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Worry wart!It’s just brutal outside. I am a worry wart when it comes to my guys dressing warmly, especially since Sean has to walk around a college campus and Bri is in and out of his car a lot for his job. I worry about the heat or electric going out, the pipes freezing, the cars not starting. Bri went out and started my 11 yr old van tonight and it started on the first try. Glad we had it worked on this past year.

Not much new. A different thing I did was to crochet a string shopping bag last night from a ball of $1.00 heavy weight string. Unfortunately I ran out of string and it’s only half completed or I’d have finished it to share with you. You are suppose to use hemp, but where do I get that? People think you are talking about something you smoke, if you get my drift. I’ll share a photo of it when I am finished. (My inspiration-Ed Begley, Jr the actor has a HGtv ‘reality’ program that I caught last night and he doesn’t like to use paper or plastic and has canvas bags for his groceries). I have the crochet pattern a day calendars from the last few years and that was one of the days. I was making slippers, but tore them out as I wanted to make them for Tori my niece, not me.

I enjoyed the InStyle celebrity wedding show tonight. I love to see the gowns and the flowers of those with big pocketbooks.

Wish me luck at the dentist tomorrow. : ) I’ll probably mail things also as I spent some time getting about 4 things ready to mail.

Stay warm!

From a quiz I just took:

As a worry wart, feeling anxious about the future is “second nature” to you.

Worrying is not always bad. To a certain degree, it is healthy to fret about things to come…

But worrying has to be put into perspective. Too much is anti-productive…and unnecessary.

How to quit this habit? Live in the present moment. Set aside time to meditate. Strengthen your personal faith. Develop a few strategies for peace of mind.

Tornado in Florida

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My well wishes go out to the people who suffered through this terrible ordeal early Friday morning in central Florida. The photos and film footage taken show the horrific event that left devastation in it’s path for over 30 miles. Brian read that one woman moved from to Florida after Katrina destroyed her house only to face this tornado and to lose everything a second time.

Mother nature can surely pull some weird tricks out of her hat!

Found this interesting post. The Red Cross is always there when people need them, and if you can help that is a blessing.

Early spring?

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Groundhog day Old Phil the groundhog, up in Punxsutawney, PA didn’t see his shadow, so that may mean we have an early spring this year. With the rate we are going, it seems we are just ‘catching up’ to winter. Next week is suppose to be a doozie-arctic cold.

I’ve been a bit blue because of an accident that happened last Friday. A young lady named Blair, barely 20 yrs old was killed in a car accident on the next road down, one of the roads we all travel all the time. We know her boyfriend from church. Blair was in the class under Sean and he really didn’t know her. Her parents wrote a lovely statement in her obituary. I couldn’t get over it-so heartfelt and an everlasting tribute to Blair.

I knew Barbaro the race horse would be all over the local papers. There are some great stories about him.

I want to thank all you bloggie people who are stopping by here. I hope you come back again. I’m glad you like my music too. That is a fun music site and I recommend it. I’ll be changing the jaunty tune soon, but it seemed perfect to pep us up from this blah weather.

I need to go shopping or something. I failed miserably in the bread baking department yesterday. I tried a recipe and the bread didn’t rise. I used all purpose flour and even warmed up the milk and butter a little-not too much. Maybe my yeast was too cold-it had been in the frig. It needs to ‘wake up’ first I guess.

Have a great weekend!

Second Harvest Helper

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Contributors to Barilla Cookbook
Barilla pasta has a free ‘celebrity pasta lover’ cookbook available free here.

Kristin Davis, one of the contributors was on The Conan O’Brien show talking about it. I am printing it out-34 pages-some color intensive. When a cookbook has a Harrison Ford recipe, well I have to have it too!

The good thing about downloading this cookbook is that Barilla will donate $1 to Second Harvest to help the 38 million people (almost half are children) who don’t get enough to eat each day.

It’s a sunny but cold day here. Sean will be home soon and I will hear some complaining about Trig. He’s never had it before and is getting stuck on some problems. I hope he asked the teacher or his cousin Sierra (who is in his class) for help. He has a ‘math brain’, so hopefully he’ll catch on soon.

Homemade-but semi that is

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I wanted to mention the cookbook I used yesterday-by Better Homes and Gardens-Homemade in No Time-400 great-tasting recipes from convenience foods. (The above link takes you to Amazon where you can get the cookbook for as low as $3.00! )Does that remind you of a pretty host on Food Network at all? Ms. Sandra Lee maybe? I watch Sandra all the time, but am concerned that some of the ‘convenient’ foods she uses have too much salt or other nasties in them. The cookbook I used has a ‘pantry’ checklist and most are pretty common items that make sense like canned tomatoes, tuna, Worchestershire sauce, you get the idea. One recipe, i.e. Fiesta Burgers used half a bottle of salsa and 1/3 cup mayo or sour cream-you can get the light versions.

Off to the dentist late this afternoon for my new crown.

Update-no new crown-the dentist’s office reception kept leaving messages on the voice mail and nothing came up on our answering machine. I have to wait until next Tuesday!

It’s a cold one out there, so better bundle up. We got a little snow, but it’s mainly on the ground. It always seems to happen on Sunday nights lately.

Giada’s recipe

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Between 10-1 most days, I ‘fish’ around in the freezer looking for something for dinner. I just happen to find a package of tilapia which is a tasty white fish. If you haven’t tried it and aren’t crazy about fishy, fish, this is a good choice. I pulled down a few cookbooks as I am trying to utilize my vast library a bit more and neither Rocco or Martha had tilapia recipes. Then I remembered that Giada (ja-da) DeLaurentiis did in the cookbook that I just received as a Christmas gift. So I’m trying it tonight. It calls for chopped up sardines (Bri happened to have a can-I’m still up in the air about if I really want to use some, maybe a smidgen). The rest of the ingredients are citrusy.

Update-Couldn’t do the anchovies-too weird looking. They were for the sauce. Giada also wanted you to fry the fish. I baked it and poured the sauce over top. I think next time I would reserve some of the sauce for serving. Also had baby carrots and Couscous.

We’re looking to have snow squalls or showers in a few hours. Just when my fellas are headed home. I wanted to go look at vacuums for mom (I’m taking stock in the Bissell company as she seems to blow one out every two years). I also wanted to pop a few items up for sale on eBay as it’s been over a month since I’ve done so. I found a few things in the ‘storage’ that Sean received at gifts that he never opened. I will give him the money toward his loan payment. Seems that he (or us) have to start paying it back before he’s not even out of college. Doesn’t seem fair, but there’s that new twist-just paying on the interest of the loan. Not that it’s new I guess-we are doing the same thing with our H.E.L. (abbrev so appropriate).

Below is our dessert tonight-Raspberry Chocolate Mousse from a package (bought at a store called World Market which is online too).
Raspberry Chocolate Mousse

The white stuff

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Snow is on the ground-like a coating. Sean is hoping to miss classes-Sean just went back to classes last Tuesday! He acts like he’s in 5th grade again. : ) I think he may be worried about driving on bad roads-that I don’t blame him for one iota.

I ruined my roast last night. I took it out of the oven too soon and it was still red in the middle. I sliced it up and stuck it back in as my potatoes and parsnips were done. Why I cooked the veggies so soon is beyond me. I should have waited a hour or so. I like my roast beef when it’s really brown and almost getting a ‘fall apart’ texture to it.

I guess I was preoccupied with cleaning off my bedroom bookcase of lotions, etc and dusting it. I found a plastic shoebox of nail polish under my jewelry cabinet that was as old as the hills. I don’t know about you, but when I’m in the middle of a project, I just hate stopping it to do something else like cook.

 ; (

The potatoes and veggies were good. Used the ricer (and am using the ricer-thanks to Von’s recommendation). I think I’ll make the chicken fingers that both Carole and Zoey made for their Sunday night din dins tonight.