Embrace the Cowlick

While blobbing (ok, I just saw this typo and had to leave it LOL!! ;)) about canning I posted a photo of myself at age 20. I was surprised to see that since then (hmm... 36 years ago) I've changed my hair part to the other side.

The main reason for this is that I have this cowlick (ya think??) and by parting on the left I could camouflage this "flaw".

Since I started letting my hair grow out I've been a little frustrated because my hair wouldn't do what I wanted it to do, like: have some body, curl forward, stay out of my eyes, you get the picture.

So last night when I was getting ready for bed I thought, let's just try the old right-side part. Voila! I've got hair that curls forward, some body on the top, stays out of my eyes... imagine that??

Who says you can't make an old dog revert to old tricks!

I LOVE Utah!

Yesterday I posted about the cookbook arrival. Today as I left my tract this is the sight the greeted my eyes! I turned right around and got my camera!

This could only happen in Utah!! And I LOVE IT! I love the fact that we have a close knit neighborhood.

It reminds me of growing up in Greenville. We knew everyone and they knew us.




What a wonderful place to be!

They're Here!!

I got a call earlier this week from Deb telling me that the cookbooks would be arriving on Friday!! How exciting! It took a semi to deliver them (and I'm told a $1700 shipping fee) to get them from their origin to Debra's garage down the street from me. Now comes the fun part... (really it is the fun part) Debra and Diane get to pass them out to everyone who's ordered them.



Since they live so close I just took my garden cart down to their house and loaded it up! I was going to drag it home but Stuart fortuitously arrived so I whistled him down there to drag for me. Such a good boy!

I don't know if I ever mentioned before that I'd ordered 20 and by the time the order was placed each one of them had a place where it was going... what no extras? As it turns out, there are a few extras so maybe I will end up getting a couple more so I will have them on hand for gifts.



It is very satisfying to see my design, in print, on the cover. Hard to describe, but very satisfying.

Home Canning Tradition

It was 36 years ago that I first got my "taste" of home canning. I was a new mommy with an almost 6 month old Tony. We'd just come back to Greenville after being in Virginia for a little over 2 years in the Coast Guard. It was so good to be back home!

Since Greenville is so small we lived with Mom for 6 weeks while we waited for some place to live. It was while we were there that Mom taught me how to can.

I don't know where we got the apples, I know it wasn't for our wormy apple tree (so sad!) Mom showed me how easy it was to turn that box of apples into applesauce! She taught me right there in our tiny, little kitchen that I'd grown up in... being her #1 helper. I loved that little kitchen with its trash burner (wood stove) right along side the gas stove. She showed me how to just quarter the apples, cut out any bad spots and pop them in a big pot and steam them until tender. Then we sent them through the old Foley Food Mill. (If you want more instructions than this I found this site online.)


Add sugar if necessary, heat again and bottle using the open kettle method (which most sources don't recommend, but I've never had any trouble in 36 years!)




The years have been good to me where canning is concerned. For some odd reason I enjoy this process. There is something basic and satisfying about bottling your own fruit.

Now here I am... a Grammie but I am still canning. Since moving here to Utah I've been blessed with all of this produce right in my own backyard!!

A Nod to Deb and Humor

Sometimes you just have to love a good comedy routine. I was blog-reading (thanks to Deb's point to Google's reader, what a boon!) and found her post that cracked me up! I love good, clean, funny stuff and, for me, this has all of it!

Go check it out!

Madison's Quilt- spoiler alert

Our youngest granddaughter was born back in May. Even though it is customary for Grammie to make quilts for the babies, I'd not made one for Madison because Aunt Suzi said she was going to make one. But then Suzi had little Ethan and that plan got sidetracked.


When Kristi and Madison were here the end of May Kristi requested a Grammie quilt for Madison. Knowing how much Kristi loves red I thought I'd take a chance and make one of my favorites using my the redwork card I got when I had my Husqvarna sewing machine.


The good news is that even though I used it up, wore it out on the machine itself and had to replace it a year and a half ago, I sent the card to Auntie P to use with her machine.







I called P and asked her if she would do up the blocks for me so I could do this quilt for Maddie and she graciously agreed. Now it is finally finished, pack up and waiting to be sent of to little Maddie. I hope she enjoys it as much as I enjoyed making it.

Just for Blake

Just because you asked Blake... here is the graphic to go with the last post.

recycled, reused U-Haul boxes circa 2004

Adventures in Moving

Usually that line is associated with U-Haul. Fortunately, there was not need to involve U-Haul this time (except for using saved boxes from our move 3.5 years ago!) Just lots of foot work... but not as much as 4 months ago.

The moving was taking place at Camille's apartment complex, and yes, she was the one moving, AGAIN! In April she and Katie moved into a 2-bedroom 2-bath apartment for the cheap spring/summer rates, but now that it is time for fall term the rent was going to go sky-high! That meant another move.

The funny part is that none of these moves has been that far, just down AND up a couple of stairwells. In the spring we just did the "let's tote it" type of move and wore ourselves out with all the downing and upping. This time we really lucked out. The landing that leads to her apartment just happens to randomly wrap around the building to ONE of the four bedrooms of the new abode. I had the bright idea to take off the screen of said bedroom and just pass the boxes through that window! It worked like a charm!!! No downing... no upping... we even moved a bed through that window.

As I like to say in my best dyslexic form... "Mother is the necessity of invention."

More R A B

Now, for those of you out there who are Harry Potter fans (Would we be called Harry Potter Heads? Pot-heads for short?? No! At least Potter-heads!!)
R A B doesn't refer to Regulus Arcturus Black but...

RANDOM ACTS OF BEAUTY!

Recently we were treated to some wonderful summer thunder storms, complete with a beautiful triple rainbow! Sadly, the camera doesn't capture the third rainbow as did my eye. The third was actually a repeat of the brightest rainbow immediately below it. It repeated itself starting with the green, blue, and violet ribbons of light. It was truly beautiful.



Next time you see a rainbow STOP and take that photo... these were taken with my Razor phone camera.

Better Never Late... Thanksgiving Point Gardens

When I was a child I learned the phrase, "Better late than never!" to which someone (perhaps Helen) would add, "Better never late!"

So here I am in my lateness! Two weeks ago today my friend Diane and I went to see the Thanksgivng Point Gardens not too far from where we live. It was the first "girl activity" that I remember doing with a friend here that is unrelated to a church activity. Thanksgiving Point has a wonderful array of gardens.

(Mt. Timpanogos as seen from the path entering the gardens.)


I went up and met Diane at her work and she drove from there to Thanksgiving Point. I am only familiar with what can be seen from the freeway having never visited the gardens before. The gardens are tuck away out of sight.

We couldn't have chosen a better day. It was the first day that wasn't blazing hot (well, blazing hot for Utah ;) It was overcast and threatened showers, but that just made for wonderful lighting for my photos.


So if you would like to walk along with us I will take you on a virtual tour of the gardens.

Happy Birthday-Full Moon

Joanie's very own Happy Birthday full moon, just for me!

I love summers! I love the cool air that blows in the window at night. Then if you add a full moon it just becomes magical. I can see the moon rise over the mountain behind our house and it light up the whole yard.

I was delighted last night when I was opening the house to find that I had a full moon for my birthday! What a lovely gift!

* Antique Paper PhotoShop action from littledreamerdesign.com (my current favorite!)

Polkie-Dottie Toes

Last evening I just needed to get out for a walk. My shoulders were all stiff and achy from hunching over the computer too much. So about 8:30 I sneaked out of the house without Harley (walking with him is not a restful experience!) On my way home I found my friends down the street outside putting out the trash (lovely ritual, isn't it?) They are an all female household, like the one I grew up in and I always feel very comfortable there in their multi-generational femaleness. We sat on their brand-new front porch and admired the concrete steps and walk that had just been poured earlier that day. Their contractor is doing a very nice job.

Then Sandie came out and I just about flipped over her toenails! I just love being bare footed or in sandals and it is so fun to have cute toenails. Well, this was the tops as far as I was concerned! Sandie'd had hers done at a shop but told me the girl had just done the design with dotters. Being an old tole painter I have dotters galore at my house.

Today I made a Wal-mart run and picked up the black polish, I already had the white on hand (three bottles to be exact, two of which were so old they wouldn't even move!) I had lots of fun giving myself an "at home" pedicure and then making polkie-dotties.

I wish I had foot-model feet, but as we all know I don't... I have Fred Flintstone Feet... but even Fred feet need to be cute.
*Antique Paper PhotoShop Action from Michelle Coleman @ littledreamerdesigns.com

Salsa so good I could eat it with a spoon!

I've come to that wonderful time of year when my tomato plants go above and beyond the call of production and I have to figure out how to preserve them for the rest of the year. This morning I picked a overflowing 5-quart ice cream bucket full of red beauties! (But did I take a photo? No, not me!)

I just need to take minute and tell you how much I LOVE tomatoes! (My mom would be shocked! I didn't like them as a child, but now I've turned into my mom!) The ones that are home grown are so wonderfully sweet that my DIL says I must roll them in sugar! I've found that the Early Girl tomato works really well for me here. I can't put them in until after Mother's Day (but we can still have frost through the end of May) and we've had snow on September 20 as well. Yes, short growing season. But with some careful watching I can prolong my tomato production into the end of October if I get them covered on cold nights.

Enough about growing tomatoes- let's talk about eating them!! Did I mention I love tomatoes?

So I had this first harvest and wondered what to do with them. Last year I tried my hand at salsa, but I wasn't too happy with the results. I wanted some good salsa in the basement but then I started thinking... Pasta-Dragged-Through-The-Garden for dinner and I wanted that as well. What to do? What to do? I finally hit on the idea that I could make salsa with the fresh tomatoes and make the pasta sauce using last year's bottle tomatoes. Win-Win!
(*Pasta-Dragged-Through-The-Garden is sauce with all sorts of vegetables in it: tomatoes [duh], onion, garlic, celery, carrots, yellow squash, zucchini, fresh basil and anything else that may be lying around!)

I needed some chiles for my salsa and thought I could just pick them up while I was at Wal-Mart. They don't have a very broad choice of chiles- Ancho and some nameless fatter darker chile. I found one of the produce guys and asked him if these were hot. Hmm, he didn't speak English, so I pulled out my basic So. CA Spanish and asked, "Caliente?" No, picante. Ahh, good, muy bueno! Then miming and using some Spanglish I said, "A bowl of pico de gallo this big (mime a 2 quart bowl), one jalepeno! Mi Gringa!" Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha... by now there were two Hispanic produce guys one from Argentina and one from Mexico. The Argentine was with me on the "not-to-hot" salsa and the Mexican scoffed at us whimpy-babies! What a delightful interaction to have with these men. We had a laugh and communicated with our basic skills. I love diversity!!


So I got home with my one Ancho Chile, "no es caliente" (I could have put in 4-5) and went to work making this year's Award Winning Salsa. Yummy! I am very pleased with the results. As I said, salsa so good I could eat it with a spoon! Camille, no es Gringa, will not think it is spicy-hot enough, but I love it. I ended up with 5 pints. I'll be making more of this!







Salsa so good I could eat it with a spoon!
1- overflowing 5-quart ice cream bucket fresh tomatoes, cored, peeled and roughly chopped
1-5 Ancho chiles, diced
1 bunch fresh cilantro, finely chopped
1 humongous onion, chopped
1 tsp crushed garlic
1-2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1/2 c vinegar
2 T ClearJel (this is a thickening agent made from tapioca that can be used in canning), optional

Bring all ingredients except ClearJel to a boil. Lower temp and cook 10-20 minutes, stirring frequently. If desired, remove some of the liquid to a small bowl and mix in ClearJel. Stir back into salsa and continue cooking until thickened, about 5 min.

Ladle into clean hot pint jars. Wipe rim of jars clean and adjust lids. Process in boiling water bath 15 minutes.

Makes a little over 5 pints (so you have enough to taste!)

Kiva- (Warrior Princess) Part Deux

OK, well maybe you had to be here to get the title. I was feeling very pleased with myself and thought, "Shera... wait, Kiva - Warrior Princess!! Yep, that's me."

I've been blessed with the ability to look at what someone else does and then copy it. That was the approach I took when I did the drywall in the bathroom last year... I'd never done drywall, but I knew what the end product was supposed to look like. (How hard can it be?)

When we moved to our house on Columbia Ave I watched the carpet men put the carpet on the stairs. The bottom two stairs were exposed on the edges and the carpet guy did something like this. You know, roll under the edge and staple the heck out of it. Kind of like binding a quilt, but with bigger pins ;)

My original plan was not to carpet the sides of the kiva, but the remnant of carpet Camille bought was 9' x 12'. With tricky cutting I was able to carpet the sides. I think it looks better than the wood sides (I couldn't get paint grade plywood at Home Depot) and it will be more user friendly.

I got some wonderful feedback from my sister/niece Cindy.

• You make me laugh... "How hard can it be?" will be on all our headstones when we die. But you know, because of you the kiva is a reality. Both Curt and Kevin wouldn't have magically combined efforts to make it happen without you! You are a project manager extraordinaire!

You just have to love it when your family members are your biggest fans!

I also got a question from another niece, Sarah, who teaches as well. I thought it might be nice to answer some of the questions here.

• The finished size of the kiva is 24" tall at the highest tier, 60" wide, and 48" deep. (That makes them small enough to fit through doors and the back of pickup trucks)
• The teacher who's kiva I measured said she could get 15 children per kiva. We've made 2 kivas.
  
• The cost for building materials for the 2 kivas was about $225.
• It is very helpful to have talented family who help you out when you're in a fix... but you could accomplish this project with a few power tools and lots of gumption!
• If you want more particulars, send me a message...
  

Stay tuned for Kiva- Part Trois- In the Classroom!

Kiva Plans

What is a kiva you may ask? Well, don't do a Google Search (prior to today's posting) and expect to find anything that even resembles what you are looking for if you work and teach in the Alpine School District! The classroom term kiva means a small tiered seating arrangement used during group instruction.

• The true meaning of a kiva is "a room used by modern Puebloans for religious rituals, many of them associated with the kachina belief system. Among the modern Hopi and most other Pueblo peoples, kivas are square-walled and above-ground, and are used for spiritual ceremonies."

Since Camille began teaching a year ago she's wanted to have a kiva for her classroom but we've had a difficult time locating plans (and for me, I wasn't even sure what it was supposed to look like). She'd pretty much given up hope for getting one this year since school starts in 2 weeks.

Earlier this week I went to help Camille prepare her classroom for the new school year and finally got to see a kiva in the flesh, or in this case, in the wood. As soon as I saw it I said "How hard can it be?" I took some rough measurements and came home and sat down to start drawing up plans. It didn't take long to for me to realize that I had no idea what the frame of this kiva should look like... great, now what?






Then it hit me like a bolt of lightening!!! Duh! Your son-in-law is an architect!! So I called Curt and asked him for some help. He started sketching and 3 days later I had some rough plans! Yay... How hard can it be? (Are we starting to see a pattern here?)








Camille, her friend, Katie, and I went to Home Depot to buy the needed lumber and supplies (make note, don't send a Momma to do a man's job... I got some totally tweaked 2 x 4's). I called Kevin and asked him if he would transport the supplies to my house and loan me his tools so I could build these bad boys.









But Kevin did my one much better! He brought his tools AND himself AND his wonderful expertise as a framer and woodworker.













Even with Curt's plans, I know I would have been a little out-classed with this job... but "How hard can it be?"









Apparently if you have a wonderful and talented family it's not so hard after all. I sat in the garage (it was quite hot, do I get credit for that?), was minimal help to Kevin but lots of moral support.









Now all that is left for me to do is sand, stain and carpet the treads and risers (notice those technical terms?)















And THAT is something I can do... likely all by myself without any additional help from wonderful family. I will keep you updated with the finished project!

So stay tuned for more updated photos of the finished kiva.