283- Grammie's Toys

Perhaps it is because my Grandma had some clever toys for me to play with when I went to visit or maybe it's the fact that I've never quite grown up, but either way I've always known the importance of having toys for the grandkids to play with when they come to Grammie's house to visit.

Over the years I've saved those toys that my own children seemed to enjoy the most: Marble Works, Playmobil Cowboys and Indians (It's been fun to hear MY children comment that they remembered playing with those toys.), some old Tupperware toys, nesting blocks, circles, triangles and barrels and other odds and ends.

Recently a friend of mine blogged about getting an IKEA Lillabo for her little grandson. (And can we just stop and talk about IKEA for a minute? Can they just not give it an English subtitle??)

Any-way, I knew that Grammie would need to get one of those to have at her very own house (Yes, I am talking in third person about myself... weird!). Of course I had to:

1. Get a storage box especially for the train (yeah, and what's up with no lid for this box?)
2. Come home and set it up and play with it myself  (Harley laid on the chair and was completely fascinated with what I was doing, watching the train go round and round.

My friend comment that she wished she'd gotten a couple of add-ons to the original $14.99 starter set (not shown on the above noted website but they have it in the store)  so I took her advice and got one of everything! 

I just left it in the front room, put away of course, waiting for the first little grandchild to come... it turns out I didn't have to wait long. Desi (daughter-by-choice) and family came over to get some fun fall fotos (ha, I had to do that) so Miss Emmie kid tested for me.  I can see that this my just surpass Marble Works as the favorite.

282- Temple Fountain Sunset

I missed Ward Temple Night on Thursday so I decided to go this afternoon after I'd worked in the yard for several hours. When I walked in the front door there was Sister Cutler, who works on the Wednesday shift with me but is an assistant Shift Coordinator on Saturday evening, was standing there at the front door looking slightly harrassed. I just felt impressed to ask her if she was short staffed. She got this relieved look on her face and told me that she would probably need me. I ended up staying for an extra hour longer than I would normally have been there. I was pleased to help out.

And it's not as if I need immediate blessing for doing a good thing... I'd already been blessed for serving. But look what awaited me when I walked outside!

Oh... what a beautiful sight.

281- Triple D

We occasionally watch the TV show Drive-Ins, Diners and Dives. Unbelievably they've done a couple of segments on restaurants in Salt Lake City. Several years ago they featured Red Iguana.  We went, we ate, we saw... yeah, we thought it fell into the category of over-priced dives.

Lasternight we saw a segment on Pat's Barbeque and Catering. One of the first things I did was Google it and read many of the reviews; there was a mix of good and not so good.

Can you guess what we did today? And Friday just happens to be the day of the *burnt-ends* special (This was featured on DDD). It's located in an industrial park at 2100 S and West Temple.

So what did we think? Hmmm... not my favorite. For my money I'd rather go to Famous Dave's. One of the common complaints I read was *the food was cold*. Although my *burnt ends* (twice smoked beef brisket) was warm enough, the cornbread was refrigerator cold. But my biggest complaint was that the meat had that telltale lighter fluid taste. I can't like that. (And yes, it falls into the category of my being able to sniff-out drugs at the airport! bwahahahaha)

This sign lives right in from of Pat's... that pretty much expresses my feelings on smoking.

280- Cook-shees

Do you remember when the *cookie stores* became all the rage back in the late 70s? Maybe if you weren't a cookie-snarfer, like me, you wouldn't.

Cookies, for me, are one of those ultimate comfort foods. When we would go to visit my Grandma in Oakland, CA she would always have a full cookie jar and I don't recall there being any limit on how many I could have (good thing I wasn't a piggy little kid!). They were always moist and chewy... yummy!

Anyway... I loved those wonderful chocolate chip cookies that were all the rage, but I didn't like the $1 per cookie price tag! So I set out on a mission to perfect my chocolate chip cookie recipe.

The first thing that I knew was a must is... I MUST USE REAL BUTTER! In my book there is just no substitute. From there it was just a process of trial and error on the amounts for the other pretty standard ingredients.

What brought all of this to mind was that Spencer texted me on Sunday and wanted my recipe so he and Deborah could try them out.  She'd been getting recipes off the internet and *they just didn't measure up* in Spencer's opinion!  Then he called this morning to tell me that they weren't turning out like he'd remembered (turns out that they didn't have cookie sheets and were baking them in a deep dish metal pan. Spencer had the idea to turn it over and bake them on the bottom of the pan and that seemed to do the trick.)

I pulled up my email I'd sent him with the recipe to see if I had the amounts correct. Then I went to the NEW recipe box and dug until I found the original recipe from nearly 30 years ago! Oh MY! What a totally loved and messy little 3 x 5 card!



These cookies have been made hundreds of times at my house! They've christened each new oven, being the first thing baked. It was one of the first things Camille learned to make and she has become a champion cookie baker!

So? Should I share it with you? OK... there it is... I challenge you to read that spotty mess! bwahahahaha

You should be able to right-click on the image and choose  
save image as
to save and print this recipe

279- Raindrops on Roses

That dreaded day came... when I arrived at the Temple this morning they were removing the beautiful summer planting to replace them with sweet little primroses.

One of the things that doesn't get removed are the pink rose hedges that boarder the sidewalks. As I was leaving this afternoon between rainstorms I saw this...



Immediately the words from These Are a Few of My Favorite Things


Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things...

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad.

278- Neighborhood Watch... Hey!

About a month ago I got home to find this, THIS on my fence!

HEY! Just because my workroom looks out on the neighborhood doesn't mean I'm Gladys Kravitz! 



Seriously, I'm all for neighborhood watch... but don't you think this is nosy-neighbor profiling?
bwahahahahaha

277- The Recipe Box

Growing up my Mom had the most wonderful wooden recipe box. It was unlike any available today. That sweet recipe box, with my Mom's initials on it, now resides at Rosehaven Cottage with my niece, Grammy's oldest grandchild. (Thank you Cindy for sending me this photo to post here.)

So for years I've suffered a great amount of angst over the problem of needing a box like my Mom's! I had a smallish orange one (actually, regular recipe box size)  when I first got married that had a slanted lid with a rolled lip that you could put the recipe on to keep it out of the cooking mess. Then a few others of which I only have a vague recollection.

Most recently I had a large square plastic mauve job you were supposed to be able to pick it up by a handle on the top but even from the beginning all that ever did was dump all my recipes on the floor. Then the plastic hinges broke and it was really dgrain-ger-ous... (Wait... wait, I just yoinked it out of the recycle wheelie-bin to get a photo for posterity!)

A few years ago (I don't remember how many, but since I moved to Utah) Rebekah sent me a DARLING recipe box that she'd made and embellished. I love it! But it just sat in the pantry unused because it wasn't large enough to take all my recipes and I have an OCD problem about throwing recipes away. (Of course, this deep-seeded fear may come from the time in 1975 when I was cleaning out and sorting my recipes and threw the WRONG PILE INTO THE FIREPLACE!!!!! I have a bunch of singed recipes now residing in my recipe box to remind me not to repeat that mistake!!)


Rebekah's repurposed recipe box is on the right.

But this week it hit me! HA! Those cool boxes I bought at Women's Conference 3 years ago and gave some to Bek... JUST THE RIGHT SIZE! So I pulled out my Un-do and removed the embellishments, ribbons, and tags from the small box and put them, along with some new ribbon and the tag from the accompanying Mother's Day card, on the new pink polkie-dottie box! I also needed to make more dividers since I had twice as many divisions as Bek sent me.

How stinkin' cute is this? I just copied her lead on the dividers (she takes scrapping to a new art form!).



OK, but now here is the crying part... I didn't even wonder why I had all these extra division/categories in my recipe box until I looked at the photo Cindy sent me today of Mom's box... there, category for category are my Mommie's dividers!

276- Come, Listen to a Prophet's Voice

I look forward to General Conference each April and October. I feel as if it just gets better each time.

The ability to hear the voice of our modern day prophet, Thomas S Monson and those men and women that work with him is a miracle. I am so grateful to be able to learn of our Savior, Jesus Christ and hear strong and fervent testimonies borne of Him.

If you would like to "Come, Listen to a Prophet's Voice" go here.


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275- Autumn Color

I've been waiting patiently for this day! I love the autumn colors. I caught Buckley Mountain at just the right time. (As viewed from East Bay in Provo)

274- Abandon Rail

There is one thing to be said about my fun little marsupial-pocket-camera... I can set it down on an abandoned railroad track and it will focus itself and take a dandy photo without me having to lie down with it!

I love this perspective...