Are you as ready for spring as I am?

I may be jumping the gun on spring decorating but all this cold weather has me just a bit weary - so when I packed away the Valentines decorations this week, I got out some of our Easter things. The colorful eggs add some brightness and cheeriness, so even if Easter is 40 or so days way and it is still winter, it is starting to feel like spring - if only in my living room.

pimento flavored jelly beans in the olives, really now....

see that little red thing on the counter? that is a pimento like substance that this food processor uses to stuff the olives, instead of just using real pimentos like we all expect to be in the olives.
I know food scientists and manufacturers are always looking for ways to cut costs but this one shocked me.
I don't like olives but Jeff does, and when I showed him this, he decided to throw them away and just stick with "real olives" in the future

This jar was purchased at Aldis but I would guess they are not the sole seller of fake pimentos.

So, read your food labels, on everything! Or you won't be eating what you think you are eating.

Sepia Saturday

This set of sepias is a tribute to my mostly glamorous Aunt Cleta.

I think this is her high school graduation picture.

Dressed up and looking so pretty -

This is Aunt Cleta with my Uncle Rex, around the time they got married. She was very young, and Uncle Rex was older, he had already been off to the Navy, serving during WWII. They look really happy together, don't they?

Aunt Cleta was glamourous but she was also fearless - she is posing with a pile of dead coyotes. They were farmers and coyotes are predators to farm animals so it was very normal for farmers to hunt coyotes.

One Christmas - I love all the icicles on the Oklahoma cedar tree.

I'd guess she is dressed up for a party in this one
Cleta and Rex - probably after a long day of farm work


here she is wearing a very pretty long hostess skirt

Aunt Cleta passed away of brain cancer in the early 1980's. Uncle Rex just moved into a retirement home - but not because of his health, for less to do taking care of a home and for all the social activities at the retirement home. He still goes dancing most every Saturday night and bakes the best pies and biscuits.


to join in or see other Sepia Saturday photos, click here

Happy Valentines Day

My pint-size model was more interested in climbing off of and throwing the props than in posing. But I somehow managed to get a few cute pictures.
Gavin is my grandson and he turned one this month.

Winner of VIP pack for Pillsbury Orange Sweet Rolls is.....

Susan!
She will get a gift pack for Pillsbury that will include coupons for Pillsbury Orange Sweet Rolls and a photo album especially for keeping pictures of meal time memories.

I've been thinking about this idea and I think Pillsbury is so right. We cook lots of meals and take lots of pictures, but I have very few family pictures of special meals.
I did find a couple and want to share them with you. I hope it will inspire you to take photos of your ordinary meals as well as your big occasion family meals.


this one is a family dinner at my dad's parents home. My mom and dad are the good-looking ones on the front end of the table. Beside my mom, is Aunt Delores, then my grandparents, MiMi and Victor, then Uncle Jesse - I'm not sure who the next 2 men are.

This is my dad standing at the end of the buffet at a big family meal at my Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Jarvis's home. I think the occasion may of been my
grandparent's 60th wedding anniversary. I do know for certain that all the food was delicious because everyone on my moms side cooked like a pro.
I think there are 8 Jello salads at the end of this table - that family all loves Jello salads. Uncle Bill especially loved every Jello salad - it was a family joke that no matter what flavor, every Jello salad was Uncle Bill's favorite.

Today's Chinese Proverb:

Talk doesn't cook rice.

just another way of saying, if you do stuff, stuff gets done.


this guy in the middle of the first photo, stirring the huge pot of rice, reminds me of when I cooked for a fraternity - I seemed to always be cooking huge amounts of stuff surrounded by lots of boys eating like locusts.



photos are from Flickr

Sepia Saturday

Betsy requested I participate in Sepia Saturday, so here goes.....
I hope you like these photos as much as I do


This is Charley and Fay, my grandparents, in 1949, on their anniversary.
Grandma does look really young to of been married for 33 years, the women in our family all got that young-looking gene, and since Grandma got married when she was just 16, she does look great.
Grandpa was 24 when they got married.

This is Tom and Carrie, my great uncle and aunt. Aunt Carrie and my grandma were sisters.
Both families were farmers and lived in Breckinridge Oklahoma most all of their lives.

I think this note from the back of this photo explains the occasion. Is this sweet or what?

Pillsbury Orange Sweet Rolls Giveaway

BlogSpark and Pillsbury have asked me to host a giveaway for them. The winner will receive a VIP pack for Pillsbury Orange Sweet Rolls. Pillsbury says family breakfasts are a great time to make good famiy memories. So, they will also give the winner a photo album to store their photos in, to remind them of happy memories.
Pillsbury is looking for pictures of families enjoying breakfast together, so if you post a family picture on your blog, be sure to tell me about it in the comment so Pillsbury and Blogspark will know too.

I've always served breakfast to my family - they especially liked pancakes, waffles, coffeecake, biscuits with gravy, eggs in a basket and Dutch babies.


Here are some vintage pictures of my children and some children I cared for enjoying breakfast - approximately 1990.



To enter, just leave a comment with your favorite breakfast - I'll draw a winner Monday, Feb. 8.

click here to print a 95 cent coupon on Pillsbury orange cinnamon rolls

USMC humor

unless you know a Marine, you won't get the humor in this - but since I know several Marines really well, it made me laugh out loud

Hello again! I'm fine....

and thank you to everyone who has left comments and sent emails asking about my whereabouts and/or health. I am fine, just busy with stuff and circumstances.
Hopefully I will be back blogging on a more regular basis now.

I stopped blogging at first because our desktop computer had a bug, my pictures are all on it, and what is a blogpost without some pictures? It took more than a week and Jeff has since fixed it.

I've also been spending most weekdays with GS Gavin while his mommy is teaching. He is a doll and I love him dearly but he prefers me to play with him when he awake and hold him while he sleeps instead of blogging. Gavin likes to crawl into and then just sit in my bottom kitchen drawer. His bottles and dishes were already in this drawer before he claimed it as his playspace.



My sweet Aunt Evelyn passed away last week. She was just 10 days short of her 88th birthday. She was my mother's sister and a wonderful mother, wife, aunt, grandmother, woman. She will be missed by all of us.



Aunt Evelyn was a wonderful cook and I think this photo of her with a meal she cooked and served is a perfect memory. Aunt Evelyn is on the left. The man in all the pictures is her husband, Uncle Jarvis. They got married right at the end of WWII.
He passed away 5 years ago.

staying busy on these cold days

I don't enjoy being outside on these very cold days so I've been finding things at home to keep me busy.

Using up supplies I already had, including this vintage rick rack, some plain tea towels and fabric print made by Debbie Mumm years ago.......

I added decorations to these towels and have 7 new kitchen towels.

We've worked one jig-saw puzzle - it really enjoyable too

and have 2 more to put together.

and I cleaned under the hall bathroom sink, put down some wallpaper to line the shelf and added a new toilet brush - not an especially fun job but one that needs done every so often.


Are you staying busy at home or are you just out in this cold weather not letting it bother you?

Snow - then and now

This picture is of my Aunt Bernice, on a ski trip with some of her girlfriends, probably around the end of WWII, I am not sure of the exact date.
Aunt Bernice was so sweet, very proper and polite in the nicest way.
So the guy skiing with them with no shirt is really funny. I don't know who is, probably just a guy there who was showing off for these 3 pretty young women.

More of Aunt Bernice, I wonder if she fell or is just sitting for the picture.



This is our front yard after the Christmas Eve blizzard. And even now, a week and half later, most of it still here.

Homemade Microwave Potato Chips

These are really good and so easy - I read about them at Gayle's and followed her link to the original recipe at RecipeZaar
The RecipeZaar one is fairly complicated and has comments by 260 other cooks. So I read some of the comments and took the information I thought would help me and started cooking some potato chips.
Jeff was pretty skeptical when I told him what I was doing, but when the first batch was done, he taste one and then took the plate to the living room and ate them all before I could get the 2nd batch cooked.
They don't taste just like Lays or fried chips but they are very much like the baked chips made by PopChips and Kettle brand.
We had some yesterday with our lunch sandwiches, and made more today to have with our hamburgers.

Here's what worked for me
wash the potatos well, I did not peel mine. Then slice them as thin as possible. I used a vegetable peeler first, then switched to a mandolin. It is important that the slices be uniform in thickness so they will cook at the same speed.
Soak the slices in water for about 15 minutes, then rinse and dry them on towels.
Put a sheet of parchment paper on a microwave safe plate - I used a Corelle platter.
Put a single layer of potato slices on the paper.
Spray very lightly with a Pam type cooking spray.
Sprinkle on seasonings - salt, Cajun, Barbecue, whatver you like
then microwave. Mine took 8-10 minutes to get light brown and crunchy.

You can re-use the same piece of parchment paper for the following batches.

And they will keep for a little while, if you don't eat them when you first make them. We kept some in a covered container and they were just as good as today as they were the day before.

Getting ready for a new decade

well, actually, I am just getting ready for the new month. I don't have a crystal ball to know what will happen in the new decade, but I am pretty sure that in January, I will be feeding my family.
I've been reading about the Eat from your pantry challenge and I think it is a good idea. I will be on a plan that works for us, just like Money Saving Mom says.
My goal will not be to just eat from the pantry, I like keeping a pantry stocked and hope I don't empty it. But I will be trying to stick to a $100 a week budget - yes, that is higher than some families spend but it works with our income and saving goals just fine.

So, I spent some time this week cleaning out, inventorying and rearranging the pantry.
One area I do plan to use down is our frozen food. We don't have a big freezer, just the freezer space on top of a normal size fridge and a small extra fridge. I made a list of everything frozen and was amazed at how much is in them.


I think we have plenty of nuts and dried fruits....

Aren't these old-fashioned jars nice? I got 8 of them from my son that likes to thrift-store shop.

My eat from the pantry guidelines
use up the frozen items
eat from the pantry as much as possible
continue eating our normal amounts of fresh produce and dairy
stock up if a great sale comes along
$100 a week budget

So, who is else is doing their version of the pantry challenge?

Giveaway - free cereal from General Mills

This contest is closed and the winner is Dawn!
Thank you all for entering and congrats to Dawn.



We've all heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and that is epecially true for children. General Mills has improved the nutrition on some of their childrens cereals by lowering the sugar content.
General Mills, through MyBlogSpark, provided me with 4 coupons for boxes of their cereal, they are good on any GM cereal up to $6. They don't expire for a long time.



I am passing these coupons on to YOU - so just enter by leaving your name and I will pick a winner New Years Day. One reader will win all 4 coupons.
If you don't have a blog where I can contact you, then please leave your email in your comment.
To print a $1 coupon on GM cereals, use this link to do that. If you want to know more about GM cereals and children, read here.

getting ready for Christmas 2010

This pretty Christmas card was made by Susan and sent to me in 2008. Nina declared it "the cutest card ever" and it has been on my craft room bulletin board since it came.
Susan used a circle punch to cut out the pictures from old Christmas cards, then she glued them onto a solid bigger circle.
this is the card as I scanned it, it is so much prettier in real life - this scan just does not do it justice.

I am not taking down all our Christmas decorations today but I did take down a few things, including our 2009 cards that were hanging on ribbons in the hall.
I remembered how cute that card from Susan was, so I got out a punch, mine is square with raggedy edges, and punched out lots of squares to make Christmas cards to send next year.