I think I’m back

Hello everyone, 

I’ve already blogged about things keeping us busy.  And you all know how the pandemic halted most travel plans. 

Well, my husband and I are vaccinated and boosted so we felt it was safe for us go on a Branson vacation we scheduled months ago.  

We celebrated our 40 and 41st anniversary during the “stay at home” days so we tried to make this long awaited vacation as memorable as we could.  

We spent a week in a condo and mostly saw lots of shows.  We ate a meal out everyday and then had light breakfasts and suppers in the condo.  

Outside the patio of our condo were pine tree with long skinny pine cones- they were about 6-8 inches long and I thought about bringing some home but they were full of pine sap and very sticky so all the pine cones stayed in Branson.  

The Duttons 

Steve, Larry and Rudy Gatlin 

Johnson Strings - their costumes light up and changed color 

Hughes Family Christmas 

Clay Cooper 

Jesus at the huge Sight and Sound theater 

We ate some very good meals but I only took a photo of this one 

Loose meat sandwiches at Heroes Tastes and Taps-  so good! 

We saw more shows but I didn’t  take photos at any of them.  

We shopped just a bit but I’m not much in a shopping mood these days.  

Branson is a great town.  It is very busy now as so many people are back vacationing.  

My advice - if you want to travel there- check online reviews for the attractions you’re thinking about, take lots of patience and take a big pile of money 

My husband and me- in the lobby of the Mansion theater where the Gatlins played just one show.  

I plan on blogging regularly now

See you all soon

❤️ Rhonda 

Probably my only November2021 post

Hello everyone 

I have no plans to stop this blog but life has lots of extra things going on that are not leaving me with much time to do homemaking in my home.  And since I usually blog about home things,  no posts have been written this month.  

Possibly toward the end of the November,  things will be normal and I’ll get back to both homemaking and blogging. 

Yesterday was the Marine Corp birthday.  It’s not a big deal to anyone but Marines.  But to Marines,  it’s a very big deal.  

They have formal birthday balls, tell each other Happy Birthday and Semper Fi all day and celebrate a lot.  

No ball for us since retirement but I did bake a cake for my Marine husband and we happily reminisced looking at old photos.  

This ball was in 1984.  I sewed this ball dress and I remember I spent $7 on the fabric.  I wasn’t cheap on purpose but we had $11 in checking and I needed a make a formal.  I used a remnant of velvet for the bodice and the sleeves and skirt were some very cheap Halloween costume fabric. 

I got lots of compliments on it and wore it to several balls.  

My husband had been promoted before this ball so I bought this dress at Dillards.  Look at those crazy lace covered padded shoulders!  I liked that dress then and wore it to several balls too.  But I don’t much like it now.  

And no,  I didn’t color my hair.  We lived in California and I spent most afternoons in our front yard watching my children play.  Just the California sun bleached my brown hair that lighter color.  

I’m fine.  Just busy and I’m hopeful by December,  life will be more normal and routine.  

Hope to see you all soon 

❤️ Rhonda 

October #9 just food stuff

Hello 

We have pretty much abandoned our garden -because I was busy and husband was down with his back so much over the summer, 

But he was checking on what we needed to do to clean it up for winter and what a surprise to find all these peppers!

So we had fajita bowls for supper last night and will have stuffed peppers maybe tomorrow 

I tried a popular person’s Candied Pecans recipe-but they just ended up tasting like  roasted pecans as the butter sugar mixture did not stick.  

This recipe was done in a skillet.  In the past, I’ve done other candied nuts recipes in the oven that I liked much better. 

Grandchildren were here and none of these went to waste but they didn’t turn out at all like I expected.  

I was given a bread machine - I’ve owned several bread machines but have worn them all out.  

This is a Kenmore and it was still sealed in the box and never used, but it’s a number of years old. 

I was pleasantly surprised it worked so well.  

It makes a long, traditional shaped loaf.  So far I’ve baked 2 batches of the Cinnamon Raisin bread in the instruction book. 

It’s a very good bread and makes wonderful toast. 

It only uses 1 tablespoon of butter and 2 tablespoons of sugar - much less than I’ve used in the past for sweet breads but it makes a delicious and sweet enough bread.  

I do chop the raisins just a personal preference. 

With the cost of groceries rising,  many of us may be choosing to use recipes that use smaller amounts of expensive ingredients 

And I recommend this recipe. 

October #8- 2 lists and stuff, etc

Good morning- I made and photographed this to-do list Sunday night 

Below is a list of meals that we have ingredients for.  I don’t usually menu plan and designate each meal for certain days in advance 

but having just a general plan like this is very helpful. 

We’ve already had taco salads, beef with mushrooms and the Joanna Gaines meal.

This recipe sounds really plain but it is delicious!  

I cut it down and used 2/3 pound of beef and 1 can of biscuits.  We had it for supper and the leftovers for a lunch.  

The salad is so good with it.  

This photo is one I took the first time I made them. 

When I made them week,  I shaped them into a turnover shape and that was much simpler than the 3 sided way described in the recipe.  

My husband’s sister sent the long pillow to us.  

A few replies 

Practical Parsimony- the reheated breakfast burritos are very good.  The eggs were not tough at all.  My husband especially liked them. 

Lejmom- we do keep water and lights in the storm building.  Our Oklahoma meteorologists are so good at telling us in advance when tornado conditions happen.  

We usually know a week ahead and can plan to be ready.  Never are we just unaware of anything and then all of a sudden a surprise tornado in heading our way.  

Terri and Tammy- those giant cookies are not for health, just for fun.  It might be hard to sell these at a yard sale and make a profit as they had 3 bags of chips in them.  

  I did find another giant cookie recipe that uses sprinkles and white chocolate chips that looks very kid-pleasing.  However she says to bake the entire recipe into just 6 cookies.  

  If I ever do make them,  they may be large cookies but not as big as the recipe writers. 

     

https://www.thediaryofarealhousewife.com/gideons-bakehouse-sprinkle-funfetti-cookies/#recipe

It’s been warm and windy in Oklahoma this week.  No photos but I got the biggest giggle while I was driving in town, watching several people walking in pajama pants.  

The wind was blowing their loose fitting pants around like flags and their pants seemed to have a life of their own.  

So if y’all are ever in OK on a windy day, put your long hair in a pony tail and maybe wear actual pants.  

Hope you’re all having a good week 

❤️ Rhonda 💨 

October #7 cooking sewing

Hello everyone 

I cooked a few different things over the last few days and got a little sewing done,

I made some breakfast burritos that have been frozen and can be microwaved in a paper towel to reheat

Hash browns, Turkey bacon and sausage and scrambled eggs- my daughter and 3 grands were here and we ate breakfast with all this food and I made breakfast burritos- 2 birds with 1 stone 

After they were rolled in foil,  I out them all back into one of tortilla bags and froze them 

Our favorite bacon is Butterball Turkey bacon- the slices don’t shrink much and the skillet doesn’t end up full of grease,  

It does not taste exactly like pork bacon but it is very good. 

I saw a story about Gideon’s Bakehouse is near Disney World that sells huge cookies.  I don’t normally bake over the top recipes like this but I really wanted to try these,  

I had some helpers- the copycat version I used is a fairly basic chocolate chip recipe.  But they are portioned to a make a large cookie and then the tops are covered in toppings - we used chocolate chips, mini chocolate chips and milk chocolate chips. 


The cookies were delicious but I thought they would of better if the toppings had more variety- like chocolate chips, peanut butter chips and nuts instead of 3 kinds of chocolate,  

https://cookiesandcups.com/ultimate-chocolate-chip-cookies/

We kept enough here for everyone to have 1 and the rest went to my son in law’s work for his coworkers.  

It was warm that day and the chocolate wasn’t set enough to bag the cookies,  so we just put them in foam plates and stacked them in boxes where they wouldn’t touch.  

The cookies were so big that 4 of them fill one plate! 

On to sewing-  I’ve got half of the yellow checked napkins hemmed. 

I used the rest of that fall themed printed fabric panel that used for Cora’s shirts to make a wall hanging and 2 pillow shams 

Replies 

About our storm shelter,  it’s a 10 foot square, concrete, above ground building. The Concrete walls are 8 inch thick and will survive an F5 tornado. 

It’s on the edge of our patio and just a few yards from the backdoor.  

This summer, the grands had fun painting it with water.  

It’s an ugly building but I don’t mind,  it looks like safety to me.  

In Oklahoma,  we mostly have clay, rocky soil that is hard to dig and doesn’t drain well so basements don’t work in most places.  

In ground shelters are another option but they are usually very small and sometimes flood because heavy rains frequently come with tornados,  

And one more food thing- these 2 had a big time building with marshmallows and toothpicks.  They also tried using candy corn but it was too hard 

Hope you all are having a good weekend 

❤️ Rhonda