Is This A Mormon Thing?

Earlier tonight a few of my high school sons friends were over for a couple hours, jumping on the trampoline, hot tubbing, and generally hanging out.

I made fry bread for my kids for dinner because my cupboards were empty and I needed to go grocery shopping. Flour was pretty much the only thing I had on hand with some condiments.

My son's friends were soon poking in my kitchen asking for some fry bread...

"Hey Mrs. Powell, what is this? This is good."

"Oh, you like it? Here...(handing over a 4 by 6 blue index card) you can write the recipe down."

So I got 14 year old boys writing down the recipe from my Pioneer Woman recipe book.

And later I hear that the kids were asking my son:

"Is this a Mormon thing?"

My son starts laughing so hard, and his friends then started laughing.

"Yeah, Mormon women give out and exchange recipes all the time!"

Heather: How To Survive Baking Day

First of all: hopefully you have shopped by last night at least. If you are shopping today for Thanksgiving, I will take a moment of silence for you...

Step One: You are gonna have to borrow my book:

Thanksgiving and Pie Baking for DUMMIES!

Step Two: Put on some music:

Play Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" because many a kitchen day for Thanksgiving baking has had many women in melting puddles of tears.

We can do this! We shall survive!!

Crank up the music and sing in such a terrible voice with your wooden spoon. Light a candle to set an aromatherapy mood:

Step Three: Throw out your stuff on the counter. You WILL make a mess. And get over the fact that your bedhead curls are sticking straight up and you are still in your jammies with no bra. And yes, someone WILL come over to talk to you when you look like Godzilla with bad hair. Get over it.

Done! Not so bad. Nothing fancy. No stupid crimping and and idiot stuff like "details" or "swirls" or "sugar sprinkles":

Step Four: Only make ONE, 1, uno homemade pie. No need to make 20 different pies with 20 different fruits and creams complete with lattice strips. Make homemade banana bread instead, that's why it's called quick bread:

Keep an eye on your pie and stop stressing. Open the oven door and step into a break dance routine on your flour and cinnamon covered floor because you made homemade pie and it turned out fine:

Step Five: Make a couple of turnovers with leftover pie dough and fruit for a friend or two. Good way to sneak in a treat for the next VT visit:

Step Six: Throw away your turkey baster, Reynold plastic bag for turkeys, and your foil thingie to cook the turkey in.

Step Seven: Like I said before, hopefully you did your shopping last night. Tomorrow's Thanksgiving Menu is going to be (DRUMROLL):

A Hamburger Bar! Complete with fixings. Throw all the toppings on the counter and grill the meat and you are DONE before the "Eye of the Tiger" song is over. Throw in some tortilla chips, salsa, Oreos. Cover the couches upstairs with sheets and you will have a very happy family with food and football!

And that is how you survive Thanksgiving Baking Day!

On a side note, host a Pie Night at your house. I am anticipating at least 20 different homemade pies at my house tomorrow night and 35 people showing up. See? That's why you only need to make ONE pie!!


And now I have some time for sewing!

(music continued....)

Face to face, out in the kitchen heat 
Hangin' tough, stayin' hungry 
They stack the odds 'til we take to the kitchen 
For we bake with the skill to survive 


Risin' up, straight to the top 
Have the guts, got the glory 
Went the distance, now I'm not gonna stop 
Just a woman and her will to survive 

Project Halloween Too Late

HI gals!

Recently I posted a closeup of a project idea asking you what it is.

It was something I just put together using leftover paint chips in shades of orange and black and a flat canvas board from Big Lots.

I painted it with leftover cream acrylic paint and attached the paint chips, uncaring if it messed up the paint. Of course it all part of trying to shabby it up without trying too hard. I used a little bit of brown paint here and there and dry rubbed it in with my bare hand. I sanded the paint chips and left the bits of them on the cream paint and it added to the overall grunge look I was going for.

Cost of project: $1.00 for the canvas board, and everything else is what I had at home.

Here is the picture in it entirety:

And of course I have forgotten to take pictures on what I did with it. I used it as a backdrop with some pumpkins and candlesticks with mini pumpkins in front of it. And sometimes I used it as a centerpiece "tray" and put a large basket of mini pumpkins on it. Turned out really cute.

So there ya go, I made at least one Halloween craft thing. Unfortunately I finished it like a couple days before Halloween so I didn't get to enjoy the display for very long.

However I am very excited for Christmas decorations. I already started Christmas decorating a bit in my kitchen.

Be back soon with another Christmas project. I have two ideas! One involves something that involves the word "flat" (no, not another canvas board project). Check back soon in the first week in Dec.

Project: Can you Guess What this is?

Overhead Annoucements

Overhead announcements just don't work for me. I never remember that they are even there spitting out useless tirades or useful information.

I learned the hard way about overhead announcements quite a few years ago when my oldest son was a toddler, and I was pregnant with my second child.

Back in 1998 I was on vacation in Utah on a well deserved 2 week visit to see lots of family members. I went by airflight. The visit started out with a fun high and ended on a emotional note with the death with a family member and a funeral. Even though I wasn't particulary close to the family member, my pregnant emotions was just easily overwrought from the whole day.

The air flight home with a tired toddler and being "emotionally overwrought" pregnant was very trying. I was trying my best to cope with the annoyed looks from the other people and the attendants. They weren't annoyed with my toddler though. It was with me, with the communication difficulties I was having.

When I arrived home in Phoenix, my SIL was supposed to be there to meet me in the terminal and drive me home to Tucson. She wasn't there. I waited a whole hour. I had no money and my kid and I were starving. No one seemed inclined to help a tired pregnant mom and her tired toddler. It had been a long day from leaving to the airport at 11 am and arriving in Phoenix by 6 pm. There was not one kind face I could find for help. Back then of course there was no texting phones so I had no way to contact my husband and ask what to do.

So finally I just got my credit card that I didn't really want to use and arranged for a shuttle ride home. During that timeframe my SIL wasn't the most dependable or trustworthy person so I felt that she just forgot to come to Phoenix.  Meanwhile my SIL was looking with the police for about 3 hours all over the entire Phoenix airport while I was taking my shuttle ride home. I was declared missing and my husband was at work frantic, my MIL and FIL were frantic, and my SIL was frantic.

I arrived to the shuttle dropoff and asked someone in the office to call my husband. Oh, how I hated having to always depend on strangers to contact my own husband. My husband picks me up and he is worried and upset, and relates the whole story to me on how my toddler and I were "missing."

He finally asks why I didn't go to customer service and use the overhead announcement to inform my SIL where I was and find out if my SIL was even there if she showed up too meet me at a certain location.

?

what is an overhead announcement?

?

There are many things I could be using or doing to make my life less complicated but I just don't know about them. If it depends on my hearing to know that they exist, it is not going to happen for me. When I DO find out about it, it is always through some horribly embarassing and difficult moment for me.

My SIL declared she was going to kill me when she found out I was finally at home, and thankfully that hasn't happened. She had 3 hours to cool off during a long drive home alone. (In my defense she shouldn't have been super late either, and my other defense is that my pregnant brain just shut down)

So fast forward to several years later to last night of November 11, 2010.

I was shopping late at Walgreens to get a couple of vaporizers and was just looking over things from aisle to aisle.

After a while an bossy and upset old lady comes to me and says, "we are closing now!" Her hands were on her hips and she was all snippy and snarky. "We made several annoucements on the overhead!"

?

(oh yeah, remembering the overhead thing)

"Oh I am sorry. I am deaf. You were announcing that you were closing this whole time?"

 I had a snarky retort of my own:

When someone doesn't repond after a 2nd and 3rd time, don't ya think you should go check the situation out in person?

But I only said it in my head. One other thing I did learn the hard way years ago is that you don't piss off a mad old lady.

Ah well. I don't mind educating the public and helping them learn that not everyone is the same and their bodies don't function the same way, no matter what the outward appearances appear to be.

I am sure that old lady learned the old way and will not be using an overhead announcement on a single patron in a closing store over, and over, and over, and over, and over.....

This time she is the embarassed one. Not me.

But I have to wonder: how many times over my life have people tried to "overhead announce" something to me while I am shopping?

Probably a 1000 times.

And I guarantee it will happen again, a 1000 more times.

Oh man! I just remembered just now! One time I was a young student at BYU in 1992 studying in the study lounge and I fell asleep on one of the long cushion benches. I was woken up by a concerned janitor and was asked to leave the building, which was COMPLETELY empty of all people. There was a fire alarm going off and all the students were outside. I was SO embarassed that all these young students were just passing me by, probably snickering at me" while I was "sleeping through" the fire alarms and possible overhead announcements to exit the building.

I better stop writing this post now, before anything else embarassing comes to mind..

Mummy's Apothecary

Hi gals-

Some of you have seen how I have done Santa's Apothecary last year. Throughout the year I changed things in the jars of the old soda crate to each month's theme. I used items around the house. Most were easily from my scrapbook and craft stash from my office.

For Halloween I just put in some paper bag colored crinkles from the Dollar Tree, and the rattan balls from the Dollar tree, which I plan to move around into different projects. Plus I used a bag of candy corn from the Dollar Tree.

I shopped my house for Halloween decors and changed things around to make it fun. With more and more money being put into my kids extracurricular activities (football, wrestling, dance, piano, gymnastics, baseball) I am having to find ways to be thrifty with the crafts and decorating. I actually enjoy the challenge, and I love scouring thrift markets to find new trash to treasures for decorating, clothing my kids, and stuff like that.

Here are my ideas for this years Halloween:

Mummy's Apothecary:

Stuffing bits and pieces of things I had into containers:

I put the rattan balls into an antique muffin tin I got out from my kitchen decorations and filled old jam jars with beans and such:

I took my collection of metal gumball machines and interspersed it with the pumpkins we picked from the patch to be carved for later:

I save my candle jars for whatever project may come up. This time I put in paper bag crinkles in the old candle jars. I printed out old apothecary labels and tea dyed them. Then I mod podged it to the jars and lined them up on my shelf:

And check this out! This is my splurge for my latest gumball machine craze that I got a few months ago. It sat empty for awhile and then I filled it with candy corn. It is not to be used to "buy" and eat. I will save the candy corn for next year. For Dec I will fill the container with small ornaments:

So that's basically it for Halloween decor with the exception of my front entrance where I put more stuff and effort into it.

The cost of everything for Halloween for the month of October was just the pumpkins, my son's Clark Kent glasses, and my daughter's tutu costume. About 30 dollars total. Not too bad.