EVERYONE is a winner!! Whooo Hoooo!!!
Here was the clue
And here was the answer. It was our water hydrant!
Lately we’ve been letting the dogs in at night. Yea… I know, we are cat people and I’m not sure what happened to turn us to the dark side. But this is what our living room has been looking like these past couple of nights. And needless to say, I think the dogs have really been liking the change. Can you tell? 
Happy Birthday to me .. Happy Birthday to me…
Someone told me once when I was kinda feeling crappy about my birthday many years ago – that having a birthday is so much better than not having a birthday. And you know what? He was right. So from then on I have no regrets about celebrating my Birthday.
So the celebration started out the night before (Saturday) when Daryl and I got dressed up and headed out for the night. The weather was not nice at all, so we went out for supper someplace close and then just hung out for a few drinks. Nothing too over the top – but hey, at 54 what do you expect?
William was home for the weekend and he was also gone for the night. We were all worried about the weather and they were predicting 6 to 10 inches of snow and blizzard conditions. OK, now this isn’t the best news when your kid is out driving around. But thank goodness for cell phones and when he sent a text that he was staying the night at someone’s house, well we were all able to get a good night sleep.
Now comes Sunday – my Birthday! I just have to tell you the story about my birthday and growing up when I was a kid. For the longest time I would celebrate my birthday on Feb 2nd. Now no big deal … well other than my Birthday is FEBRUARY 1st! Yea.. For some reason everyone thought my birthday was on Ground Hog’s day and being the 4th kid in our family of 6, well we all just kind of rolled with that date. So one day I needed something for school from the baby book that Mom had in the ‘downstairs closet’ and noticed something odd. We were celebrating my birthday on the wrong day for all those years. I know that some people might get kinda weird about this if this was them – but it’s always a good story to tell and no harm done. The worst of it was a couple of years ago when my one sister called and told me to hurry up and call into the local radio station. Just DO IT she said! My birthday was on the spin wheel or something and you had to be a certain caller and then you won money I guess. Well I didn’t get through and called her back to tell her. She said that it was too bad because February 2nd doesn’t come up that often. Really?
Alright enough whining about that – Sunday was a great day and after making a path to the barn to check on the animals, William was able to make it back to the farm. He said the roads weren’t that bad yet but didn’t think he should stay long.
Brrrrr….
William couldn’t stay to Skype with Kyle and needed to get ready to pack up to head south for a 3 hour drive back to his apartment. I can’t lie, I was really nervous about him leaving with the terrible weather outside. But before he left, I was summoned out to the Roadhouse for my birthday present. Check it out – Love it!
It is PERFECT!
Its metal and was custom made just for our building. It’ll go on the outside of the Roadhouse just above the door. Did I say that I really Love it?
Then it was time for William to hit the road. I made him promise that he’d call once he got to his apartment. He had to head out by 1 pm otherwise we were thinking that he’d get snowed in on with all the drifting going on with our road in the afternoon. But he’s a kid and he plowed through the gravel roads with no problem.
So it was quiet for awhile in the house and I wanted to catch up on some cards that I needed to make for Ma. I stood true to the fact that I wanted to make this past year’s Christmas mostly a homemade Christmas, and for Mom I made her a card box with a bunch of crafted cards in it.
I knew that I couldn’t get all the ones that I wanted to done by Christmas, so it’s a gift that keeps on giving throughout the year. Below are some of the cards in her Christmas box so far. I’m going to try to make a few more as the week goes on before I bring back the box. 
Next on the list is to Skype with Kyle. It’s always great to see the kids, either at our house or on the computer. To me it doesn’t matter. He looked good and things are also going well for him. He’s just wrapping up his contract for teaching and will be done within a few months. So with some more Happy Birthday wishes from him, it was time to let him get to his classes. We try to Skype with him on Sunday night (his Monday morning). I think he’s 15 hours ahead of us, so that time seems to work well for both of us.
Humm.. now what to do? Well since it was my birthday and with some chili and marinated baked chicken in the fridge, I figured everyone fend for themselves for supper – I’m making soap. Oh yea.. what a good day this was turning out to be. I tried my orange peppermint soap earlier that day and found out that it really wasn’t so bad. And since I had some time to make a different batch – you guessed it, that’s what I did. So the soap tonight is a Rosemary scented soap with crushed rosemary in it. I wish I still had William’s coffee grinder that he took with him this afternoon. That really would have worked sweet for grinding the rosemary into powder. I’m thinking it’s a little too coarse, but I guess it’ll have to do for now.
The Rosemary soap is set and now needs to be un-molded
This is how it looks when it first comes out of the mold
I cut the soap into bars to dry out for about 5 weeks or so
Now at the end of a long weekend, with the kids both safe in their homes and the yard scraped up so we can get to work tomorrow
Daryl cleaned up the yard when the wind died down tonight
It was time to head to bed. Yup, it really was a Great Day! It was my Birthday!!
William came home for the weekend and since we both had a few minutes to hang out in the kitchen, well it was time for me to learn more about hummus. And it’s a good thing that I have spell check because I didn’t even know how to spell it correctly!
So first things first. I had guessed what I would need for the groceries for the hummus and after watching William making it quite a few times last summer, I was pretty confident that I was right. I had chick peas, lemon juice, olive oil, cumin, and a bunch of other spices if needed.
The recipe for this is pretty easy and it’s kind of one of those foods that you can just dump a little in and then taste.. then dump a little more in.
Hummus
1 can of chickpeas, drained and put into food processor
Add a drizzle of olive oil
2 – 3 Tbsp of lemon juice
Dash of salt
Dash of cumin (add more if you like cumin)
Dash of garlic salt and onion powder (I need to remember mints for work)
Then you process the daylights out of it. It’s going to be chunky and the longer you leave it in the food processor, I think the better it is supposed to be.
First things first – into the food processor the chickpeas go
Add more or less of the ingredients to your taste
Mix, Mix, and then Mix some more…
Finished product
So why am I making this? Well, it’s all natural stuff in it and normally on my sandwiches that I bring to work I either slather a whole lot of butter or I pour on some ranch dressing. Now don’t get me wrong – both of those things are pretty good on a sandwich 🙂 but just maybe not as good for you as hummus.
So my plan is to give it a try for a week and not to make commitments too fast. But I think a week is a good effort – don’t you?
Have you ever walked past a window and then you stopped because you just weren’t sure what in the world you just saw? Well that’s what happened to me today. I was minding my own business and then all of a sudden I looked outside and see a whole herd of cats just hanging out in the yard. Now during the week we normally see the Fearsome Four kitties and once in awhile we’ll see this big calico cat just hanging out. But never all in the same spot. So I’m not sure if they think no one is home or what – but if you ask me it looks like are expecting either an airplane to fly over and drop dinner to them or they’re planning a party!! I’m sticking to my second guess.
Check it out
I’ve been thinking lately just what makes a house a home. I mean – you say things like ‘It’s good to be home’ and ‘I can’t wait until I get home’ – but why don’t you say stuff like ‘It’s good to be back to this house’. It just doesn’t sound right does it?
Well the reason that I was thinking about this was because of what I saw on the way home from work this week. I even stopped and turned around to check it out again and snap a quick picture. 
Now granted this little house when it was standing had the chimney leaning more to the right than any Republican that I know, and the sides of the house .. well they weren’t good at all. But still it was someone’s home at one time wasn’t it? About 28 years ago I was just starting to sell Tupperware and this was one of the houses that I went to and did my sales pitch. And if I remember correctly – it was an awesome party! But time had taken it’s toll on this little house and maybe it needed to be put out of it’s misery. It was too small for today’s standard of houses because I’m sure that there isn’t an open concept floor plan or a chef’s kitchen in it either. So maybe it was time.
But that led me to think about our house and when do you stop thinking it as just a house and it becomes a home? I had heard the best compliment from one of our kids some time back. I was cooking in the kitchen and since we live in a farm house, when you walk into our house you walk straight into the kitchen. I’m not sure what I had in the oven and I’m sure there was something on the stove cooking when he came into the room. I apologized that it smelled and he said that it smelled really good and it smelled like he was home. See.. kinda cool right?
So as I’m thinking about the little house that looks more like a missing tooth on the landscape than anyone’s home, and I thought about all the things what makes our house into our home. Is it when you open the front door you have about 1 second (or less!) before 2 little orange kitties are rubbing against your leg inside the house? Or how about the neighbor that spends about an hour at your kitchen table having a beer with you to explain what his plans are for his farm this upcoming year? Could it be that when you get packages delivered that you’ve ordered – it’s like Christmas because they’re on your kitchen table when you get home from work? Or how about when you are done with a long week and you sit down in the living room and see the peacocks looking at you from outside the french doors and realize that even though the stuff decorating your rooms don’t really match and you have peacocks staring at you .. well life’s not perfect. But for now, you really wouldn’t want it any other way.
I got a birthday email yesterday from someone and both her and her husband have been gone for these past couple of months visiting friends in a much warmer climate than Iowa. They’ve been doing just tons of fun things and are planning to go on a cruise before they are heading back to colder weather. Now even though I’m positive that they are having the best time ever, at the end of the letter she mentioned that it will be ‘good to get back home’.
I believe the saying is true: There is no place like home.
Here is this weeks photo challenge. And the clue is that it is something that is used outside and usually on the farm. Can you guess what it is?
This one was a little challenging.
Here was the clue and I mentioned that it was used in the kitchen
And here is the answer. It’s a kitchen scraper for your cast iron pots and pans. Seriously, how did you not guess this? 🙂
Since I’ve been talking about my diet and running so much lately, I’m sure you’re thinking to yourself..’Man I bet that girl is getting really skinny by now’… Well – you are sooooooo wrong! For some crazy reason I’ve been on the ‘See Food Diet’. You see the food and then you eat it! Last night I had made a large pizza that was in the freezer. And since it was fresh when I bought it and then I took it out of freezer – it had this layer of greasy oil on the top when it was done baking. So you would think it wouldn’t be appealing right? Ya, well I ate one, two, and then three pieces and said to myself – STOP! But then I ate another one. And when I was cleaning up the kitchen there was one piece left so I ate that one too. I have no idea what in the world was wrong with me, but I think I ate 3/4 of that large pizza! Thank goodness Daryl was home so at least I didn’t eat it all!! He didn’t say anything that it was all gone, but I did notice that he later nuked a hot dog. So when I woke up this morning my belly kind of hurt and I thought that I shouldn’t have trouble staying away from the food today. Well… wrong!! At lunch I went downtown and got me a fresh mini taco pizza. I had good intentions of keeping 1/2 of it for tonight but check it out. So not cool! 
As you probably know by now that I like to do laundry. You could almost say that I’m a Laundry Connoisseur. (OK, maybe not) But if I’m stressed, bored, or if the house is too quiet I like to get the old washing machine going. But I was totally amazed tonight when I was standing in front of the washer. I saw something that I don’t think I ever saw before. I saw that I have a ‘Wool’ setting on the machine. Now maybe my brain did see it and I never really cared before – but it’s time to give this a setting a shot. So I grabbed a wool winter coat that I have and decided instead of taking it to the dry cleaners (the tag in the coat said it was my only option!), I thought let’s try this out. So into the machine it went along with some soap and a prayer. To be honest if this coat came out like 3 sizes too small I was even OK with that. I’ve got enough around the place that I could spare one or two. When the little chime went off and said that the load was done, I reached in and pulled out my coat. Guess what? It looked like it was going to be OK. Maybe a little fresher than it was before it went in but it didn’t look like it shrunk at all. Whooo Hooo!! I’ve got to find me another wool coat to wash! 
