Graduation Vortex is over!

I have been trying to write since the 7th, really shocked that it took me so long to write. It's summer time and as with me and everyone else, I've been busier than an one arm paper hanger with an itch!

Graduation went off perfectly, both sons graduated! Hurray! We went to table top Japanese cooking, which was a lot of fun! Below you will see the boys with Andy and I and the following picture is their "other mom" with their sister Analise.





When it was said and done, they left for Vegas for the week, and Andy and I took off for the Mission Inn as part of "our" graduation present to ourselves which just happened to be Father's Day. It was incredible as usual, had an incredible time, had a tour of their catacombs, now I don't even have words for that experience, took the historic tour of the hotel the next day, WOW! What an experience! I am truly in love with this hotel and can't wait until we are there for our Christmas Party.

Hope you enjoy these pictures, they were a blast to take!



Our favorite bartender!

Artwork in the catacombs


I have soooo many other pictures, that I want to share, so, today I am going to put them on my Picassa in a format so you can see more!

My heart hurts!

 Graduation caps...

Well, I tried to get these to the graduation for the kids, that will teach me to put them in the back seat of the truck and drive through dirt roads, what a mess! I couldn't give them to the kids, when I parked and opened the back door, the sight took my breath away.

Then the tears hit, disaster! Well as my sister says "No good deed goes unpunished!

Well I saved some to give to my sons tomorrow, but the rest, total loss!

Well today is the day!

This is the last day of High School for my twins! What a wild ride, have been battling depression and manic behavior, very strange if I say so myself.

I have been getting ready for tomorrow "graduation day". With Andy's ex-wife coming in, boys not wanting a graduation party, to that I ask "Isn't everything worth a party, especially a graduation!" Well, I picked myself up and said "Well we will just go out to dinner and call it a night. Now I feel as though I have way too much time on my hands, rather strange feeling.

However, I did make it a goal for myself for the kindergarten class I have been TAing in. I made the graduation caps for these great little kids and am heading over there this morning to see these cuties!

The caps were extremely easy to make, considering anything with chocolate scares to me work with, so this was a huge leap for me. I just kept laughing when I was making them. Andy loved them and they are absolutely precious!




I loved putting these together and can't wait to give them to these kids.

Have a great day and now I promise not to wait too long before I post again, can't believe it had been two weeks!

Writings on the Wall

Well, if spring fever is not enough to want you to get your house in order, the boys are graduating in two weeks from today. No,- we are not having a party, but the ex- wife and her husband and daughter will be here for two days, so naturally as a female, you want all the ducks in order when they are here. No, they are not staying with us, they will be staying up on the hill at our friends home (his weekend home, at it was our first of four homes we have had since we have lived in Big Bear. Two being full time and the other two was weekend homes.

So today, I fiddled around on the computer looking for different thing I could do to my home, just little things but would make a huge impact.

I found a company, well a few companies that does vinyl writing. I have a couple of saying in my home, i.e. the picture below, which is in the kitchen over the fridge and wanted to do a couple more.



I look at them as being tatoos for my home!

I haven't decided on which phrase to put on my wall above my headboard in my bedroom. Those would be:

Don't dream your life, live your dreams

or

I knew when I met you an adventure was going to happen - Pooh.

My thoughts..I LOVE the second one, I was going to put it in my living room so when you walked in, you would immediately see it, put it seems so cute to have it over my headboard.

Give me your thoughts I would appreciate it! I am going to send over pictures to this company to help me design it!

Also, I have decided to dedicate on wall for Woody. I put together a collage of pics of him yesterday and put it on this wall and decided what a great place to show off pics of him. So I have decided to order the words "Woody's Wall" How cute is that?

I made the funniest joke to the word company, saying how I named him was because of him eating a stick when we first saw him. Good thing he was eating a stick because his name could of been Rocky or Poo! I crack myself up!

Well off I go, I still have not found the jack rabbits, and boy did my sister dog me hard on that on Sunday, I'll show her!

Have a great day, my friends!~

I thought they were coyotes!

Andy was at the door the other day and I saw behind him up on the hill was what I thought were coyotes frolicking on the top. I said to him "Look at the coyotes playing up there, wow they are pretty big for me to see them up there". Andy turned around and looked and said "They are not coyotes, they are jack rabbits!" OMG these were huge! I went and grabbed my binoculars and looked and he was right. They were huge!!! I grabbed my camera which I didn't have the correct lens on it but took pictures anyway. Well I didn't get any shots of these HUGE animals but I wanted to post the hill where they were.

I said to Andy I want to take a walk up there and see if I can see and capture these animals. They look like they are out of National Geographic mutant animals! Here I am at a dinner party and telling people about it and they laughed at me! I'll show them, I know they are real because a time or two I have seen them lurk across my property which I thought they were dogs, I am talking HUGE!

So, off I go and let's see what I can find, just really need to be careful, rattlesnakes are abundant this year, we see on an average 6 or 7 a year and end up killing 3 or 4. The timber rattlers are the ones that freak me out!

So here is a picture of our hill across from us. I didn't get the mutants!

THE best lemon curd recipe!

I love lemon curd! I have to tell you the first time I ever heard of lemon curd, the name grossed me out! Curd? Too close to the name curdle, YUCK! When looking at recipes that had the lemon curd in its ingredients I finally broke down and bought it, and thought "This is incredible!"

My friends ask "OK, what do you do with it? Well, many things, my favorite, which I made the other night for a dinner party at my house, was to take the angel food cups you buy at the store in packs of four, sliced strawberries with sugar over them to sweat out the juice of the strawberries (did that a few hours before), then layer it, first the cup, then the curd, strawberries over it and a large spoonful of Cool Whip over it, what a great summer recipe! You have the sweet and sour taste which has summer written all over it! YUM!

I put it on my bagel, add it to the filling of cakes, use it with scones, and use it as a dip for fruit, just to name a few.

So, off I went to try as many lemon curds as possible to find the best one. I went from very expensive to cheap (from $9.00 down to $2.25) trying to find the best one. I have really wanted to make a recipe but scared to because of the possibility that the eggs will cook and have bits of eggs in it, I don't think so EWWWWE!

Looking and looking I saw one that I FINALLY decided to try it, what the heck, if I don't like it I will just throw it away.

Wow! Was it fun to make, and boy is it fabulous!

So here are the instructions. Let me what you think....

These are the tools you will need:
Mixing with the hand mixer: Don't get scared, it is supposed to curdle.
Putting the mixture into the saucepan, but NOT on the....
Stove! See what happens when I try to take pictures and pour at the same time!
This is low heat, just keep stirring, MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT HAVE IT BOIL, or you will be eating eggs in it, YUCK!
After 15 minutes, the curd will turn beautiful yellow and thicken up so you can see the separation on the back of the spoon.
It will thicken up once it cools down and I almost immediately put it into a canning car, wow isn't it gorgeous!
The recipe is as follows:

3 oz. (6 Tbs.) unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
2/3 cup fresh lemon juice
1 tsp. grated lemon zest

In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar with an electric mixer, about 2 min. Slowly add the eggs and yolks. Beat for 1 min. Mix in the lemon juice. The mixture will look curdled, but it will smooth out as it cooks.

In a medium, heavy-based saucepan, cook the mixture over low heat until it looks smooth. (The curdled appearance disappears as the butter in the mixture melts.) Increase the heat to medium and cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens, about 15 min. It should leave a path on the back of a spoon and will read 170°F on a thermometer. Don't let the mixture boil.

Remove the curd from the heat; stir in the lemon zest. Transfer the curd to a bowl. Press plastic wrap on the surface of the lemon curd to keep a skin from forming and chill the curd in the refrigerator. The curd will thicken further as it cools. Covered tightly, it will keep in the refrigerator for a week and in the freezer for 2 months.

Variations
For lime curd, substitute fresh lime juice and zest for lemon.
From Fine Cooking 26, pp. 52-54
April 1, 1998

Man, I love the internet!

I finally figured out how to play with photoshop!

I posted a while back, and it was a while, that I took lessons on who to use my camera and photoshop. The instructor was WONDERFUL, even came out to my house and was patient and very knowledgeable. He was with me for about 4 hours and told me we just hit the tip of photoshop (I am using Elements 6, he said it is all that I need for what I am doing with it.

Well, as soon as the lesson was over, instead of sitting down like a good student and studying my lessons, I took off and left for Vegas for three days. That went that. Everything I learned went out the window. Why didn't I learn this hard lesson when I was in high school 30 years ago, it still does not work.

So now I am fumbling with the haphazard notes I wrote down, another flaw in my school years thinking (I got it, these scribblies will be good enough).

Here we are, not understanding a thing when I open the program up. "Get going", I say to myself and I did actually figure out the ONE thing I wanted to do.

I love black and whites that have a ting of color on it. The Pioneer Woman did it on her blog and a lot of people put on flickr what they did and I said "I want to do that" that is really the one reason for my lesson.

I took a picture of Woody with his Frisbee and played with it and it worked! Don't ask me how I did it right now, I have to go back and write down the instructions for myself. I am going to get this printed and put it into a frame TODAY!

Give me your thoughts, I'd love to hear them!

Woody's first adventure at the beach

I have so much to share with everyone today, Wow, between picking the winner and getting my pictures on my computer, there are a lot of posts I want to do today.

Let's start with this weekend. We took for for Rosarito Mexico for a long weekend, Friday through Monday. We only live 3 1/2 hours from door to door. and we haven't been there for eight months I know, a lot of people are telling us we are absolutely crazy for going down there and taking chances that could be seen as stupid. That is why I really didn't tell too many people.

Between the swine flu and the drug lords it is a very scary place in thinking of visiting. We are very cautious when we are there. We don't travel at night, we are always on either the toll road or the free road where they are a lot of people. We leave for lunch, then go to the fish market for dinner and are home within a few hours, it gives us time to play on the beach and hit our appetizers and enjoy the sunset with great music in the background. ( I LOVE my IPOD).

It was a blast bring the puppy to the beach for the first time, I took over 400 pictures of him, and no I won't bore you with all of them, just his first reaction to the water, I laughed so hard I fell!

Have to say one thing, there was on one in town this weekend! We were the only Americans at Poppas and Beers and at La Fonda for Mother's Day brunch. Hurt my heart for them.

Andy and Alex played an excellent game of golf on Sunday, while I hung out at the house, taking Woody for a very long walk on the beach, then heading out for the Sunday Brunch, life is good.
I loved waking up on Monday morning, looking out the window and seeing dolphins swimming past us, incredible!

As you can see, we made it back, no problems, really look forward to getting back to where Americans visit Mexico and feel somewhat safe, their economy is really devastated.

Also, I look forward to bringing friends with me, it was nice with the family, but always a lot more fun with more friends!







He did get a lot more comfortable with the water towards the end of the weekend, but the show was worth everything!

We have a WINNER!

Yea! to my first winner, I did the drawing this morning at 8:30AM, with the help of Woody, well sort of, (He ate the paper with the winners name on it1) as it pulled it out of his mouth I was able to read the winning name. The winners name is: MEADOWLARK! YEA! CONGRATULATIONS!

Please contact me via email with your address and I will get the apron out today and thank all of you for your great answers, what am I going to do with my music?

As bad as it hurts me, I have decided to remove it, the point that drove home was from "Smart Mouth Broad" and that was being on the computer when the husband is asleep and hitting a blog that the music blares out. I get it, been there done that and he really gets angry not a good way to end the day.