Long Live the Tradition

Thanks, Becca! You spurred me on to do our traditional Halloween Ghosties! I think I first started making these when Katie was just a little girl. We would get out the napkins, thread, and markers and go to town, making all different kinds of faces and hanging our ghosties all over the house. We got out our "Witchie Poo," too.

I have some cute fall decorations and it is always fun to put them out.

I have always loved to decorate for each season. I was being sort of a stick-in-the mud about it this year, but thanks to Becca, we got it done! I mean, who could resist it when she looks at you with those big blue eyes and says, "let's eat brownies and make ghosties, Mom."

Even though it was 104 today, it is fall. Eeeeee hee hee hee heee!

Monster German Pancake!

Saturday we had a special "reward" breakfast for all the ladies in our Ward that read or listened to all of the conference talks from last April sometime during the past 6 months. It was a fun challenge and the breakfast was so yummy! I hope that more will accept this challenge after this conference coming up next weekend, 'cause we are going to do a breakfast again.

I decided to make my crock pot breakfast casserole and a German pancake. I doubled the recipes for both. I baked the German pancake in a larger pan, thinking it would be okay. When I opened my oven door, I thought "how in the HECK and I going to get this thing out??" It was at least 4 or 5 inches above the edge of the pan! I mean it was overflowing BIG time. It was major "muffin top" overflow growing in there! There was nowhere I could take hold of the pan to get it out. I managed to slide it forward enough that I could get it from the bottom. It was a beautiful thing!Steaming hot, fragrant, fluffy, with a nice puddle of butter right in the middle. It was quite delicious served with plenty of syrup!It did shrink up as it cooled off, which made it more manageable. But it really took me by surprise when I opened the oven door!

Pay it Forward Surprise!!!

In March, I did a post called Pay it Forward. Five people were supposed to respond and then I get to make them something of my choice within the next year. I have only done one so far - a pioneer bonnet for Miriam. I have a niece that signed up and then asked me to sign up on hers so the she could make me something in return. When I got home today, I had a package. This is what was inside:

These are beautiful and they are my favorite kind of dish cloths. Thank you Sarah!

You made my day!

What in the heck is this??

I have a little greenhouse window in my kitchen. If you know me very well, you know I have the black thumb of death when it comes to plants, but I do try to keep some little house plants in that particular window. The plant pictured below was adopted sometime last spring. It has seen the depths of dry dirt, and reacted with leaves starting to shrivel before I finally resurrected it with a drink of water. I do try to keep my poor plants watered. It started sprouting the long, long, long stem that you can see, and then SURPRISE! This little weird thing sprouted out of the stem. I have trimmed off two of these stems before, but decided to let this one grow to see what it would do. It got this bundle with little pink balls on it, and then they turned into stars.

The plant has really waxy leaves. I would almost venture to call it a succulent.

You can see the stars on the top left in the above photo. They looked like they were made out of plastic, sort of had a plastic sheen to them. I looked at it every day wondering "what the heck is that?" Then two days ago they started opening!

This is what it looks like today. Isn't this cool! I have these beautiful pink stars with smaller pink stars in the middle, that have brilliant red centers all in one perfect pink bouquet. It just hangs there over the kitchen sink. I have never seen the likes of this before, and it is all on this weird stem thingy that just shot out of the plant. It makes me smile with wonder at the things nature can do. I love it! The End.

Peoria Temple Site, What a Beautiful Sight!

We went on a hike in the early morning before it went from 99 to 100 degrees. This is from one of our our favorite trails at Thunderbird Park. As you reach a certain point coming down the mountain, you get a perfect view of the new temple site. It is the vacant lot right next to the stake center. If it is typical of most of the smaller temples, the parking lot will be shared. We are so excited that we are getting a temple in Peoria. It will only be about 15 minutes from where we live. We won't even have to get on a freeway, won't have to plan 2 hours of travel time, won't have to go clear to Mesa through the traffic. This will be such a great gift for the members in our area. We will try to take pictures during the construction to document this incredible building project. Can't wait for the next step - the ground breaking.