Sitting at the Library

So, today, I opted to sit at the library for a set amount of time so that my Girl Scouts and their moms who wanted to come by and get Cookie info could do that. What a great idea on my part! I have forgotten how nice it is to just pick a time and be somewhere rather than trying to meet up with everyone's schedules. Well, only one of my girls has come by, but hey, I made myself available and that's what counts.

I am enjoying watching people. This library is so inviting. It's relatively new... built a few years ago. There's a lot of buzz around the room. Some folks on their own computers, some folks are on the library computers and of course, you can hear the kiddos moving around. It's nice to see that people use the library. I always seem to forget it's over here. I get so busy and I forget that I should take some time out to just come over here and sit.

Later today, there's some activity that's free for kids about the science of bubbles. As one of my Girl Scout moms said a bit ago, it's not so much that the kids are a problem, but the parents who aren't parenting that makes those kind of free events such a pain to be around. So, in a few minutes, I am packing up and leaving.

It's a rainy day again today. So, it's not one of those days when you want to go outside and do stuff. It's a good day to just stay inside and veg...

Guess that's what I'll do... crochet, craft, or just nap. We shall see what happens.

My adventure in making lasagna from scratch

So, I had these grandiose plans to get in my craft room and get through a bunch of stuff and get it on the road to organization. Needless to say, that didn't happen. I paid some bills, surfed to find some more digital scrapbook elements/paper/etc. then I watched a couple movies. (dang the tv sucked my day away!!!)


At least, I was able to make lasagna from scratch.

I sort of improvised the recipe based on a bunch I have found...

1 32 oz package of ricotta cheese
1 cup mozzarella
2 eggs
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

- Mix them together and set aside

1 pound ground turkey
1 tsp minced garlic
1/4 cup chopped onions
salt, pepper, oregano
Worcestershire sauce

- Brown the meat and add garlic, chopped onions, Worcestershire sauce, season to taste

1/2 jar spaghetti sauce
2 small cans tomato sauce
1 can diced tomatoes
1/2 tsp minced garlic
1/4 cup chopped onions
salt, pepper, oregano, parsley

- simmer together, add garlic and chopped onions and season to taste

- Once the meat was browned, I added it to the spaghetti sauce/tomato mixture and simmered for another 20 minutes or so.

1 package lasagna noodles
olive oil

- drizzle olive oil in the bottom of a 9x13 casserole
- spread a small amount of meat/tomato sauce across the bottom of the casserole
- lay down 3-4 lasagna noodles (no they aren't cooked) to make a layer
- spoon more meat/tomato sauce to cover noodles
- spoon cheese mixture to cover meat/tomato sauce
- lay down 3-4 lasagna noodles
- spoon more meat/tomato sauce to cover noodles
- spoon remaining cheese mixture to cover meat/tomato sauce
- add another layer of noodles
- spoon remaining meat/tomato sauce across the top to cover
- sprinkle grated Parmesan cheese on top
- take a spatula and create a bit of a moat around the lasagna (about 1/4 inch) away from the edge of the pan
- pour a bit of water in the newly created "moat" to allow the edges of the top noodles to have liquid touching them.
- cover with foil
- cook for 45 minutes at 350 degrees
- remove foil
- cook for an additional 10-12 minutes
- remove and set for about 5-10 minutes
- cut and serve

Well, I would say it went well since my family had seconds and some thirds... ;) but who's counting?

Til next time...

P.S. The Sky Scarf color of the day according to what I saw when I looked out was light gray.

2013 - A Fresh New Start

Today, we ring in the new year with a cold, blustery day. It's overcast and at 4pm the temperature reads 36 degrees with a wind chill of 29 degrees. While I am thankful for the cold because it should hopefully lessen the bug population, it makes wanting to do anything in my scrapbook area a little challenging because that room isn't nearly as warm as the main part of the house where many family is all cuddled under various quilts and blankets.  I must find the motivation to get back to scrapbooking as it seems all I have done in recent months is buy supplies instead of using up what I have.

So while my cuddly family sits and watches movies, I am heating water for hot cocoa, and wondering where my warm fuzzy socks are.

I have crafting goals for 2013.  First and foremost is to actually craft!  In that I want to find and set aside time at least once a month (ideally more often) to sit down and actually scrapbook.  I want to make more cards than I buy and I want to do some service project stuff (like blankets for preemies or even cards for soldiers oversees). 

One other challenge I have taken on is to create a sky scarf where I crochet a row each day that matches the sky for that day.  Today, the sky is light gray.  My foundation row and first row are complete. 

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25 Things

One of the blogs I read periodically mentioned a challenge to get rid of 100 things, either give away or throw away.  I like that idea and in order to get my family to play along, I have made it a challenge to each of them to get rid of 25 of their own things...throw away or give away, by Saturday.  I'm kind of excited...we've admittedly started out pretty slowly so far, but I can see how slowly but surely, we can make a difference in the clutter that has consumed our house. 

Let's hope we can make this a habit.

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What a week...

So, this week has been crazy busy... but it really started Last week. Last weekend, I got to go camping with some of my wonderful Girl Scouts and their moms and grammas. It was a wonderful weekend! We went horseback riding and made smores and all that fun camping stuff. Monday was my son's 8th birthday, so we had dinner Sunday at Rainforest Cafe with friends and then Monday night, he got to have ice cream cake and play with all his new legos and toys. Tuesday night was Cub Scouts, so we went to the meeting and then came home and worked a bit on the Pinewood Derby cars. Wednesday night was church dinner and choir practice for both kids. Last night was the final weigh-in for the Pinewood Derby cars for my son and daughter (she gets to do one as an "outlaw"). Tonight is Pinewood Derby at the National Boy Scout Museum here in town. Should be fun. Tomorrow, my girl will be at auditions all day for the All Region Choir. Phwew... tiring. I am just thankful that we have the ability to provide these opportunities for our kids. So many people don't have that luxury.

Hello 2012!

So, yeah, I keep saying I'm going to do better with my blog updating, and yet, it's been MONTHS and MONTHS!  For those of you still following along, thank you... Hang in there with me for a while, would ya?  My perspective and priorities are changing and I am so very determined to make it work this time.  No, I won't be taking a set number of pictures.  No, I won't be posting a set number of posts.  However, I have begun to schedule time to make updates to this blog.  With the world of social networking... facebook, twitter, etc... so readily available on each and every smartphone and not so smartphone out there, I have fallen victim to the lazy way out of updating things... Post it to facebook...


It is my humble hope that I can plan my time better in 2012 to allow me to really put thoughts into words and post blog updates rather than relying on Facebook solely. 

So, again, if you are still following along, thank you... and let's get ready to get rolling!

Laura

Ack... really?

How silly am I?  I haven't posted in FOREVER!  And I admit I'm a slacker.  Where has this half of the year gone?  I make no promises... I will try to do better...  bear with me. 

Sorry, short and sweet... Busy Friday! 

New year, new challenges to myself

So I tried and failed miserably last year to do 365 photos...I think I posted 45 or so...sad really. So 2011 is the year that I have decided that I can do a picture a week... That seems more attainable as a goal for me.

I have been trying to decide if I should have a theme throughout the year for my photos. Hmm...

So another of my goals this year is to manage to actually make cards for all occasions and to get through some of my scrapbooking to dos. Unfortunately, in order to do that, I am going to HAVE to thin out my stash some because I have so much stuff I don't know what all I have. In the process, I hope to get my scrap area organized and manageable.

So, I thought that it might be fun to tie the two goals together. Weekly pictures of the process... What do you think?

Hopefully, it would turn out that you'd see progress along the way and that maybe the accountability of the weekly picture might be motivation to not show the same picture of the same mess every week.

So, here we go. This weekend, I will start. I will post before pictures (although, it's always a work in progress) when I get them taken. Stay tuned...

Later!

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Well, we are saying goodbye to another year. As we do, I am sitting here reflecting on the past twelve months. We have certainly had a challenging year this year. Car repairs, house repairs, etc. certainly tested our faith and finances.

I had to make the decision to replace the Prius this year after 8 years. Three big repair bills and an expensive diagnosis for the last warning light's cause were enough to make it necessary. I am now driving a 2007 Ford Fusion. It's definitely different and larger. I miss a few things about the Prius, but I think the lack of repairs needed on this car certainly outweigh the desire to keep the Prius.

The house repairs definitely kept us on our toes. I am thankful that we made it through a lot of repairs.

2011 will bring new beginnings and new adventures.

Welcome 2011!!!! (forgot to finish and post last night)

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New year, new phone, new app

Okay so now I am an android user and I just downloaded an app that will let me update my blog from my phone. So we'll see how this one works.

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17 years

17 years ago tonight, I couldn't sleep. I was happy, excited and nervous about getting married the next day. What did I have to worry about? I was marrying my best friend. He loved me and I loved him. Best friend or not, I was unable to stop my brain long enough to be able to really get to sleep. It didn't help that I had had my nails done that day and through some crazy grandeous plan, I had asked for them to be longer than I was used to. I thought they would look great for our wedding and everything would be okay. Well I did spend a few hours that evening with a very rough grain emory board trying to make them more manageable. For gosh sakes, they were so long I could hardly do anything for myself. So between tears and giggles over the fact that I had rendered myself completely helpless with my dumb choice for long nails, my mom and I sat and talked while I worked to shorten those nails. Okay so now that you are laughing at me, take a minute to imagine how much my fingers hurt the next day from the attempts to grind these nails to a realistic and functional length. Ugh. At least I wasn't completely and totally helpless any longer but I was still struggling to do the simple things.

Our ceremony was beautiful. Both my pastor from my church and Bob's uncle who was an ordained Episcopal priest were performing the ceremony. It was amazing.

I am amazed at how much my love has grown in just 17 years. Every day I find that I love Bob even more than the day before. It amazes me because I never knew that after this long you can still find new things to love about your spouse.

I am happy to be Mrs. to his Mr. I cannot even venture to say where I would be right now if i had not met and fell head over heels in love with this man. He is my soulmate and best friend. Even when we don't always see eye to eye we cam still find that common ground that has always been so important in our relationship.

I love you my husband! Happy 17th anniversary and here's to the rest of our lives together.

Words of caution from an early hybrid adopter

Let me just say that this is all just my humble opinion and is probably just an irrational, emotional response to the latest update from my Toyota Dealership on what it will cost to fix my car THIS time…

Okay, so I really, really, really loved my Prius from the day we bought it back in May 2002. I even still really loved it the first time a big orange triangle came up. Of course, it was a recall item and they fixed it with no problems. And really, I even still loved it when it was 7 years and 8 months old… (Just shy of the 8 year battery warranty expiring) and I had to have $2800 worth of work done to replace the rack and pinion steering assembly (Which included the electronic control unit that was what failed). And I was still mostly in love with it when I had to have the brakes done for about $800 not too long ago. I was just getting back the love after recovering from the two other control units ($2700) that I just had replaced 6 weeks ago… Today however… I am no longer in love with my prius… I would trade it in without looking back if I could get a reasonable deal on a camry or something like that and never have to experience the frustration that goes with that stupid big orange triangle and all the money that it ends up costing every time that big orange triangle pops up on the screen.

I got the big ugly orange triangle this morning… They’ve had it all day at the dealership and the best they can tell me is that it’s something with the voltage regulator system in the car/hybrid system. They aren’t exactly sure what it is, but if it’s either one of the two things they suggest could be the problem, I will be out at least another $1500 to get it fixed. I will get my car back tomorrow and then they will get my car back on Monday at which point they will take it apart to work through the hybrid system to find the root of the issue. I try really hard to be an optimist about things, but I won’t be surprised if after a couple of days of them combing through the hybrid system and electrical system of the car, they’ll come back and tell me that $1500 was a low estimate and it will be more like double that.

So, here’s my suggestion to any and all Prius owners and you can take it for what it’s worth and with the knowledge that I’m frustrated… Trade those Prii off before the warranty expires…(and before all the savings you’ve had in gas go to repairing an aging hybrid) Everyone worries about the batteries… that’s always been the concern (“What happens if the hybrid batteries fail?” “How much does that cost?”)… It’s not the batteries that are the problem with this car… yet… It’s the electronic control system that is basically the brains of the hybrid system… My hope is that folks with the 2nd and 3rd generation hybrid systems will have better luck than me… Maybe mine is just because it’s the first gen…

Guess now all that's left is to wait and see which appendage I will have to give up for this repair.

Where have I been?

Wow. I come and go and don't manage to remember to post on this blog with any regularity at all.

School started last week and so the madness ensues. Seventh grade and first grade. That is what our experince will be this year. It is new but comfy for both kiddos from what I can tell.

With the new school year comes new adventures. Layden is old enough now to be a cub scout I think so we will go to scout night at his school to check it out. He is always so dejected when Audra and I head off to do something Girl Scout related. This year will be his year to start. Should be interesting.

Well hopefully I will get better at posting more often. I actually have several photos and topics I would love to share so I should really get those thoughts composed into posts.

Prius goodness

So my baby is fixed. She cost me another nearly $2800 but she should hopefully be good to go for a while now. Okay so 8 years and 4 months later I still don't regret the decision to purchase a classic Prius. I just wish that the ECUs didn't keep failing. Those suckers are hugely expensive!!! In 6-7 months, I have now had to replace three of them in different locations, to the tune of about $5700. I have now officially lost any money I have saved on gas and I think probably put more money back in the car than it would probably trade for when replacing it. :(. So sad!

Big Orange Triangle

Just one week ago, my fabulous little 2002 Toyota Prius turned 90,000 miles. I have put all but about 13 miles in this baby and she has been serving me well. She shows a lot of wear and carries her age somewhat well. Sadly, as with all older cars things start to cost more to fix. She got new front brakes and refinished headlights so that thy aren't so dim. Thought that might be the extent of maintenance for a while and was happy for it. Sadly, I was wrong. Yesterday evening, as I was driving down the road to go workout, I got the dreaded big orange triangle. In prius terms it means "take the car to a dealer as quickly as possible". So I brought her home and parked her. Today, I took her to the dealership to be checked out. They got generic codes indicating a problem with the hybrid batteries. For those reading who don't know, this system has a separate bank of batteries to store a charge as a part of the hybrid system. It consists of a bank of batteries separate from the battery that is used to power headlights etc. They reside in the trunk. Anyway, when all is said and done, it looks as though it is the Electronic Control Units that regulate the charging of the hybrid batteries have failed. Unfortunately, the cost to replace those is in the neighborhood of $2,900. Less than the price tag for replacing the batteries, but still a hefty chunk of change. So, the big orange triangle is currently cleared but the little check engine light is on. Thursday, the parts should be at the dealership and the repairs will be done.

Phwew!

Well two races were run on Monday at Texas Motor Speedway and then this weekend we got to watch two races run back to back at 'dega. Jamie just almost had the win in his grasp for the Sprint Cup race at 'dega and then kind of messed it up in the Nationwide race by trying to put his car where it didn't fit. He looked good though! It is nice to see him with some quality equipment rather than sloppy seconds like he was getting at Roush. It is definitely good to see him run up front!

Now blogging on my iPod touch

So I have had my iPod touch for about month now and have loaded and removed more apps than I care to admit. I think I have slowed down on finding new things that there are apps for until tonight when I got to thinking that I should see if there is an app to post to my blog so I can blog a bit more faithfully ( maybe ) and low and behold there's even a free one! So I will try it and see if it will work. Now if there was an app to go ahead and take and post 365 challenge pics for me I would be all back on track.

Til next time

365 challenge - Quick version

Have I given up on the 365 challenge? No.  I have pictures, I just haven't had time to post them here.  So, if you want an abbreviated version of the 365 challenge I'm doing, you can check out my shuttercal version.  http://shuttercal.com/calendar/txscrapbooks/ will get you to the quick and dirty version.  It makes it easier to get them uploaded and then I can take my time coming back and posting about them here.  That way, I'm still motivated to take the pictures (most days) and I manage to get them updated quicker.  Let me know if you have any problems seeing my pictures over there!

Until I get the time to update here again soon...

Laura

Days 18, 19, 20, and 21 - Quick before we go camping

On my list of things to do is putting this post up before I head off to bed and then head off to go camping tomorrow with my wonderful Girl Scout Friends!

So, Day 18 was Monday... Do you remember the days of laying on the ground and looking up at the sky and clouds?  It's not the same in the City and it makes me long for the days of living out away from so much civilization.  Not as much traffic, hardly any jet contrails and if there were, they were so far up!  When I got home, I saw all these contrails in the sky and decided to take pictures of that and the wispy clouds around the rest of the sky...

 

So, Day 19 is all about new shoes...  Audra has been wanting new converse tennies... We found these...

 

Day 20 found an interesting sunrise, mostly cloudy, really... So, I had to snap a picture while I was sitting at the stoplight...

And on the way home... I saw a sight that you normally only see during November/December...

And here we are at Day 21... Today, on my way to shop for new hiking boots and to pick up stuff at Walmart for our campout this weekend, I saw so many birds.  They like to divebomb cars and even people in the parking lot.  I just thought I should take a picture, again, while sitting at the stoplight.

And there you have it.  I think I'm caught up enough to head off to bed after letting Holly outside.  Til next time...

Less posting, less often

Because I can't seem to find the time, nor the inclination, to post every day anymore now that things are getting busier, I think I'll go to less posting, less often.  Oh, I'll still be taking pictures every day, but I'll likely only post a couple of times during the week (at least one time).  In case anyone was wondering... No, I haven't missed a day of taking photos, except for one previously mentioned in a post.  ;)
Til next time...