The Big 50!

Wishing Dan a Happy 51st year!

For Dan's 50th birthday, we had three days of celebration. This is day two, when we finally presented Dan with all of his cards. I had sent out requests to friends and family to send him cards. For this day, we had a delicious cake from Houston. The Mountaineers were conveniently playing that afternoon. The highlight was all of the birthday cards from friends and family. Some were funny, a few were sentimental, and all were appreciated.

The Perfect Tribute

For a couple of years now, I've kept this tribute to June Carter Cash on my list of favorite places. It was written by Rosanne Cash. I keep it because it reminds me of what is important in life. People and how we treat them. When I read this, I always wish I could have known June Carter too. Instead, I let the words inspire me and now hopefully you.

Tribute

Summer Greetings

The Missing Angels

I came home today and the second thing my younger daughter said to me was "I saw something last night that disturbed me." Then she said, "I can understand Clare's Angel, but I don't understand why there is an angel named after the daughter of a friend of yours and an angel named after a cousin but NO angels named after your daughers."

There was a really good reason I named an angel after the daughter of a friend of mine. It was four years ago and MK was making her first communion. I was inspired to create an angel to commerate the occasion.

Jessica's angel was known as Spring 2005 for a while. But at some point, Jessica expressed appreciation and this angel happened to be dark headed and beautiful and I impulsively named her Jessica's Angel.

Here's a pic of my two "angels" dancing. It's K's birthday and we've just finished eating a fondue feast.

I found exactly six pictures on my camera from my niece's wedding. My entire family was there for the first time in five and a half years and I only took six pictures? All I can say is that I was living in the moment of enjoying every single minute with my parents, siblings, nieces, nephews, children, and two amazing aunts.

This was a favorite print of mine and the last giclee print of her has been sold. She's out-of-print at the moment.

I've also been making lots of note cards. They don't feature the girls though. I've been having fun making these and trying out new ideas. I'm still cutting up magazines. I can't seem to get enough of that.

When I'm taking a magazine apart, I'm first looking for materials for my girls. In addition, now I look for things that go towards my note card designs. I also do one-of-a-kind floral arrangements on cards occasionally. I sent one of these to a friend and she said it was the only card she has ever kept! In fact she was actually carrying it around in her purse on the day she told me that.

Because I love sending cards so much, I've started a blog on writing cards. I know, it would appear I have too much time on my hands. You make your fun where you can. (Linda's house Saturday night! Thanks!) Here's the link. Write With Me!

Making S'Mores

Last night we created an amazing dessert. No it wasn't S'mores but making S'mores led to our final dessert production. It took three nights, three grocery store trips, and $30.

It all started out on Thursday night when Stacey and I went to Houston. We ate at the Amazon Grille and when we got there the fact that we could make s'mores at our table enticed us to stay. We ate our dinner and when it was time to get our s'mores set-up we were told all the graham crackers were broken. Every one. In the entire restaurant.

Stacey and I were disappointed but decided to make the best of it. Instead of getting a different dessert, we decided to buy ingredients at the grocery store. Since we were in Houston to specifically go to Whole Foods, we also decided to make gourmet s'mores. At Whole Foods we bought three expensive chocolate bars, whole wheat graham crackers, and hand-made, hand-cut marshmallows. We were excited to get home and make s'mores for everyone.

Though it was 10 PM by the time we actually got back home we went ahead with our plan. We used the oven to cook the marshmallows and we discovered that the handmade marshmallows turned into a puddle of marshmallow. While having a delicious taste, they didn't work well for this intended purpose. The whole wheat grahams were just plain and didn't help the chocolate and marshmallow out at all. Fortunately the chocolate was good and that cheered us up a bit. But a seed was planted with that runny marshmallow.

The next day, while having coffee, I was inspired to give the s'mores another try. I told Stacey we would stop at the grocery store on the way home and buy the right ingredients, real marshmallows and Nabisco honey grahams. She concurred though she did try at the store to substitute the low-fat cinnamon grahams. We also bought a couple of Hershey bars to be on the safe side. Earlier in the day we had conferred with our favorite waitress and her mom (our favorite birthday cake baker) at lunch about how to best cook the marshmallows sans a camp fire. Birthday-cake-baker-mom said the oven would work and we could do a little broil to brown. I thought browning them over the stove would work best, though I tossed out a maybe-we-need-to-go-to-Lowes-and-buy-a-fire-pit.

Using traditional ingredients is BEST. Even the Hershey's was ultimately better tasting in the s'mores. But the cooking options left something to be desired. Neither the oven or the stove provided the right kind of heat. You just need fire I guess. A trip to Lowes just may be necessary to pull this thing off.

Remember the seed planted with the runny handmade marshmallows? The next day, Stacey and I decided we would make fondue with that. The entire family had enjoyed dinner at a Fondue restaurant for her Birthday and we thought we could make our own chocolate fondue at home. Since we had eaten about all the chocolate on our previous experiments we needed more chocolate and some things to dip in our fondue. We bought Ghiradelli chocolate chips in Milk and Dark chocolate as well as strawberries and bananas.

At home we made two types. I made the marshmallow dark chocolate fondue. Stacey made milk chocolate peanut butter fondue. It was easy. We just used saucepans on the stove on low heat. The Ghirdelli chocolate melted easily and we added just a bit of soy milk to thin the concoctions. We cut up bananas and strawberries and also used left over graham crackers and regular marshmallows for dipping. The secret ingredient for the peanut butter fondue was our favorite peanut butter in the world, White Chocolate Wonderful We buy this at our Krogers and it is great.

We had some wooden skewers for dipping. We put all the things to dip on a big white platter, gave everyone a pretty paper plate and napkin, and put four small warmed ramekins on the table.

That was a wonderful dessert.

West Virginia

No trip to West Virginia is complet without a trip to Blenko. It was a magical trip when I was a little girl and it still is. It's especially good when I find a treasure to bring home.