Awards

We've got some awards, we've got some awards....

My very kind and sweet friend Julie awarded me with this Beautiful Blogger Award. To accept this award, I must:

1. Thank the person who bestowed this honor upon me. Thank you Julie!

2. Copy the award and place it on my blog. Did it

3. Link to the bestowers’ site. Please visit Julie's blog Elisharose News.

4. List seven interesting things about myself. Ok here goes:

• I love to bake and cook (as if you don't already know that)
• I used to be afraid of dogs (how can that be? right?)
• I drink a lot of water daily
• I am a crier. I cry watching a sad movie, I cry reading about something sad
• My first dog's name was Shaggy(from Scooby Doo)
• Purple is my favorite color
• I love to eat

5. Nominate seven bloggers that I find beautiful. Ok, here's where I break the rules. It's too tough to pick just 7, so I am going to pick all of you because you are all beautiful and you are great blogger friends for keep coming back and leaving me comments. :)

The second award came from our friends in Italy: Paco, Milo and Maya. Thank you so much dear friends!

Wordless Wednesday

My Words

Last Wednesday over at My Home Among The Hills I saw this meme and have asked to play along. Here's how it suppose to work:

I asked to be given my words, upon receiving of such words I am supposed to put my thinking hat on and relate those words to my life or something in that nature. If you want to play along, leave a comment saying you would like to play and I will find you your five words. If you don't want to play, you can still leave a comment.

Alright, lets get to those words:


Wander - We have been pretty lucky that Samantha can be left off-leash almost all of the time. She will wander a little but never far. June on the other hand has to be on the leash. Not because she will take off and run but because she will run after a squirrel or bunny or run towards a dog(not to attack but to say hi). That's dangerous because there might be cars coming or who know how the other dog's owner would react. So she would have to be on the leash.

Elegant - I never have any(at least that's what I think) decorating sense. Our place is totally not decorated at all. Don't get me wrong, my place is not messy or dirty, it's just plain due to lack of decorations. But if I were to pick a decorating style, I would pick a country cozy look over an elegant or sophisticated look.

Fantastic - Years ago I used to go to Fantastic Sams to get my hair cut and I even got a perm from there once. But I don't go to Fantastic Sams or any other hair salon anymore. I keep my hair straight, less maintainance that way. All I have to do in the morning is to brush it and that is it. No jell, no spray, nothing. I do trim it every once in a while but I do that at home. Hubby does that for me. I just don't justify paying whatever that they charge for a hair cut just to get a trim of less than 3".

Fruit - I try to eat at least 1 serving of fruit everyday. I'm really not much of a fruit eater. The fruits have to be sweet, otherwise I won't eat it. I can't stand eating sour fruits, even if it's slightly tart, I won't eat it. I do love to bake with fruits.

Radical - Do you know what Free Radicals are? Free radicals are atoms or groups of atoms with an odd (unpaired) number of electrons and can be formed when oxygen interacts with certain molecules. This means, when these radicals formed, will cause damaged to DNA or cells, which leads to the possible development of cancer.

Wordless Wednesday

How to Make Fruit Water

Read this acticle over at Vegetable Gardener and thought it's such a refreshing idea!

Photo taken from Vegatable Gardener

Please click on the link to read all about this: How to Make Fruit Water - Vegetable Gardener
Posted using ShareThis

I drink a lot of water everyday. Most of the time it's just plain cold water but from time to time I would add a lemon wedge. I have never thought of adding fruits! I am going to give this a try.

Oh miiiiiinnnnnnt....I've got plans for you.....

p/s: There will be no Golden Friday post this week. The girls have been very busy.....napping.

Have a great weekend!

Golden Friday

TGIF everyone! It is a Golden day! Today we are going to talk about our friends, because we would like to enter into Daisy's Friends Forever Contest. If you would like to enter the contest as well please click here to sniff out/check out all the details about this contest.


Ok Daisy, here goes:


1) Our first friend is actually a family member. She is mom's sister Rebecca. She loves scrapbooking and she has an adorable daughter named Grace. Grace is very cute, we just want to lick her face and give her lots of kisses but they are far far away in Malaysia. Daisy, they are even farther than from you to Milo in Italy. The picture below is one of the scrapbooking page Rebecca made about Grace. Isn't she adorable?




2) Our next friend is this handsome German Shepherd Dog named Kane. Kane is an awesome and handsome dog. Mom loves him! Kane and his mom Lena practice and train in the working dog sport of Schutzhund. The picture below is them "in action". Please check out his blog: Schutzhund Adventures. Other than Schushund, Kane loves to "supervise" his mom when she is in her garden. You know who humans are, they always mess things up, we dogs need to make sure that they get their job done right! You can also visit his mom's blog about gardening and cooking and baking....mmmm, she had a very yummy doggie treats recipe there: Sleeping Dog Bakery.

Apart from these 2 friends, we have lots of other bloggie friends. When you get a chance please visit them. They are on the left side of our blog.

Happy Weekend!

First Day

Remember your first day in the blogging world? Remember that first step you took to sign up for a blog? Remember writing your first post? And remember how excited you were when you saw your very first comment from a total stranger?

My friend/co-worker Renee had just started her blog today: RBGirls
She is very new to the blogging world and is still learning her ways. Please stop by and give her some words of encouragement. Thank you.

My Favorite Things

"Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

Brown paper packages tied up with strings

These are a few of my favorite things"

The Sound of Music - My Favorite Things

Watching hubby sleep so soundly

The sound of my dogs snoring

My dogs napping or playing

Tomato sauce simmering

Fresh-picked tomatoes

Watching campfire

The smell of basil

Untouched snow

Snow falling

Sunflowers

Chocolate

Camping

...

These are a few of my favorite simple things

How about you? Please share with me your simple pleasure.

Homemade Cherry Pitter

I love fresh cherries. If you love cherries you know that the pits are quite a pain, especially if you want to can them for future enjoyment in the winter time. Those of you who own a cherry pitter, it's easy for you. I do not have a cherry pitter, so I have been just cutting the cherries in half then dig out the pit.

Well, not anymore! I have found a way to pit those cherries without a pitter. All you need is a pair of chopsticks(which you can get for free at the Chinese Take-Outs) and an empty glass bottle(small mouth bottle).

Place and hold the cherry on top of the bottle(that's why you need a small mouth bottle, so that the cherry doesn't fall into the bottle). Using just 1 chopstick, poke the cherry in the middle until the pit falls through. The bottle acts as the pit collector.

And there you have it.

I used a glass bottle because it's sturdy. I don't know if a plastic bottle would work as it's not as sturdy. Also I don't think a kabob skewer would work because it's not as think as a chopstick.

Back to work again....

I guess it's back to the grind again...I was back yesterday but my mind wasn't, therefore no posting from yesterday.

Here's the run-down of what we did on Friday: We woke up a little later than usual, around 8am I think. The girls wanted to go out, so I had to get up and take them for a walk. Then it was house cleaning time, you know the usual, vacuuming, dusting, cleaning the bathroom, laundry, cleaning the kitchen counter and the stove...BORING.....and where was hubby this whole time?

Hubby and his nephew were doing something that involved these:

Can you figure out what they were doing? Ding ding ding....I know you are smart. They were putting up this:

After putting up the pool, they fenced it in to keep the girls out. Now, don't think for one second that the girls are being leftout. Nope, mommy always take care of her girls. They got their own little kiddie pool, so that they could do this too:

I also managed to find time during my "such busy" day to make a batch of black raspberry jam. I only made 1 batch of 8 8oz. jars. I did take a picture of the jam but I don't have the picture ready yet. You see, we don't own a digital camera....SAY WHAT???? You are probably thinking "how could someone in this day and age not own a digital camera?" Well, we don't take a lot of pictures, so we have been putting off to buy one. I promise, as soon as I get those pictures developed from my "old-fashion" camera, I will post them.

Oh, not forgetting the cordial...I did make a small batch of black raspberry cordial. I used a 32 oz. mason jar for this. Now the recipe that I had printed out called for a pound of raspberries and 3 cups of 80 proof vodka. Well, I didn't have that much raspberry or vodka left. So I just sorta put whatever I had left in the jar. It's about half full. Now I have to wait 3-4 weeks then filter out the berries and add sugar and wait some more...at least 6 months to be exact. Let the waiting game begin....

As for the rest of the weekend, there wasn't much going on.

So how was your Fourth of July weekend?

Happy Independence Day

Just wanted to wish everyone a safe and wonderful Fourth of July!

I will be spending my July 4th with hubby, my girls and hubby's nephew, just relaxin' & chillin'.

On the menu will be:

Hickory Smoked BBQ Ribs, Home Fries, Tortellini Salad and

for dessert, Cinnamon Buns.

Sometime this weekend I'll be canning up some Black Raspberry Jam and perhaps try making, for my first time, Raspberry Cordial.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Pay It Forward

Last Saturday we drove pass Wal-Mart and hubby pointed at the parking lot and said "those people have been there since Tuesday". I looked over and there were 2 trucks parked and it was a family of 4 with 2 big dogs. I could clearly see that they were "staying" at Wal-Mart parking lot because the trucks were packed with their belongings.

Without sounding too corny, I would like to tell you how much I love my husband and one of the reasons why is that he has a very kind heart. He is a very tough guy and he acts that way too. He swears like a sailor or a trucker(no offence to all the sailors & truckers, he used to be a trucker himself). Sometimes people think he is a hard-ass. But he is a very kind man and he would do anything he could to help other people(his friends or even strangers).

Yesterday he called me at work and said that he just had to stop to find out why those people were "staying or camping out" at Wal-Mart parking lot. He found out that they came from South Carolina. Ray and his sons were offered a job to work with a local custom home builder. So they packed up their belongings and moved from SC to NY to persue this new job. Little did they know that the company went bottoms out recently and the owner is actually facing some criminal charges. So with no jobs and not a lot of money, they were not able to find an apartment to live in(having the 2 big dogs don't really help with apartment searching. I know how hard it is because I have gone through it myself, trying to find a place to live that would allow not one but 2 big dogs). They tried to stay in a local motel that would allow dogs but it's getting expensive staying there daily. So they went to Wal-Mart and asked if they could just kinda camp out there for now.

So hubby called me later yesterday and said that we may not have much but we could offer them a hot meal and maybe a shower and asked if I would be ok with it. Of course I would be ok with it! Other people had helped us out before when we needed it and we should always pay it forward. So he invited them over for dinner and he also offered them a job for now(helping him with his landscaping projects) until they find a full time job. Later yesterday we discussed over dinner and told the family that they are welcome to stay for a little while at our home until they can get back up on their feet. We only have 2 bedrooms but we have a huge yard. So, we asked our neighbors from 2 doors down if we could borrow their pop-up camper and let the boys stay in the camper in our yard and the dogs can stay there too. Our neighbors were very glad to help.

Ray and his family were very grateful and kept thanking us. They kept asking if there is anything they could do for us. We told them to just pay it forward.

I know some poeple will think we are nuts for inviting some strangers to our home. Even Mike's best friend made a comment yesterday to me: "Is he nuts? He doesn't know these people, he could get robbed". Well, if everyone thinks this way then this would be a really terrible world! We already have plenty of problems like school shootings, sexual predetors, killings....someone somewhere has to do something kind to keep the world going. If we got robbed then so be it, at least in our hearts we know we are trying to do a good deed.

So my dear readers, do something nice and kind to someone you know or don't know and ask them to pay it forward.

Heat, Heat, Go Away!

Heat, heat, go away, come again some other day. No scratch that, don't come again some other day.

I hate the heat. I can't stand it being so hot. Kristin at Going Country had a similar post about the heat last week. The heat makes me so grouchy. It makes my husbby moody(he is the same way, hate the heat). Even my dogs don't like anything about it!!! They would go out and do what they needed to do outside and hurry back in the house. I don't blame them, who wants to be outside in this kind of humid & hot weather? My poor girls, with the hair that they have, it's like wearing a winter jacket at this time of the year.

Yesterday we decided to clean the car in the garage, so the girls(my dogs, I always refer them as the girls) decided to get out of the house and hang with us outside. June, as always, found a spot underneath the truck and dug herself a hole in the dirt to stay cool. Samantha stayed close to us so that she could get hosed with cold water.

1 more day of 90 degrees weather and we will get a "break" of cooler temp. Arrrggghhh, I need a pool!!!

Lucky Number 9

My co-worker emailed me this morning about an acticle in the Prevention magazine. I never knew about this until today. Do you know that when shopping for organic produce at your grocery stores, you should look for the lucky number 9?

The picture is just a snap-shot of the article. You could read the article here

Just thought I would share with you. Hopefully it's useful for you in case your local grocery store doesn't have an Organic section.