Strawberries on the Brain

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Once a month I get together with some “stampin” friends for a little “party”. Our leaders do a make and take (always something super cute that I would never think of on my own) then we order stamp/scrap stuff and talk a lot and laugh a lot. Everyone in the group takes turns hosting the event and last night was my turn. It is usually very low key, we gather around the kitchen table and do our little project, and maybe snack on a bowl of M&M’s.


When I got this months Country Living magazine and there was a whole section on strawberries, and a great recipe for strawberry lemon aid, I knew I had to do something different for my party. Then to my great delight in my Kraft Food magazine there was a great recipe for a strawberry dessert. I decided I was going to do both.

I like to entertain, I don’t do it very often, but when I do I really enjoy it. I like making and planning food that people will enjoy. I even like cleaning house and decorating so everything looks nice and comfortable.

Here is a picture of my strawberry lemon aid. I have never made “real” lemon aid before, I usually use the powdered variety, so this was fun for me.

It is such a pretty pink color!

I served it in clear glass tumblers, so everybody could really see how pretty it was.

Here is my recipe for Strawberry Lemon aid:

Boil 2 cups sugar and 2 cups water, let it cool a little and pour it into a jug (or picture). Add the juice of 12 lemons and 2 cups cut up strawberries. Then add 8 cups cold water and 8 cups of ice. I sliced up two lemons to make it look pretty and tossed in a few whole strawberries.

Very easy and it makes a nice presentation.

Then I made this for dessert

I love strawberries

Here is an inside view

This little gem of a frozen dessert is really, really good!

You can get the recipe here: Strawberry Whipped Sensation

It was a wonderful evening, we had a good time. Most of my family was out of the house which makes throwing a party much easier. The two littlest punks were in bed, punk #2 was at a Birthday Party and Dadzoo had punk#1 and punk#3, they were picking up this:

More about “this” in another post.

I’ve been tagged

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I’ve been tagged!
this one is a fun one that requires little thinking
(whew)
All you have to do is take pictures of the view from your front door and your back door, very simple.

This first one I am standing right in my front door.
however if I step out a little the view gets so much better!
(note: sorry if I sound like I am bragging a bit, but I love where I live and I love the views)

I am standing on the front porch looking north east

I am facing East here
that big beautiful mountain is Timpanogos
it has snow on it all year long and there is a small glacier on the back side.


Here is a little better view, I walked out on the side walk.

I am still looking east, you can see Utah Lake

we have beautiful sunrises

my favorite is when the full moon rises over the lake, there is a glittery moon path on the water,
it is stunning.

Here we are looking out my back door.

We are right up against 100 zillion acres of open land, out here in the western USA that mean a lot of sage brush and dry grass. Sometimes if we have a wet spring, there will be wildflowers, and sometimes, because of stupid people, there will be wild fires.

(I will do a post with wild fire pics another time)


Sometimes, late at night you can hear the coyotes calling.

There are also a lot of snakes, occasionally of the rattling variety.

We get a lot of deer too.

We have even twice rescued Jack Rabbits, who have become trapped in out window wells!

So there you go, my little slice of the world.
I absolutely love it!
There are some challenges living here.

It is really hot and dry (Utah is a desert after all)

We have had cattle and sheep make short work of our gardens more than once.

Grasshoppers ate the first tree we ever planted,

and the deer…well…we all know what deer can do.

I sort of feel like a suburban homesteader, and I am oh so thankful for the grocery store!

I am going to go out on a limb and tag non-family, so of my blogger friends that I have found while browsing the blogs!

so here goes…

I tag

Garibay Soup, Be It Ever So Humble, Mom to Five Kids

and Jesica

(ok fine one family member, she lives far away and I have always wanted to see her house.)

Favorite Things

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Olive Oil

I love Extra Virgin Olive Oil

I think it is yummy with chicken

however
I have also learned that it has other important uses.

My Punk #4 has had varying degrees of eczema her whole life. As a baby it was easy to control with liberal amounts of Eucerin cream and limited amounts of soap. As she has gotten older it has become worse. There are two patches that are especially stubborn and the last year has been especially bad. I have tried almost everything with her, Eucerin creams, Vaseline, expensive lotions, cheap lotions, dye free and fragrance free soaps, no milk, lanolin, Chamomile and oatmeal baths, everything. Finally when her patches became so itchy that she would scratch until she bled I went to the Dr, and he gave me some creams to use; they sort of, kind of kept things at bay, but it was still a battle.

This winter was really bad, it seems like she would break out with a new dry patch daily. I would put her prescription creams on in the morning, then lotion her body up with Aveeno cream. At night after her chamomile and oatmeal bath I would put her creams on again, then I would cover her bad patches with gaze (to keep her from scratching them at night) then lotion her up again.

Then I read an article that said steroid creams can make the skin thinner making healing harder.

**sigh**

So I asked my aunt, whom we affectionately call the “witch doctor” for some advice. My aunt Beki is a healer, she knows all sort of “natural” healing methods. Well she told me to try plain old olive oil.

Olive oil?

Olive oil.

Yes,

Olive oil.

I didn’t want my daughter to smell like dinner.

So I said thanks, and didn’t try it.

As winter turned into spring her skin started to get a little better except for her two bad spots and on a whim (and because I had run out of her regular lotion) I dabbed a little olive oil on her bad spots. The oil soaked right in, so I put on a little more, and more and a little more after that. The next morning the spots seemed much, much better. Hmm…maybe smelling like dinner was better than having bloody, oozy scabs all the time. So I kept it up for about a week and slowly, but surely things are looking better.


Then I was talking to a friend and she mentioned that she had been using lavender oil to help with her skin problems. I like the smell of lavender, it doesn’t smell like dinner. So I mixed the two. In a small Tupperware I put in about a half cup of olive oil and about 12 drop of lavender essential oil and slathered it all over my punk (by this time I was using olive oil all over her body and it was keeping her skin hydrated and smooth). She really started to heal by this point and she didn’t smell like dinner anymore, she smelled like flowers, a much better smell. I also noticed a little side effect, my fingers and thumbs tend to get dry and cracked (something to do with wiping sticky fingers and faces and doing a lot of dishes) since I had been using the oil on my baby girl punk my fingers had been soft and smooth!

I love Olive Oil and Lavender Essential oil.

Thanks Auntie Beki for the advice, sorry I didn’t follow it sooner!

Tending Roses

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My in-laws gave me this book for
mothers day.
Giving me a book is almost always a sure thing. I love to read. I am a voracious reader. When I FIRST looked at the book I wasn’t so sure I was going to like it. I am not a romance reader, and this book looked like it was going to be a romance. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like a good
love story
as much as the next gal, but I cannot stand a cheesy romance novel. I have a hard time with the syrupy sweet love stories, I like my books to have some substance, to give me something to think about.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by this book. It isn’t a sappy love story. It is a book with depth and feeling. It really gives you something to think about on many, many levels. This book will be one of those I read over and over, it is going into my yearly line up, along with the “Little House” books and the “Narnia” books,

it is just that good.
(Someday I will post my list of “yearly books” there are quiet a few!)

I highly recommend this book:

“Tending Roses”