Things that make my heart happy

The Merry Little Flower Garden Next to the Driveway

This is the flowerbed just next to the driveway. It used to be all grass with the lantana, some holly, and the nandinas in a much smaller flowerbed. After the driveway was poured and the forms removed it just made a nice size flowerbed. It used to be so plain and now I just love to look at it. And here is hubby's hibiscus....his favorite flower. We usually have one in a pot by the pool, but this year we just went wild and planted it in the ground like we had sense. It is an annual, but it makes him so happy to see it bloom. His grandparents lived in South Texas, known hereabouts as The Valley. So any kind of tropical plant reminds him of very happy times with them.

THE LAST OF THE PEACHES
just to make you crazy to make one

Peach cobbler just the way it should be. Here is the cobbler from the last of the peaches. It was/is so tasty. It is made from peaches, sugar and spices. The crust is from a ready mix that sounds like Mixit Quick, but it called for some grated lemon peel and I added some of that brown granulated sugar over the top.

And here is the warm cobbler with ice cream on it, all melty and good....and this is even the peach ice cream on the peach cobbler. That is the ultimate decadence. Oh my....it was so good. The recipe for the ice cream is below a few days ago.

These are some things that made my heart happy and in moderation probably won't hurt it too much. Didn't make my waist all that happy though. Maybe, I should have called this Weight Watchers can wait....but not long. And especially after I get the test results for my physical. aie aie aie

I promise to work on the picture issues and the weight problems tomorrow. There truly are many more things that make my heart happy...these are just a very tiny fraction of them.

While the uploading of these pictures wasn't bad I need to figure out why they didn't all upload. It worked pretty much like it should and had been working. hmmm. And apparently my luck is better with the pictures...at least for a little while tonight. Melli, I'll post the pictures of the curtains tomorrow. Something happened while they were uploading and they didn't make it.

Garden Spells bySarah Addison-Allen
looks like it will make my heart very happy right after I finish reading some other books.
Note to Pyewacketcat...I think you will like this, too and they have the audiotape, etc.

The domesticity funk

I've been so domestic this past week I think I need to go get a beer and sit around in an undershirt or something. And, remember when I so wanted to be hubby's biker babe on the Vespa, but chose not to have helmet hair instead...well, while reading Crazy Aunt Purl I found a link to this Scooter Babe embroidery pattern. It is very cool...and there are so many really cool ones at Super Crafty, but it means there have been LOTS of women becoming scooter babes ahead of me....so much so they have an embroidery pattern for gosh sakes. There really are some cute patterns at that site, even though they have crushed my dreams of being original.

The domesticity today was sewing, for goodness sake! We remodeled our upstairs bedroom some...well, a while back and I'd never gotten blinds or curtains for the clerestory windows above the bed. I had the matching bedspread and curtains and pillows and had craftily taken one of the curtains and made it into a shower curtain. How clever is that! But now coverings for the windows over the bed. Our daughter is coming in August for my birthday and my mil's birthday and she is like her mom...she likes it to be somewhat caveish for sleeping. A trip to Home Depot for blinds was first on my list this morning, then over to Garden Ridge for accessories that I'd seen but didn't buy and sheer curtains. Well, the sheers were 84" long and the window is 25" high, so there was some altering going on here today....and with what I had left over I made a tiny little matching curtain for the bath. It has a tiny little window.

Did I mention the peach cobbler made from the last of the peaches? Well, it was wonderful and last night I gave in and put some of the peach home made ice cream on the heated cobbler. It was so good. I will be looking for a Weight Watcher's meeting place very soon, but my goodness it was so good. I'll get pictures of the cobbler uploaded tomorrow, but I'm worn out. Here is a picture of the ice cream.



Apparently life size for tonight...I can't get the edit thing to work right now, or the little hand thingy to scruch it down some. And for another thing I lost the pictures in a post about our vacation. They just will not transload from the hosting site. It might be God telling me not to post those ones, even though they were for family viewing. I'll work on that tomorrow, too after I run to my doc to get the paperwork so I can get blood work done for the physical in July. I'll get better at this blogging thing one of these days.

Just Leave it alone

This fern had died back over the winter and during the spring rush of getting things planted and preparing for the party, I had forgotten all about it. It is coming back just fine being left totally alone and forgotten. Sometimes that is just the best policy, I think.

total bliss

I just found this picture of my grand niece on my nephew and his wife's website. If this isn't total serenity, I don't know what would be. Welcome to the world of ice cream, sweetheart. She had just had a good tasting of it. I love that sweet innocent little face. She is so interested in learning about the world.

And I just got a whole lesson in familial relationships, and how. While I was brushing my teeth and talking to my husband who was settling in to bed I asked him what the difference is between a Great Niece and a Grand Niece. He, who has NO clue about how family connections are figured out, started telling me that if she was younger then me...well, something something...if she were older than me the she would be the Grand Niece. He based this reasoning on the fact that Grandparents are older. He is wise, my man.

So, to settle my mind about the whole grand-great debate I googled it. OH LORD....you have NO idea what is out there about relationships. My mind was spinning and and my eyes were rolling after looking at some of the charts. This one is a doozy!! It has an enormous chart detailing any possible relationship to anyone ever who is remotely related to you. Definitely worth a click just to see the thing. Man, someone went crazy figuring that out.

Then there was the slightly odd website that was very serious about relationships on Prince Edward Island. Wikipedia had this to say, "According to the 2008 estimates, Prince Edward Island has 139,407 residents[3] collectively referred to as Islanders. " I guess with that small a gene pool one must be most rigorous in selecting someone from the Island, or possibly all of Nova Scotia.

I didn't used to get too interested in how my family was related to each other...there just weren't that many of us. That is the deal with my husband, he was an only child, too. (My sister has gotten that name for her website, so be on the lookout) So, anything other than a cousin was pretty exotic for us and after thinking on the relationship for a nano second we were back into our own little worlds, where we were king and queen. And we lived in a very large metropolitan area where we were not likely to marry anyone remotely related to us, so it just wasn't all that important to us. But now, I'm getting older and there are more and more of us after the first influx of my siblings. Same dad...different mother. And now they have children and grandchildren and our world has grown so much and become complex.

After all the reading, grand niece and great niece are the same thing, but ain't she grand!! Anyway, I wanted to show you Miss Lilly in all her loveliness at age 7 months 21 days, with ice cream face and wide eyes. Keep this image with you today as you go about your business and I think it will make you a little happier.

Disclaimer-I did make sure it was ok with her grandmother to use this image and grandmothers are the toughest.

the actual ruler of this house

This is our cat called variously Got-e-bo, by her previous choice of owners and then The Doppleganger by my daughter, because she looked just like the cat we had before. This cat would come to our house and hang out before we took her in she moved in with us. I tried to call her Daisy for a while, but it didn't fit. Now she is 'Puddy...as in the cartoons. She lived with my neighbor down the street, but they got a dog....hiss...and that was unpardonable to this little cat.

She only weighs about 4 pounds, but is healthy. I asked my neighbor the other day how old she is...the cat not the neighbor...and she thought for a moment and said, "Well, she was born under Sean's crib, so she is 18 years old!" She, the cat, is a good one. We get headbutts and kitty kisses when we return from a trip, but only after she has made us feel pretty bad about leaving her with only the kid to feed and water her twice a day. Our daughter, who has her own home and job, actually sits with her and once turned on the sleep timer on the tv for her so it would seem as if we were home. It made Puddy all calm and happy...so we were told. My husband saw her checking out another neighbor's house the other day. He was sort of worried she might be thinking of moving on to live with them.

it's all just peachy

I've been watching tivoed So You Think You Can Dance and turned on the news. It is STORMING like crazy just on the other side of town and we got nothing, nada, not a drop. Unbelievable. It has been such a hot day today...the heat index was 101F and it felt like it, too.

This morning while I was looking for a file on the computer I found a recipe for peach ice cream.

I have no idea where the recipe came from, if you do please let me know so I can give credit where it is due. It was easy to make and it is good. I added a bit more sugar...just because I like it like that. It nearly dropped me to my knees when I tasted it before putting it in the ice cream freezer. We have an electric one that is ages old, but it worked. We haven't made homemade ice cream for twenty years...for real. Wish I'd taken a picture of it. It was like magic how the cream expanded as it froze and came up in the cannister. This was the first time I've ever had homemade that didn't have salt in it...I thought, but after I finished I got a tiny aftertaste. It was truly the real deal.

Texas Peach Ice Cream

3 medium size Fully-ripened peaches, peeled, stoned and chopped (approximately 1-1/2 cups)

¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons Sugar

1-½ teaspoons Pure vanilla

2 cups Half-and-half, or 1-½ cups whole milk plus ½ cup heavy cream

In a bowl, using a potato masher or wooden spoon, break up the peaches with the sugar and vanilla until coarsely mashed. Stir in the half and half. Taste and add more sugar if needed.

Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer's directions. You can also "still-freeze" this ice cream, but it will not be as smooth (see directions below). When the ice cream is thickened and frozen, scrape it into a plastic container, cover and freeze for at least 1 hour. Let it soften slightly in the refrigerator before serving.

After about 30 minutes of looking at the recipe off and on, I told my husband we must go to the farmer's market right now! We weren't sure if the Parker County peaches were ready yet, but there was one guy who had a bunch of peaches. He was sorting them and putting the bruised ones in a box. I asked if he would make me a deal on that box (the overipe ones are the best for what I wanted). He made me a deal for $3.00.!! I made a double recipe of the fresh peach ice cream and have enough for a peach crisp or cobbler tomorrow. Oh yes...those peaches count for fruit servings....well, in my world they do and they do for real. We just won't think about the half and half tonight.

Thank goodness we have a new little freezer to put our ice cream bounty into.

You can see how messy our garage is...and I spy the pink flamingo's rear end...been wondering where it was....you know..yard art and all.


Alas, poor brown freezer we knew you well. You served us for forty years and kept our food frozen solid, except for the time the kids pulled your door open trying to reach the popsicles and the side of beef defrosted. That was not a good day for pretty much all of us. The parts guy came for you today and carted you off to freezer heaven, for you could go to no other place, faithful Montgomery Ward freezer.


Keep an eye on my weather thingy to see how hot it is and how we at my house are not getting any rain whatsoever and the other side of town is nice and cool...however, there were some bad issues associated with this rain. No tornadoes or anything like that, but I did hear them say a lot of wind. Now I feel awful that I envied their rain.

Wordless Wednesday

This was taken very early last spring when we had a snap cold front

with snow....guess I should have not done WW with this at this

time of year. It has been SO HOT the past few days,

and it is just the beginning for us.