Yummy Twist To The Ordinary Roasted Pumpkin Seed.

I found this really yummy recipe for Spiced Pumpkin Seeds... So good, thought ya'll might want to try it! Enjoy!

INGREDIENTS

1 cup raw pumpkin seeds, rinsed and dried
(you may choose to only partially rinse them, since they tend to have a bit more flavor with some of the pumpkin still on them)
6 tablespoons white sugar, divided (4 Tbs. is sufficient if you don't like your seeds overly sweet)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F (120 degrees C). Spread pumpkin seeds in a single layer on a baking sheet. Toast for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally, until dry and toasted. Larger seeds may take longer.
In a large bowl, stir together 2 tablespoons of white sugar, salt, and pumpkin pie spice. Set aside. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the pumpkin seeds and sprinkle the remaining sugar over them. Stir with a wooden spoon until the sugar melts, about 45 seconds. Pour seeds into the bowl with the spiced sugar and stir until coated. Allow to cool before serving. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.

Homecoming at Creek.

So now that football is in full swing... 5 weeks and counting... and Homecoming week is here, I can honestly say that I am simply Exhausted. Most of the exhaustion stems not so much from football itself, but rather from Iain, and the fact that when I get home from practice he is ready to play. Would I trade the playtime for rest... absolutely not, but it still doesn't make it any easier to get up in the morning and get going.

Yeah, so homecoming week is here, and my oh my what an interesting week it has been... luckily the first three days of dressing up is over and there are only 2 more to go.... we have seen bananas, referees, Reno 911 officers, superheroes, Sara Palin lookalikes, Barbie Dolls (in their boxes!) Elvis, hippies, Richard Simmons, '80's jazzercizers and breakdancers, and those are the VERY tame ones. Tomorrow is spirit day and I am sure we will be seeing TONS of orange and black, but Friday... OH FRIDAY....the day of all homecoming spirit days. Yes... it is the dreaded, but HILARIOUS (and perfect for blackmail later on) Senior Cross-dress day. Oh to see the guys decked out in mini-skirts, pantyhose, tube-tops and caked on make-up. Sometimes I wonder if this is the image they have in their mind of how girls really are, (which is a very sad statement in and of itself) or if this is hopefully the OVERDONE spoof of todays in-your face fashion statements. Either way, it is fun to watch, and especially fun when some of the guys can actually pass for girls in the hall... I passed one young man last year who I REALLY thought was a girl. THAT my friend, is a very successful senior cross-dress attempt! However, I think my favorite is to see my senior football players... all 6'5" 250 lbs of them squeezed into hose and skirts, wigs and make-up. Very, very entertaining!

So here is a video I found on YouTube that some of my former weightlifters posted of this fully entertaining day at our school. (Imagine trying to teach with these kids in your class... HA!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2c94aT2rTk

Anyhoo...Here's to the game tomorrow night, and hopes of a winning streak continued!

How to Clean Prop Clothing From a Slasher Flick!

While we were doing the laundry this weekend, we managed to get one of those "Oh-No!" moments... you know the one... that moment when you open the dryer door to find that all of your nice dress clothes look like they have been the props in a bad slasher flick!

Well, that was our find this weekend. Evidently one of Iain's red crayons from the restaraunt this weekend ended up in the dryer... RED Crayon was absolutely EVERYWHERE... I was so upset, because all of my good clothes for work were completely ruined.

I looked everywhere online for a remedy that would work... WD-40 to break up the wax of the crayon so it would wash out... Well... it faded it a tiny bit, but all it really managed to do was make my laundry REALLY stinky... and now we have to buy another can of the stuff for when we really need it.

So after I looked around for a while I managed to find this little gem, I had to go out and buy a few things... ended up spending about $15 for everything, but $15 is a small price to pay when it would cost me at least$200 to replace the clothes.

Here you have the super-magic, amazing and wonderful dried in crayon removing miracle!

2 full caps of concentrated laundry detergent (Tide works great!)
1 cup of borax
1 cup of Oxi-Clean
1 cup of white vinegar

Pour all of the above in gredients into the washer tub already filled with the HOTTEST water you can fill it with and let the clothes soak for an hour before you start the wash cycle. Then wash heavy soil cycle.

I couldn't believe my eyes when nearly everything came out like brand new... I will tell you though that it doesn't seem to work very well on synthetic fibers like polyester... I am still working on that shirt...(it was a freebie from work anyway, so nothing lost!) but anything that was cotton or even cotton blend came out like brand-new!

Another Page... I know... it's been a while.

Bronchitis STINKS!

Well, it has been over 2 weeks since I first got my cold...you know, your typical cough and hack, runny nose type cold. The first week went by and it got pretty rough with the cough, enough that for 3 nights straight I couldn't really sleep, so I went to the doctor to get some good presription cough medicine... we decided at the time to bypass the antibiotics. Well, about 4 days later I went back to the doctor to have a mole removed and she noticed the cough was still there, I told her that it was getting a lot better since I had seen her before, so again we decided on no antibiotics. DUMB DUMB decision on my part... 2 days after I went, the cough came back but this time worse.

Friday night came around and as I was trying to go to sleep I found out that I was having a really hard time breathing... It just felt like an elephant was sitting on my lungs! So after taking more cough syrup I finally was able to sleep, but I knew I had to go to the doctor in the morning.

So Saturday rolls around and I go to Urgent Care, after listening to my lungs, the doctor decided I needed a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia! He told me he was sure I had a mild case of it going on by listening to my lung sounds... So chest x-ray now done, he comes over and lets me know that he didn't see how my lungs could be so clear considering how they sounded... so to put the story short... by passing the first (2)time(s) around on the antibiotics, I got myself into a mess that required a chest x-ray, a PAINFUL, BURNING shot of antibiotics in the butt, a nebulizer treatment at Urgent Care before I left, and prescriptions for Albuterol, a major strong antibiotic and more cough syrup with codiene in it... .and permission to use ibuprofen for pain....Maybe, I will have learned my lesson for next time... (fingers crossed...)

Giraffe loving little dare-devil...

Ok... so the title to this entry may be a little odd... but to briefly explain we went to the zoo today and when we came home Iain decided to perform a few daredevil antics. (so there you have it short and sweet.)

The last time we went to the zoo, when we went to the Giraffe exhibit, we went only to find out that the Giraffes had gone in for the day, so we left that time a bit disappointed. But this time we went early to make sure we got to see them! We actually were the first to see them, because we overheard them on the radio saying they were letting the giraffes out, so we booked it over to the lookout! We were definitely not disappointed... All I can say, is God had such a great sense of humor when He made the Giraffe!...How can you not LOVE these gentle creatures. They came right up to us, ready to get some morning loves from the visitors. Iain and I fed the giraffes crackers and sweet potatoes. Iain absolutely loved it... he kept saying "Hi!" over and over in his sweet little voice to the giraffes whenever they would come close. It was absolutely the cutest thing! So here are a couple of pics from the zoo...

When we got home, he was absolutely wound up, and decided that it was time to start jumping off of the couch and into the beanbag on the floor...absolutely no fear. After he had done it a few times he then decided that he wanted to do a somersault off of the couch. That one got me a bit startled, but he just giggled and got right back up on the couch... go figure...That's my boy!

Epicurious

Well, it goes without saying, that toddlers have very curious eating habits... Some days you can't get them to eat a thing, the next day they will eat everything you put in front of them. And most of the time they will come up with new, albeit curious combinations of the food on their plates.

When I saw him put together this combination of macaroni and cheese, fishsticks and chocolate pudding, I immediately had this idea of a food magazine cover pop into my head. So here is my take on a "foodie" publication from the toddler point of view!

Customer SERVICE????

Okay, so I have been having this little issue lately. Well, actually not just lately, since November of last year really...You know those nice little companies, that when you have your baby, are all ready to sell you every possible trinket imaginable to commemorate your little guy's birth?... Well, we fell prey, and decided to buy the Louisville slugger baseball bat that every boy should have with his name and birth information.

Yeah, we ordered it in November and recieved the bat just before Christmas... and well, someone at the company evidently decided that we had simply misspelled Iain's name. They decided to engrave LAIN in the bat instead. So we went through the process of letting them know that they had made a mistake and they were very apologetic and ready to replace it with a corrected version. We were told to expect the new bat at the beginning of January, so we patiently waited for the new and correct bat to come.

January came, and went... no bat... so we called, and the company said it must have been a mistake in communication with production, so a new arrival date was given to us.... Well, February came and went... in the process we called at least 10 times to find out what was goin on, and FINALLY in March we got the new bat... GUESS WHAT?? It was misspelled once again! Exactly the same way. So, what do I do... I call the company... as our conversation went along, I realized very quickly that they were NOT going to take the blame, instead they proceeded to tell me that since it is engraved in a script font, I am simply mistaking the "I" on the bat for an "L". So basically they called me an illiterate idiot, who cannot tell an I from an L.
At this point I was just pissed off.

So I continue to make calls, 6 more to be exact before someone actually talked to me without "disconnecting" me while I was being transferred to their customer service dept. When I finally got to someone to actually talk to I decided it was time to play their game, so on came the Alligator tears, and the "weepy momma" simply wanting her son's bat in time for mother's day. I made the woman feel so bad about the situation that she said she would "immediatly talk to her supervisor" to fix the situation, and that she was so upset for me. (hee hee!)

So to get to the point, the THIRD bat made it's way to us, and guess what... MISSPELLED AGAIN!!! What on Earth?? I called again today... and held on the line listening to the same hynoptizing muzak track OVER and OVER for 54 minutes before someone finally said they would refund our money with proper proof of repeated mistakes on their part, so the picture you see is the response they will recieve. GRRRRR... Customer service....Yeah right!

Iain's after bath playtime... quite fun!

So here is a little video of Iain playing Peek-a-boo with his towel after his bath last night. He gets absolutely wound up after his bath, but as you can see is loads of fun!

Pictures from the beach

Here are some pics of Iain from the other day at the beach
I absolutely LOVE this first one... Probably one of my
favorites that I have taken. I also threw in one of Lynx
from the other night as well, I just liked the pic.

Got my new camera!!!

So, I got my birthday present! And I can say that I am LOVING my new XTi! The first 2 are from the first night I had the camera, just snapshots more than anything, but I have to say that I like the shots from the park today. You can tell, I have been doing a little bit of reading up on aperature and the like. Feel free to dole out the CC, that is what will make my shots better. All are SOOTC.

bits of me

Have you ever seen one?

Go figure the one night this week that my camera died, I saw what had to be one of the most rare things ever. Believe it or not... I saw a rainbow at night! I really didn't think it was possible that that was what I was seeing, so yesterday I asked my students if they had ever seen one, and sure enough 3 of my students saw it too!

I was so mad that my camera was dead... This was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen... We had a full moon and there happened to be rain just offshore and no clouds over us directly so we had the rare conditions met for a moonbow! Absolutely amazing!

Softball! Woo Hoo!

Well, our softball team is actually doing pretty well this year. We weren't expected to do much since our heralded,nationally ranked pitcher graduated last year. Yeah, they pretty much just left us out of the picture entirely. Well, I have to say after watching a few games this past week, that our girls are faring pretty darn good, and knocked off "the team to beat".

Anyhoo... I finally remembered to bring my camera to some games, and was so excited to get some really awesome pics... and I have to say that the last one is definitely my favorite!

Scrappin' Fever

Well, as you can see I have been bitten by the scrappin' bug of late. This is quite an accomplishment for me. You see, I have not scrapped much in about oh, 4 years. In those 4 years, I have made a total of about 2 pages. No joke. Well, after watching Manders post 60+ layouts this year alone, I guess I got a little motivated to get scrappin. These are the layouts I have made since February. At this rate, I might actually make a whole scrapbook's worth this year.... WOO HOO!

So Manders... thanks for lighting the fire under my butt to get scrappin'!

BIG BOY!

Well, since I haven't posted in a while, I thought I would finally upload some pics since it has been so long. They aren't in any particular order and arent touched up or anything, but here they are... ENJOY!

Iain is Walking!!!!

Christmas is coming! Christmas is coming!

I can't believe it is FINALLY almost here! All I can say is I am so so so excited about watching Iain this year. It is already quite fun around the house watching him get excited over and over about the Christmas tree. He is never bored with the tree to look at and those ornaments on the bottom to pull and taste and all.





Well, we went to the mall to have Iains picture taken with Santa. I wasn't sure what to expect of this first such excursion, as all of my friends kids seemed to go haywire when they were put on Santa's lap. Well, we got him there, and go figure... Mr. Extrovert himself came through again! Iain definitely knew who to suck up to for this time of year. He sat there and was so good they only had to take one picture! The funny thing was, we have been working with Iain for a few weeks now on waving bye-bye... sure enough.. Santa got his very first wave!


Anyway, I thought I would share a couple of pictures... including a few of my favorite ornaments from our tree... (yes, Manders... I once again stole your awesome idea! Love ya!)

Fall in Florida SUCKS!

Fall is finally getting here to Florida. Weather is starting to get cooler (if you call 77 degrees cool!)and Halloween is all but here. I don't know why I didn't realize it before, but it just hit me that I would be missing out on Iain's first Halloween. Our volleyball team has a playoff game at home that I have to cover, and there is no way out of it. We really wanted to go to Trunk-or-treat at church, and we can't. So all of this planning we had done to do Noah's ark with Iain as the lion and Allen as Noah pulling the ark (Iains wagon)is for basically nothing. The only thing we can do now is dress him up for the game and hopefully he won't get too hot.

Another thing that hit me was that his first Thanksgiving is going to be without family. We just don't have the $$ to get a plane ticket home and don't really have the money to drive either. This just plain flat out sucks.

If you can't tell, I am frustrated, and whiney, and tired, and wishing it was Christmas already so I CAN actually go home!

Somebody give me a hug already, dang it!

Milk Can Dinner.... AMAZING!!!

Well, well, well.... I FINALLY found it! I have been looking for this recipe for about a year now... (I know I probably didn't look extremely hard, but still, I had a hard time finding it...) Anyway, back when we lived in the apartment here, some friends invited us to a neighborhood cookout. They told us not to bring anything, they had it all covered. So the day came, and we started out toward the lake where we were eating, and I was hit smack in the face with this unbelievable burst of aromas and flavors... Yes... I could already taste it, it seemed. When it came time to start to eat, Jimmy took his milkcan... yes you heard it right, his milkcan and emptied its contents into a wheelbarrel parked next to the tables. Out of that can came one of the biggest, most amazing feasts I have ever laid eyes upon. There was corn, and potatoes, sweetpotatoes and cabbage, ham, and sausage, onions and carrots, etc, etc... In all honesty this was one of the best meals I have EVER had in my life. And so my search of this masterpiece commenced! I am so excited to have found this recipe, and I can't wait to test it out on friends. Hope you enjoy!


Milk Can Dinner


• 25 ears sweet corn, shucked (reserve a few husks for lining can)
• 25 medium red potatoes, scrubbed but unpeeled
• 3 pounds carrots, peeled and halved
• 6 medium onions, peeled and quartered (optional)
• 4 heads green cabbage, cored and quartered (optional)
• 50 Polish or German sausages, or for a spicier taste include some
• chorizo sausages
• Medium to large ham roast (2 lbs. of bacon can be substituted)
• 4-5 cups of water
• Salt and Pepper to season
Accompaniments
• Butter or margarine
• Sour cream
• Tossed green salad
• Hot bread or biscuits
To prepare the fire, dig a shallow pit 8 inches deep by 20 inches wide. Place two cement blocks, which will support the milk can, on either side of the pit. Build the fire using about 10 to 15 pieces of hardwood (about 1-1/2 inches in diameter and 15 inches long). When the embers are white hot, the fire is ready. (Continue to add wood little by little to maintain a slow, even temperature while cooking.)
Place a thin layer of corn husks on the bottom of a clean, unrusted 8- or 10-gallon milk can to insulate the food from the fire. Place the potatoes in the can, then add layers of carrots, onions, corn, cabbage, ham and sausages. If necessary, stuff the sausages into the can. Salt and Pepper to taste. Add 3 cups of water. If your can has a lid, place it on gently to allow some steam to escape. (This is very important as a lid that is jammed on may cause steam to build up and blow both the lid and the contents of the can out the top.) If you do not have a lid, improvise one by placing a doubled sheet of heavy-duty aluminum foil over the top of the can and crimping the edges.
Set the filled milk can on the cement blocks above the fire and cook gently for 1 to 1-1/4 hours. Add more wood to the fire as needed. If the liquid in the can seems to be boiling away, add the remaining water. Empty the can into serving containers. Large wooden bread bowls, even foil lined wheel barrels are great ways to serve this fun outdoor dinner.
Serves 20 to 25