July Picturesque Guessing Game

Ya know, July is my one-year Bloggie birthday. It's true -- I have now been a Blogger for a year. I kinda thought I'd do something special for my bloggie birthday, but I just got so busy, and never got around to doing anything about it. So, I'm just going to do my guessing game, and I hope everybody has a fun time trying to figure them out!

O.K., here goes.

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

A note about #3: Ladies, I doubt if many, if any, of you will correctly guess this. Here's a tip: Ask your guy. Seriously, if you can't figure it out, call for a guy to help you out. Even if he says that he doesn't know, ask him if he even has a feeling about it. Because a lot of the guys probably will just have a funny feeling about it, and maybe it will be correct. So if you don't know it, ask your man! Have fun guessing! :)

When Puppets Speak...

...Kids listen. They really do.

Before I start, let me warn you -- this is going to be somewhat of a multi-topic, random post. Ready? Here we go.

My mom and I are part of a program in our church. It's basically a VBS, except that instead of being every morning for a week, this is every Saturday morning for five weeks. Make sense? Well, among performing many other tasks and helping in many other ways, Mom and I are the puppeteers.

OK, we're not very good yet, but we enjoy it!

Meet Gertrude and George:

Gertrude and me:

George and my mom:

So that's what my mom and I do in the Saturday Bible Blast. And my beautiful niece, Ariana? She's just plain cute!! And yes, that is an Auntie Bekah outfit!!

By the way, she's so close to walking!!! Yes, it's true! She has taken around a half-dozen steps, at various times, without holding onto anything. Aaaahhhhh!!! We're not really counting her as actually walking yet, because she can't really walk without holding onto something for balance, but she is so close!!

On to more random things. Such as.......my feet. I warned you this would be a random post.

How 'bout my head and upper body now?

Smile sweetly!!

Ready for a total topic change?

Recently I finally won victory over something that had been bugging me for awhile. Literally. It was pretty much like an OCD kind of thing for awhile. And when I say awhile, in this instance I mean basically 4 years. Yeah, it was quite a while. Do you know what it was?

This may shock some of you that don't know me very well, or that just never knew about this.

I collected candy wrappers.

I know -- weird, isn't it??!! But I was really pretty much OCD about it. I couldn't stand to throw away a.single.candy.wrapper. Ever. I would even get candy wrappers from my mom, my friends...

See this nice kitchen table?

Now look at it.

Yeah. It was pretty bad. That's 4 years worth of candy wrappers, probably about 95% of them mine, that I'd had been saving.

I had myself convinced that I was going to do something with them...something...anything... And actually, I did do a few things. I made a collage or two, I made some picture frames for family and friends...I did use a few of them. But nowhere near the amount that I had and continued to horde. I knew that I was never really going to do anything with them, but I couldn't stand to let them go. I was going through a lot of other issues in my life, and I don't know why I chose to hang onto them, but somehow I felt like I couldn't throw them away. Any of them. About 3 months ago, when we got our kitten, I had to move the collection, but did I throw them away? No. I bagged them up and kept them. But now, it was time for them to go.

Going...

...going...

...gone. Goodbye.

As a matter of fact, I had been doing the same thing with about 2 1/2 years worth of old catalogs, too...but those left about 2 months ago. So I am happy to report the victorty that Lord gave me over that area of my life!

Well, that about concludes this broadcast of Daddy's Girl Network's Random Post. Tomorrow we will be airing the July edition of Rebekah's Picturesque Guessing Game, so stay tune -- don't touch that dial! Goodbye till then! ;)

The Neighbor's Dog

A lady on a site I'm on posted this recently:

An older, tired-looking dog wandered into my yard; I could tell from his collar and well-fed belly that he had a home and was well taken care of.

He calmly came over to me, I gave him a few pats on his head; he then followed me into my house, slowly walked down the hall, curled up in the corner and fell asleep.

An hour later, he went to the door, and I let him out.

The next day he was back, greeted me in my yard, walked inside and resumed his spot in the hall and again slept for about an hour. This continued off and on for several weeks.

Curious I pinned a note to his collar: 'I would like to find out who the owner of this wonderful sweet dog is and ask if you are aware that almost every afternoon your dog comes to my house for a nap.'

The next day he arrived for his nap, with a different note pinned to his collar: 'He lives in a home with 6 children, 2 under the age of 3 - he's trying to catch up on his sleep. Can I come with him tomorrow?'

Some Handy Tips

I don't know about you, but I always love reading household tips. Somebody sent these to me, and I have tried some of them, but not all. When it says, "...I..." or "...me...", that's not referring to myself, that's the person that sent them to me...or maybe whoever sent them to the person who sent them to me...or maybe even whoever sent them to whoever sent them to the person who sent them to me...something like that. Anyways, if there is something in italics with the tip, that's actually my own note. Enjoy!

DID YOU KNOW?

Peel a banana from the bottom and you won't have to pick the little 'stringy things' off of it. That's how the primates do it.

Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.

Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and not mold!

Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating. Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking.

Add a teaspoon of water when frying ground beef. It will help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking.

To really make scrambled eggs or omelets rich add a couple of spoonfuls of sour cream, cream cheese, or heavy cream in and then beat them up.

For a cool brownie treat, make brownies as directed. Melt Andes mints in double broiler and pour over warm brownies. Let set for a wonderful minty frosting.

Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light taste of garlic and at the end of the recipe if you want a stronger taste of garlic.

Leftover Snickers bars from Halloween make a delicious dessert. Simply chop them up with the food chopper. Peel, core and slice a few apples. Place them in a baking dish and sprinkle the chopped candy bars over the apples. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes!!! Serve alone or with vanilla ice
cream.

Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza. I saw this on the cooking channel and it really works.

Easy Deviled Eggs: Put cooked egg yolks in a zip lock bag. Seal, mash till they are all broken up. Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up mixing thoroughly, cut the tip of the baggy, squeeze mixture into egg. Just throw bag away when done easy clean up.

Expanding Frosting: When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar and calories per serving.

Reheating refrigerated bread: To warm biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place them in a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.

Newspaper weeds away: Start putting in your plants, work the nutrients in your soil. Wet newspapers put layers around the plants overlapping as you go cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic, but they will not get through wet newspapers.

Broken Glass: Use a wet cotton ball or Q-tip to pick up the small shards of glass you can't see easily.

No More Mosquitoes: Place a dryer sheet in your pocket. It will keep the mosquitoes away.

Squirrel Away: To keep squirrels from eating your plants sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn't hurt the plant and the squirrels won't come near it.

Flexible vacuum: To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge add an empty paper towel roll or empty gift wrap roll to your vacuum. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow openings.

Reducing Static Cling: Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not have a clingy skirt or dress. Same thing works with slacks that cling when wearing panty hose. Place pin in seam of slacks and -- ta da! -- static is gone.

Measuring Cups: Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don't dry cup. Next, add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out.

Hate foggy windshields? Buy a chalkboard eraser and keep it in the glove box of your car. When the windows fog, rub with the eraser! Works better than a cloth!

Reopening envelope: If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside, just place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two. Viola! It unseals easily.

Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It's cheaper than shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It's also a great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn't like when you tried it in your hair... (this really works! I love it!~Rebekah)

Have cheap or old shampoo you don't like? Use it to clean your shower. It's made to cut soap scum. Works great!

To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass fill it 1/2' with Apple Cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dish washing liquid, mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!

Get Rid of Ants: Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it 'home,' can't digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains, but it works & you don't have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!


INFO ABOUT CLOTHES DRYERS
The heating unit went out on my dryer! The gentleman that fixes things around the house for us told us that he wanted to show us something and he went over to the dryer and pulled out the lint filter. It was clean. (I always clean the lint from the filter after every load clothes.) He told us that he wanted to show us something; he took the filter over to the sink, ran hot water over it. The lint filter is made of a mesh material - I'm sure you know what your dryer's lint filter looks like. well,...the hot water just sat on top of the mesh! It didn't go through it at all! He told us that dryer sheets cause a film over that mesh that's what burns out the heating unit. You can't SEE the film, but it's there.

It's what is in the dryer sheets to make your clothes soft and static free -- that nice fragrance too, you know how they can feel waxy when you take them out of the box, well this stuff builds up on your clothes and on your lint screen. This is also what causes dryer units to catch fire & potentially burn your house down with it! He said the best way to keep your dryer working for a very long time (& to keep your electric bill lower) is to take that filter out & wash it with hot soapy water & an old toothbrush (or other brush) at least every six months. He said that makes the life of the dryer at least twice as long! How about that!?! Learn something new everyday! I certainly didn't know dryer sheets would do that. So, I thought I'd share!

Note: I went to my dryer & tested my screen by running water on it. The water ran through a little bit but mostly collected all the water in the mesh screen. I washed it with warm soapy water & a nylon brush & I had it done in 30 seconds. Then when I rinsed it the water ran right through the screen! There wasn't any puddling at all! That repairman knew what he was talking about!


Well, that's all for now. I intend to post on Saturday, and then I will probably have the July Guessing Game up on Sunday morning. I know it's kind of late, but hey, I've been busy. By the way, did you know that Saturday, July 26th, is the National Day of the American Cowboy? You can visit www.cowboyday.com to see if there are any Cowboy Day events in your area. Have a great day, everybody!

The New Blog -- check it out!

My mom, one of my aunts, one of my uncles, and myself, and maybe some more people, have made a new blog. It's called Countdown to Havasupai...because that's what it's all about, is our preparation for hiking down the Havasupai part of the Grand Canyon, which will (Lord be willing) happen in less than 2 years. So here's the link:

http://countdowntohavasupai.blogspot.com/

Enjoy!

Oh, and what do you think of the new blog look?

Wacky Sisters Night!!

**** WARNING ****

Lots of pictures ahead

Sunday night we spent at a cabin up near Big Bear, CA. The scenery up here is amazing, and these blurry, through-the-window pictures don’t do it any justice:

We moved all our stuff into the cabin, then started having fun!
The stairs, as you can see, are tall and narrow…

Just perfect for bumping down!

...and bumping…

...and bumping…

We sure had fun bumping…

After that we had to go upstairs and have some pillow fights. WHACK!

WHACK WHACK!

KAPOW!

It tired us out…

…but not so much as to stop us from posing for goofy pictures…

Loi the sweetheart…

Kryssy the secret agent…

Bekah the magnificent…

"Oh, so you think you’re so tough, do you?"

"Well, put up or shut up!"

SECRET AGENT: MISSION POSSIBLE

Draw, partner!

Sing with me: Sisters, sisters…

…never were there such devoted sisters…

The amazing, bendable, twistable Loi!

And Bekah too!

Well, that's all for now. I hope to soon have more pictures from the trip...photos of riding horseback, hanging out, cattle sorting, and more. I don't know when I'll get a chance to post these, but I hope you've enjoyed these pics of our wacky Sisters Night!

Catching Up

Hi everybody! Well, I'm sorry that I've been away for awhile. After my June bloggie break, I was going to really get back into serious blogging, but seems like I'm still kind of busy. After this week, though, it should be much better...for the next few weeks, at least. This week, my tutoring students finish their class, so I'm done with that...except I will probably keep meeting with one or two of them, off and on. We'll see.

Skeeter and Casey are doing pretty good...although I think yesterday we nearly lost Casey. She was outside, and it's pretty hot out there in the afternoon...there wasn't really any shade or anything, and we didn't realize that she was out of water. When we finally figured it out, she was panting worse than I've ever seen, huge, shallow breaths, her tongue hanging out and losing an inordinate amount of drool, her body hot to the touch. We gave her water, and she drank, and lay down on the cool tile floor...but wouldn't cool down. We think she was probably pretty close to sunstroke at that point. We took her in the front yard and hosed her down, and then let her lay on the tile kitchen floor again. After a little while her breathing calmed down some, her body cooled off, and by an hour later she was panting much more normally, and was more interested in her usual stuff again. It was probably pretty close, but I praise the Lord that we realized it in time and that she's OK. She's still moving pretty slowly today, and panting some, but that's probably a combination of the humidity today and the leftover weakness from yesterday.

Skeet is getting so big! She's close to 8 lbs. now. She's 6 months old, and really more of a cat now, than a kitten. She's still on kitten food, and she's still going through that goofy teenager-ish, 'don't-touch-me-don't-pet-me' stage, and she still bugs the life out of Casey, but she'll probably grow out of that.

My beautiful niece is growing too -- can you believe she's 8 months old now, going on 9 months!!! She's just the cutest little dark-haired, dark-eyed baby you ever did see! I have a few pictures here, for your enjoyment:

My niece and I, on the 4th of July

Is that not the cutest little sailor outfit ever?!!

My mom was making me crack up, but we still couldn't get Ariana to smile!

Ariana with her mommy and daddy, my sister and brother-in-law

Ain't she the cutest!!!! She's getting sooooo big!! Auntie Bekah loves you, Little One!

I have some other pictures to post, just some funny photos from who-knows-where that my dad gave me. Here are some great dog pictures:

And I have yet another great picture for you. This one is actually a real photograph, although it might not look like it. I will try to get the picture posted in such a way that you can click on it and see it larger, but in case it doesn't work, this is a real picture of a flyby being done past an aircraft carrier. The text at the bottom of the picture says:

This was an actual flyby during deployment of the Nuclear Aircraft Carrier USS Stennis. The pilot was grounded for 30 days, but he likes the picture and thinks it was worth it. Yikes!

Well, I am getting a post ready about the wacky Sisters Night I spent with my two sissies, Loi and Kryssy of Yellow Rose Yearnings, on last Sunday night, so stay tune for that! Also, the July edition of Rebekah's Picturesque Guessing Game will be coming soon! Goodbye for now!