Thursday, July 29, 2010

Roadshow

I watched an episode of Antiques Roadshow tonight. Omgosh. This lady went to the roadshow with a diamond ring (5.2 carats) set in platinum. She'd been told her grandpa made it for her- I think he was a jeweler. Turns out it was made by Ascher? Jeweler Co. in 1915.

Guess how much it was worth.

I guessed $30,000.


Wrong.


Try $175,000.

Omgosh.

And she'd just had it sitting in her jewelry box.

!!

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Can my baby read?

So recently I've been really interested in the Your Baby Can Read program. I've seen commercials with real home videos of babies and really little kids reading- it looks pretty amazing! There's a video of one little girl who looks like she's about three reading Charlotte's Web. Wow. I'm bidding on the deluxe edition right now on ebay. Hope we win so we can try it with Ella.

I asked the opinion of some teacher friends before bidding to get their input. One was all gung ho about it, while the other said I could get just as much from ordinary reading. Don't get me wrong, I do plan on reading just normally with her, i.e., bedtime stories and such- in fact, I do already. However,I think that babies and small children love to learn. Ella already loves to read. She starts cooing really loudly when I turn the pages and changes voices :) Its sweet. But, back to what I was saying- I will do normal reading with her. I think, though, that if learning is fun for her and her learning curve is so high right now- it would be pretty cool to give her an educational "game" of learning to read. Already, she is a sponge. It's amazing to see how interested she is in everything. I don't want it to be a chore at all for her, but for it to be fun. So if I do the flashcards it comes with and all the fun stuff, well... I guess it will be. I'm definitely not going to be like one of those psycho parents who's all about school and "learn, learn, learn"! I just think that if this makes it easier for her in the long run, and she wants to learn anyway... heck, why not?!

I'm excited, in case you can't tell. :)

So the other night, I made this yummy recipe for cheesy biscuits. It was soooo good! I'd say they taste the same as Red Lobster's, and those are simply fantastic. Mmmm! Here's the recipe:
Ingredients:

2 ½ cups Bisquick baking mix

¾ cup cold whole milk

4 tablespoons cold butter (1/2 stick)

¼ teaspoon garlic powder

1 heaping cup grated cheddar cheese

Bush on Top:

2 tablespoons butter, melted

¼ teaspoon dried parsley flakes

½ teaspoon garlic powder

pinch salt

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

2. Combine Bisquick with cold butter in a medium bowl using a pastry cutter or a large fork. You don't want to mix too thoroughly. There should be small chunks of butter in there that are about the size of peas. Add cheddar cheese, milk, and ¼ teaspoon garlic. Mix by hand until combined, but don't over mix.

3. Drop approximately ¼-cup portions of the dough onto an ungreased cookie sheet using an ice cream scoop.

4. Bake for 15 to 17 minutes or until the tops of the biscuits begin to turn light brown.

5. When you take the biscuits out of the oven, melt 2 tablespoons butter is a small bowl in your microwave. Stir in ½ teaspoon garlic powder and the dried parsley flakes. Use a brush to spread this garlic butter over the tops of all the biscuits. Use up all of the butter. Makes one dozen biscuits.

Recipe courtesy of Todd Wilbur, "Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2," Plume Books.
I got this from

Anyway, I'm experimenting with dinner and Sam's done with P90X, so I'm gonna go spend time with him and make sure I don't ruin our food!

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Gotta get ready

I was taking a moment to think about some things that are coming up. I'll be busy for a little while :) I like the feeling of busy-ness. Well, sometimes. But for the most part it makes me feel accomplished and productive to know that things have gotten done.
Today, I slept in a bit, put up the laundry, did the dishes, bathed and played with Ella, paid a few bills, and here I sit taking a break.

Saturday will be a busy day too! Ella gets baptized at 10am. I'm having lunch with a couple of friends. Then I host the Ladies for Christ Bible study from 2-4pm. After that I have just enough time before Sam and I go to a friend's weeding at 6. Whew! So excited. I need to go get Ella's white dress and candle. I'll do that today while I have time.

I miss Sam. He's on days for several weeks while he trains for his promotion position. Praise God. Annnnd... We started P90X yesterday! I'm so excited, but also pretty sore. Not the can't move because it hurts so bad sore, but a good sore. Like a nice reminder that I worked out :) Anyway, I'll keep posting about our progress. I'm really happy that we decided to get the program.

I'm so in love with my husband. I'm happy that we made the commitment to each other a long time ago that we always want to try for each other. Trying in the all inclusive sense... meaning I'll always try to be a great wife to him and take care of our home and children, and he'll try to help with chores and disciplining our kids. He'll always try to be the provider and leader of our home, while I try to work a couple of days a week. We have our "main" roles in our family and in our home, but we also make an effort to help the other in their role. It works well for us. But back to working out... part of the trying promise, we also want to strive to be our best selves for the other person, including keeping up with our physical appearances. I want to get really in shape for him, and he wants to be really in shape for me.

More on the topic, Sam kind of mentioned me being his girlfriend the other day. I laughed a little bit, because it just sounded funny to my ears after being married for over a year. After he said that, I said, "I'm not your girlfriend! I'm your wife." Then he explained to me what he meant: "You're my wife and my girlfriend. My wife because you are my everything, my best friend, and the mother of our child. My girlfriend because I still want to date you. To some people, when you get married you stop dating the other person. And when I say dating, I mean trying. You stop trying to learn about the other person, stop trying to spend quality time with her, you stop caring about how you look. Well, to me, you're still my girlfriend." :) That was what he said pretty much. Just paraphrased a little.

Anyway, I love being married to him. He's the best. And my boyfriend too ;)

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

A little sad, a little glad

So I guess I'm a little disappointed. The Bible study turned out great except for the low attendance. I don't so much care about even that, except that there was one person in particular that I was really hoping would come. I think she really needs a group of Christian women to hang out with and be a good influence. But I guess there's not really anything I can do but invite and remind. I had three girls show up, although even that didn't go according to plan. We ended up discussing the power of prayer with three of us... a rather small Bible study group. But it was a great one. I learned a lot and I think the other two girls did too. We talked about Scripture and I read a little from the book "No Greater Love" by Mother Theresa related to prayer. It was really nice. Perhaps more people will show up next time. I will just keep praying that God bring the women there who He wants to be there.

Besides that, Sam and I have started this new budget I found online. It's amazing! It's pretty neat because it has everything in it we were looking for: an income spreadsheet, categories for all our bills, a section on "allowance" money (similar to the Dave Ramsey-style cash envelopes), and a snowball debt reducer. I super duper like it. Here's the link to the website I found it on.
(for some reason, it won't let me hyperlink it) just copy and paste.
http://beyondmom.com/2008/09/free-basic-budget-spreadsheet-template/
Click on Budget Template Spreadsheet. It's definitely worth checking out. I checked I don't know how many sites and budget templates before I found this one.

So, sorry for the short post, but Ella's getting hungry!

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Bible Study

I'm so excited! Today is the first meeting of the Ladies for Christ Bible Study. This is the same Bible study group I first started trying to put together a couple of months ago. I finally got the invitations out. I hand made them with chipboard, scrapbook paper, and various scrapbook pieces. They turned out awesome!!

Today our topic will be the power of prayer and what prayer really is. I invited 9 ladies for meetings every other week, that way we'll hopefully always have a least a small group together. I've been looking for Scripture passages related to prayer and found quite a few. Then my mom heard what topic I'm planning on doing and she suggested a book she's been reading by Mother Theresa. It's perfect for our study today. I'm going to tab certain passages and read them to the girls.

I'm hoping it won't be raining when everyone comes over,that way we can sit outside on our patio furniture in the backyard. Even so, we could always sit outside on the balcony since its covered. I'm really glad we finally got patio furniture. We never used to use our balcony since there was no where to sit.

Ideas for Bible studies:
- fresh fruit and veggies
- crackers and dip
- highlighters and pens out for notetaking
- index cards with next Bible study topic on it and suggestion for daily reading
- prayer before starting study and after ending study

I guess I should conclude this post. I need to clean house, get groceries, review passages.

Pray that our first Bible study be a successful one and that the girls show up!