Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Happy New Year

I hope everyone has a blessed and happy New Year. I am sure we will here. Looking forward to our trip to DC for Vanessa & Caleb's wedding. Got my hotel room and plane tickets reserved, and am getting excited.

Christmas was great, with one party yet to go. We met at Sue's Sunday night for a good supper and gift opening. Best part was seeing the grandkids, we don't see them often enough.

Cleaned out my closet where the Christmas items are kept. I found some Christmas wrap I didn't know I had plus ends of wallpaper and brown paper which I used to wrap mailing packages in. Since that isn't done anymore, I will donate the paper to either the library or school. The wallpaper is in the wastebasket, why did I save those small pieces? A lot of "stuff" went in the Goodwill box. Am I starting to sound like my mother?

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Wanting a white Christmas

I want a white Christmas, not this dreary, rainy, foggy stuff. Christmas in Iowa should be white!

Christmas gifts bought, check.
Christmas gifts wrapped, check.

Now on to the big day! Church on Saturday night, our Sunday School program is always Christmas Eve. Church on Sunday morning, interested to see what Pastor Steve has for us on Christmas Day. Christmas night at Sue's for a good time with the kids.

Merry Christmas to all of you.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Project Can Do

Two weeks ago we went to Moline, via Rock Island, but that's another story. We visited the John Deere Pavilion to see Project Can Do. What an interesting and huge project. John Deere came up with the idea of building a combine out of stacked cans to promote the new S-Series combine. This is a life-size combine, built by volunteers completely of stacked cans of food. The combine was 16 feet tall, 80 feet long and 60 feet wide. There were more than 300,000 cans of food in the 170 ton sculpture. The food was bought by John Deere from Hy-Vee stores, and now all the food has been given to the River Bend Foodbank, which serves 12 counties in the Quad City area.

The combine looked like it was being driven into a corn field; with stalks of corn (made of cans, of course) going thru the 16 row head. On the floor were 3000 bags of popcorn, 5000 bags of beans and peas, 2000 bags of pinto beans and 800 bags of red kidney and black beans. Behind the combine were the tracks, made of the darker bean packages. There were lights on the combine made of yellow cans, the windows were silver cans (1500 cans LeSuere peas), black cans (9000 cans Chiliman Vegetarian) for the tires and of course the green combine (6000 cans of spinach) with the yellow details, simply awesome. What an amazing engineering display. If you are interested you can visit www.deere.com to see a picture.

Monday night was our Circle Christmas party at the 3-30 club where we enjoyed a prime rib/fried chicken dinner and later played Pictionary. Joy and I were on the committee (again) and I think everyone had a good time. The food was very good. Bill stayed home with his cold because I didn't want him getting close to Carma and having her get sick; she is taking chemo and surely wouldn't want his cold. So far I am staying well, spraying the Lysol right behind wherever he has been!

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Card Club

Card club was here Saturday night. Everyone was anxious to play again as we hadn't met since September. They sure ate snacks, I was afraid I was going to run out. I had made a batch of Chex Mix and when that was gone opened a bag of another kind of snack mix plus used 2 bags of popcorn and M & Ms. We have a dessert at the end of the night which was Texas dessert from our old blue church cookbook. Everyone stayed to visit after eating dessert and it was 1:00 before I got to bed! Really late for me!

Sunday was the senior dinner sponsored by the Youth Fellowship at church. They had a wonderful meal, roast beef and ham, potatoes and gravy, corn and beans, different salads and a host of desserts. As I had to go early for choir, Bill brought Grandma to church; and since he "couldn't" stay for the Bingo after we ate, I took her home. We didn't win any prizes but had a good time and Grandma enjoyed her day.

Next year I will be heading up a committee to publish a new cookbook from our church. The profit will help with the repainting of our sanctuary. Anybody reading this can help by sending me their favorite recipes.