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.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Almost December

Nov. 30 and it feels like winter! I don't mind the cold, just hope we can have good weather for the weekend. Saturday Lowden is having it's Christmas Kickoff at the Legion. They serve a free continental breakfast and there is a mini bazaar with venders and the Lowden library is having a cookie sale. Santa and Mrs Santa will be there too for the kids. It usually is a good money maker for the library. I finished my cookie donation yesterday; my thumbprint cookies turned out well--then I tried some "big molasses cookies", a new recipe I wanted to try. Only had 1/4 cup of molasses instead of the 1/2 cup called for so I subbed in white corn syrup. The cookies were supposed to be rolled in "coarse" sugar, of which I had none so used regular sugar. It all would have been alright, except Dan Sander came to put in Bill's new Ti-Vo and in the midst I forgot if I had added the spices. Just added more cinnamon, can't go wrong on that I thought. Then as I had my first pan in the oven--the recipe said 15-18 minutes at 400 degrees--Dan started my lesson on how to use the remote. I guess I didn't hear the timer go off and really burnt that pan full. It's a wonder we didn't smell it, that sugar burns easily! Did finish the batch of dough, but didn't bake them near as long as the recipe said. They didn't taste bad at all and am taking the good ones to the cookie sale.

Bill had had a lesson on using his new tv toy; so he could tape his soap opera. Only thing is he forgot how to do it and used a few naughty words trying to figure it out last night. Finally gave up. He has a new tv coming from F & B in Wheatland and might have to have Dan out again to set it up and give another lesson!

Hosting card club here Saturday night. Have to get ingrediants for the dessert this afternoon while I take Grandma to WalMart. Thursday afternoon we are going with Klahns to the John Deere Pavilion in Moline where they have a combine made of canned goods. After it is taken down the canned goods go to the food pantry. The picture in the paper looks pretty awesome, a full sized combine by the looks of it. Marilyn has a coupon for Texas Roadhouse so will go there for supper!

Friday, November 25, 2011

One month till Christmas

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. My guests were Sue, Ben, Thelma, Jim, Betty, Jerry, Ron and his girlfriend Denise. Everyone was here by noon, left by 4:00. So many leftovers--I have to learn not to cook so much. Dishes put away, I still need to sweep the floor and then get started taking down Thanksgiving decorations and putting up some Christmas. I have card club here next Saturday. Need to think of a dessert to serve and put some prizes together.

Tomorrow the search committee members are taking a road trip to Fon Du Lac, WI to go to Pastor Stepp's ordination. Sue Boedeker Monson and I are going with Donna & Leroy Leupker. Need to be in Lowden by 7:00 tomorrow morning, ordination is at 1:00 and we probably won't get home till late evening. Then Sunday will be his first church service. Bill and I helped carry furniture etc into the house from the moving van this past Sunday afternoon. Many hands made the work go fast, but I'd say that was the easy part. Pastor Steve and Jean had to put everything away and figure out what they wanted in each room.

At Circle Monday night we trimmed and counted Campbells labels, Boxtops for Education and milk jug caps. It took awhile but we had over 2000 caps and that many Boxtops for Education plus 1000 or so Campbell labels. I took them all to the school Tuesday before I took mother to her chiro appt.

Bill has been busy working--either driving liquid fertilizer truck for Liqui-Grow or hauling lime for JJJ. He enjoys the work although he misses playing cards!

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Parsonage cleaned and ready

Monday was a fun day at school. I was correcting 3rd grade math papers. One of the questions was those "hard for me" questions, like Dan followed Keith, Keith was 3rd etc etc. Then the question was what line were they standing in? One of the kids answered with "strait"! I just cracked up. What thinking that took! Some of the teachers didn't have much for me to do as last week was conferences and there was no school on Friday. I did get to have 1st graders read to me and had kindergarteners read number flash cards (from 1 to 25). Some of them couldn't get past the single digits and others just zipped thru.

Sunday afternoon Donna L., Janis K., Phyllis B., Connie M. and I washed windows and cleaned blinds at the parsonage. Pastor Stepp will be moving in this Sunday afternoon. The carpet has been cleaned; the kitchen cleaned top to bottom (the counters have been sprayed with a marble looking finish, looks wonderful--the same was done in the upstairs bathroom. Wes G. was still working on putting in a new floating floor in the downstairs bathroom, hall and fireplace room. I didn't realize until Sunday how many windows and closets are in that house. Every room has at least one very roomy closet! I hope the Stepps are happy with the house.

Time to plan Thanksgiving dinner. I don't know how many are coming. Jerry's wife, Betty is having some health problems and didn't know what they would be doing. Oh well, I'll fix a turkey and those who can come will.