Messes of Pottage

My dog is not too brilliant. (If you've been unlucky enough to meet her, you know that quite well.)

So the other day, Mom had this huge bone left over from a roast she made. And because we love Grace in spite of her selfishness and stupidity, we let her have the bone so she could chew on it or something like that. Now although Grace has the mentality of a Great Dane, she is most definitely just a quivering little Cocker Spaniel who could hardly hurt a fly. She did almost no damage to that huge bone. Honestly I think she just liked having something to put in her mouth.

But she loved that thing.

She guarded that thing, too.

We found her randomly holed up with the bone in her crate after we gave it to her, and whenever we got too close, she would growl and bare her teeth at us. (Obviously she never learned that sharing is caring.)

We decided to let her just stay in there for a little. We figured eventually she would get bored and come out. But there she stayed, all morning, with a bone she had no clue what to do with, but felt she had to protect. Finally I pulled out her leash in an attempt to coax her out. She almost came, but for some reason felt that her useless bone was worth forfeiting a walk, her favorite thing in her entire doggy world.

I can see the total stupidity of her decision because she's my dog. But I do the same thing with my God. Rather than abandoning the corruptible things of this world for God's eternal riches, I stubbornly cling to my messes of pottage, only focusing on what satisfies my worldly lusts. God is offering me the best gifts imaginable, but I'm too busy chewing on my bone to walk with Him. If I would just look to Jesus, I would see that these things have no value compared to what He has laid up for those who diligently seek Him.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,

Look full in his wonderful face,

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,

In the light of His glory and grace.

Meet Gracie

This is Gracie. 

(She says hello)
I know lots of you have probably met Gracie, but also many of you haven't.
You are missing out. So I would like to introduce you to the love of my life, my fuzzy blessing, my reason for living - also known as.....my dog. :)
Now, those of you who have met Grace know that she is....um. Outspoken (to put it nicely. And therefore, I will insert her commentary in italics, so you can hear both sides of the story.

Gracie is a chocolate and white American cocker spaniel. And I am very pretty. And she is very pretty.
She's also VERY spoiled. AM NOT!!! Um. Yes you are. AM NOT!!!!!!
*sigh*
Whatever.
We got her in July of 2010, and I was very very happy to bring her home as I had been wanting a dog for a REALLY long time!!

We were really excited to have her, and she has been a constant joy. Oh, stop it you.

Okay.

She's also a huge pain in the cheerios, as she hates....well. People in general, it seems. Our dog is a psychopath. Am not. 

Ignoring that.....

Give me food.

No! I'm in the middle of a -

GIVE ME FOOD.

Grace......

Pleeeeeaaase???

Okay.....

I hope you all have enjoyed getting to meet Gracie, and I'm sure that she would love you all if she got the chance to meet you and once she stopped being a psycho puppy. ;) 

Gracie

0.
l6+555555

My dog can blog too. :)

Culinary Endeavors

So the last week or so, I've tried some new recipes. Okay, two new recipes. Okay, one new recipe and another one I've tried before that had never turned out quite right. :) The first one was from the Amish cookbook I got for Christmas. It was chocolate cream pudding, and there were probably five ingredients. Less ingredients is bad for me because if I mess one up, it'll have a lot worse effect than a recipe with fifteen ingredients.
Anyways, obviously one of the main ingredients in pudding is milk. And, like the newbie cook that I am, I forgot that you should always check and make sure you have all of the ingredients before you start. So I mixed my cocoa powder and corn starch together with some salt and sugar. And then I realized we had no milk.
Now, if I was anyone but me, I would have sensibly put the ingredients in a bowl or something and saved them for a later time. But, being me, I remembered that we had powdered milk packets in the pantry (leftover from some sort of craft). So of course, I mixed up the artificial milk.

Gracie found a nice little box to sit in while she hoped that I would drop something for her.

After that, I poured it into a double boiler and cooked it until there was a semi-skin on top. I started to have doubts about this "milk" right about now.

Looks perfectly innocent, doesn't it?

 After the milk was ready, I mixed it into the cocoa powder mixture.

 Then I whisked it all together, quite vigorously, and ended up with this.

Ooh, bubbly!

 So I covered it with plastic wrap, stuck it in the fridge, crossed my fingers, and hoped like nobody's business that it would turn  out. While I didn't get any pictures the next morning after it sat in the fridge all night to set up, it really doesn't make any difference, because it looked exactly the same after twelve hours in the fridge. Chocolate soup, anyone?
CULINARY ENDEAVOR #1: FAILED


Last night, I decided to try something a little more in my comfort zone: cinnamon rolls. I used my cousins' grandma's recipe to mix them up. You combine the yeast, flour, milk, sugar, salt, eggs, etc... and let it sit overnight. Then the next morning, you roll it all out and spread the delicious things on it: butter, sugar, cinnamon. Then you roll it all up and slice the giant log of doughy, cinnamony goodness. You stick all of those delectable goodies in their respective pans and let it sit for a while longer, until you can't stand to wait  any longer. Then you bake them at 350 degrees for about fifteen minutes.
I decided to make a caramel sauce to go on top.
That turned out pretty well.

YUM!! Breakfast....

I poured the caramel sauce over the top until it looked like the rolls were sitting in a giant hot tub of caramel sauce. Now, I'm done and I can go eat one!!!!!
CULINARY ENDEAVOR #2: DOMINATED!!!!!!!

Crazy dog!

This is our dog, Gracie. As you can see, she hadn't been groomed in a while. (She looks much better now!)
I squeezed some gooey stuff out on her nose so she could lick it off. Unfortunately, our dog is not the brightest light in the chandelier. She just sat there and...well, you'll see!

Seriously, Gracie, it's just the neighbors moving out-you don't need to bark at them!!!
I'm going insane.
*sigh*

Morning log

Happy December! It's going to be an awesome month! We've already got so many fun things on the calendar, and there'll probably be more soon, and I'm getting insanely excited just thinking about it!

Anyway, back to everyone's favorite topic, me. I went for a walk this morning. Yeah. In thirty-degree weather, I went for a walk. When it was 6 AM and I could have been in bed. Am I insane? Little bit, yeah. Anyway, after I froze my butt off, we came home to a warm, butt-wagging welcome.

It was hard to get a good shot of Gracie for two reasons.
1) She never stays still for long in a good photo pose
2) She really didn't like the flash on my camera.       

Who wouldn't love that? Maybe after she's peed on the floor and pooped on your bed and thrown up on your binder and eaten your music book and bitten you in the nose and stolen your cheeseburger and refused to come when you called...yeah, the list goes on and on. I don't know, maybe it's impossible not to love that. Unless you're allergic.

Puppy wants to exercise too!

Mom and I were downstairs at 6:00 this morning getting ready to go on our 1.6 mile walk, and then I stuck my head outside to see if it looked like rain. The humidity was at about 6043%, so we decided not to go on a walk. Outside, that is. We popped in our two-mile walk DVD and got hopping. Now, you must know, our dog is a little bit crazy and she doesn't like unusual happenings. So me and Mom walking (marching, rather)in place in the middle of the living room was somewhat upsetting to her. So she came over and started jumping up on us. Naturally! Let me just tell you it was very hard doing knee lifts and side-steps with a little puppy jumping all over you! I do not recommend it highly.

Family Life

Our house has been bustling lately. We've had a lot of stuff going on with the homeschool group and our co-op, so it was hard to find time to decorate for fall. But finally yesterday, I cleaned and swept the living room and decorated. Even though we don't have a lot of decorations (for fall at least; Christmas is another story entirely), when artfully arranged, those few have a better effect than a room that's dripping with leaves and pumpkins.

When I lit this candle (actually, Mom lit it because I'm scared of lighting matches), the whole room instantly smelled absolutely wonderful. We had it burning all day. I did all of my schoolwork in the living room yesterday!

This bookshelf is one of my favorite places to decorate! It's just a long, flat surface that just screams, "DECORATE ME!!!"

The day before yesterday, the girls decided to get crafty. So my little sister Audrey found us a project to do. You take those terracotta pots that make a terrible noise when they scrape on each other (I got chills down my back just thinking about it), paint the bottom part with chalkboard paint, then decorate the top rim. Then you can chalk all over the rest of the pot.

The pot without decoration

Me working painstakingly on my design

The finished product.
 Don't I look evil in that picture? We took literally more than eight of those shots until I got one that was "blog worthy."

Another thing that has been keeping me busy lately is Gracie, the cutest little Cocker Spaniel you ever saw. She greets me every morning by barrelling to wherever I am and jumping all over me. Having a dog has been fantastic, although some parts are definitely better than others. For example, feeling loved and needed when your dog is whining at you for a walk. Then you take her for a walk and she pulls your arm off and then leaves a pile for you to clean up. Not cool, Grace! Anyway, the good things about her far outweigh the bad. Usually.

I don't know what it is about Grace, but her eyes always turn out funny in pictures. They're either red or she looks like she's got these weird green holes in her head. I'm not sure why, and it's frustrating sometimes.

Anyways, that's what I've been up to lately. Besides PE, where we play volleyball for two more weeks, I think. This Thursday, we're playing co-ed volleyball, which should be interesting since the guys are so competitive. Fortunately, the girls have a month of practice already, so I would say that those guys are going down!

Wishing for that chew toy....

Home at Last!

Well, after four and a half days away from my home in the Sunshine State (haha-whoever named FL that should be shot), we're finally back. And it's raining.
It was seventy degrees when we left Brandon, Mississippi, and now, it's ninety-seven. After a long, sticky trip in the van with no air conditioning, we finally arrived home. I was SO happy to see Mom and my dear sweet puppy.

Grace was happy too! You just can't tell, cuz she's, you know, a dog.

After we had unpacked everything and Gracie was so very happy, we put her in her crate and headed out for a late lunch together.
So, Mom finished all of her lesson plans and we're ready to start school this Monday, Gracie got all excited only to be stashed away in a corner, and I am stuffed to the gills!
Have a great (and fun) day!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

The recycling place's sign (75 cents is a great price for a pound of cans, b.t.w.)

 OK, so for you to fully appreciate this post, you'll need a little background info....Like, seven years ago, Dad realized that we could recycle our soda cans for money. So we stopped throwing away all our soda cans and started stashing them in plastic shopping bags and stowing them in the garage. We just kind of let them accumulate, usually until it starts to be hard to walk down the aisle in the garage. Then we rip open all of the bags and transfer the cans to big trash bags. Then we load all the garbage bags into the van (they didn't all fit in the trunk, so we packed out the front seats) and drive to the recycling place. Then we grab the plastic tubs and rip open the garbage bags and dump the cans in them. I've noticed that most people who come have a LOT of beer cans. Anyway, next we take the tubs over to the scale, where the guys who work there weigh them. Then we go to the cashier's, where we wait for them to give us our cash. Then we all fight over how to spend the money we made. Cameron always wants to split it among all the people who helped, but this time, it looks like we're going for pizza for supper. We do this, like, twice a year, which is fine with me because the recycling place smells funny, and they have roaches! Anyway, enjoy your day and have fun!

Gracie wanted to get in on the action, too. Unfortunately for her, she had to stay home.

Here's Cam dumping cans into one of the giant tubs

Reminds me of my room!

We had three full containers of cans

The conveyor belt that carries the cans up, then dumps them in a huge container that then takes them to the Crushinator

Waiting for Mom in the cashier's office

We made $20.30!