Life Gone Crazy!!

I started working 'almost' full-time back in July and life has been crazy ever since! Sadly enough, it is this blog that has suffered the most! So I thought I'd stick my head in and just say 'hi' to everyone! I am working 30 hours a week in the music office of our church, First Baptist in Denton. I do the ordering, hiring of musicians, payroll, coordinating sound and music for funerals and weddings, rehearsal schedules, contacting praise team, quartet, adult choir, orchestra, and anyone else who needs contacting (!!), and the biggest part of my job right now is making sure that all the contracted agreements for our upcoming David Phelps concert are being met. There's never a dull moment, that's for sure!

I'm still a Discussion Leader in Bible Study Fellowship and thoroughly enjoying the study of Matthew this year. I have 12 wonderful women in my group and contact them each week.

I scrapbook anytime I get a chance. A friend came over last night and I worked on making these really cute Christmas trees out of scrapbook paper. They were so much fun to make and I thought they turned out really cute. I used double-sided Christmas paper and coordinating cardstock. The paper is mounted with straight pins into a styrofoam cone. As you can see, I tried three different styles. Which one do you like best?? The one with the paper curled up doesn't have a topper on it yet. I can't decide what I want to use.

I've also been trying to get my England album finished. I'm well on my way.

Looks like we're going to go camping at Thanksgiving. Tori and Greg are too far away to be with and Todd and Elisa will be with Elisa's parents. We'll leave Wed. afternoon and wouldn't you know...they're forecasting our first hard freeze for Wed. night!! Just our luck. But we'll still have fun and I have no doubts that we'll stay warm. It'll be great weather for a campfire!

I'm really going to make it a priority to keep up with posting to this blog!

I hope that your Thanksgiving is filled with thankfulness, fun, and love!!

Here's a great recipe to go with that turkey and dressing!

Baked Pineapple

Layer in order:
2 cans pineapple chunks, drained, and heated with 1 c. sugar and 5 T. flour
1 1/2 c. grated cheese
1 sleeve Ritz crackers, crushed
1 stick melted butter

Bake at 350^ for 30 min.

We served this at Tori's bridal brunch and it was very popular! It has remained a family favorite.

Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving!!

Blueberries and Blackberries-My Oh My!!

In one week, we got to pick both blueberries and blackberries. Wed. morning, 4th of July, our alarm went off at 4:45 a.m. We walked out of the house at 5:20 with everything we needed to go on a blueberry-picking adventure! We drove about 45 minutes to the north to Bailey's Berry Farm outside of Sadler, TX. We arrived there at 6:20 (we bought gas on the way) and, believe it or not, we weren't the first ones there! Two families were already in the field picking. We got our buckets and off we went. We were lucky because the weather was cloudy and very comfortable. It did rain on us a little, but that didn't slow us down one bit! We were instructed to pick the berries that were dark blue with a dusty look to them.

The blueberries were beautiful and it only took us about 2 1/2 hours to fill three gallon buckets. By this time, there were cars streaming in and parking up and down the dirt road. We had a lot of fun and are looking forward to doing this again next year. We have several ziplock bags of blueberries in our freezer to enjoy for as long as they last! They're good in cobbler, bread, in cereal, or just straight out of the freezer with milk poured over them! This makes a yummy slushy!















Several days later our friends Becky and Al Camp called and asked if we wanted to go pick blackberries! Of course we jumped at the chance, but this time we would be picking in the late afternoon. The following Monday we left at 5:15 to head north only about 15 miles to a blackberry farm outside of Sanger. It didn't take us nearly as long to get our gall0n of blackberries as many of them were quite large!
















Blackberry cobbler is sounding pretty good right now!!
The last pic shows Al, Becky, and myself...with full buckets, hot and ready to go home!! What a fun time we had.

Sketch Challenge

Every month I participate in a sketch challenge on one of my scrapbooking groups. I thought I'd start including the sketch for the current month's challenge, and maybe some of you would want to participate in the challenge as well. If you'll send me a pic of your LO, I'll post it on my blog along with mine! Fun, huh??
Here's the July sketch....

And here's my LO based on this sketch It's kind of rotated and a loose rendition!

Girl Trip to Arkansas

My friend Renee and I just returned from a 6-day 'girl' trip into northern Arkansas. We took the RV and stayed at Lost Bridge South Campground on Beaver Lake. It is a beautiful lake surrounded by hills and trees. Our campsite was right on the water. We did lots of fun things like stopping at every little flea market and junk store, drove through Pea Ridge Military Park, explored War Eagle Cavern, took many sidetrips down interesting dirt roads, visited War Eagle grain mill on Beaver Lake, shopped in Eureka Springs, and spent lots of time just relaxing by the lake, reading, playing games, or just visiting. My brother Tom and his wife Bev came out to our site a couple of times. We went to their home for a delicious dinner and a relaxing visit on Thurs. night. Friday night, our last night there, Tom and Bev came out and after sitting through a downpour, the skies cleared and we started a campfire to roast marshmallows and eat s'mores! What kind of a camping trip would it be without eating s'mores!! This was a wonderful break for me from life in general and a fabulous opportunity to enjoy God's glorious creation.

This is the view from our campsite...This next picture shows who we shared our campsite with!













These last two pics are of me with my brother Tom in his convenience store, The Short Stop, at the entrance to the Lost Bridge campgrounds, and of Renee and I enjoying the view from a lodge overlooking the lake.

My England Album

I've spent a lot of time recently trying to get our trip to England and Scotland scrapbooked. I took over 800 pics, so you see what a daunting task this is! Tori and Greg made sure that we saw as many of the awesome sites as we could. I only have a few minutes so I'll post a page now and promise to return in the near future with more.



We are eating a late lunch at The Trout Inn, a famous pub outside of Oxford, in Godstow