Just a Quote for Friday

"Choose to have fun. Fun creates enjoyment. Enjoyment invites participation. Participation focuses attention. Attention expands awareness. Awareness promotes insight. Insight generates knowledge. Knowledge facilitates action. Action yields results."

~ Oswald Shallow

Choose to have fun!

When all else fails, do this:

Meet my friend, Carl.

Spunky, sweet, "take-my-picture" Carl.

This little boy was one of the guests at his grandmother's 75th birthday party where I took pictures last Saturday night. When I came home that night and uploaded all the photos, this shot was the last one I had taken, and when I saw it I laughed out loud.

In fact, there were several shots of little boys doing crazy things. I thought about doing a post called "Boys will be boys" but getting permission to use the photos of a whole bunch of little boys I don't know would have taken a while. Carl's mom graciously said yes when asked if he could appear on my blog.

I had fun taking pictures at that event on Saturday, and I ended up with some really nice shots {if I do say so myself}. My favorite out of almost 400 photos? Carl.

How many times during the day do you wish you could just make this face?

:o) ♥

A little funny...

{All credits are shown within the artwork.}

Rarely does a comic strip make me laugh out loud.
This one did. :o)
May your day be filled with belly laughs.
♥

Excuse me, Mr. Weekend...where do you go?

Time really does fly when you're having fun!
♥

Our weekend fun started Friday night when we met Carrie at Lucky Lou's for dinner. Now that she lives in her own house, we really appreciate those times together to catch up and just see her smiling face. After dinner Carrie and I headed to Costco where she finally bought the computer she's been waiting for {thanks to receiving her long awaited tax refund}. Expect more frequent blog posts from her now. :o)

Saturday was busy with Doug and I both working in our respective home areas - me cleaning inside and him working outside. Then Saturday night we headed to Scottsdale to meet some good friends for dinner. The weather was perfect and we had dessert and a glass of wine {ok, two glasses...} while sitting outside along the "River Walk" {which is actually a canal all fancied up} waiting for the Super-moon to rise.

After dinner we enjoyed a nice stroll around the area and took a bunch of photos that mostly didn't turn out very well {point-and-shoot along for the ride}.

Sunday morning found Carrie and I in front of my computer for two hours chatting with some lovely blog friends on Skype. I had to borrow Rhona's photo {I hope you don't mind, Rhona!} because I accidentally deleted mine before I was able to upload it. Gr!!!

It was so much fun visiting with these ladies and getting to know each other a little better. If you haven't tried Skype, I highly recommend it!!! From top left to bottom: Carrie and me, Mel, Karen, Denise & Deb, Ruth, and Rhona at the bottom. Fun. Fun. Fun! xo

♥

And as if that wasn't enough fun for one weekend, Carrie and I met our dear friend Janae at the park with her two adorables, B & K. These little dudes just turned 2 and they are busy, busy, busy, and oh so cute. Top that all off with grilled burgers on our patio with Carrie for a Sunday evening meal and you've had yourself a great weekend!

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So tell me, how was your weekend?
♥

Some Things About Candy Corn

With Halloween fast approaching, I thought
I'd share a few things about candy corn.

♥

* There's just something about candy corn that screams

H A L L O W E E N ! ! !

* It's a sure sign that fall is upon us.
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* It's a candy treat of solid sugar that {honestly?} isn't really all that great tasting - it's the texture I like.
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* You have to eat it one section at a time: bite off the white tip...then the orange middle...and the yellow base gets eaten last. It's just the way it's done.
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* Until this year I thought candy corn was enjoyed around the planet. Come to find out, some of my international friends have never tried it. {I should have done a blog giveaway for candy corn...next year!}

* I used it as a decoration last weekend when my SIL's came over. The photo above is of our table centerpiece and we picked at the candy corn throughout the night. The next morning there was one lone "kernel" by the spider. :o)

I did a little internet search and found these facts {the source}:

* October 30th is National Candy Corn Day
* One serving of candy corn contains only about 140 calories
* Candy corn has 3.57 calories per kernel
* More than 35 million pounds of candy corn will be produced this year. That equates to nearly 9 billion pieces -- enough to circle the moon nearly four times if laid end-to-end.
* Halloween accounts for 75% of the annual candy corn production
* A cup of candy corn has fewer calories than a cup of raisins. {who knew?}
* Candy Corn was invented by George Renninger and produced by the Wunderlee Candy Company in the 1880's. In 1900, the Goelitz Candy Company, now Jelly Belly Candy Company, started mass producing the candy, but, due to the lack of machinery, it was only made available seasonally from March to November. Its recipe has remained unchanged.

♥ ♦ ♥

There you have it. Don't you feel
really smart about candy corn now?
;o)

♦ ♥ ♦

PS: I hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend. Doug and I are hosting a "chili cook-off" tonight at our house. We're expecting 25 guests and about 9 different kinds of chili. We'll do a taste test and vote for the winner. Our weather is beautiful so our back patio will be buzzing with activity, fun, libations, food, friends/family, laughter... {mmm...probably should have invited all the neighbors...}

I wouldn't have missed it for anything...

A few weeks ago I sent an email out to our "camping family" rounding them up to go camping this past weekend. As it turned out, none of them could join us, and by mid-week I had decided I wasn't going either. Doug never gave up ship.


When we got home from work on Friday afternoon Doug persisted, "Come on, Deb, let's go!"

Me: "Ugh. I'm totally unprepared and I have some other obligations..."
Doug: "Get ready, let's go."
Me: "But I have to wash my hair..."
Doug: "I'll wait."
Me: "And I was going to mop the floors this weekend...they're a mess..."
Doug: "The floors will wait."

~sigh~

It's kind of annoying when he's right.
Here are some photos of what I would have
missed if I had stayed home and cleaned our floors:

This was our view while we drank coffee Saturday morning.

Alright, I could have done without ant hills,
but I liked this photo so I'm gonna' share it.

They were everywhere this weekend!

Ground cover on our property. When we first got there
I was tip-toeing around trying not to step on flowers and
I had to give that up after a while. They were solid all over
the place!

Juniper berries. One of these days I'm going to make juniper berry wine.

More wildflowers - a macro look at some tiny white flowers.

A horned-toad lizard that Doug caught
and let me hold before we released him.

Prickly-pear cactus with fruit that the javalinas haven't found (but some weird looking bugs have). Prickly-pear jelly is on my list of things to make but it sounds like too much trouble. You have to wear very thick gloves the whole time you are working with the fruit because there are some crazy needles on these babies. I'll be more likely to make juniper berry wine!

Stag-horned cholla cactus fruit. Doug liked seeing
these because apparently deer love to eat this stuff!
Where there's cactus fruit, there's wildlife.

Pretty purple wildflowers.

More wildflowers in the foreground, Doug in the background.
This is the Sunday Tree where Doug's mom's ashes are laid
to rest. It's a few miles from our property and the view there
is spectacular. We visit every time we go to our place.
♥

I think these are black-eyed-Susan's, but they may just be
some sort of sunflowers. They were everywhere and I took
about a hundred photos of them. LOVE these!!!

Even our fire-ring had wildflowers growing around it.
I'm so glad I listened to Doug.
If you visit my house this week, don't look at my floors!
xo

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Somehow my blogger settings were changed to upload photos on "medium" so these aren't as large as I had hoped...and too many to start over once I published the post and noticed them. Oh well. Here goes a week ahead of rolling with the flow... ;o)

The Candy Factory Episode ~ "I Love Lucy"

I thought of this bit from "I Love Lucy" the other day while I was making ice cream sandwiches and chuckled to myself - this is kind of what I felt like while racing against the melting ice cream!

If you've never seen it, you have to watch this. And if you've seen it a million times like I have you will probably still laugh out loud. Enjoy!

Ice-cream, you scream...HELP with sandwiches!

A few tips for making ice-cream sandwiches
in the summertime in Arizona.

♥ ♥ ♥

1 - Freeze your cookies ahead of time so the chocolate chips aren't still melty and the cookie isn't as bendy.

2 - Let the ice cream soften a bit so you and your sore shoulder can scoop it. Then work REALLY fast because there's not a lot of wiggle room between soft-and-scoop-able and melting-faster-than-you-can-smoosh-sandwiches-together.

3 - Have an extra set of hands to photograph the step-by-step and to help with the flow. (I learned this the hard way after I was elbow-deep in melting ice-cream! I ended up putting only a few together at a time, and then quickly placing them in the freezer on a waxed-paper-lined pan to harden up before I could package them up.)

4 - Use sprinkles like the ones shown in the photo above. The sugar sprinkles used later (because I ran out of the first) melted and weren't as cute on the finished sandwich.

5 - Tie up in celephane bags with festive ribbon and put them back in the freezer to harden once again.

6 - Pack in an ice-chest for the 20 minute trip to SIL's house, drive fast and make a bee-line to her freezer when you arrive.

7 - Pass them out after dinner and bask in the glow of having created something that everyone is enjoying. :o)

8 - Say you probably won't make them again because they were kind of stressful to make, but know you'll do them again someday...probably with chocolate sprinkles the next time.

Happy 234th Birthday, U.S.A.!!!

You're a grand ol' flag
You're a high flying flag
And forever in peace may you wave.

You're the emblem of
The land I love
The home of the free and the brave.

Every heart beats true
'neath the red, white, and blue
Where there's never a boast or brag.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
Keep your eye on the grand ol' flag.

♥

Lyrics to "Grand Ol' Flag" by George M. Cohan in 1906

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Headed to my in-laws for a 4th of July celebration this afternoon.

Wishing all of my US friends a safe and happy holiday!

xo

What I did this weekend:

Doug and I escaped the heat in the valley this weekend and headed for our property in Young, Arizona. I thought I'd share a few of the pictures I took, and show you how we roll on an Arizona weekend.

♥

As soon as we get to camp, Old Glory flies high.
In our little building where we store our supplies {and also where we sleep} we have this little mirror that I painted a few years ago. Pretty silly, but I thought I'd share it here. I used a gel pen to write "Happy Camper" on it. {Funny - I think this is the ONLY thing I ever used those pens for!} Anyway, every time I use it to fix my hair it makes me smile because, well, every time I'm there I'm HAPPY!

I made some yummy sun tea and brewed it in the middle of the wild flowers currently in bloom. Pretty little purple flowers everywhere this time! By the next time we visit these will most likely be gone and replaced by the next round of flowers.

We took our quad out for a ride and along the way we saw wild life! This time a 4 foot long king snake. He wasn't poisonous, so I wasn't afraid. {I did shoot a brief video of this bad boy crawling away, but in the interest of not creeping my blog readers out, I decided to share only a still shot. You're welcome.}

We had a picnic lunch by "The Boulders." This place is about 5 miles from our property and set in some beautiful tall pine trees. There are these huge round boulders in the middle, just random big rocks that don't match any other rocks in the area. You can see them in the background in the photo below...

{clink} "To us!"

We took a delicious nap. The wind was blowing through the trees and the weather was SO beautiful!!!

Then we took a walk. I spotted this tarantula web in a tree stump:

This morning after breakfast we took a little hike downhill on our property. We are working on creating a hiking trail that goes across the top of our property, down along the fence line, back across the bottom and up the other side. You can see the path going between the trees below...starting to take shape...

And we made this trail head marker at the start:

We packed up and left our sanctuary around noon, and as we were driving out I snapped this photo of our fence along the front property line. Doug and his brothers have been working on cutting sticks and wiring them in for a while, and the fence is now complete all the way around our 5 acres. I love it!

Since one side of our property backs up to forest preserve, there are cattle that graze there. They wander all over the place, including up onto our property. We wouldn't really mind, but they really leave some big messes behind. This fence should keep them out...time will tell...

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Driving home, exhausted and a little sun-burnt, I still had Doug stop the truck so I could take a picture of this cholla cactus in bloom. I was wearing flip-flops and couldn't hike in to get a better shot (you need protective footwear when walking in the desert!) so this is as good as my zoom lens would get. It was so pretty!

So there's my weekend re-cap. The upcoming week will be a busy one for me and it includes several craft projects (hooray - I'll have crafts to share on my blog!!!). I have two birthday gifts to put together, a 4th of July banner to make, and ice cream sandwiches to make with a red, white, and blue theme.

How was your weekend?
xo