Friday, March 31, 2017

Goals for April

Here are the goals for this month:

Visit with my YD's in-laws
Send cards to grandsons
Work on baby quilt
Make quilt for Nate
Make a blue elephant
Take a new hike
Make 2 new meals
Try different waffles (malt)
Get through week 4 of the couch to 5K (go to the gym at work)
Reach step goal 5 of 7 days (each week)
Start a biography
Get the garden prepped -- plant?
Bread? Try a new one.

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Goals for March - Wrap Up

First the re-cap of last week:

1 - continue with the Round Robin posts - done
2 - work on my other blog -- finish adding my European vacation from two years ago - done.  If I'd realized I was so close to finishing, I might have done this before ...
3 - meet my step goal three times -- only two -- Sunday and Saturday
4 - take a hike (probably the dish).  No hike.
5 - Move my sewing room to the dining room - done (I've actually moved it back already).



6 - help my YD pack her house - done
7 - send a card and a package to my OD - didn't do.


I'm not doing another weekly goals .. I'll post goals for April later this week.

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

New Hike #1 - Alamaden Quicksilver County Park

We finally took our first hike of the year, Almaden Quicksilver County Park.  I found it online.  Picked it mostly because it was dog friendly.  Nevada, my YD and Max and me.

This is a picture of the trail we were on.  We took pictures of the maps so that we would be able to figure out where we were ... We made only one wrong turn. My fault.














All-in-all, a very nice hike.  One we would definitely do again.

Saturday, March 18, 2017

Goals for March (Week 3)

First, let's take a look at last week:

1 - Visit Amanda - Done!
2 - One Grinch block - see note on #4
3 - two Round Robin posts - I added many more.  I'm up to 1953.
4 - work on baby quilt - wasn't able to do this and will put this on hold until my sewing room gets re-located.

5 - Make a new dish - Made crusted parmesan chicken with zucchini.  Recipe from here.  It was good, but not a very interesting or different recipe.  I need to try harder to do something new.  I guess it'll be good for a slightly different fried/baked chicken coating.

6 - Do research on planting for the garden - nope
7 - Straighten up my sewing room - nope (with moving the room yet again, I'll be setting up soon in another location)



and for this week:

1 - continue with the Round Robin posts
2 - work on my other blog -- finish adding my European vacation from two years ago.
3 - meet my step goal three times
4 - take a hike (probably the dish)
5 - Move my sewing room to the dining room
6 - help my YD pack her house
7 - send a card and a package to my OD

Friday Wrap Up (3/17/17)

I might have to start planning to do this on Saturdays because Friday just seems too hectic ...

Good things that happened this week:

1. Had a glass of wine on the lawn of Retzlaff with Nevada
2. Played Catch Phrase with friends and family
3. Went on a long hike followed by breakfast at Mikayla's Cafe

Things that made me smile:

1. This from the bottom of my "weeping angel" mug (I love the "for best results" line ...)



 2.  This sign




Things that made me sad

1. Working late
2. Ugly traffic

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Cocktail Wednesday - Strawberry Lime Rickey

This week's drink was from Cooking Light, March 2017.


Ingredients:
  • Strawberries, sliced
  • Sugar, 2T
  • Lime
  • Club soda
  • Gin

For the first batch, I muddled the strawberries with the sugar, added the lime juice, put it all in a shaker with the gin, and then strained into glasses with ice.  It was such a waste of strawberries, that we ended up putting the remaining strawberries in the bottom of the glasses.

 



For the second batch, I put everything in the blender and then poured the slushy mixture over ice, no strawberry waste, but not as pretty. (no pictures sorry).

This was a very nice drink.  Will definitely have again.

Saturday, March 11, 2017

Goals for March (Week 2)

First, let's wrap things up first.

I worked on baby clothes quilt. 



I have a lot more to do, but at least I got started.

I also added a bunch of posts for the Round Robin blog ("Letters from the Past"); years 1978 to 1971.

I didn't visit Amanda, make a block for the Grinch quilt or make one new recipe.

For this week:

1 - Visit Amanda
2 - One Grinch block
3 - two Round Robin posts
4 - work on baby quilt
5 - Make a new dish
6 - Do research on planting for the garden
7 - Straighten up my sewing room

Friday Wrap Up

These items on these lists are in no particular order.


Good things that happened this week:
1 – found some old pictures from 2005, including pictures of the devil cat


2 – My daughter got published ("Designing a set of safety standards for surgical short term
medical missions")
3 – I added a bunch of letters to my "Letters from the Past" blog.
4 – had Panda for lunch
5 – Watched 3.5 of the Indiana Jones movies

Things that made me smile:
1 – I weighed myself three times on Thursday and got three different numbers, with a 10 pound swing.

Things that made me sad
1 – I have a cold (Wednesday)
2 – I still have a cold (Friday)

Thursday, March 9, 2017

Happy Blogiversary!

Apparently I've been blogging for 10 years!  I have 1,067 total blog posts (which comes out to just over 100 per year (though not particularly impressive, I've been at this for quite a while now)).  I have 44,949 total page views which I think is pretty amazing.

And one of my favorite things ..

Pageviews by Countries

Graph of most popular countries among blog viewers
EntryPageviews
United States
21250
Russia
10784
China
1761
Australia
1668
Germany
1619
France
1043
Ukraine
431
Canada
387
United Kingdom
293
Netherlands
267

Who the heck are the 10,000 Russians who are reading my blog and why don't they comment?

Anyway, I started my blog originally just as an online diary that I didn't think anyone else would ever read.  

I don't have many followers but it's cool to have made connections with people in different states and in different countries.  Maybe one day I'll even meet some of my blog friends. 

I was hoping to find a picture of me from 2007 and then one from now but the closest I can get is 2010.
 and now ...


Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Cleaning House ..

I brought some CDs to work to shred but decided I'd look through them first.  I found one with pictures from 2005 on it. 


My daughters on the stamp sands in Gay, Michigan.

  
The devil cat (kitten) about 4 months old.
 Lego.


Spooky.


And a picture of my mom and my daughter.

Glad I looked at the CD before I shredded it.

Monday, March 6, 2017

Goals for March (Week 1)

So, I haven't been accomplishing much lately and I'll attribute that to not having more specific goals.  I watched two of the three Indiana Jones movies this weekend, before I realized that my goal was to watch Star Wars, not Indiana Jones.  It had been ages since I had watched them, so it was pretty fun.  I got part way through the third one and may finish that up later this week...  anyway, back to my goals.

1 - prepare the fabric for the baby clothes quilt I'm making
2 - visit Amanda
3 - make 1 new recipe
4 - two posts for Round Robin blog
5 - make one block for the Grinch quilt

In order to hit my goal of 6 quilts for the year, I  need to get started - and finish some up.  I still haven't made one for Nathaniel and he'll be 2 in April. :(


2024 - Week 8 - Feb 19 - 25

  Feb 21 - Nevada's Teddy Feb 22 - more of Teddy   Feb 24 - a new tent    Feb 25 - Popovers