The Rest of Parade Day

After we watched the Festival of Trees parade, Lilly and I spent the rest of the day in downtown Davenport. Of course, we were hungry -- so the first order of business was LUNCH...

One day, I'll show her this picture and say, "Grandma took you to your first bar when you were only five years old."

Sippi's in downtown Davenport is a WONDERFUL place to eat. And the cheesefries were the best I ever had...

Lilly agreed with me completely....

Then we walked across the street to the Figge Museum where they were having a children's craft day...

The tables were fully equipped....

Lillian made at least a dozen ornaments. She LOVES doing crafts!!

I enjoyed the cookies that were provided.

Admission was free that day -- so we did a little walk around the museum...

Whenever possible, Lilly got involved in making her own art...

Honestly -- she would STILL BE THERE. She is so earnest when she's working on a project.

Me, taking a picture of me taking a picture.

The parade was a great way to start the holiday season -- and it's been non-stop action ever since. THERE ARE SO MANY GREAT ACTIVITIES at this time of year!! And I am thrilled to have a little girl to share them with.

Applesauce Cake

So -- what can I do with all that applesauce??

At the end, I had about 5 cups of delicious applesauce...

I decided to make an applesauce cake. I went online and read many recipes. One recipe called for shortening -- I used butter and oil. Most recipes used white sugar, I decided to use both white and brown. I wanted to use lots of applesauce, so I nearly doubled everything.

Finally, I added more spices than most recipes called for. My cakes turned out so great, I tried to write down exactly what I did.

Rita's Late-Night Applesauce Cake

1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 stick of butter
1/2 c. vegetable oil
4 eggs
4 cups flour
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. ginger
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
3 cups applesauce
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup of nuts (optional)
1 cup of raisins (optional)*

Cream together the sugars, butter and oil. Add the eggs, then alternate the dry ingredients and the applesauce. This makes a lot of cake. I poured the batter into three pans. Two 9" round cake pans, and one small square pan.

*soak the raisins in boiling water for about 10 minutes to plump them up.

************

At the end of the day, I made homemade applesauce -- THEN, I made scratch cakes from the homemade applesauce. WHO DOES THAT???

It was 10:30 when I started baking the cakes. I was listening to a wonderful new book on tape in my kitchen, and these cakes smelled so great, baking in the oven...

My plan is to eat one, freeze one, and give one away...

Oh, yeah. Life is Good...

Foley Food Mill

Like everything else in life -- apples are an individual thing. We are three adults living in a house, and we have three completely different apple attitudes.

I like tart, crisp apples like Stayman Winesap or Honeycrisp, and I like them cold, out of the refrigerator drawer. Ross will only eat Fuji apples -- and he insists they stay at room temperature -- his apples NEVER go into the frig.

John almost never eats an apple, but he is the best grocery shopper in the world, so his big job is keeping both me and Ross well supplied...

The other day, I realized John's shopping had gotten way ahead of our apple-eating.  Suddenly, we had a dozen apples that were past their eating prime...

And I remembered  how easy it was to make applesauce with my Foley Food Mill....I wondered if I could find the darn thing...??

Stuck in the back of a high cupboard -- there it was!!  I took it apart, scrubbed  it up,

I washed the apples, and cut them into quarters....I put them in the pot, seeds and peels and all...added 1/4 cup of water, and covered the pot.

I stirred them often to prevent sticking.  The apples quickly cooked down.

Then, into the top of the Foley Food Mill....turn the handle....

APPLESAUCE!  Just as easy as I remembered it!!

As you turn the handle, the applesauce goes down through the sieve...leaving only  the peel and seeds.

MAGIC!!  What a great invention. Thank you, Mr. Foley....

But. Wow. That's a lot of applesauce. Maybe six cups. Yikes.  Then I remembered another funny thing about the Farro family. Nobody here eats applesauce... Ugh...

Smartphone Withdrawals/flipphone

IT HAS NOT BEEN EASY to live without my smartphone.  If phones were cars, my smartphone was a Cadillac.  However -- without the data plan, and no need for a SMART phone, I knew I'd be trading "down" when I got my new non-smart phone.  To a Chevrolet, perhaps??

Or a sturdy Toyota?

As it happens, phone companies don't want to sell anything BUT smartphones nowadays...so there were only 4 "non-smart" phone models to choose from.  It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, we've been talking about it for weeks...and I sent John to Verizon to close the deal.  He came home and handed me this....

A flip phone??

What car is comparable to a flip phone?  A Studebaker?

Seriously?  I have to go all the way back to a flip phone?  Okay...I can do this.  I am determined....there is a principle involved here...

Before the battery was even fully charged -- I received a text message -- and after much consternation, and trying to read the worthless little manual...I was SHOCKED and dismayed when I realized I had to use the number keys to hammer out:  each. letter. of. the. alphabet.

WHAT THE HELL???

In the last two years...TEXTING has become a very big part of my life.  But I was always able to talk my texts into my smartphone.  I have never had to hit the numbers key to get to each individual letter of the alphabet.  OMG....

Oh, yikes.  WHAT WAS I THINKING??....I get 100 texts a week....

I had my new flip phone in my hands for exactly 20 minutes when Ross walked through the living room and I pretty much wailed, "I can't do this."...

He started to laugh so hard...he said, "gheesh, Mom?  20 minutes? That's your best effort?   Really?   You're saying you can't do something every pre-pubescent girl in America mastered a decade ago?"

Crap.  What was I thinking....?  I was sooo sanctimonious and full of myself...

*************
My family and friends are taking bets on how long I'll last....

Ronda's Christmas Decorating....

During the years I was collecting pink flamingos, my sister Ronda was collecting pigs. When I think about it, for every pink flamingo I brought home, Ronda would have six pigs...

Nowadays, I am hooked on pithy t-shirts -- and she collects Nativity sets. For Christmas, she takes down every single pig and replaces it with a Nativity....

To kick off our holiday season -- the TMBC came to my house for breakfast -- then we went over to Ronda's house for the Nativity Tour...

The nativities are everywhere...we are surrounded...

Every shelf is completely crammed with Nativities...every ornament on this tree is a Nativity

Little ones, big ones...nativity books, blankets, sweatshirts...

This set is large, so it gets it's own tabletop...

This set is made out of BRICKS -- so it has to sit on the floor!!

This is the most expensive Nativity -- the wood comes from Jerusalem...

This wall hanging is made out of copper wire.

Soft sculpture nativity

our sister pic (with caribou hanging on the wall)

Ronda's first Nativity came from Alaska. She was a newlywed when she bought it at craft show...

She has several Precious Moments versions...

We kept saying...Wow...

A Nativity jigsaw puzzle that was framed...and a quilted wall hanging...

Ronda made PIE for our breakfast dessert...

Please note -- in all of the pictures, we had our coats on. Ronda is famous for her cold house. They have a wood burner in their house, so the gas furnace doesn't get used...much....maybe ever. We have propane here in the country, but the gas truck hasn't been to her house since sometime in the 90's...

Hey -- to each his own.  But the TMBC was warned. I told them that before Ronda would turn her furnace on, there would have to be skim ice on her toilet...so dress accordingly.

Merry Christmas!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS, PEOPLE. I hope this day is all you wanted it to be.

BUT, of course, if you are reading this blog on Christmas Day, I worry that maybe it was a disappointment. Few things can live up to the huge expectation we put on Christmas...ugh...

I want to dedicate this post to my Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club...

It was one of those weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas...the TMBC was coming to my house. I scrambled some eggs, and fried two pounds of bacon (just because I could)....

Linda K. and Sandy....

Linda P. and my sister Ronda (our special guest)

The big SEW AND TELL on this day was from Sandy!! She has a four-year old granddaughter, and this is the year she gets her FIRST AMERICAN GIRL DOLL....

This is the BED for the doll....

And, when you lift the lid - there is an amazing wardrobe...

Outfits, shoes, coats, nightgowns,

Loved this little snowsuit....everything in exquisite detail...

Sandy even knitted a little sweater/hat/blanket set...

The tub is jam-packed with beautiful little outfits and bedding...

Of course, I understand completely how much work Grandma Sandy put into this little tub. OH MY GOD...the work.  Writing this post, I am snapped back to Christmas 2012.

I was so excited about Lillian getting her first baby doll. For weeks, I'd been making outfits...and I made matching nightgowns for Lilly, and her Mom, the doll AND Sophie...I had my cousin Linda paint a little train case, using the nightgown fabric as inspiration for the pattern. WOW...

When Lilly opened the gift,  she said, "Nice try, Grandma..."

You can see she was MISERABLE about my gift...and we were both quite annoyed with the men in the room, who could not stop laughing...

In this picture, even Sophie looks disappointed...

She never played with the doll or any of those clothes. And I never saw anybody wear the nightgowns.

Hey -- sometimes - that's how it happens. And, on this day,  we all need LISTEN to some very good advice from my friend Eileen Roche. It's the actual planning and making of the gift that matters. We put our heart and soul into a project, thinking about the person we are doing it for the whole time we're working on it. THAT is the benefit to us. To be creative, and to love somebody so much you would go to all this trouble just for them.

Once you put your best effort and love into the MAKING of a gift....how that gift is received is beyond your control and really not important.

Eileen says, once she's finished, and has given the gift, it's over for her. She doesn't care if it goes in the trash. The joy was in the making...

Excellent advice, my friend...

But I am worried for Sandy....

19th Street Light Show

On the Wednesday BEFORE Christmas week, I took Lilly and Warren to the 19th Street Light Show in Bettendorf, Iowa.

If you click on the picture, it should take you to their YouTube video...

The weather was perfect. It had been raining the day before...but on this day, it was dry and not too cold. With them both firmly buckled in their respective carseats in my backseat -- we went into town, listening to Christmas music.

 I stopped at McDonald's for Happy Meals -- knowing we might have to sit in line to get close to the house. And that was the right thing to do...we were all very content, with our hot and delicious french fries...

We found the neighborhood, and because of the line of cars, we knew we were in the right place.

On their Facebook page, the 19th Street house told us to tune our radios to the FM station at 107.1. When we did that, we could hear the music from FROZEN...and that is how they choreographed their lights.

OMG... Lilly knows EVERY WORD from that movie. I have no idea how many times she's watched it. But it would have to be a four digit number at this point. And she LOVES, LOVES, LOVES the songs...all of them.

I did not understand how many songs were in that movie. There are a lot. The actual light show takes 13 minutes.

We listened to the whole show one complete time before we actually got close enough to SEE the lights.  Then, we waited for our turn, and got jockeyed around so the kids had an excellent view.

By the time the show was running for the third time, I was able to park my car in a great spot -- and both kids joined me in the front seat.  It was magical.

I don't know who the people are who live at the 19th Street house in Bettendorf -- and I do kind of pity their neighbors...

BUT I'D LIKE TO SAY A BIG THANK YOU...for all the work you did.  It was incredible!!

AND if there is a house like this in your town, do yourself a favor -- and GO SEE THE LIGHT SHOW before it's over!!

Christmas Linens

I always say my Christmas decorations are mugs and rugs...and that's mostly true. But I realized this year that I also have MANY CHRISTMAS LINENS.  But I don't use them because they are not accessible.

Some things aren't so much about Christmas -- but winter scenes, i.e., snowmen tablecloths or Poinsettia napkins. But THEY ARE IN STORAGE (which is code for:  lost in the black hole that is my basement)....

On Christmas Eve, when I really want Christmas napkins, I don't have time to look for them....

 Hey -- why not "CHANGE OUT" my linen drawers the same way I change out my closet? 

DUH!!!

Sunday is Lilly's day here.  So, last Sunday, our main mission was to put up our tree.  (my job is to clear a path in the basement so Ross can actually get it to the steps!!  lol...)...

Lilly went through the napkin drawer, and put all the spring/summer colors (bunnies, pastels, patriotic, etc.) in a big tub to go to the basement.  Which left us one whole drawer for WINTER NAPKINS, tablecloths, table runners, etc.

THIS IS SUCH A GOOD IDEA...and it took all of about 15 minutes to do the change-out.  I can't believe I didn't think of this years ago...

Of course, the danger is that come Spring, I won't be able to find the tub of linens...so we'll be using Poinsettia napkins for our Fourth of July picnic...

But it is a risk I'm willing to take. 

Unshrink your clothes

Welcome to the Monday of Christmas week. Today, I will make my "Countdown list"....just to make sure I'm not forgetting anything important...

But, to take my mind off all that important holiday stuff -- here's a mundane Monday-laundry post.

Doing laundry calms me. I love the feeling of making things clean....but it doesn't always work out. Sometimes, there are mistakes -- and things turn pink. Or they shrink. (Gheesh...that rhymes, and I really should do something with it...)

Most often, of course, it's the OTHER PEOPLE in your house who make the laundry mistakes.

Years ago -- John did not understand the value of SORTING laundry. He put one bright red article in with every load. My boys didn't enjoy wearing pink as much as I did...

One of our now-famous-huge-screaming-yelling-fights was about laundry. Specifically, John using hot water for every load. On that day, I realized he had shrunk and ruined an entire load of my clothes. He washed them in hot water, then put them in the dryer for an hour. Ugh.

I was furious, and I can still see myself, standing on our porch, waving a pair of now-too-small-pants, and SCREAMING at the top of my lungs....."I'VE TOLD YOU THIS OVER AND OVER AGAIN. IT IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE...HOT WATER SHRINKS THINGS...FOR CHRIST'S SAKE -- YOU WERE IN CHARGE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS -- HOW IS IT YOU DON'T GET THIS?? WE CANNOT AFFORD FOR YOU TO DO THE LAUNDRY....YOU ARE NEVER, EVER, TO DO ANOTHER LOAD OF LAUNDRY...."

Looking back, I wonder if it wasn't one of those passive-aggressive things couples do to one another. On the one hand, he was doing the laundry, "helping" me...but, on the other hand, he subconsciously delighted when he ruined my clothes...

Oh, yeah, it's a wonder we stay married!

Maybe I could have salvaged some of those clothes...if only we'd had the internet. There was no Pinterest, of course.

WE ARE SO LUCKY, LADIES....and if you go to this link -- there is an excellent tutorial about how to UNSHRINK your clothes...with holiday eating upon us, I'm thinking I am going to try this with EVERY PAIR OF PANTS I own...


How to unshrink your clothes...

Smart Phone Withdrawals...

The night of the Kenny Rogers concert we got lost in downtown Bloomington. It's a big, rambling college town -- and when we came out of the concert, we were driving in circles. For some time...there's a bridge...and many one-way streets...

Deena has never had a smartphone, Nicole forgot to charge her Iphone -- and, of course, I just got rid of my smartphone.

We drove past the University of Illinois stadium three times

Yikes. THREE WOMEN, LOST IN A STRANGE CITY, WITH NO SMARTPHONE GPS!!

We were flummoxed.

We were driving the wrong side of the street (we thought it was a one-way, nobody else did) when Nicole pulled over and parked the van. She called her husband, Bill, hoping he could tell us how to get out of town. But he was more confused than we were...Then her Iphone went dead..

Of course, neither Deena nor I could call Bill back because we didn't have his number programmed into our phones...

I called Ross on our home phone. I figured he could use the GPS on his smartphone to tell us how to get back on I-74....

Bloomington is bigger than you think....

Clever plan, eh?

Ross answered...and I explained our dilemma.

He said, (very calmly) "You are lost in downtown Bloomington, you've been driving in circles for half an hour and your big idea was to call me?"

I said, "Yes...."

Long pause.  "Mom -- by the time I figure out where you are -- you could be half-way home...(yelling now) -- GO TO A GAS STATION AND ASK FOR DIRECTIONS!!"

Nicole and Deena, both sitting in the front, heard him...and the three of us started to laugh. And laugh. Hysterically. It was soooo funny.

Of course, Ross was right. We went into the gas station (we were parked in front of it) and were immediately given directions which led to a direct route back to I-74....

Instead of me MISSING MY SMARTPHONE...this incident proved my point...

SMARTPHONES MAKE YOU STUPID....