Pudding Desert

I thought today would be a good day to share the pudding cake recipe as I promised after I told you we made it for my mom’s birthday a few weeks ago.  This recipe can be made with less calories if you use light cream cheese and sugar free pudding.

PUDDING DESERT

Crust:  1 cup flour, 1 stick butter or margarine and 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional).  Mix well and press into the bottom of a 9”x13” cake pan and bake at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes or until crust is lightly tanned.  Cool completely before proceeding.

Mix with an electric mixer:  1 (8 oz.) cream cheese softened, 1 cup 10x sugar and 1 1/2 cups thawed cool whip.  Spread this mixture carefully on top of the cooled crust.

Beat with the electric mixer:  2 pkgs. INSTANT pudding (flavor is your choice), and 3 cups of cold milk.  Spread this mixture evenly over top of the cream cheese layer.

Frost the top of the desert with a layer of cool whip and refrigerate.  To serve, cut into squares.  Yum!  :o)

ROUGH DAY

We got a lot of rain earlier today, and it is fairly cool, but humid.  The boys have been out of sorts today and it has been quite rough so far.  Things have settled down somewhat at the moment.

My hamburger vegetable soup is simmering on the stove and Steve baked dinner rolls to go with it.  My dear friend is up from Virginia.  Her mom was just diagnosed with Leukemia and is already receiving chemo treatments.  Her parents and 2 of her brothers have a dairy farm, so there are many mouths to feed and work to be done.  Her mom is in Roswell and will be there for a while.  She is one of the sweetest ladies I know and we are praying for the Leukemia to go into remission.  Anyway, we thought homemade soup would be something they could just grab a bowl and warm up whenever someone wanted to eat.  The dinner rolls should go well.  We have to stop at my mom’s on the way as she made brownies and cookies to send up too.

Rachel and Steven are having a good time on vacation.  Today they are in San Antonio, TX and are going on the “River walk”.  Rachel will be flying home on Monday and she has classes on Tues.  I can’t wait to see their pictures.  :o)

Rachel Arrived

Rachel (our 22 year old daughter) arrived safely in Houston last night.  She is going to spend the weekend visiting Steven (our oldest son).  They have plans to go to Austin today and San Antonio tomorrow.  I hope they have a great time.  We haven’t seen Steven in a little  over a year, since he moved to Houston.  It is really hard not seeing your children, but at least we talk on the phone quite often and he is doing so wonderful there.

We got to see Megan (our oldest daughter who is married and living in Hamilton, Ontario Canada) on Wednesday for a couple of hours.  She visited with us and then went to Buffalo and took Rachel out for dinner for her birthday which was in July.  They had a great time.  It seems so good to have Megan back from the summer camp in Pennsylvania where she has worked as a nurse for many years.  Megan called last night to see if her and Scott could have Bradly for a weekend in a couple of weeks.  There is a dinosaur exhibit at the museum in Toronto and they know he will love it. They have a couple of other things they want to do with him too.  I know this will make him feel so special, and the one on one attention will be great too.  I can’t tell you how fantastic it is to have grown children that all care so much about their young, adopted siblings.   Steve and I have been truly blessed.  :o)

Finished

The laundry bags are finished and all packaged to be shipped.  The customer was very pleased with them as I sent her a picture of the finished bags.  Here is a pic.

I gave Bradly his own section in one of my Etsy shops.  Brad loves to make things and has been creating some very nice ornaments and key chains with his Perler Beads.  What we are hoping he will learn is the importance of doing a good job and how to handle his money.  It will hopefully be great for his self esteem.   He is paying his own listing and commission fees, and the rest of his income is all his.  Here is a sample of his work.  :o)

Laundry Bags

I have an order for three of the laundry bags I started selling in my Etsy shop.  I have one finished and need to get the other two done and ready to ship to Toronto Canada by tomorrow.  I have so many projects I want to work on that it seems there just isn’t enough time in the day to get it all done.  I will have more time once the boys are back in school again.

Rachel is leaving tomorrow (Thurs.) for Houston to visit Steven.  They are going to Austin for a couple of days too.  I am worried about Rachel flying alone, but she is 22 years old and I am sure she will do great.  I always worry about the kids when they travel.  Megan broke us in since she was determined to be a world wide traveler.  LOL  Reid’s solution is not to tell us he traveled until he returns.  I guess no matter how old your children get, they are always your children and you worry. :o)

Finished My Newest Tote Bag

Finally, I have finished this humorous new tote bag I have been working on for the past three days.  I think it is really cute and hopefully someone else thinks so too.  Take a peak and see what you think.

I have to go to my studio and make a list of all the thread I need.  I feel so stupid because I was all excited that Joann Fabrics was running a weekend sale with all the thread buy one get one free.  The sale they usually have is 50% off.  Last night my hubby made the comment that probably some people would think because the word free was in the ad that it was a better deal, but it is the same as 50 % off.  I couldn’t believe I was one of those people.  LOL  Well, I am off to get ready for the big trip to Joann’s.  If you don’t hear from me for a day or two, it might mean I am still there browsing and ogling the big selection of fabrics,,,don’t send out the search party as I always return eventually.  :o)

My Mom Has A Birthday Today

I just popped the crust to my mom’s birthday cake into the oven.  She is having a pistachio pudding cake.  We haven't had one of those in years and it is so yummy.  Maybe I will post the recipe when I get time as you can make it with any flavor pudding you like and it is very refreshing on a hot day.

The kids had counseling yesterday, so afterward we went to Sprague Brook Park and had a picnic and then they donned their swim suits and their creek sneakers and played in the creek.  They looked for Cray fish, but never found any.  I went in with them and screeched quite loudly when Bradly turned over a fairly large rock and there was something under which we thought was dead because it didn’t move.  Bradly disrupted it and it took off in a direct path to my feet.  It really startled me and yes, I screeched..LOL  In retrospect, I think it might have been some kind of a salamander.  We had a really good time.

Karli is going today to get her stitches out.  Last Monday Karli got spayed and had all four dew claws removed.  She is quite active and you would never know she even had surgery. 

Tomorrow I am off to Joann Fabrics as they are having a fabulous weekend sale.  I have needed to buy more thread and it is actually buy one get one free, which I have never seen.  :o)

Skateboard Anyone??

I found this etsy shop and wanted to share it with my readers.  This artists shop is called “Krystie17”, and she has some beautiful, hand painted, 100% bamboo skateboards.  If you have a skateboarder in your life, one of these awesome boards would make a terrific gift.  You can find her shop here…..http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=7392060

 

 

 

 

Krystie also has a web page.     www.krystiesargent.com

I hope everyone is enjoying these last few weeks of summer.  Things are going surprisingly well with Nick being done with summer school.  Today both boys are working with their skill builders.  Bradly has really made some gains this summer and we are very pleased with his progress.  We are hoping he has a good year in 6th grade and that Nick does well in 3rd grade.  :o)

Recipe for Zucchini Bars

This is the time of year that everyone is over run with zucchini squash.  I had forgotten all about this recipe until yesterday.  Anyone who eats this will swear they are eating apples, not zucchini.  I made it probably 10 years ago, and my Dad (who hates zucchini and will not eat it) loved it .  Since it is baked on a large cookie sheet, it will feed many people.  I cut my zucchini in half the long way, and then after the seeds are out and the skin is gone I start slicing.  The shape even looks like apple slices.  :o)

ZUCCHINI BARS
1.)  Prepare crust:  4 cups flour, ½ teas. Salt, 2 cups sugar, 1 ½ cups
                          Butter or margarine
Mix like a pie crust until crumbly….set aside

2.)  Prepare filling:  Simmer 6-8 cups of sliced zucchini (skins and seeds removed) in 2/3 cups lemon juice until tender.  Add 1 cup sugar, ½ teas. Nutmeg, 1 teas. Cinnamon.  Simmer 5 more minutes.  Add ½ cup of the crust mixture to thicken.  Let cool.

3.)  Pat one half of the remaining crust mixture in a large cookie sheet.  Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes.  Remove from oven and pour cooled filling on top.  Add 1 TBSP. cinnamon to remaining crust mixture and crumble on top of the filling. 

Bake 30 minutes longer at 375 degrees.

Last Day of Summer School

Well, today is the last day of summer school and we have two weeks until school is in session again.  We are hoping that Nick will do well during these two weeks without school as a diversion.  Weekends are usually quite difficult, so we are hoping and praying that we can enjoy these two weeks.

Yesterday, Nick was in a talent show at school.  He got up by the microphone and was too scared to talk, so another boy said Nick’s line.  They were doing a little Dr. Suess skit.  When his class was done, Nick got right up to the microphone and thanked everyone for coming, which was really cute.  We brought him home with us since he had had a rough morning and the other singing during the rest of the show bothered his ears.  He was really happy to stop at McDonalds on the way home and partake of a strawberry milkshake.

Rachel, our 22 year old daughter, left Wed. night on a bus to New York City.  Our older daughter met her there yesterday afternoon as she caught a ride into the city from the camp she is a nurse at every summer.  Last night our son in law and his sister and brother in law flew into NYC and they are all vacationing together until Sunday.  Since Megan and Scott and his family live in Hamilton, Ontario they were originally going to fly in from Toronto, but the prices went quite high.  They saved a lot of money by driving down to Buffalo and flying from there.  Rachel was quite thrifty and took the bus from Buffalo to NYC for $1.  The price was great but she wasn’t too thrilled with bus travel.   :o)

Another Rough Day

The last hour has been really rough.  Nicholas is having problems controlling his temper, which is an on going problem, but some days are worse than others.  He has birthday money to spend and we told him if he could keep himself under control we would take him to Kmart or Walmart today to spend it.   There is no way we can take him out in public when he is like this.  We will wait and see how the afternoon goes and if he can get it together, we will try it.  It is so sad and so hard.

On a good note, Bradly got a chance to work with Rachel yesterday at the ice cream shop.  The girl that was supposed to work with Rachel was in a car accident, and there really needed to be two people working in case it got busy.  Rachel showed Bradly how to use the cash register and he caught on quickly and only made a couple of minor mistakes.  He also made $3 in tips which he was thrilled about.  He did some cleaning too which he loves to do.  We are really proud of him.  He got paid and is also looking forward to buying some things at the store.

Nick has only one more week of summer school and then he is off until school starts in September.  To be quite honest we are hoping those days are not just a big series of temper tantrums.  We need to go shopping for school sneakers.  The boys have been growing so much that we thought we better wait until August to shop, as we usually start shopping earlier in the summer.  We would have liked to have gotten that shopping done today.  Time will tell.  :o)

Funny Mugs

I ran across a shop on Etsy that carries hand painted coffee mugs.  You can have a mug custom made or buy one of the many she has listed in her shop.  The shop is called, “Dirty Dishes”, and would be the perfect place to purchase a gift for that hard to buy for person in your life.  The sayings on the mugs range from sarcastic to a bit dirty and are quite humorous.  I will post a couple of pics from her shop, but if you would like to check it out, here is the link to her shop.  :o)

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5317562

Fresh Veggies

My mother has been keeping us supplied with fresh zucchini and yellow squash and green beans out of her garden.  Monday I took two zucchini and stuffed them for dinner.  I cut them in half length wise and scooped out the middle.  I chopped the squash I had pulled out and put it in a frying pan with a little butter and cooked it with onions and minced garlic.  The zucchini halves went into the microwave long enough to half cook them.  Meanwhile, I mixed one egg and about 1 1/2 cups of ricotta cheese, Italian seasoning and salt and pepper.  I slowly stirred the warm squash and onion mixture into the ricotta mixture until it was well blended.  The squash halves went onto a baking sheet with a bit of water in the bottom and the filling went into the zucchini halves and I sprinkled the tops with parmesan cheese.  They baked about 30 minutes in a 400 degree oven and then I added some shredded mozzarella cheese and stuck them under the broiler until they browned.  They were a big hit.  I had two left which we zapped for lunch yesterday and they were still delicious.

Bradly is off to go pick blueberries with my mother.  This is wonderful for him and even better for me because he has been extremely irritating the last few days, and I really need a break from him. :o)

I finally finished my newest “Doggie Travel Bag”.  All the other ones had sold so I figured I better get a new one made.  Here are a couple of pics. 

Still Here

I decided I better post on here today or some of you might think I had dropped off the face of the earth.  LOL 

Saturday, we took some time for family and spent the afternoon and early evening at Letchworth State Park.  It was a warm, sunny gorgeous day, and we had a great time.  When we stopped at the middle falls, there was a beautiful rainbow and the boys were amazed by it.  Bradly was enthralled by the gorge and the rock formation, the railroad trestle, the wildlife and pretty much everything.  Nick took binoculars along and both boys had a blast using them to look into the gorge.  (A small amount of bickering over them was to be expected and we weren’t disappointed..LOL).

  Brad and Nick (Brad looks like he is facing a firing squad.LOL)

We toured the beautiful campground in the park where we spent many fun days camping with our older kids in years past.  Being there made us wish we didn’t  have our camper parked permanently and could tow and go different places again. 

A short trip to the “Charcoal Corral” in Perry procured us a delicious pizza which we took back into the park and ate at the “Wolf Creek” picnic area.  Karli went with us and a great time was had by all. :o)

Wolf Creek

                Rainbow at the middle falls

 

 

 

 

Steve with Brad and Nick