Saturday, January 31, 2009

Free Piano Lessons

I was looking up how to play a certain song on youtube today when I found this. It's a man who has made about 30 piano lessons and put them on youtube !
They are good quality (HD) and seem to be very well done. I have only watched the first 2 lessons but it looks like he is giving lots of good information and explains he very things well.
Here is the link to his channel.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Cranberry Muffins

Cranberry Muffins recipe


Cranberry Muffins ingredients list:

1 ½ cups of flour.
1 cup of cranberries, either fresh or frozen.
1 cup of Milk.
½ cup of sugar.
¼ cup of melted butter.
1 tablespoon of baking powder.
1 medium egg.

Pinch of salt.

Walnuts or pecans (optional)

Instructions for Cranberry Muffins:

Mix together all of the dry ingredients in a bowl.

Combine the remaining except the cranberries.


Add liquid mixture to the dry mixture, then stir until moistened.

Fold in the cranberries.

Fill sprayed muffin cups almost full.

Bake at 375°F (190°C) for 25 minutes.

More Muffin Recipes Here.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Dial "M" for Mustard

I found this on YLCF a few months ago and thought it was great. I read it to my siblings and they all agreed :)

Dial “M” for Mustard

by Joshua Carden

March 23, 2001

Part I

It’s me again, Cash J. Endor, Detective. My friends call me C.J. My enemies call me crazy, at least, the enemies that call me at home. I do get questions about my unusual name occasionally. Most people give up after the third or fourth try at spelling “anagram” so they can look it up in the dictionary. I should add that vocabulary is important to me. Mainly, because of my crossword addiction. I joined a twelve-step program for it once, but it disbanded when they realized that the New York Times wallpaper was too distracting. So I continue on – in fact, as I am currently between cases, that’s what I’m doing now.

The phone rang. A ringing phone is at once good and bad. Good, because it usually means business; bad, because I had the answer to 27 Down on the tip of my cerebellum and now it’s gone. Regretfully, I put down the paper and answered on the second ring, “C.J. Endor, Detective.” “BUDDY!” The phone nearly jumped out of my hand. I shifted it to the other ear, so the first eardrum could quit playing the solo in “Wipeout.” Nobody could greet you like my friend Drew. Drew was my fun-loving, loquacious, and always entertaining friend from down around crawfish country. “Hey, Drew, whazzup?” I had often thought about having my lawyer friends sue that beer company since “whazzup?” had been OUR standard greeting for many years now.

“Have I got a deal for you…” he began. I cut him off: “Drew, the last time you said that, I had to show my P.I. license to convince the policeman not to book us. He said if he ever caught us in the giraffe pen again, we’d be sorry.” “Relax, C.J.,” he said soothingly, “it’s nothing remotely dangerous or illegal. I’ve got a gift certificate for Uncle Mike’s.” My stomach growled. Loudly. Uncle Mike’s is Drew’s and my favorite restaurant. Admittedly, they don’t serve coffee or chocolate, but they’ve got great pizza, especially on Sundays after church. Although it was Monday, Uncle Mike’s was always a good plan. “Last one there has to pay for coffee afterward.” With that parting challenge, Drew was gone, and I was talking to a dial tone. Drew was pretty quick on his feet. I jumped from my chair, tripped over my intricate music-filing system (stacks of music on the floor with the most recent pieces I’ve played on top), and headed for Ol’ Betsy, my trusty blazer. I locked my frosted glass office door, which read “Cash J. Endor, Detective” in solid black letters. I had finally gotten around to painting the letters on the outside of the door.

I gunned Ol’ Betsy and headed for Uncle Mike’s. I kept more or less within the speed limit, and as I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed that Drew’s car was already there. I debated crawling through the window, emerging from the bathroom, and pretending that I had been there all along; but then I figured that wounded pride and the price of coffee weren’t worth that much skin off my nose. As I pushed the door open, I saw Drew grinning at me from our usual booth: “Grande, house blend, cream and sugar please.” Something tugged at the back of my mind as I walked up. “Let me see your belt,” I ordered. His grin became a bit forced, “Why?” “You know why!” I glared at him in mock anger. He pulled back his trench coat to reveal his cell phone clipped to his belt. “Aha!” I exclaimed, “You were on your way here already weren’t you.” The guilty look on his face told the story. “Okay,” he said sheepishly, “I forget that you make a living figuring out stuff like this.” We shook hands, and I sat down across from him.

As we waited for our food, several families entered the restaurant for Uncle Mike’s “Monday Special.” Over in the corner, Earl from Earl’s Auto Dealership was there with his family in one of the special “homeschooling size” booths for families with more than six kids. Sharp kids, too. Two of them had done papers on detective work and had come to interview me. I tried not to glorify the work too much, but I’m pretty sure that “detective” went into the hopper of possible careers, along with “astronaut”, “lawyer”, and “fighter pilot.” It probably didn’t help that I played “Great Balls of Fire” for them before they left. What can I say? I’m a sucker for cute kids who ask me to do stuff.

When our food arrived, we both dug in enthusiastically. As we ate, our conversation ranged from crosswords to computers, with the occasional obligatory Star Wars reference. Me being the expert on the first, and Drew the expert on the second, and both of us chiming in for the Star Wars parts. Drew is a techno-whiz. He knows how to work cell phones, computers, palm pilots, etc., and get them to do what he wants. I know enough about computers to not get white-out on the screen, but that’s about it. I also keep a hammer on my desk whenever my printer needs what I call “farm maintenance.” Anyway, Drew was telling me about one of his latest projects: “So then I get real serious with him and say, ‘look, Jeeves, you pull a stunt like that again, and your computer will have a virus that turns your OS into a giant Barry Manilow jukebox before you can say “We are the world”!’” I laughed, a little vacantly, since he had lost me somewhere around the twenty-third acronym; but I could appreciate the Barry Manilow humor.

During a lull in the conversation, the rest of the restaurant suddenly got quiet as well. As always happens when there’s a pause in the conversation, I thought of Abraham Lincoln. I don’t know why, it just happens. I was about to ask Drew if he had too, when I heard “Nobody move.” I paused with my fork half-way to my mouth. In polite conversation, those two words usually mean that somebody’s got a bee crawling up his back. The voice that said them this time was anything polite. I usually make it a habit to sit where I can see the whole room. This time, since Drew had beaten me there, all I could see was Drew and the wall. His face went the color of cottage cheese, which immediately removed my appetite for two reasons. I risked putting my fork down and did a super-slow turn of my head. Two men with guns stood in the doorway.

To Continue reading go to :
http://www.ylcf.org/humor/dial-m-for-mustard.htm

We got a Piano !



Last week a friend who knew we had been wanting a piano for sometime now, put us in touch with a friend of hers who was moving and did not want their piano anymore. It is a beautiful old studio upright piano. It's in fairly good condition, it is only missing one black key and the middle pedal needs to be reattached. It also needs desperately to be tuned, although we are still playing around on it a little. ;) Katie has a piano instruction book and now all three of us girls are going to learn how to play.
We haven't decided where in the house the piano is going to end up, but for right now it is in the living room.


On the inside it has the brand "Starr Piano Company" written on a metal plate.
I looked it up and it was a company from 1870 to 1920's. They made several different brands of painanos and even had there own record label before they went out of business in the '20's.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Scotland *sigh*




Scotland. No I haven't been , but it is one of my dream places to go!
I am reading a book right now that is set in Scotland and it brings to mind all the beautiful places, the amazing language and history.




This could totally be my house ! Right there on the second floor, Or a little to the left. " Torie's Tower !" I like the sound of that :)



Of course with a castle comes the up keep. Just think how much time it would take you to care for this garden !





Sometimes I will search photos just to be able to look at this amazing piece of God's handiwork !



Katie and I were both saying how fun it would be to dress up in historical costume and go someplace like this. Ah, 'Twould be sheer bliss !

Friday, January 23, 2009

Curious who reads your blog ?

I recently had a lot of traffic on my other blog Miss lady ma'ams closet , where I very rarely post.
I was curious why it was getting hits with so little activity on it, so I signed up with a free blog counter BlogPatrol.
You add a visible or invisible (your choice) widget to your blog and it counts how many visitors a day , week and month you get. It can also tell you where they found your site, what time, what browser they use, what operating system and a few other things to help you make your blog easier for them to view and interact with.
Also , if you have had trouble with people leaving spam or inappropriate comments you can ban certain ISP addresses so that they no longer have access to your site.

I have learned a few interesting things from it already !
Most of my visitors are Mac users.
11:00 am 4:00 pm and 9:00 are the busy times of day.
I have several out of country readers

Try it on your blog , see what you learn :)

Ultimate sports for the faint of heart

Yep. I found it. A Crazy cool activity that looks relatively safe. It's called "Zorb".
Right now there is only one location in the USA , (anyone up for a trip to TN this summer ?)
the other locations are in New Zealand and Japan.
Here is the link : http://www.zorb.com/

Chocolate chip cookies

We LOVE Chocolate chip cookies at my house. But what we probably love better is the dough :)
Here is the recipe I made these from.



Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies.
From the MOMYS cookbook

1 cup real butter softened
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 1/2 cups flour ( Tastes delicious with whole wheat flour)
Chocolate Chips -- As many as you like !

Combine butter and sugars until smooth. Add eggs and extract, then combine well. Add flour, baking powder and baking soda, and salt. mix until well combined .
Add chocolate chips scoop by T. spoon onto cookie sheet. Bake for 10 min. or until golden brown.
To get cookies that are crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside, remove from the oven and leave on cookie sheet for about 10 min. to cool before removing from cookie sheet.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Pray for Rebulutionary Tylor Farver

Please pray for Tyler and visit the link below.

http://www.therebelution.com/blog/2009/01/urgent-pray-for-tyler-farver/

Twitterers ?

Tweet Tweet ! Have you heard ? Twitter is a fairly new site that helps connect and inform people.
Its a very simple idea of answering one question. " What are you doing right now ? "
I got my account with them a few months ago as a easier way to update my statuses and facebook account with out having to go to each one individually. I downloaded an App. for Firefox (or your browser of choice) so it's on my toolbar and I can easily check it threw out the day.
So , Are there any other tweeters out there ?
If so, you can find me at username : Amethyst180

Friday, January 16, 2009

Ex-Monks and Flip-Flops

This is a post found and copied from Stacy McDonald's blog http://yoursacredcalling.blogspot.com/


"Help, call the police! Oh yeah, I am the police..."

This video is either proof that women shouldn't be police officers or it's proof that only women from Texas who have the ability to "kick off their flip flops" should!

Seriously though, notice the interview with her Police Chief. He says she's "a real smart person...a real caring person." But being smart and caring didn't seem to help her here. Praise God for His perfect timing!


Monday, January 5, 2009

No More Hand made ?!?

There is a new law that comes into effect Feb. 10th.
It states that all handmade products have to be submitted for mandatory third-party testing to make sure they don't have lead or phthalates in them. This has been brought on because of all the toxic toys that have recently come from China. This does not effect only toys, but clothing books, fabrics and any other item intended for a child under 12.

While the original intention of this law is good , it will have some serious side effects on small , home based company's.
This will not effect large company's who manufacture children's products , but this could shut down home based businesses. The law will require every product to be tested. This is a huge expense that most company's can not afford. We are talking thousands of dollars worth of testing ! Every paint, every color, every material must be tested.

Thriving small businesses are crucial to the financial health of our nation. Let's amend the CPSIA so that all businesses large and small are able to comply and survive!

Please contact your representatives and tell them you do not support the CPSIA as it currently is written.
Watch the videos below for more information.