The adventure of the pumpkin pie crust

As I said in an earlier post, I attempted my first ever pie crust for our Thanksgiving feast. Ironically it's for pumpkin pie which isn't really my favorite, but that's how the chips fell this year. Hopefully my sis-in-law will be bringing a yummy pecan pie I can devour! Mmm...pie...whipped cream...sorry! Back to the post- Almost as soon as I started I kinda wished I hadn't agreed to do it. I think part of my problem was the oratory I got from Ty on how rare a perfect pie crust is and how many pies he'd eaten and thought that the crust was just ok but could be so much better. I'm pretty sure his intention was to spare me from thinking I had to make the perfect crust, but really I was thinking, "If his Grammy can't perfect the pie crust, why am I even wasting my time?!" Truthfully, I only ended up calling him once to ask if he thought I was doing ok. -aside- These are very interesting conversations in which I try to describe what I'm doing/what something looks like and Ty tries to reassure me that it's fine while I'm sure rolling his eyes because he has no way of really knowing because he's on the phone. Anyway, I cut in stuff, and I patted, and I chilled, and I rolled, and this is what I got...

Not real pretty, but there they are. The filling seemed alot easier.I guess the real test will be when someone tastes it. Ty has told me he'll eat it no matter what (I love him for things like that).

Since this is a Thanksgiving related post, I thought I should say something I'm thankful for. My friend Taylor did a list of 25 things 'cause she's 25. I don't want to admit how close I am to 30, so I think I'll just say that I am thankful for friends and family who remind me of what is important in this life, and what is not. Here's a picture of the girls in their matching pjs for good measure:

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Stay tuned for the results of my pie crust adventure.

New find!

Ok, so you know how I was talking about the screen printing idea I got at the Little Birdie Secrets blog? Well, I happened onto an infomercial (don't ask me why I watch these things) for a super cool machine for screen printing at home! It's called the Yudu, and it's SO neat. It's a much more involved process, but the awesome thing is you can create any image you want. With the Plaid stuff, you use pre-made templates to make your designs. With this Yudu, if you can draw it, write it, or print it from your computer you can screen print it. This opens up a whole new world of personalization possibilities! The other cool thing is it's made by the Cricut people, so they have detailed instructions about how you can use your cricut to help out w/ your Yudu projects. Check out the website if you want to see all the different kinds of projects you can do. It's not just t-shirts for sure! Of course, this system is much more expensive than the Plaid version. $300 for the machine itself plus inks and other stuff to make the screens is alot, but a mom of a couple of sports kids could make their little league shirts at a fraction of the cost of having them professionally done. If they did that kind of stuff every summer, you could see how the thing would pay for itself. Have I justified the purchase for myself yet? Maybe I'll add it to my Christmas list and see what happens.
*On the Thanksgiving front, you'll be happy/amused/bored silly to know that I am attempting to make my first ever version of "candied yams" and my first ever pumpkin pie(neither of which I'm going to eat). I'm making the crust and everything so I'm a little nervous. Will update with victory or disaster. What are you making/eating for the holiday?

Finally...

a post about the house! As you know, progress has been relatively slow. This was (I am told) one of the very busiest times of year, and now that things should be slowing down there should be more time for working on the house. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed, but I probably won't hold my breath (just in case). I've been doing what I can, and one of the things I can do is work on the floors. As I said earlier, there were some gorgeous hardwood floors underneath the hideous carpet that came with the house. The only problem was, it left behind this residue that is a bear to get up. I'm not sure if it's glue or just parts of the carpet pad that kinda melted to the floor or what. One thing I do know is that it's majorly stuck on there. Here's an example:The option that seems to work the best at getting it off is Goo Gone and some good old fashioned elbow grease. That's right folks, we're talking hands and knees stuff! I'll give you a moment to recover from your shock that I'm the one doing this, and then check out the finished product. Pretty good right? Next I'll take some pics of Ty's progress in our bedroom. Slowly but surely people!

Little Birdie Secrets: screenprint at home

Hey all my fellow crafters! I just found this really cool product at Little Birdie Secrets: screenprint at home for making your own screen printed stuff. Really cute idea, and it looks like you could do a whole project for around $25, and have some cute stencils that can be reused 20 times! I found some even easier ones here at the Plaid website. Super cute iron ons for less than $4 each! I may have just found my Xmas gift idea for a few peeps!

Pheasants Forever

So, many of you asked about the benefit dinner we went to tonight. I thought I'd recap the event for anyone who was interested. This was a benefit for Pheasants Forever. The group basically tries to educate farmers about keeping up the habitats for local wildlife (so they can be hunted w/out losing too much of the population) and getting youth involved in outdoorsy hunting/fishing activities. We expected it to be a smallish community thing where we could meet some people and hang out...WRONG! Let's all remember that this is opening weekend for hunting season (found this out today). So hunters from everywhere (I saw New Jersey tags) are here to get their hunt on, and were so kind to join us at the dinner. It was held at the Vesper Gym. Built prior to 1920, it's a quaint old building with a stage on one end that still has the beautiful ruby curtains with a huge golden V embroidered on them. Mostly it's used for old ladies to play bingo together, but tonight it was almost bursting with people of all ages, men and women; almost 350 in all! It was a sea of camo and blaze orange with dots of plaid here and there. I only counted 4 rifles and 5 knives in the building, but who can guess how many there were in all the trucks outside? There were raffles and games(a virtual shooting thing for the kids), and of course all of the prizes had pictures of a bird or dog on them with camo accents. In the middle of all this...me. I wasn't wearing pink (thank goodness), so maybe I blended in a little. One cool thing is, it's really fun to see people in small towns organize things and then have most of the community come out to support it. Whether you're into it or not, you just go because it's good for the community. That's really cool. Plus there was a pretty good bbq dinner, so what more could you really ask for? Come visit me sometime, and I'll take you to see the gym.
*Random Vesper fact of the day (maybe 5 miles from our town, was a bustling town and now just the gym and a few houses): The post office was established in 1873 out of a man's house, and they actually passed the duty around from house to house for several years until they were able to build a building for it. Can you imagine?

Old Pics

Well, I thought I'd finally get around to putting up some pictures from this adorable little Fall Festival we went to last month in Lincoln. There is a lady in the area who is super into preschool education, and runs a program called Parents as Teachers. She does a really great job putting together fun things for kids to do now and then. One of them is this Fall Festival. We went hoping to meet some fellow local parents (and have fun). We had lots of fun and met a few parents too. There was Halloween play dough, pumpkin decorating, snacks,fishing for apples, and a cool grain table that was basically like a sand box full of bird seed, and all different kinds of mini gourds. The kids had a blast digging through the grain with shovels and stuff. A really good time and a great service to the community!

Stories

Wow! It's been forever since I last posted, so I guess I'd better put something out there to keep people coming. So, here are a couple of stories about the girls...

Anna wrote her name for the first time all by herself yesterday. It amazes me how she seems to learn things in bursts. She's only really been interested in drawing circles and lines for a while. Then a couple of weeks ago, she started drawing As, and yesterday she wrote an M and was so proud of herself. I showed her how to make an N instead (which she knows is in her name), and before I knew it, she was writing her whole name! Can't believe how big she's getting!

Abby was eating her dinner tonight (yummy pureed sweet potatoes) when Anna walked by and said something that distracted be from spooning the goodness into sweet Abby's mouth. As I turned to answer Anna, I must have left the spoon just hanging there tantalizing the poor child. Unable to wait any longer, she reached up, grabbed the spoon and jammed it right into her mouth! Couldn't believe the coordination! I'm trying not to overlook these early times, but the more she learns the more I can't wait to see her grow. Soon enough I suppose.

I'm hoping to get some more house progress pics up soon. Things move kinda slowly out here (as you may have guessed).