You may have heard that my husband is a musician. He’s been playing music all his life and loving it.
He was in a band when he was younger that made an album and now we get to announce the release of a long awaited 2nd recording!
Bob Ryan does all the song writing and Terry adds instruments to the arrangements. They’ve played at local venues as well as at the Tucson Folk Festival and Sunnyslope Art Walk. They’re anxious to share their love of music with everyone.
If you’re thinking of making Quiche for an Easter Brunch, here’s an easy recipe that I’ve been using for decades. The secret to keeping your quiche from coming out soupy or runny is to toss the grated cheese in a little bit of flour before baking (see recipe).
I also love the fact that you can use a variety of cheeses and a variety of fillings. I’ve used Swiss, Monterey Jack, Mozzarella, Cheddar – most any semi-soft cheese. For fillings I’ve used ham, bacon, broccoli, crab and more. Just choose your favorites.
This link also takes you to a couple of other tasty brunch recipes.
Hope you have a wonderful day celebrating our risen Lord with family and friends.
I wanted to share with you that I had the chance to do a guest post yesterday on Lemon and Raspberry’s New Year’s Day Blog Party! What a fun way to start 2013 and so much available in one day.
Amy always provides lots of information and motivation for all kinds of business and personal projects throughout the year and this is the way she kicks it off.
You’ll find tips and inspiration about Memory Keeping, Blogging, Photography, Travel, Marketing and just general creativity and productivity. She also provides creative prompts for journaling the details of your life.
My post is called Memory Keeping with a Purpose. If you have a few minutes stop by and say hi to Amy, check it out and tell her that I sent you. She’s running a free mini online workshop and several giveaways as part of the New Year’s Blog Party, so sign up to participate or for a chance to win one of the prizes.
O.k., here goes! Journal your Christmas 2012 has begun. Attempting to do a blog post each day in the month of December. Already resigning myself to the fact that it won’t happen every day, but maybe I can post a photo and a caption at least to document the day. Then later I’ll put it into a Blurb book like my clever daughter did last year. Although she was doing a different project, called December Daily. At times I’ll be focusing more on documenting traditions, holiday activities, etc. with Shimelle and her gang at Journal Your Christmas. I’d love to have you join me.
For those of you who are scrappers I thought I’d pass along this info about a new eBook that my daughter, Amy contributed to. It’s all about ideas for a scrapbooking/memory keeping system called Project Life.
And here’s a link to the new eBook that was just released. It’s called Project Dig Deep. Amy’s offering a discount, as well as a drawing for a free copy of the eBook. But hurry, it won’t last long.
She’s the one in the top left corner. So proud of her!
Do you enjoy memory keeping or scrapbooking? If so, you might enjoy Amy’s blog, LemonandRaspberry.com.
Thanks so much for stopping by. In case you haven’t heard, I started a new blog and soon will have some other snazzy additions as well. I’ll still be posting here periodically, but I’d love to have you come over and visit me at TravelingwithPurpose.com and tell your friends, too.
I’m sharing regularly over there on these topics and even more.
Learning for Fun while Traveling
Service-oriented and Volunteer Travel
Money-saving Mondays
Travel-related Gift Ideas (just in time for the holidays)
Travel Inspiration – Photos and Quotes
Travel Gear Reviews
Travel-related contests, giveaways, etc.
Please sign up for my newsletter there, so you won’t miss a thing. I hope to see you soon!
Well, you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been posting here much lately. I’m sorry to neglect this blog, but I’m happy to announce that I’m launching a new blog focused on Traveling with Purpose!
I will still be posting here occasionally, but for the near future my focus will be on getting the new blog going and building a community there. I would appreciate so much if you would help me in any or all of the following ways:
Visit the new website and share it with your friends who love to travel
Sign up on the site to receive blog updates and/or the TWP newsletter
If you are aware of any great organizations that offer either service-oriented or short-term educational travel, please let me know so I can contact them and share about them on the blog.
If you have suggestions or ideas for the site drop me a line as well.
I look forward to staying in touch both here and at TravelingwithPurpose.com.
Just for fun, here’s one of my favorite pictures from a recent trip to my hometown of Vermilion, Ohio. This is the view from the pier just a short walk from where we stayed in the neighborhood of Mitiwanga. It’s filled with “beach cottages” of all shapes and sizes. So quaint and nostalgic. I love being there. (click the photo to enlarge and see my sister on the steps)
And below is the cottage that we rented for an impromptu family reunion. We took the trip with my 88-year-old mother who wanted to go back one more time to visit our extended family (mostly from my dad’s side). We had aunts, uncles, cousins, 2nd and 3rd cousins and friends all drop in for open house gatherings. I’ll bet we had nearly 50 people there on a single day. What a blast it was!
Thanks for stopping by and for visiting my new blog and helping me get the word out. I appreciate you so much!
While on a recent trip to Vermilion, Ohio I stumbled upon a quaint little shop that stole my heart. Something about the warm wooden furniture and the subtle colors of the plaid woolens at The Chairmaker and Friends made me feel right at home.
The owner, Garrett Aston creates amazing hand crafted Windsor chairs, tables and other finely detailed furniture and accessories. The kind of pieces that stop you in your tracks and make you want to run your fingers across their glass-like surfaces. The quality and beauty of his works of art make my heart ache with appreciation.
Wouldn’t you just love to have this cubby cabinet? I can think of a million things that I could use it for.
Katie Allman also offers a variety of reasonably priced rug hooking classes at the store. They keep a stock of gorgeous woolens that can be purchased for the classes or other uses.
On the way back through the store I spotted these adorable patchwork cats. Since we recently said goodbye to our favorite cat, I decided I could “adopt” one of these for our home. The navy one now greets us when we walk in the family room.
Take a look at this wood working shop. A carpenter’s dream, I’d say. I love the smell of sawdust in a place like this. It reminds me that furniture is being lovingly created one unique piece at a time. Garrett also mentions that he holds wood-working classes. How cool would that be! He also offers refinishing and various types of furniture repair and restoration for your cherished heirlooms. I only wish I lived closer to this shop. It’s 2000 miles away from my home, so I won’t be able to get there very often. If you live in northern Ohio I hope you take advantage of your proximity to this wonderful shop and maybe take a class or two. It’s a gem!
You may remember when I posted about the upcycled gift bag that I made for a baby shower gift recently. It was actually a design that could be used for most any gift and this one is much the same.
My friend, Sharon loves all things coastal, but isn’t really keen on the traditional blue and green color schemes, so for her birthday I decided to make a sailboat gift bag with some non-traditional colors.
Once again, I pulled out one of my large bags. This time a traditional brown bag. I dug through my scrapbook papers and found some lovely plaid, starburst and print papers.
Initially I did a Google search for images of a sailboat line drawing that I thought I could trace. After looking them over, I couldn’t find what I had in mind so I just looked at a drawing for ideas and created the pieces from scratch. They’re all pretty basic shapes, so it was easy.
Just for fun I printed the name of the ship on the orange plaid paper that would be used for the hull and the mast.
I added cute brass star-shaped brads to the pennant shaped flags at the top of the mast.
And check out the words on this fun paper that I used for the waves. Rusty orange print to coordinate with the other papers, and words like surf, wave, tide and cool!
And here’s the finished product – full view of the bag. Added an orange plaid tag and bright yellow tissue paper to complete the look.
What do you think? Can you give me ideas for other gift bag designs? I may just make your suggested creation.
On July 23rd I had the extreme privilege of attending a James Taylor concert at Red Rocks Amphitheatre just outside of Denver, Colorado. If you’ve never been there, you should make plans to go. There’s just something magical about listening to music outdoors, especially on a cool Colorado summer evening.
James Taylor just happens to be the ONLY musician that I like enough to sign up for his mailing list. He’s so amazing! You know, its not that he’s an outstanding vocalist or flashy instrumentalist (although he sure knows how to put a band together), but his songs come straight from the heart and he’s authentic. Every time I’ve gone to one of his concerts, I feel like I’m sitting in the living room sharing good music with friends. And since my husband is a musician, I really know what that feels like. It’s pure joy!
So, several months ago when I got an email saying that he (James, not my husband) was going on tour and would be playing in Denver, I talked my husband into getting tickets for my birthday (which happens to be in July). Our son lives in Boulder and we knew we’d be going to visit him sometime, so we planned to be there for the concert too…AND since I’m on JT’s mailing list, we were able to get tickets before they went on sale to the public, so we were in row 14! The photo above is from near the top of the amphitheatre. That’s a long way up!
This is the walkway that leads to the seating area. It’s a bit of a hike, but not too bad.
The pics below show our location in relation to the top and to the stage. It was a perfect spot!
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to take in my camera, but we did have Kevin’s pocket camera to take these pics. He and his date, Hattie went with us too.
Despite the fact that it looked stormy that night and was a bit blustery, we didn’t have any rain (like they apparently did the following night) and the concert was only affected by wind sometimes blowing through the microphones. Oh, and one of the roadies had to sit next to the drum set to make sure the cymbals didn’t get blown over. (you’ll see that in the video below)
James and his band performed amazingly well considering the distraction from the wind (and potential storm). I did notice though that he’s reminding me more and more of my dad. You see, he’s tall and thin and built like my dad and he’s bald like my dad and this time when JT was “dancing”, with his somewhat awkward moves that make him so endearing, I could totally see my dad. I LOVED it! So he’s not only a wonderful performer, but also a fond reminder of my dad, who passed away over 30 years ago.
Just to give you a little taste of what it was like at the concert I recorded one of my favorite songs, “Sun on the Moon” with Kevin’s little camera. The lighting is way too hot on JT and my hand is a bit shaky, but I love the rhythm, arrangement and the harmonies in this song. And check out the cheers when JT starts “dancing”. Gotta love this guy for his down to earth performances. Nothing flashy or overly choreographed here.
The last pic here is the band taking their bows. It’s hard to tell, but it really is James Taylor and his band.
Funny thing too, we found out later that another couple we know from Phoenix was at the same concert. Only we didn’t find out until after we got home. It was a spectacular night and makes me smile just thinking about it. Wish you could have been there with us!
