Friday Morning Coffee

from Coffee Talk by Beckie Wallace

Another Friday and another week is done! So far I’m doing well at disciplining and time managing in my online classes. I’m taking the free class offered by the State of Ohio for assessing and prepping for distance learning. I just finished up the chapter on time management.

To be true I an so dedicated to the importance of good time management and always have been. This all started in first grade. Imagine, 6 years old and worried about the consequences of not meeting a deadline! Oh, it started as me sneaking out when I was supposed to be getting my coat from the hall hanger and running out to be first on the bus because I was afraid to miss it. I remember one time I realized half way across the snowy parking lot that I forgot something and came back with wet boots. Sister Ann made me wipe up the floor as I whined “But I’ll miss my bus!”

Truth is I had plenty of time to not miss the bus and in retrospect, Sister Ann KNEW I was skipping out to run to the bus before I was excused. I must have appeared to be a young basket case. But in first grade, we still had a boy who was deathly afraid to speak out loud in class and a girl who occasionally wet herself in class, so I guess my psychosis was minor. After I didn’t miss the bus for cleaning the floor, I quit running out before I was excused to catch it too. Have I said before how much I idolized that woman? 36 years later I still list her as one of the first major influences in my life after my parents and she still amazes me with what she added to who I’ve become.

But that was truly a lesson in trust and time management. I had to learn to trust that the people scheduling these things were not setting them up for students to fail and that I had plenty of time to meet my goal, in this case, catching the bus. I became very good at budgeting time to get assignments done. I was throughout all of my schooling rarely the one cramming to finish the project the night before and was successful. That naturally spilled into my professional work habits and that is great for making less negative stress on the job. It’s all good!


Very Cool Opp!

If you’re a scrapper and you haven’t been over to Darlene’s blog this week, make a point of it! Now, I’m very open about being a big time Darlene Haughin fan, often referring to my CT job as a dream CT Spot. Darlene does a blog freebie every Wednesday and this week, the freebie is a contest. She's giving away a full kit of your choice to random winners from the comments. There will be one winner for every five comments, so no matter what, you have a one in five chance of winning a full kit! Head on over to her blog and see the details and by all means check out all of her wonderful designs and put your hat in the comments for a chance to win!

See Darlene’s blog for more details - http://darlenedesigns.blogspot.com




A Little Rhetorical Rant

Maybe I’m showing my age with being a Weather Channel regular, but I’ve done a lot of work outside with electric in my professional and personal life, so the radar has always been essential.

What’s with the music when they go back into the studio? I totally get it for the local forecast, where you’re only seeing graphics and the voice over is not at all conversational, but when they go back into the studio there’s dramatic music that is mixed too loud for the people talking. It’s produced poorly and it deters from the message. You don’t hear music under the news while they are reporting. Music under the dialog is for dramatic effect at prime time. When there is music under the top story, today a tornado in Missouri, it says “fiction.” Add to the fact that the music is too loud so you have a harder time understanding the anchor anyway. Yeesh!


Yummy Morning!

Skinny and The City had a recipe for fruit salad today. They talked about how high in fiber berries are and that they’re in season. I have a container of watermelon I cut up, some raspberries and black berries in the fridge. I’m disappointed with the blackberries. They were on sale and I thought about getting two containers. I’m glad I didn't. They are sour with little blackberry flavor. The melon and raspberries are good though! I had a salad of those three and banana with cherry pomegranate yogurt yesterday for breakfast. YUM! I’m going to try cutting up the blackberries and using the juices in the recipe to sweeten them up a bit. Then I’ll add the nuts and coconut to make the salad after I get some blueberries. It ought to be good!

Around The Horn

For Me? More???



I am flattered to be a 3-time recipient of the “I Heart Your Blog” award! Karyn from “The Life and Times of Karyn” and also a cast-mate on the scrapping reality show at SAS presented me with the award last week. I’ve been kinda consumed with the designing myself, then the promoting of my “sisters in stress,” so my manners slipped a little. I am grateful for the recognition! :)



Nani-Music


Okay, the iPod has been up for a while now. What say you, readers? Do you like it?

I made it a point to put it up high on the side bar so it’s an OPTION. If you click the play button at the bottom of the middle circle, it turns off. If I’m checking my own page and I’m listening to music on the iTunes, I use that button to turn it off as soon as the page loads. I hate blogs that have music that you either can’t turn off or the controls are at the bottom of a very long page.

My musical taste is pretty mainstream, but the variety of that taste is a bit eclectic. Where else can you go to hear Keith Urban, 112 and Glenn Miller? If you were here when “Letters From Home” was the current kit in the SAS contest, you probably noticed that you heard Letters first every time you visited. It’s in the rotation now and the iPod is again on random. When I was still trying to create a kit for week three, “Little Brown Jug” was in the rotation. It’s not there now because I “scrapped” the idea of using that kit name and there are Glenn Miller songs I like lot better.

It’s just a constantly evolving variety of songs that I’ve named scrapbook kits after and songs I just like. I’ve tried to stick to the most middle of the road songs in hopes that the selections aren’t offensive. I like a lot of Metallica and Iron Maiden too, but I don’t think you’ll hear them on my “Public iPod.”

I haven’t heard any negative comments about it thus far and I really like the ability to “set the mood” when I launch a new kit. So, I think Nani-Music is staying.

I promise to always have the iPod up high enough in the right column to turn off if you choose. This one’s for David, I also promise - no Iron Maiden!



Nani’s Grand Slam Breakfast!


Okay, the story here is one of the last zucchini a week and a half later, 2 grand slams in one game and an antique recipe book.

Nani, ‘SPLAIN!!

Hehe... Okay, the above breakfast loaf is homemade zucchini bread! Remember that last trip to the farmer’s market with Dad...in the rain? He loaded me up bags of several of my favorites. I had green beans and roma tomatoes and a beautiful cabbage and a bag of huge zucchinis, green and yellow ones, as part of that care package. I have been loving all the fresh veggie dishes and a couple batches of vegetable stew! I’ll have the last of that stew tomorrow for lunch. The good and bad about the veggie stew is that David doesn’t like it. That’s good because I get all the vitamins, antioxidants and wonderful lo-cal flavor all for myself! But not so good, because I like to cook FOR people and I especially like to cook for David things he likes. But on some things, if I don’t just go ahead and make them and enjoy them alone, I don't get them at all. So I have my homemade vegetable soup for lunches and when he has steak. Works fine for us!

Back to the zucchini... I used zucchini in my stew, made seasoned steamed zucchini as a side, had the pancakes again, (golly those are so good!) and I even broke down one night and made breaded and fried zucchini medallions for us. There was one yellow one left earlier this week that was getting brown splotchies on it! Now, brown splotchies on the outside doesn’t mean dead yet, but it does mean use it quick and preferably in a recipe where it doesn’t have to look good!

Answer?

Zucchini bread! But I don’t have a good zucchini bread recipe! I started looking through my collection of cookbooks.

Now, remember that I chewed home run gum balls and ate BB Bats as a kid because they had baseball stuff on them. As a grownup I...well, I haven’t changed! I order Baseball Nut ice cream at Baskin Robbins or buy Toft's Bullpen Chocolate or Strawberry Strikeout at the store. If I can find the Hostess Baseballs, I buy them. Pretty much, if they make it look baseball-flavored, I’ll still pick that one.

In my kitchen collection I have a fund raiser cookbook from 1974. “Tigers’ Favorite Recipes,” the favorite recipes of the Detroit Tigers as cooked by the Tiger wives.

Among Jim Northrup’s accomplishments in his playing days, was hitting two grand slams in one game in 1968. He hit them in consecutive innings in a 14-3 slaughter of the Cleveland Indians. As I was flipping through the pages of the book, that if it weren’t a baseball cookbook, I’d have just checked the index, but now I was reading every page, I came across the Jim Northrup page and his wife’s recipe for Pumpkin Bread. I assessed what I knew I had in the house and what substitutions and changes I could make to turn it into zucchini bread and was on my way!

The result, a successful “recipelift!” I finished the recipe off with a light sweep of a simple butter cream frosting. It is so tasty and moist like you wouldn’t believe! David’s not into sweet breads either, so half of that loaf is in the freezer already because I want to discipline myself. I don't want a celebration of "two grand slams in one game" to become “two grand flabs in weight gain!”



Perfect, just perfect!


I just love Beckie Wallace’s design work! Back in June, when I was a guest on her Creative Team, I found her kits were just so in tune with me and the things I scrap. You have to see her blog! She has a new elements pack in her store that is just SO Nani!

Coffee Talk is a set of 8 coffee mugs and a coffee ring for the table. Seven of the mugs are cool word art with one blank mug to “paint yourself!” Just too cool! (And now the very TOP of my Christmas list! LOL) I’m sending you to Beckie’s blog rather than right to her store, because she has a free sample with the link to "Coffee Talk.” The sample freebie was the OMG moment for me. Just a couple weeks ago, it was a coolish afternoon railfanning and I was ready for a cup of pumpkin spice coffee. David jokes about my pumpkin obsession and said “it’s that time of year again.” I told him that pumpkin spice coffee was the sign that fall is here.” And the sample mug? Well, let’s say it fits PERFECTLY with that discussion!

Go to Beckie’s blog, check out “Coffee Talk” and if you haven’t tried Pumpkin Spice coffee yet, put it on your “must try” list!!

FREE COFFEE form Beckie Wallace Designs