Abby is one year old today….

Happy Birthday To You,
Happy Birthday To you,
Happy Birthday  precious Grandbebe,
Happy Birthday To You.....

You're my Honeybunch, Sugarplum
Pumpy-umpy-umpkin, You're my Sweetie Pie
You're my Cuppycake, Gumdrop,
Snoogums-Boogums, You're the Apple of my Eye

XOXOXO ~ Grammie

Linda Evans Mountain Retreat

Ladies, this is a must see.  Oh, what a magical place she lives in…. Her home is wonderful, it’s just absolutely amazing, what she has created…..

Here’s the link>>>

I’ve been a busy bee this week, Abby’s party is Saturday

• Abby’s gifts bought and wrapped – check
• Clothes pressed and ready to go – check
• Fresh batteries in the camera – check
• The M&M’s bathed with haircuts - check
• Aunt Em’s cupcakes baked – unchecked
• Lose ten pounds – unchecked

Hey, four out of six is pretty good….

Giggle of the day…

UCLA STUDY

    A study conducted by UCLA's Department of Psychiatry has
revealed that the kind of face a woman finds attractive on a man can
differ depending on where she is in her menstrual cycle.

    For example: If she is ovulating, she is attracted to a man with
rugged and masculine features. However, if she is menstruating or
menopausal, she tends to be more attracted to a man with duct tape over
his mouth and a spear lodged in his chest while he is on fire.    

    No further studies are expected.

Why Seniors Break their Hips

Carlene sent me this, you can’t help but laugh, but oh my, some of these people must have really hurt themselves.  This proves that you can’t really be a kid again…

Betty White’s biggest fan…

Hooterville sent me this clip.  How about that, all these years and I thought I was Betty’s biggest fan.  This is so darned cute, thanks for sending it Jean…

Harry Loves Lisa, is anybody else going to watch this???

 

Any of you remember Tuckerville with Tanya Tucker?  Oh, I loved every cheesy, redneck moment of it.  Then along came It's Complicated, Denise Richard's totally awful reality show.  Loved that one, too.  And my favorite of all was the short lived chasing Farrah, but c'mon, who wouldn't be fascinated by a glimpse into Farrah Fawcett's personal life. It was worth watching just to see her house and her clothes.

Now along comes Harry Loves Lisa, looks like another really bad one that I can't wait to see!

I don't even like reality shows, but I do enjoy glimpses into star's trashy lives.  I know, I know, I have no taste, none, nada.  But I do have a few friends, who shall remain nameless, that enjoys these shows as much as I do.  Bad girls, bad girls.........

Abby’s one year pictures…

Lindsay’s friend Lauren came to their house and took Abby’s one year pictures today.  Lindsay sent me a “tease.”  Just had to share. 

Is this little girl precious or what???  The boots, the vest, this is everything her Grammie loves in life!  This bebe has got it all goin’ on!!!!!

The pumpkin bread pudding is a WINNER!!!!

This was an absolutely killer dessert.  You would never know this was low calorie.  It’s a must try this fall, definitely a keeper recipe to make again and again. Veronica Jeanne, this has your name written all over it…

Less than two Weight Watcher points per ramekin, for you non-Weight Watcher people, this recipe is the same amount of points as a large apple or a banana!

Amazing, huh?  Details and tweaks on Jan CAN Cook.

What tea is in your pantry?

Here’s what I have:

• Lipton Green Tea with Citrus (thanks V for the heads up)
• Lipton Cranberry Pomegranite (excellent tea, this is in Deanna’s pantry as well)
• Celestial Seasonings Vanilla Chamomille
• Celestial Seasonings Raspberry Zinger
• Celestial Seasonings Wild Berry Zinger

And others, too numerous to mention. *blush* But these are the ones I’m enjoying the most this fall…

I found an interesting pumpkin bread pudding dessert for tonight...

This recipe was on the Splenda website.  It calls for french bread, but I'm going to substitute my favorite Nature's Own Whole Wheat and see how it turns out.

I'll let you know if it's a hit or a miss.

Pumpkin Bread Pudding>>>

A little Sunday nostalgia….

My Sundays are quiet now, and I don’t like it one bit!  I miss years gone by!!!  Sunday was always the day I spent in the kitchen, cooking for my family.  Big meals, soups, stews, homemade bread, great desserts, a lot of visits from mother, too, on Sunday.  And now it’s just me and the girls, hubby works the weekends, but that’s going to change soon, only five more weeks until he retires.

The boys laugh at me because there was a period of time when they were little that I made homemade pizzas on Sunday night.  Both of them argue with me now, saying that I just didn’t make all those pizzas, but trust me I did.  I made a lot of cookies, too.  One of their favorites was a molasses cookie, sprinkled with sugar.  It was a Silver Palate recipe, my cookbook of choice in the 80’s.  I need to dig out that recipe and post it on Jan CAN Cook.

I think that’s one of the hardest things about growing older, if you’re not lucky enough to have your family live close by, not being able to have them visit on Sunday. 

I still cook for LC, it’s just not the same though.  Healthy food is not nearly exciting as comfort food like fried chicken or pot roast.  Yummy pies and cakes aren’t around anymore, and I often wonder, is it really worth it?  Look at how much we sacrifice not being able to eat the things we used to.  Right now I would kill for a pumpkin cake or a batch of those molasses cookies.  Oh, those were the days.

Maybe I’ll make a pot of chili this afternoon, that’s pretty healthy, and it’s so cool here, only 50 degrees this morning.  And I’ll figure out some kind of pumpkin dessert that’s good for us.  I know, bor-ing.  No butter, no cream cheese, it will be a challenge…  I can always do the spice cake Weight Watcher recipe.  Do any of you make this?  It’s just a cake mix with a can of pumpkin stirred in and baked.  That’s all, don’t add anything to that cake mix, no oil or eggs or water, just stir in the pumpkin, put it in a Pam sprayed baking dish, I like an 8x12 instead of 9x13, makes a thicker cake, and bake it at 350 for about 35-45 minutes, don’t overbake.  It’s actually really good, you can do this with any cake mix, even chocolate, or a brownie mix - but spice is good for fall.  And no, you don’t taste the pumpkin in the other flavors.  It’s a challenge to stir, as the batter is really stiff, and it sounds strange to make, but it really works and makes a moist, yummy cake.

~ jan here, wallowing in her memories on a sunny fall Sunday morning…

Note:  Whoohoo, thanks to the internet, I Googled those molasses cookies, they popped up instantly.  Maybe you would like to make a batch for your family this Sunday afternoon.  Sometimes I didn’t have molasses, but I always had sorghum, so I would substitute, either way, they are just wonderful.  Of course they’re wonderful, they have 12 tablespoons of butter in them!!!

I just posted the recipe on Jan CAN Cook so we’ll always have it.  It’s a keeper, ladies, pinkie swear…

Enchanted April, it was just a superb movie….

Like a lot of you, and I love Netflix.  For $8.99 a month we have instant access to thousands of movies, we use that feature more than ordering the DVD’s.  When you consider that movie tickets in Heavensville are $9 on the weekend, no senior citizen discount, grrrrr,  by the time you go to the movie, buy drinks and a popcorn to share, you’ve spent $30.  That’s just crazy!  $30 to see a movie!!!  Unless it’s a must-see, I would rather just wait til’ it comes out on DVD and get it from Netflix.  Hooterville taught me a good trick, as soon as a movie you think you might like is in preproduction, go ahead and add it to the top of your Netflix Queue, that way when it’s released to DVD, you will be one of the first to get it and not have to be on a waiting list. 

We had problems last year when we first started watching instant Netflix movies, they were choppy, the movies would start and stop, but then we discovered Roku.  If you’re unfamiliar with Roku, it’s a box that you attach to your television like a DVD player, it’s easy to set up, you don’t have to hook your computer to your television anymore, and you have totally seamless, smooth running movies.  And the good news is that the prices are down.  You can now buy a HD Roku box for $59.99.  At the bottom of Roku’s website there is a link for a $20 off coupon for new Netflix customers. Wow, that’s really cheap, $39, we paid $100 for ours.  But it’s money well spent, a one time hit, and you can watch all your movies without annoying choppy, uneven streaming.  You can also get a free month’s subscription to Netflix from their website.  A great deal if you haven’t tried Netflix before. 

You might not even need a Roku box, maybe your ISP streams smoother than ours, or if you have a WI or Playstation you can also stream your movies through them.

Yesterday was a cool, cloudy day.  I was restless, decided to settle in with the dogs and watch a movie.  I was in the mood for something “different” and oh wow, did I hit pay dirt.  I watched Enchanted April, an English film, about women vacationing at a castle in Italy.  The acting was superb, the scenery was absolutely breathtaking, the gardens were gorgeous,  it was totally wonderful. 

I thought of Deanna when I watched it, she and John were in Italy this summer and she loved the gardens, she said the geraniums were huge, so large they didn’t look real.  They were the same in this movie, lush, gorgeous geraniums, beautiful vegetation, it was a treat just to see the countryside.

Those ladies did what we all should do on vacation, talk, eat, laugh, lie in the sun and rest.  This is a good one, ladies, not your usual samo-samo, so be open to going outside your box, you might enjoy it, too.

Here’s a link to the trailer and what IMBD has to say about it -

“This slow-paced gem is about the civilizing influence of Italy on beleaguered Londoners both male and female and has it's own civilizing influence on the viewer. It's almost like taking a little mini-trip to Italy, a gorgeously filmed enchantment.”