Birthday Party

Rick came to my rescue once again—sometimes I feel a little dumb—I’ve deleted some of the website tiles from time to time but I never looked at the bottom of the screen where Rick told me to find the “restore all” button.  I clicked on this “restore all” button and most of my favorite websites appeared in the tiles again but some did not.  Some of the sites which did appear I haven’t visited in over a month—weird—and I never did get Yahoo to appear in one of the tiles.  Maybe Rick can now tell me how to make a website appear in one of those white tiles???  Seriously, thanks Rick—you keep me out of computer trouble all the time—I bet you can hardly wait until I switch to Windows 8???!!

I spent the day getting ready for a dinner party—my friend Jeane’s birthday was Thursday and I was having a party for her.  Jeane and Steve as well as Jill and Terry braved the awful roads from town and came up to enjoy dinner with us.  Delicious homemade lasagna, salad, and homemade bread.  For dessert I served fresh apple cake and homemade ice cream.  I think I now waddle when I walk!  It was fun to see our friends and we appreciate their driving up!!

I’m not sure what Michael and Emmi did today except take an early morning walk and keep the wood stove going.  It was not as cold today, I think we had a high of about 18 degrees but it snowed off and on all day, piling some more white stuff on top of what we all ready have.  As I type this the thermometer reads 6 degrees—BRRR!

A photo from our trip to Zion National Park in 2012—Jeane, the birthday girl, Jill in the middle and me.

Another one, Jeane on the left, me in the middle and Jill.

Google Problems Anyone

This is the first screen I see when opening my computer--

When I open another tab from this screen I get this:

The white tiles at the bottom of the screen are normally filled with websites I use often such as Facebook, our local news station and our local newspaper plus other sites such as this blog.  Websites come and go from those tiles depending on the frequency with which I visit those websites.  Well—there is a gremlin in my computer—the last few days, sites have been disappearing from those tiles with regularity!!  One morning I open up the computer and every tile is white—nothing—then the next morning I might have two of the files occupied.  Weird!!

And has anyone had issues with comments on their blogs—my comments are not appearing in Gmail any longer—sometimes not at all, sometimes after they are all ready posted to the blog.  And it seems the number of comments is down—am I just boring or is something going on with ole Google???

After lunch I headed to town for some errands—and was back in a couple hours.  Michael puttered the day away—when I got home he made some popcorn and proceeded to try and trounce me at cribbage.  He won the first game and I barely squeaked out a win in the second. 

A sunset walk netted us some gorgeous photos:

Sun going down over the mountains and the neighbor’s cows on the feed row. 

Emmi gets cold feet—the snow packs up in side the pads of her feet and she hobbles around three legged with a pathetic look on her face.  When it is really cold as in below 20 degrees, she wears the socks I made her.  When we went out this afternoon late, it was 21 degrees and I left off the socks but she still got cold feet making the cowboy feel sorry for her!

Doggy Quilt Finished

The doggy quilt is finished, binding is made and I will sew it on tomorrow.  I stitched in the ditch around all the borders, doggies and hydrants.  The dogs then have a small amount of decorative stitching on the heads and bodies.

For lunch I tried a new recipe—Chicken Marsala—I’ve made it in the past but not for a long time.  I Googled substitutions for marsala wine as I had none—seems there isn’t a good substitute for the distinctively sweet taste of marsala wine.  So, I wandered downstairs to the wine rack looking for something I thought might work—the first bottle I pulled out was a bottle of Muscadine Wine given to us by an Arkansas relative who shall remain nameless.  The first thing I noticed were the words, “semi-sweet.”  OK, this will work and by George, it did!  My Chicken Marsala was delicious and here is the recipe:

Chicken Marsala

2 to 4 boneless chicken breasts, pounded to about 3/8" thick

1/4 cup flour

1 1/2 TBS olive oil

1 1/2 TBS butter, unsalted

1/2 small onion halved and sliced thinly

1 clove garlic finely diced

3/4 pound mushrooms, sliced thin, any variety

1/2 cup Marsala wine

1 cup chicken stock

Parsley as garnish if desired

Pat the chicken dry, season with salt & pepper and dredge in the flour shaking off excess.

Heat the olive oil in a large heavy skillet on moderately high heat until it is shimmering. Add the chicken, browning on each side about 3 minutes, remove to a plate and keep warm.

Add butter to skillet, sauté onion, mushrooms and garlic, stirring occasionally until the juice from the mushrooms has evaporated. Add the Marsala and cook the mixture, stirring occasionally until the wine is almost evaporated. Add the chicken broth and chicken back into the skillet and cook for approximately 15 minutes, turning the chicken once. Remove the chicken from the skillet.

Simmer the remaining mushroom sauce until the liquid is reduced to about 1/2 cup. Spoon mushroom sauce around the chicken and sprinkle with parsley if desired.

Our morning temp--Our neighbors who are calving reported minus 30 this morning—those calves are going to come out as popsicles!!  It warmed up enough for us to take a walk this afternoon, a whopping 2 degrees above zero!!  I opted out of yoga this morning—just too cold to get out and about.

 

Happy Birthday dear Ms. Jeane—hope it was a good one!!!

Another Cold One

Well, the most interesting topic of conversation around here is the weather!

7am temp

2:30pm temp—our high for the day!  It is dang cold out there.  At least today there was no wind, Emmi and I went outside to play for just a short while this afternoon but it didn’t take us long to decide inside was a better place to be.

The mailman brought Michael the new feet for his leather sewing machine allowing him to finish up one of the VW seat cushions—my cowboy is a man of many talents!  The sewing machine is an older one and when we purchased it years ago it came with no extra feet—eBay to the rescue!

We both used that dreaded treadmill today and I even did some yoga.  After lunch I started and finished a small project for my friend and quilting buddy, Jane. 

There was a lot of talk around the New Year among quilters about finishing UFO’s—Paulette for one is working hard at eliminating her unfinished quilting projects.  I shouldn’t say this as I will probably jinx myself but I don’t have UFO’s—I have fabric and patterns I never made but I don’t have quilts I have started and never finished.  What I do have is a bunch of quilts I’ve made and never quilted—what is that old saying about the cobbler’s children not having shoes??? 

Well, this longarm quilter has a stack of her own quilts which need quilting!  The bunny quilt was a start and today I brought out another project—over three years ago I quilted a little “doggy” quilt for my Aunt Marg’s friend Marti back in Arkansas.  It had the cutest little black dogs and red fire hydrants.  Included in the box with that quilt was a wallhanging sized duplicate of the “doggy” quilt—sent to me as a gift by Aunt Marg and Marti.  It has languished in the “to be quilted” stack until today.  The two ladies also included some pieces of the backing fabric they used and I pieced those together getting just enough to make a backing. 

The cowboy also made another ironing table today—he’s such a good husband! Tonight our friends Jim and Kathy braved the frigid weather and came up for a spontaneous happy hour—we spent an enjoyable couple hours catching up.

And that’s it for our Wednesday in frigid Montana!

All Done

The bunny quilt is done—quilted, the binding sewn on, plus the eyes and noses are done.  I’m not totally thrilled with my little noses but for bunnies—they will do!

One of my quilting buddies, Mary, is teaching a bunny quilt class at our local quilt shop I think in March--all our finished bunny quilts are going to be displayed to draw interest for the class. 

Michael is feeling much better and spent the afternoon building an ironing board table for me to take to quilt retreats.  Back in the fall, I purchased two of the small folding tables, one for me and one for Jeane.  Well, either I didn’t communicate well or Michael has selective hearing but as he finished up the one table today he said, “glad to have that project done,” and I said, “oh, but you have one more to do for Jeane.”  He walked away muttering but I bet Jeane’s table gets built tomorrow!

Our high temp today was 0 degrees and right now it is minus 3 degrees—oh, and did I mention the wind is blowing???  We tried to take a walk with Emmi this morning but didn’t get far, the wind and cold temps just freeze your exposed skin—nasty!!

But, there is a loaf of banana bread in the oven, my house is clean and warm—we are all tucked in for the night. 

Thank You

Our hearts are filled with gratitude for all the many blogging friends we have who’ve left such comforting comments—it’s a blessing for which we are so grateful.

Global warming—not in Montana this year!  7 degrees with wind and snow as I type this blog.  We drove into town today having lunch with Lonn and the gang at Nat’s so he could be told about LoraLee’s passing.  The roads are miserable—snow packed and icy with blowing snow. 

Yesterday evening we were getting ready to go to a Super Bowl party at the home of friends Leslie and Ken.  When we stopped down at the shed to remove the chains from the truck tires, Michael slipped and fell, striking his head against the steel frame of the flatbed on our truck.  He has a laceration on his ear and behind his ear plus a really sore spot where his head hit the frame.  His wrists and shoulder are sore and achy—he must have caught himself as he was falling.  The cowboy has retired his cowboy boots until we get back to Arizona.

Shots I took as we drove over to Lonn and LoraLee’s on Saturday.

I think the cowboy is on dinner cooking duty again tonight—popcorn?? 

She’s Gone

Our dear daughter-in-law LoraLee died Sunday evening, losing her hard fought battle with cancer.  Lonn, Katie and Laci tenderly cared for her at home these last two weeks  and she died with them by her side.  Her suffering is finally over.

LoraLee was one of the strongest women I have even known—one of six children raised on a ranch in the Bears Paw Mountains in northern Montana—the last few years were tough on LoraLee and still she showed such strength.    She and Lonnie raised two beautiful, responsible children, Katie and Laci and LoraLee was so proud of her two son-in-laws, Michael and John. 

LoraLee was an excellent quilter and knitter turning out beautiful gifts for her family and friends.  No one ever went hungry at Lonn and LoraLee’s—she could put on a feed to say the least.  She rode horses well and loved her dogs. 

Her family was her life and we will miss her so much.  Rest in peace dear LoraLee.