Here is a link to the actual video, ignore the subtitles, the song is in English.

Wishing I was at home, I’m missing cooking, and I have a lot of new recipes I want to try. I’ve watched lots of YouTube videos on making cheese, and that’s one of the things I want to experiment with. I told Harvey about my aspirations, and he just laughed and said he would get me some goats. Then I laughed and told him my kids would call me that “goat lady” cause that’s what we called people who showed goats. “We showed sheep!” Which probably made us “Those sheep people.” If you don’t know what I mean when I say “We showed sheep” here is a picture from “back in the day”

This is an over exposed picture, but its at Santa Barbara County Fair, one of our favorite places we exhibited at. From left to right Jonathan Hall, Eric Baro, Jennifer (Wonderly) Mebane, Steven Hall, and Melissa (Wonderly) Fachin. The Hall boys are my sons.

This is another favorite of mine. This is at Cow Palace in San Francisco, this is from left to right my daughters, Carissa (Hall) Plumley and Stephanie (Hall) Haynes. Carissa was Miss Bo Peep that year representing Wool Grower’s Auxilery aka “The Bo Peeps” of which I was a member. Stephanie was wearing a wool outfit and participating in Ladies and Lads Lead, which was a fashion show which included wearing a wool outfit and having your ewe dressed to coordinate. Such fun and such good memories.

Hugs,

Margaret

Choosing colors is the hard part, I seem to choose the same color palette every time, even though I try and start out with different colors.

The next one is a work in process. It was the first one I experimented with in this style. So here’s the challenge! Leave in the comments the scripture or favorite saying you would like to see in this art, and I will work on it.

And as you can see it’s not in the same color palette. A lot more vivid colors.

Hugs,

Margaret

This week The Apple Farm in San Luis Obispo, Ca, was running a contest on their Facebook page consisting of posting pictures of their gardens, which will be judged and the prize is Dinner for two at their fabulous restaurant. This is their posting:

In the spirit of our upcoming spring festival, Apple Blossom Days, we are looking for some your photos of our gardens! Post any spring Apple Farm photos that you may have and the top three (decided by our staff) will win dinner for two at the Apple Farm! You have until Monday, March 28th to post. We will announce the winners on Friday, April 1st!

So of course I remembered the pictures I took and wondered if I had anything I might enter:

And here is my entry! Because we are going back to Diablo Canyon in May and I am looking forward to that dinner for two!

I’ve been working on my family tree for the last month and I haven’t played in Photoshop very much. We bought the Family Tree Maker which comes with three months access to Ancestry.com and I am addicted, but then so is Harvey! That’s all we have done lately, last weekend we stayed up till 2am researching. You know on the commercial where they show that little leaf that tells you, “You have a history hint”? Well those little green leaves on all these ancestors’ names are driving me crazy! It becomes obsessive to get them all off my names. Thankfully my Mom and my aunt Mary have already documented a lot of our family, so that entails multiple calls to them to verify facts, which caused my Mom to use all her cell phone minutes last month.

So when I saw this contest I had to open up Photoshop and play! Today I have edited a few more pictures from that trip.

The Old Mill House

The water wheel!

And one more look at that flower! (Sorry I don’t know what it’s called.) I edited it a little more abstract and it’s a different angle,

I’m not sure if I don’t like it better!

Hugs, Margaret

 I already own a set of Homer Laughlin dishes in an off white color, the pattern is called Colonial. I was researching the dishes online and found out the factory wasn’t too far from where Harvey is working in Pennsylvania, and that they were the maker of Fiesta Ware. So I decided we needed to make a trip. Last weekend we went to Newell, West Virginia to the Homer Laughlin Factory and store to pick out new Fiesta ware dishes.

Do you remember Fiesta Ware? We had a set of Antique Gold dishes and I recall the pitcher and its unique shape. If I remember correctly, we bought them at the grocery store (Mayfair Market), where you would get the accessories at a special price like .79 cents and once you got hooked buying the accessories you would end up buying the whole set of dishes. A little research shows that they were made in that color from 1969-1972.

The product was discontinued in 1973 and reissued in 1986 with new contemporary colors to mark its 50th anniversary. This year they are celebrating their 75^th year of Fiesta Ware.

We programmed Homer Laughlin in the GPS and started out for a beautiful drive, about sixty miles from New Stanton, PA.

Many long brick buildings which have been there for many years.

This is the parking lot, which borders on the Ohio River, there were many buildings side by side that were identical.

The Broken Ware Garden was on both side of the entry.

As we walked in the door we entered the retail part of the store, where everything is new. We looked around and saw all the new colors.

Not sure what this color is but isn’t it gorgeous?

Now into the seconds room.

Wow! This was an experience! Since it was our first time there we had no idea what to do. But around us were people who you could tell were experts at the seconds. They had cloths and were sifting thru dishes polishing and looking for flaws. I pick up a few dishes and the only thing I can think of to get the dust off the dishes with was my sweatshirt, real professional looking Margaret! The other problem is the stacks of dishes, as you sort through them looking for the color you want you have to pile them in another pile and I was worrying about the pile getting to high and all the dishes tumbling into the floor.

I had an idea the color I was wanting before we arrived, so after sorting through dishes for half an hour we decided that this could be an all day process, so we made the decision to buy the 4 place settings new and buy the accompanying side dishes and platters in the seconds room.

The platter and the canister in the back is a Red color called Scarlet, although in this picture it is showing a pink color. The blue dishes are a color called Peacock. I love the idea of mixing the colors.

This picture is the four place setting, I had to take them out of the box and play when I got back to the room.

We are here in New Stanton for another week, then we are moving close to Beaver Valley while Harvey works at the Beaver Valley Nuclear Plant for two weeks. That is a lot closer to the factory, so I plan on making another trip, and loading up on more of the seconds. I will probably have to ship them home because our car is already loaded with dishes and a big composter in a box that we bought at Costco, so I don’t think I can stuff much more in there.

Hugs,

Margaret

This is my card to Harvey! The template is from Florabella Actions Facebook page the download is under Exclusive. I’ve changed it up a little bit by adding the word Love in the Outlaw font and Happy Valentine’s Day in the Fiolex Girls font from Dafont.com.

The picture was taken last week when we went to dinner with our friends Pat and Carole Kearns, who live here, outside Pittsburgh, PA where we have been for the last three weeks while Harvey is working in New Stanton,PA.

If you watch PBS you may be familiar with Lidia Bastianich, who has a cooking show that features Italian food. I happened to go to her web page and saw that she had a restaurant in Pittsburgh. So we made arrangements to go with Pat and Carole. It is located in the Market District of Downtown Pittsburgh.

The fish market is right across the street from her restaurant.

I couldn’t resist taking this picture of the fish made out of lights!

The dining room, and I loved this huge chandelier made out of glass globes, it looks like a giant bunch of grapes.

This was the appetizer course. We asked the waiter all about this dish because it was delicious! It’s fried cheese with a potato and ground pork filling between another layer of fried cheese, called Frico di Montasio or Montasio Cheese Crisp.

Carole and I ordered Lidia’s Pasta Trio, which were three different kinds of pasta. I can’t tell you what the names of these pastas were, but the white colored one was my favorite! It was a potato and leek ravioli in a butter sauce.

Served tableside and refills of your favorites!

Pat had Zuppa di Pesce, a traditional Seafood Soup with Shrimps, Scallops, Mussels, Calamari, Fish Fillets and Octopus.

This is Harvey’s dinner! Bistecca 20-ounce Bone-in Ribeye Steak with a Rosemary Sea Salt Rub, Fried Potatoes, Herb Roasted Tomatoes.

When we finished with our dinners, Dessert! I was so busy enjoying all the wonderful flavors that I forgot to take a picture of the Tirramusu, but it was wonderful! The whole dinner was a great experience! Lidia has a restaurant in Kansas City and guess who is planning their birthday dinner there in July?

Me!

Hugs,

Margaret

I thought I would share with you my favorite dip! Caramelized Onion Dip, this is not your instant soup mix dip, the flavor is so much more intense and it is so easy to make.

See all that caramelized onion bit goodness!

Hope you enjoy the game this Sunday!

Hugs, Margaret

Yesterday I promised you another freebie! It’s a little later in the day, but we have been having internet problems here at the motel. I imagine it’s because of the rain which does weird things to the internet satellite. But here it is!

This Valentine Subway art is made up of all your favorite words associated with Valentine’s Day! When you download this it will not have the black frame on it, I thought it would look great put in a black frame so I wanted to let you picture it that way.

This picture is an original art piece, starting with making the background paper adding the shaded art and adding the words in many different fonts.

I have been thinking of making an original art picture for wedding couples, using a similar format but in color of their choice and including a picture of the couple. Don’t you think this would make an original gift to give to the new couple? If you are interested you can contact me and I will be delighted to work on your project.

Enough babbling! To download this picture click on the picture itself and it will take you to BOX.NET where you can download it. The reason I am using this format is so you can get the picture in the highest possible quality. Today it is not in a zip format. It’s in JPEG so all you have to do is download and you can send it to Costco or Sam’s club and print out in whatever size you want.

Please leave a comment if you download so I know if anyone is downloading. Also if you click subscribe in the right hand side column my blog will be delivered to you in an email.

Thanks so much to you who read my blog!

Hugs, Margaret

Tomorrow is the first day of February so we are 15 days away from Valentine’s Day. This is a good opportunity for me to give you my friends a gift! Actually I have two gifts planned, one today and one tomorrow, and did I mention free!

I’m updating my blog so if the background and header look funny, it’s because I have changed formats to a wider photo friendly size. When I get finished the pictures will be able to display larger so you can see more details.

I’m also trying out this format for being able to download my gifts. I’m using BOX and all you have to do is go to this link and download to your computer. It is in a zip file so right click and extract. This is all new to me so if this doesn’t work well, please leave comments so I can work out all the kinks before I open my Etsy store.

Don’t forget to check back tomorrow for your second free gift!

Hugs

Margaret

This picture is of a Mail Pouch Barn in Ruffsdale, Pa, you may remember the picture I posted during the summer of the same barn?

We took a drive today, and decided to take a picture of the barn in the winter with snow.

We have been in New Stanton, PA for the past week, it has snowed every day we’ve been here and has been fairly cold so I haven’t been out taking many pictures.

I noticed this tree yesterday outside the motel and wanted to take a picture of the ice hanging on the berries.

Nature is so beautiful! The snow on the mountains around Pennsylvania reminds me of a Grandma Moses painting.

I’ll leave you with one more of the Mail Pouch Barn. It is one taken from the road and if you look to the left of the picture you see the farmer and his horse and there was a goat out there with them.

While I’m here in Pennsylvania, I have lots of time to work on Photoshop Elements9 which I got just before Christmas and have been learning all the new features. I’ve been learning how to make digital scrapbook pages and digital cards.

I’m still in the process of opening the Etsy store and developing ideas for it. I will try and post some valentine art I’ve made in the next few days.

Hugs,

Margaret