Hot Chocolate Chip Cookies

My daughter came up this past weekend and wanted to make some cookies from a recipe she had gotten from a friend.  The following site is where the recipe came from.  These are a very rich cookie but the taste is fabulous.  With visiting family this past weekend, these cookies were gone in no time!  My husband really liked the cookies so I made another batch yesterday and they are almost gone.  They get their chocolate flavoring from hot chocolate and they have 3 kinds of chips…….white chips, semi-sweet chips and milk chocolate chips.  The recipe also calls for two cubes of butter.  Now you know why they are so rich.  These cookies are worse than potato chips…you definitely can’t eat just one.  Give them a try and enjoy chocolate bliss!

Falls Creek and Family

This past weekend, I made another trip to Falls Creek.  This time I made the trip with my family……my husband, my two daughters, my son-in-law, and my grandson.  Only myself and one of my daughters have been there before so it was something new for the rest of the family.  No matter how many trips I make to Falls Creek, I am never disappointed.  As usual, the Falls were beautiful.  The water was quite low, but beautiful.  It takes a bit of time to drive there but well worth the drive.  The 1-mile walk to the Falls is refreshing.  Since I’ve already posted about the Falls on two previous blogs, I won’t write much……………I’ll just share some of my happiness.

Three Bull Moose

You’re not going to believe what I went through to get these pictures this morning.  Early this morning, at 6 a.m., my husband woke me to tell me we had a large moose on our lawn.  I jumped (that’s an exaggeration…I can’t jump….who am I kidding) out of bed and grabbed my camera.  First off, it was too dark outside, there were reflections from the windows, took a few pictures and my camera battery went dead, ran out of disk space and was running all around the house trying to find another disk, and as I opened the blinds slowly on another side of the house to get a picture, there were three cars traveling up the road and I was there……standing in my underwear!  Oh well, anything for a good photo, right?!  But after all that, I did get a good photo, or two and I was also able to get some video footage so I guess all wasn’t lost.  There were actually three of them….one on the yard and two more just over the fence and they were all bulls.  One was quite small but the other two were huge……ExCiTeMeNt!  By this time, I think I may have been jumping – Ha!

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Weavesilk/Spirograph

Our local telephone company sent out a news letter today that had the following site on it where you can make amazing art for backdrops, cards, handouts, etc.  I made four pictures just to show what you can do and it took me under 2 minutes to make all four pictures.  No two pictures will ever look the same. 

When you first pull the site up, you need to click on “draw something” on the lower center of the page.  On the left-hand side of the page, click on the “blue dot”…..this is the controls button where you can change colors and effects.  If you want to start a new creation, you just push your space bar on your computer keyboard.  I just started playing with this and I am excited to get into it, try some new things, and see what this program can really do.  It reminds me of the old Spirograph, drawing toy we used to play as children.  Fun!

Falls Creek Trip

On June 28th, a group of people (R.S. group and children) went for a walk to Falls Creek.  I say walk because that’s all it is.  Once you get to the place you park your vehicles, it’s less than a mile walk to get to the falls.  We also made this trip last year and it was just as beautiful this year.  If it didn’t take so long to drive there (approx. 45 minutes and a lot of dirt road), I’d probably make this trip quite regular.  There is also a large deck with benches by the falls so we brought our lunch and made day of it.  You can also go below the deck and sit on some rocks or fallen trees and enjoy your lunch by the falls.  You can also take a small hike/climb to get above the falls where there are other small falls.  Pretty, pretty place.

 

 

 

Hummingbird Feed Fire – Life Lesson # ???

Life lesson #……………well, I can’t give you a number because I definitely have made a bazillion mistakes in my life.  But, on this lesson, I learned that you do not leave humming bird feed or anything else cooking on the stove unattended (without setting a timer to remind me I have something cooking). 

As I looked out my window this morning, I noticed that one of my hummer feeders was out of liquid so I decided that now was as good a time as any to make more.  I went in the kitchen and measured out water and sugar, put it in a pan and put it on the stove to boil so it would dissolve the sugar.  I thought while that comes to a boil, I will just go in and check my e-mail. W-E-L-L-L-L-L, I kind of forgot about the stove and ………………….! 

I was on the computer when I heard the fire alarm in the living room go off.  My first thought was – oops, need a new battery.  As I proceeded to head that way, I saw that the house was full of smoke.  Weird that there wasn’t any smoke in the room I was in.  I rushed to the kitchen to see that the pan and the stove was on fire….literally.  Flames were pretty high at this point but I miraculously stayed calmed through the entire experience.  I put the burning pan in the sink, but knew that water was not the thing to use so I went to the cupboard to get baking soda.  I poured baking soda on the stove then turned around and realized that the pan was still on fire so I doused it with baking soda, too.  By this time, my eyes were really burning and both fire alarms in our home were ear piercing so I got a rag and fanned the alarms to get them to stop their siren noise.  I opened all the windows in the house, turned on fans, and blew the smoke out of the house.  Our house now smells like a mixture of burnt sugar and yuk.

I took a picture of the stove and pan but failed to get a picture of the fire……………..guess I had other things on my mind.  I also took a picture of our hazy living room.

I can absolutely say, without a doubt, that this was a lesson well learned!  Also, smoke alarms are definitely worth their weight in gold.

I’m not taking this experience lightly because I know how serious the situation could have been but I saw this quote on Pinterest and decided to make a small card about it. 

It’s good to see humor in all things, if possible…….I know it sure helps me in my life, along with someone else who know my every move.  I feel that sometimes my Heavenly Father looks on me, while shaking his head and says…”Marsha, Marsha, Marsha”!

All Natural Weed Killer – It Works!

I came across an all natural weed killer on the internet and had written it down in a notebook some time ago.  Yesterday, I remembered writing down this solution and decided to give it a try.  It worked AMAZING!  I wanted to share it with others so today I went outside and took some before pictures then one hour later, I took other pictures of the same weeds.  It’s hard to believe that this stuff works so well but as a caution, it will also kill any other weeds or plants you get it on so you need to be very careful when spraying .  Here are the before and after pictures after 1 hour of spraying.

 

 

 

Following are just a few more thistles that I also sprayed an hour earlier.  We placed straw around all of our tomato and zucchini plants trying to keep the weeds down but it didn’t seem to detour the thistle, much.  Until now……mwah-ha-ha-ha.

 

I hope I haven’t lead you astray and that this stuff is really not a super, fertilizing agent and that I don’t wake up in the morning to 5 foot tall weeds and thistle growing around our yard.

A few years back, I bought a Flo-Master hand sprayer and I Love It.  It holds up to 2.5 pints of liquid.  All you do is pump the green lever on the top to build up some pressure and then push down on the green thumb pad to spray your solution.  You can lock down the thumb pad by pushing on the black button on top of the thumb pad and pushing it again to release the lock.  You can also adjust your flow of liquid from a stream to a spraying position by turning the end nozzle.  Works great for me.

You can purchase one of these sprayers on line at www.atgstores.com.  After going to the site, go to Tools – Lawn & Garden – Sprayers…and then arrow down just a bit to find the sprayer.  You can get it for a total of $12.27 (that includes free shipping), which is cheaper than the price I found on Amazon or Wal-Mart.  I have personally never used this company but I was just searching for a good price on this sprayer and this site came up.

*****I just went outside (3 1/2 hours later) to check on the weeds and thistle and at this point, they are more dead than the after pictures I took previously.  The thistles are totally black – yeah!

High School Friends Visit – Part 2…Continued…Mackay Earthquake

After leaving Bayhorse Ghost Town & Custer Ghost Town, we started making our way back home.  We decided to go visit the sight where the Mackay Earthquake (7.3 on the moment magnitude scale and 6.9 on the Richter scale) took place.  The earthquake took place on October 28, 1983, shortly after 8 a.m.  Not too long after that, I visited the sight but I haven’t been there since.  The place where we took the following photos has changed quite a bit since seeing it for my first time.  They now have a nice road where you can drive right up to the place that shows the fault line and what happened to the land that day.  The also have a small, fenced in place with several plaques that describe the events that took place.

At the sight, there were lots of these leaf-less, small pink flowers blooming all around.  They were so pretty and I thought they would be pretty growing around my yard.  When I got home, I found them on the internet and as far as I can tell, they are called Bitterroot, the state flower of Montana.

Now, it was homeward bound.  As we were driving along, we notice a huge cloud of smoke down the valley.  I stated that it looked like it was in the Mackay area.  When we got closer, my suspicions were confirmed.  We were told that it came from a controlled burn that had flared up.

The time had finally arrived and it was time for my friends to head back to their homes in Utah.  I will miss my friends as we always enjoy our time together.  The following is the last picture that was taken.  Well, I shouldn’t say last picture because it took us many photos to get one that was semi-good enough to post.  My friend (in pink) would set the timer on her camera then race to where we (my other friend and I) were standing and get in the frame before the photo was taken.  In all the pictures but this one, my friend setting the camera had her eyes shut.  In this one, all eyes were open but there was some serious laughing going on and for that, I can’t tell you the reason……too funny!