Category: gratitude

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Gracious Rain Blogiversary!

blogiversary

Now, I figure this is an event worth celebrating–wouldn’t you say? Maintaining a daily blog for one whole year has been a pretty wild experience–and very, very good for my brain. So, since this is my cute little blog and I like to think I’m queen of the whole world–we are going to have a celebration…my kind of celebration.

To thank you all for your kindness and comments, I’d just love to invite you over to my house for cake and ice cream, but alas, I’m quite certain we’d have so much fun and make so much noise that somebody’d get arrested…likely me. So I propose an alternative to anyone doing time on my account. Here it is:

Answer the questions: What has been your favorite post, recipe, or project on Gracious Rain in the last year? and What would you like to see us do in the coming year?

Get this—Each person answering both questions, between now and midnight, TODAY October 20, 2009 will receive a gift from Gracious Rain for our Blogiversary. It could be anything from my favorite book to one of our cute little craft projects all finished–just for you. Perhaps you’ll get a pack or Ding Dongs. Or maybe…just maybe, you’ll receive the very last ticket to the New Moon premiere left in the theater. You never know–until you speak up. Oh, and after you comment, you’ll need to send your name and address to Launi@GraciousRain.com. Yeah, I’ll need that.

It’s such a good day to celebrate.

I hope you’ll join us.

Thanks for being friends with us.

love,

 

If you’d like—Read the very first post–from back when we were pups and had no clue what we were doing. :]

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Playing in the Dirt…

garden-003

We finally, FINALLY put our cute little garden in last week and just sat back to cross our fingers.

may-31-049tomatoes

garden-017garlic
garden-008peas
garden-011ornamental white mini pumpkin
garden-012ornamental regular mini pumpkin
garden-013regular big pumpkin–ok, we’re pumpkin freaks here. I know.

garden-016cucumbers

may-31-071

Bless their seedy-planty little hearts—they are growing! For those of you who are thinking, “DUH-what did you expect?” I’d say–whenever we bury a little seed or plant into the ground and it really actually grows–isn’t is still a wonder?

garden-010peppers
may-31-069radishes
may-31-070Oh, I’m just so proud of you– you cute little radishes!

Tell the truth–when you plant a package of seeds don’t you go check every morning to see if something is poking it’s head up out of the dirt yet? And when you find some brave little sprout…aren’t you so excited and happy and…well….isn’t it just SO COOL?

Ok, I’m done.

My seed-dirt-plant-sprout worship session is over.

“Thanks for noticing me,” and my baby garden.

Tell me–What are YOU planting these days?

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Thankful block…

Here is a pretty great thingy that we made a while back–which I positively love—so I want to show it to you. It never hurts to have a reminder to be…

Of course, we didn’t free hand this–fear not. It was a big, old block of wood that we painted, sanded, roughed up a bit, and then “dirtied” with some black stuff–no idea what it was. Then we took a rub-on stencil and a tongue depressor, and applied the sticker. Pretty dang easy.

People ask me all the time where I got it, but since it was an Achievement Night Class project–I have know idea where the stencil came from. However, if you love this and are interested in something like it, I’m just real sure that Katrina– over at Katrina’s Kreations could likely hook you up.

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Egg Toast Cups

In case you’re feeling a bit of a sugar buzz–here is some nice, soothing, protein to balance things out a bit.

Egg Toast Cups

Ingredients:

Bread

Eggs

Cheese

Ham or sausage or bacon or NOT

Whatever else you put in scrambled eggs

Butter

Lightly butter each slice of bread and cut off the crusts.

Hold the bread–as shown–over a muffing tin.

Pinch slightly and press the bread down into the muffing cup.

Toast in the oven at 350 for about 15 minutes–until browned.

Fill with a scoop of scrambled eggs mixed with diced ham and a bit of cheese. The cheese is important because it holds the eggs together so that they don’t spill whenever you take a bite.

Have a good weekend and I promise—no more food for a while. We’re about to burst over here!

Week 4  Food Storage Prompt

100 count Multiple Vitamins

Egg Toast Cups
 
Print
:
Ingredients
  • Bread
  • Eggs
  • Cheese
  • Ham or sausage or bacon or NOT
  • Whatever else you put in scrambled eggs
  • Butter
Instructions
  1. Lightly butter each slice of bread and cut off the crusts.
  2. Hold the bread--as shown--over a muffing tin.
  3. Pinch slightly and press the bread down into the muffing cup.
  4. Toast in the oven at 350 for about 15 minutes--until browned.
  5. Fill with a scoop of scrambled eggs mixed with diced ham and a bit of cheese. The cheese is important because it holds the eggs together so that they don't spill whenever you take a bite.
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Baby Feet

New Year’s Goal #6– I will pay attention to the tiny feet that may be stepping in my footprints.

Preparing this week for General Conference is an easy way to set a good, happy example for the babies.

Years ago, when the bald kid was about 7, he was in the kitchen looking at the huge wall calendar that we had on the corkboard. He walked his fingers over the holidays, birthdays, sport events and parties that were scattered throughout the month of October. Because it’s such a busy month he kept saying, “cool…cool…cool.”

Then as he got closer to the top of the calendar—he was short back then and had started at the bottom of the page—he shouted, “Yes-yes-YES!! CONFERENCE!” Everybody in the room just busted up laughing. I figured something must be working right.

Over the years, in our quest to help the kids enjoy Conference we would buy inexpensive notebooks–you know the kind you can get at Target for 25 cents at “Back To School” sales–and a new pen of some kind. Saturday morning we would ceremoniously pass them out with the instructions that they could use one page per speaker.

They could take notes,

or draw picture of the topic

or of the speaker themselves–

or a combination of all three.

Now, for our family, it felt important to NEVER give the children the feeling that they had to sit here for 4-2 hour stints and not move or breathe or leave the room.

In fact, we told them outright that they could go play if they wanted to. But the incentive to stay in the room was that every half hour or so, I would pull some kind of surprise out of a secret brown bag–and whoever was here taking notes would get the treat.

Watching Conference in St. George Hotel

It could be muffins, or fruit rolls or Wheat Thins or mandarin oranges. The important thing was that the bag held things we rarely ever bought. So they really wanted to stick around.

Then, at the end of Conference on Sunday afternoon they would count up their number of  speakers and we’d give them a Skittle or M&M for each one. That might not sound like much, but over the two days–there are close to 30 speakers and so there is potential for quite a handful of loot.

One year, I told the kids I would give them $5 if they could tell me the name of each member of the Quorum of the Twelve and the First Presidency–just by looking at their picture. Bribery may seem like a goofy tactic to some, but it made sense that it would be easier to listen to, and respect someone that they recognized–and $5 was a cheap way to help that happen. They all did it and the girls wouldn’t let me pay them. But the best part was later when one of the little boys came running up the stairs breathless, saying, “Hurry, you’ve gotta come downstairs! L. Tom Perry is on TV!”

If you’d like a reward for getting to the end of the longest blog post in history– here is a Conference Packet you can download for your own family.

Conference Packet 2009