Friday Funny

 

Cooking Thursday

This is a recipe I hadn't made for awhile, but my friend Jenny at I'm Having a Thought Here reminded me of it.  It was perfect for our July 4 celebration, so I finally made it again.  It's called a salad, but really it's a dessert. The recipe calls for strawberries, but since Bob isn't a fan, I make it with raspberries.  Either is good!

Strawberry Pretzel Salad

2 cups crushed pretzels
3/4 cup melted butter
4 tablespoons sugar
8 ounces softened cream cheese
8 ounces thawed Cool Whip
6 ounce package strawberry or raspberry jello
3/4 cup boiling water
10 ounces frozen sliced strawberries or raspberries

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Stir together pretzels, melted butter and 4 tablespoons sugar. Press into 9x13 pan and bake for 8 minutes. Cool.
Beat cream cheese and 1 cup sugar together until smooth. Fold in Cool Whip and spread over cooled pretzel crust.
Prepare jello using 3/4 cup boiling water. Stir frozen fruit into it and immediately spread over cream cheese layer.
Refrigerate 4 hours until set.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Fun with the girls

This is a catch up post!  Before I took my little break for Terri's visit, we had the girls over and I want to share the fun we had.

I needed new pictures of them, so I had them pose in their yard for a few shots.

We went out for ice cream!

So good!

I read a tip about making people skip while taking their picture to get fun action shots, and this was the result.  :)

When it started to get dark, we sat out on the deck and watched fireflies and Ruby even caught some!

The next morning, we made some Magic Water critters.

They had fun picking colors to make them and they turned out cute.

Bob hooked up the old Nintendo that our kids used to play with and we played a few games.

Then we set up tables downstairs and the girls painted beach towels.

They took packing tape and electrical tape and made designs on the towel.  Then they used spray tie dye paint and painted around the tape. When the paint dried, we pulled the tape off and ironed it to heat set it.

Ruby did stripes with summer fruit; pineapples and watermelon and a few R's.

Alaina did stripes, a giant A, waves and The Rookie.

They had lots of fun and were happy with their towels.

Meeting Terri!

I'm back from my little break!  I had a wonderful time with blog friend Terri from Your Friend from Florida. Terri flew in to Grand Rapids on Monday morning and left on Thursday afternoon. I can tell all of you that know her through the blogging world that she's just as sweet in person as she is on her blog.  Here's a few of the things we did while she was here in Michigan.

We went to Laura and Aaron's house so she could meet Alaina and Ruby.

We went to Grand Haven to see Lake Michigan and the lighthouse.

We went to Meijer Gardens and Sculpture park and checked out some of the Gardens and took a tram ride to see a lot of the Sculptures.

One of the most famous sculptures there, is this DaVinci horse, made from drawings done by DaVinci.  There is one here in Grand Rapids and another duplicate in Italy.

We went to Heather and Andrews house to meet Cassie and Connor!

We went to Windmill Island in Holland

You feel like you are walking into a town in the Netherlands.

It's the home of DeZwaan Windmill; the last windmill that the Netherlands allowed to leave the Netherlands.  It's now 250 years old, it came to Holland in 1964 and it's still working. 

One last shot of Terri in the Windmill Island Gardens

After Windmill Island, we went into the City of Holland to see this display honoring The Wizard of Oz.  The author, Frank Baum had a cottage here and his family said much of the story was written in Holland.

There were also sculptures of characters from The Wizard of Oz, including Dorothy and Toto

and of course, the Wicked Witch!

We did a little shopping in Holland too.

We had several days of fun and also relaxation and talking.  What a wonderful time together and such a joy to meet another blogging friend!

Friday Funny

 

I'm going to take a break next week.  I've got a special blog friend coming to visit and a lot of you know her!  I'll tell you all about it when I come back.

Cooking Thursday

 Here's the recipe I promised you earlier this week. These are the bars Heather brought to our July 4 gathering.  You could change up the color for different holidays.  We all thought they were so good!

Red, White and Blue Cheesecake Bars

1 1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs
1/3 cup butter, melted
2 tablespoons sugar

3 8 oz packages cream cheese
3/4 cup sour cream
3/4 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
red and blue gel food coloring

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Line 9x13 pan with parchment paper.  Stir together graham cracker crumbs, melted butter and sugar. Press into pan and set aside.
Beat softened cream cheese with sugar and salt, mix well. Stir in eggs, one at a time beating each egg well.  Stir in sour cream and vanilla, mix until creamy.
Transfer 1 1/3 cups filling evenly into two bowls. Add red food coloring to one bowl and green to the other.
Pour the remaining white filling over the graham cracker crumb base.
Pour alternating lines of red and blue filling down the length of the bars. Use a knife to create a swirl pattern.
Bake for 50-55 minutes until center is set. When done, turn off oven, open oven door and let set inside for an hour.
Remove from oven, refrigerate overnight, then pull up parchment paper and remove from pan. Cut into squares and serve!

Wordless Wednesday

 

A Day in my Life - July

July is here!  We're halfway through the year and it's hard for me to believe that.  Here's how I spent the first day of the month.

This is my usual start to the day, 30 minutes on the treadmill.  Then it's time for breakfast, devotions and some computer catch up time.
After that I threw the sheets in the wash.

This is the devotion book I'm reading right now and enjoying.  It's a study on Jacob.

I had lots of cleaning to do on this day.  I started by cleaning the stove and wiping down my frig, dishwasher and microwave.  After that I cleaned the bathrooms.

This is one of my favorite cleaning tools.  It's a dyson cordless vac and it makes it so easy to vacuum my carpet, rugs and hardwood floor. The floors were done in no time!

When I finished these things it was close to noon and we had some special visitors stop by.  Heather was nearby and she stopped with Cassie and Connor.  Can you believe that I forgot to take any pictures? They stayed about 45 minutes and we had a nice time visiting.

After lunch, I made a run to the grocery store. It was a beautiful day, blue skies and a nice drive.

When I got home, I went out to Bob's shop to see what he was up to. He's working on these cute signs to put in some of our garden beds.

I spent some time reading in the afternoon.  This is one of 4 books in this authors Blue Sky series.  Each book can stand alone, but I'm reading each of them and totally enjoying them! If you haven't read any of her books, I recommend them.

We had taco salad for supper, a good meal on a hot day.

After supper, we took our usual walk around the yard to see what new things are blooming.

This is Bee Balm or Monarda.  The flowers just started to open up.

We relaxed and watched some tv, then went out a little after 9 and sat on our deck.  We've been really enjoying it in the evening.

The sky was getting a little pink, there were some birds singing, and it's just peaceful.

This is a firefly. There have been a lot of them in our backyard in the evening and they are so fun to watch blinking as it gets dark.

And that's the end of my July 1.  It was another good day!

Celebrate!

I hope you all had a nice 4th of July.  Ours was a little strange because Heather and Andrew and kids were planning to come for supper. (Laura and Aaron were with Aaron's family).  Anyway, on Wednesday Bob got a cold  (He said it was a man cold) and he felt crummy.  I was having stomach issues and Andrew wasn't feeling on top of things either.  So we decided to try again on Saturday.
We were all doing better a day later!

Bob grilled burgers, I made baked beans and pretzel salad.  Heather brought fruit salad and some yummy cream cheese bars.

These are the bars she made - so festive!  They were good and she said they were easy to make.  I'll share the recipe on Thursday.

After supper, Cassie and I made these cool little critters.  You choose gel colors to fill these molds, dip them in the water solution and they pop out!

Here's our critters.  They need to stay in the solution for 4 hours.

Cassie put them in another container so she could take them home.

I got some cute pictures of them while they were here too.

The whole family

Cassie

Connor

And both of them!

It was a fun evening and it was worth waiting a day.