The Christmas decor is

up!!!

(Excuse my poor photography skills!)



Our very mini Christmas Village

Our Kitchen Decor

My new Willow Tree Nativity!!! I've been building it piece by piece and got the last pieces at Christmas last year so this is the first year it's been out! I LOVE it!

Our neighbor made this! Always goes on the couch.

The tree, missing the topper at the moment.

The fireplace. Mama, Daddy, Bliss, Justin, and Jackson's stockings. :-)

Couldn't resist sharing this. He just had to be in a photo!

Mistletoe ;-)

Now it's time for Santa deary to do his part...



~BK

Dog Treats...

that's what I've been thinking about for the past 24 hours.

I have a project due in my Medicinal Herbs and Plants class. We had to make an herbal product, write a paper about it, and make a tri-fold. I worked on the tri-fold yesterday, and it's almost complete. I also made my product: herbal dog treats. (And if you're wondering spices are considered herbs, hence the HERBAL dog treats are created with the addition of ginger, cloves, and cinnamon.) And yes, I still have to write the paper. Always put it off for as long as I can!

Here's the recipe if you're interested. It wasn't hard at all to make. Also, I bought a dog bone shaped cookie cutter from Michaels and they ended up so cute!


Ingredients:
1 cup molasses
4 tablespoons honey
1 cup water
½ cup vegetable oil
6 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
2 tablespoons chopped fresh ginger or one tsp. of dried powder ginger

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Combine the molasses, honey, water, and oil in a medium bowl. In another large bowl mix the flour, the baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Combine well. Divide this dough in four sections and roll each piece into a ball, wrap each ball in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 3 – 5 hours.

After the dough is well-chilled Put dough onto a lightly floured surface and roll dough out into 1/4 “ thickness. Cut dough with a cookie cutter into gingerbread men or other fun shapes. You could use carob bits to form the eyes and buttons if you like. Bake 10 – 15 minutes, or until cookies are lightly browned around the edges and firm.

And a few photos (which I had to take to display on my tri-fold)


Rolling the dough



Justin lifting up Jackson to smell the dough. He was sniffing around the kitchen like crazy trying to figure out what that yummy smell was.


A taste test with Jackson


Checking it out


Give me back the rest of my treat!


Do you seriously have to take the rest of these to school? (Cheated a bit, I didn't take this last night- haha!)

Hope you have a wonderful day!

~BK

Our Anniversary was...

so much fun!!! Justin had made reservations at a restaurant, but we also wanted to find a day activity to do as well. We had originally planned to go to a farm on the outskirts of Greenville where you can pick apples, but due to the low temps they removed all the apples from the trees to prevent them from freezing, so that was out. We actually headed to Greenville with no certain plans other than dinner.

The first place we went was Paris Mountain State Park. We had a picnic and walked one of the trails. It was beautiful. The leaves were gorgeous and Lake Placid was most definitely placid. :-)







Afterwards, we stopped here for coffee to warm up. I originally snapped a photo to show how thin the building was, but my photography skills failed miserably. It was the neatest building though. It had a spiral staircase inside with tons of neat artwork. Behind the store was a huge antique store. We could of spent hours in there! They had they neatest old camera that we loved, but that was most definitely out of our price range, and tons of other really cool old stuff.




Next we headed to the beautiful Falls Park. We took tons of photos, but I'll only bore you with a few.






After that, we changed clothes and headed to the restaurant. We ate at Stax Peppermill. It was sooooo good!!! Justin did very well in picking a place that I would love. I was surprised to see these on the table when we arrived:


And our waitress snapped this of us too.



Then we rode through the beautiful downtown Greenville and back through Falls Park to see the bridge all lit up which was so neat (but I forgot to photograph it).



Overall it was a fabulous day. I'm usually such a planner, but it was so nice to just figure out things as we went. I hope you had an equally good weekend!



~BK

I like um...

LOL! Justin and I saw this in the IMAX theater last weekend and loved it!!! The hippos crack me up!

Happy Friday!

~BK

Almost there...

only 1 more day until I get a week off for Thanksgiving. Praise Jesus!

A tid bit of more exciting news- this Saturday Justin and I will celebrate 6 years of togetherness. I can't believe it! We're spending the day in Greenville. Not quite sure what we'll be doing yet, but I know it'll be fun. :-)

Have a wonderful weekend!

~BK

I should seriously consider...

buying stocks in Kleenex.

I'm sick again!!!! Ahhhhhhhhh.

Thanks for the comments about the grandmother. She is quite amusing. You just never know what crazy idea she will come up with next. This is her playing the Wii...


And aren't the leaves beautiful? Here's a couple shots from my deck.





Well I'm off to snuggle up under my blanket in my pjs and watch

Have a good weekend!

~BK

What are we going to do...

with my grandmother?

We all promised my Papa we'd take care of her and let me just say, we had NO IDEA what we were getting into. ;-) That man must of been a saint!

Just a little glimpse into my grandmother's personality (aka stuborness). Yesterday, she was supposed to go to Anderson with one of her friends, but that fell through due to a family emergency. So my grandmother calls my mom to see if my dad could stop by. (He stops by about four times a week to check the heater, well, ect. He had just been the day before - he put gas in the lawn mower and had it all ready to go- a factor that will make sense as the story progresses. My dad said he could be there by 11- it was 9:30 AM at the time. Well that just wouldn't do. So one of mama's co-workers ran up there on his way back from a job in the area.

What did she want?

Him to show her how to crank my grandfather's TRACTOR. Never been on one a day in her life.

Why?

So she could mulch up leaves.

Riiiight.

Mama (via phone) tries to convince her to use the lawn mower because it is safer and she is used to it and well because that's all you need for mulching leaves. She refuses.

Three hours later, mama calls me and says "Well MaMa only destroyed two things with the tractor so I guess that can be considered a good thing."

She ran into my great-grandmother's well house, knocking it completely down, but claimed it "just collapsed on itself". She also knocked down her clothes line which my Papa had CEMENTED into the ground.

Lord help us all.

~BK

A worrisome week...

that's what this week is!

I have my fifth genetics test tomorrow, followed by a microbiology test on Thursday. Why do they ALWAYS fall in the same week?

I also am having two skin biopsies done on Thursday afternoon, one which requires quite a bit of stitching. For those of you who don't know, my grandfather died from malignant melanoma so my family practically lives at the dermatologist's office and at my last visit he saw two red flags. I'll be worried until they come back that's for sure. My mom is having two as well, so send up a few prayers that they come back skin cancer free.

I know worrying does no good, and I try to not do it, but it's pretty much impossible.

At least I have plenty of distractions through all this studying...

~BK

Greenville, SC

Does anyone know anything fun to do in Greenville, SC or anywhere within a couple of hours from it?

~BK

Election Day

(So my post is a few hours early... but I actually have a free minute!)

November 4th, 2008 is finally here! I've already voted and am quite frankly, tired of hearing about the election. I do encourage everyone to vote though. If you don't vote, you have no right to complain when things go down the toilet ;-)

I think these kids say it best:



Full Version:



Happy Voting!
~BK