Picture Perfect Cooking

As I mentioned on here last week, we had a chili/soup/game night at our house last night for 14 people including C & myself and it turned into a really fun night!!

I wanted to finish decorating for Christmas before the party and it was mission accomplished on Friday afternoon.  Friday night was spent baking my two desserts which will be featured on here in the near future.  That left the cleaning and soup making for Saturday.  Even with both of us working, it still took all day to finish everything, but I am a little bit of a neat freak so I usually go overboard on the cleaning.

We have a lighted wreath hanging on our front door and the extension cord runs inside the house for power.  I needed to hide the cord and outlet since it is right inside the front door so I put a few baskets that I had already to use.  I stacked the 3 baskets in front of the outlet and it looked like this…

Not bad, but it was missing something.  When I walked Ellie that morning, I took my garden clippers and a bag to collect some greenery and berries.  I also raided my in-law’s yard for some pinecones and holly branches.  I started the arrangement with cedar and pine branches…

Then I filled in with the holly, pine cones and berries.

I thought it made a nice addition to the entry for absolutely no cost since I already had the baskets!

Here are the other interior decorations.  The dining room…

The staircase…

The kitchen…

The living room…

The office…

And, last but not least, the stair landing…

Now that the decorating is finished, I MUST start Christmas shopping!!

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My Soon-To-Be New Work Home

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Friday night was our local American Cancer Society Relay for Life.  For those of you that don’t know, it is an all-night fundraiser for the ACS.  Our team from the courthouse has been raising money since January with bake sales, soup lunches, and one cookout.  The money from the food sales and the money raised by a little girl in the local Relay Kid contest added up to over $4500.00 for our team!  I don’t have the exact amount yet but we did very well since our original goal was $2000.00.

The teams were supposed to host fundraisers Friday night so we decided to sell fruit kabobs with dip and fruit smoothies.  I went to Wal-mart Thursday and purchased all the fruit and other odds and ends that we would need.  We ended up with 180 kabobs and enough smoothie mix to make 200.

The cancer survivors at Relay got a free smoothie from our booth and something free from every other booth.  We were prepared to make some money and hopefully top the $5000 mark.  Alas, it was not meant to be.  Mother nature had other ideas.  The local funeral homes set up their tents for the teams to use.  After ours was set up, we started decorating…and listening to the thunder in the distance.  The events were supposed to start at 6:00pm and just a few minutes before that it started raining a flood! 

A lot of people that were there left because it rained for almost 30 minutes!  We were having to push water off of the roof of the tent every couple of minutes so it wouldn’t leak and there was no way to walk around outside the tent.  We ended up making $65 that night, not near what we had hoped, but we had a good time anyway. 

The theme for the whole Relay was The 1980’s , so our booth was decorated like The Love Boat.  We had music playing and a ship’s deck backdrop.  It looked really cute.  Our activity for the night was “The Newlywed Game”.  We had a married couple of each of the other teams to participate and the people working the sound system had found the theme song to play as well!  They came to our booth before the game to answer their questions.  We had them onstage to compare answers just like in the game show.  Everyone seemed to really enjoy it and the winning couple was one from a local church that had been married the longest, 22 years!  The only question they missed was the husband’s first question, “What is the color of your wife’s eyes?”  They got the rest of the questions right!  It was so funny!

The luminaria ceremony later in the evening was so moving!  The bags with candles had been placed around the side of the town square we were using and lit.  It was beautiful! Each bag had the name of person being honored or memorialized by a loved one.  After the ceremony, everyone walked a memory lap with the Sarah McLachlan song “I Will Remember You” playing.  It was very, very touching!

I am so glad that we all participated in this and look forward to doing it again!  I encourage people to get involved for it is an extremely worthy cause!  C & I have both had very personal experience with cancer.  C’s paternal grandfather was diagnosed with lung cancer shortly before he passed away.  My maternal grandfather passed away from brain cancer in 1994, and my mom is a SURVIVOR of stage 3 ovarian cancer!  GO, MOM!!!!

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As some of you know, my workplace has a team in the local Relay for Life for the American Cancer Society.  We were getting very close to our fundraising goal, so we decided to have a cookout to try to reach it.  Well, we did it!!  We sold meals consisting of either grilled Green River Cattle Company hamburgers or grilled Uncle Charlie’s tenderloin sandwiches, a bag of chips, a homemade dessert, and a canned drink for $5.00.  We ended up making over $400!!!  That was pure profit since we had some very generous donations. 

My father-in-law is one of the co-owners of the Green River Cattle Company, a locally owned and operated gourmet beef business.  He graciously donated 40 quarter-pound hamburgers for our cause.  Thanks!!!  We used bake sale money to purchase the tenderloin.  My co-worker K, who co-owns a local restaurant, donated the chips.  The Wal-mart store in the next town donated the drinks, buns, and cheese, and the team members made the desserts.

I had plans of getting some very good photos of all the action, but there was NO time!  I got a few shots of our set-up before the rush began, but that was all. 

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Raising Money For a Good Cause

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I know, it’s not as catchy as Snakes On A Plane, but I’m not making a movie.  As many of you know, I am a professional court system paper pusher in our little town.  Last year, we had a snake problem. The soffit over the front door of my workplace had a hole in it and a mama snake thought this would be the perfect place to raise her children.  Guess what, they’re bbbaaaaccckkk!!  There were 3 baby snakes sunning on the evergreen by the front porch today.  Oh, joy!  You know I just love snakes…dead ones!  I could have gotten photo evidence of this, but it gave me the creeps to think of taking pictures of snakes, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

For some better news, our new local pizza joint had a friends/family meal today! Their official opening day is tomorrow, but since we are close with the owners, we got to try it out for free! The pizza is delish.  We also have cinnamon bread, but I was so full that I just brought that home for later.  Yum!  Everyone really seemed to enjoy it.  You can see for yourself below, and, yes, we ate the whole thing!

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