Happiness

Everyone wants happiness. I don't deserve it, but I want it. In general, I am an even sort of person; mostly still waters. No one makes me that way, I choose to be so. It is a daily decision to look at what I can do, instead of what I can't; to be glad for what I have instead of what I don't. It's a muscle that I have to work and flex constantly in order to have the habit of happiness. This is why you haven't seen a blog post from me for awhile. I've been struggling with my personal happiness.

I am a person of faith. There is noting more important to me than my faith in Jesus Christ and my purpose for being a human being on earth today. However, like all humans, I make mistakes. Sometimes I'm able to see my error right away and make corrections and my life moves on very smoothly. Other times, I pretend not to see that what I'm doing or thinking is wrong and eventually, God will stop listening to me and answering my prayers. Why? Because God can't be around wrong (read: sin). Wrong is like a glove over my body that completely blocks me from God's view; it is what stands between me and God and obscures me from his view. Oh, yes, He knows I'm here, but because I'm in the wrong, He can't be near me. Well, I've been wrong. I've been wrong about several things (no, you don't get the privilege of knowing what those things are) and all that wrong has been keeping me from the fellowship of God. Now, maybe this means nothing to you, but to me it is everything. Yes, I always have the love of family and friends, but God can only forgive my wrongness if I own up to it, walk away from it and seek his forgiveness. The owning up and walking away part is all me and I had to do that this week. Suffice it to say, the process was not pleasant, but God is good and I know I am forgiven and I did learn some things.

Miniature roses from the garden
just because...

So, enough of my problems. I hope you have the grace of God working in your life. People who love you are great, but if I have to choose, I want the grace of God. Life after this time on earth is eternal and I am more concerned about that life than this one. What I do now prepares me for the next life.

That's it for today. We'll call the last few weeks a working vacation where I had to visit camp Get It Right and I came home with a couple of skinned knees, but no broken bones. I hope you're having a great end to summer where you are and that you are learning great things about yourself, too. Until next time, when I'll share more from the land of the very humbled HumbleVoyager, Godspeed, Voyagers!!

Finding Control

Twice a year (at the moment it's twice a year) I have a visit with my cancer doctor where he investigates my person thoroughly looking for possible family members of the Renal Cell Carcinoma he removed from me in 2011. I am coming up on that visit in less than 2 weeks. Every time I work through the pre-visit steps (i.e. blood work and X-rays or sonograms or MRIs) I find myself holding my breath in anticipation of what will happen. Will there be something there that wasn't there the last time? Will he find some new friend of the last cancer? Will God let me live a little longer? Over the last 3 years, I've graduated from 4 visits per year to 2. So far, so good. However, I'm becoming fed up with myself over how much the thought of these check-ups negatively effect me and I am working to set some positive goals that I hope will help me get through future events with ease. I really believe that the way I think about taking care of myself is the issue. The fact is I never really learned how to take care of myself properly as a child. What I learned shouldn't be in anyone's text book. I should be the poster child for "This is not how to do it" child rearing! I'm not complaining mind you, but I am frustrated with myself and why at this advanced age, I can't seem to figure out how to be more healthy. ..sigh..

I am continuing to work on my projects. The toaster oven cooking is on hold as it's just too hot to cook anything. I can't think about baking without breaking out in a sweat! My Halloween costume is really making me crazy. I have 3 ideas and none of them are making me overly excited. I continue my work on that project, but I have to make a decision by the first week in September or I won't have time to make the costume properly.

Other than watching the heat turn the front yard from lush and green to brown and crunchy, my days are filled with work, goal setting and planning. There is so much to be done and no time to do any of it in. Work is a bit demanding at the moment and I'm okay with that as it is what funds the rest of my existence. At the moment I just want to feel a bit more in control and I think God will have to help me get there. Trying to make that happen on my own just hasn't worked for me. Go figure!

So that's it from HumbleVoyager land. I'm still working on my own set of problems and doing my best to help those around me find what they want in life. Some I can truly help and some I can't. This too is upsetting to me, but again, I give it to God. Only He can really help me deal with the dissatisfactions of life. Thanks for stopping by. Until next time when I hope to give better news about a project completed, Godspeed, Voyagers!!

Projects O'Plenty

My brain never stops working on what the next big thing should be. By 'big thing' I mean Project. Yes, I always have multiple projects going. Right now, I'm working on ideas for a creative and award-winning Halloween costume, garage clean-out and reorganization plan and writing the recipes and blogs for my series on Toaster Oven Cooking. Being busy with projects makes me feel alive. What I do has to challenge my intellect, artistic nature and body. Running a family and working full-time, should probably be enough, but it isn't. Besides I don't do as much around the house as I probably should. Everyone here does some of the work and I'm not the one who does the lion's share.

The Halloween costume is still in development. My child asked that I never do anything scary again, so blood is out. I have an idea for a raven costume, which is borderline scary, but would allow me to wear my favorite, all black. On the other hand, I have this idea for an all white costume, as well. The all white would require the purchase of some plain white clothing (i.e. white shirt and pants or even leggings) and the only prop is a clear bubble or dome umbrella. I found what I would need on Amazon.com, but I'm still not sure of what I want to do. The umbrella idea would take less time to make, but I have to wear white. With the raven, I'm going to need lots of black feathers and stiff felt. The more I think of it, the more I want to do the white. I need to step out of my comfort zone. Anyway, my hair is almost white so it won't take much to get it the rest of the way! Hmmm...the creative thinking continues.

The garden is still producing miniature roses. Today one was delivered to my home office and it really brightened my day. I hope it brings a smile to yours.

So pretty and about the size of a monocle. I love flowers, don't you?

So, what is the next big thing? Should it be a creative venture? Should I learn to do something new and healthy? Maybe I should think about it some more and make a few lists. What is your next big thing? I'd love to hear about it. Drop a comment below and let me know. Who knows, maybe your next big thing will spark some creative ideas in my own head! That's it for today. Until later when I'll share more of the current and upcoming projects, Godspeed, Voyagers!!

Biscuits and Ideas

Welcome to another Friday in Central Texas! Today is the official launch of my sister's series idea on Toaster Oven Cooking. This morning, I worked with a simple quick bread, Biscuits. The recipe is just like the one for scones, but with a bit more buttermilk and no sugar. They take just a few minutes to make and are delicious as a stand alone breakfast delight or as a side to your already wonderful bacon and eggs. Be sure to check out the KitchenAid 12-inch Convection Bake Countertop Oven. I purchased mine at Target, but they are readily available online as well. Check out the

Nancy's Buttermilk Biscuits

recipe for the biscuits in the sidebar to the right. The recipe makes the perfect number of biscuits for my toaster oven and they come out even and beautiful. There are plenty of options for cutting the biscuits. I used a 3" scalloped biscuit cutter, but feel free to use whatever you like. Cut a larger biscuit and when they are baked make biscuit sandwiches. Little biscuits would make great Hors d'oeuvres with some country ham! There are lots of options. Throw some sharp grated cheese into the mix and you've got cheese biscuits. I could go on and on, but use your imagination and make them your own.

This has been an incredible day. I completed my work and had a great time outside for awhile. The temperature at 3 p.m. when I came back into the house was just 85 degrees F. Yes, it is August 1st and yes, it is Central Texas where usually at this time of year we're looking at 105 degrees, but today it really is a BEAUTIFUL, summer day. I'm looking forward to the rest of the weekend. There are chores to be done and errands to run and I will need to be outside for some of that.

It's hard not to spend time outside when the flowers are so pretty, but the garden continues to amaze me. The corn that the squirrel planted is actually going to give us an ear of corn. I have no idea what the ear of corn will look like, but we'll dry it and feed it to the Squirrels in the end. They grew it so they should get to eat it. We've been learning a great deal about growing corn from YouTube. It's incredibly complicated! So much so that I'm amazed we have any corn to eat at all. Here is what the corn is looking like:

Amazing!

This week I'm starting the process of cleaning out the garage. Every Saturday (that I'm home) between now and early November, I will work for 2 hours in the garage, grouping things together, identifying things that need to be given away and throwing out trash and things that have just accumulated. The goal is to transform the garage into several new and useful areas for the family. In our neighborhood, we're not allowed to turn the garage into a room, so everything we do in there has to be okay with an overhead garage door still in place. I drew up a plan that gives us the following spaces:

• An area for the workbench and tools
• A space for a desk or table work/craft/project area
• Shelves for household storage
• Shelves for seasonal items (i.e. Christmas decorations and etc.)
• Space for household cleaning implements (i.e. brooms, mops, buckets, vacuums and etc.)
• Workout space
• Even some room for a small car...maybe?

A quarter of the garage will become a gym. We have a treadmill and elliptical trainer that both live in my living room at the moment and I want them to move into the garage where I can open the garage door and exercise while feeling like I'm outside. The gym section will have the addition of cushioned floor panels and the weight bench, weights and other exercise implements will join the aforementioned equipment. But there is lots of clean out and up that needs to be done. We seem to have a hard time letting go of stuff and I'm ready for stuff to leave my life so I can have the space inside my house I need to really feel at home. I use the exercise equipment, but it's suffocating me in the house. I'll take pictures along the way and share the progress.  The first pictures will thoroughly embarrass me, but hey, maybe what I do will help someone else!

The rest of the weekend is all about getting things done and relaxing a little. What do you do on your weekends? If you have a great way to spend a weekend, leave me a comment and let me know your ideas. That's it for today! Until next time, when I'll share more in the world of Toaster Oven Cooking and other nonsense, Godspeed, Voyagers!!

A Toaster Oven Life

The U.S. is approximately 42 days into the 94 day long summer of 2014. Although it has not been the warmest summer on record, it is still hot here most days; too hot to turn on the oven. Our high Monday was 100 and Tuesday 96 degrees. With these kinds of high temperatures, the last thing I want to do is heat up the house cooking with open flames and ovens. What I've come to learn is that the crock pot and toaster oven are really helpful when it comes to preparing a meal without overheating myself or over working the air-conditioning. I'm fully convinced that if I was suddenly down sized into living in a very small space and had only space enough for a tiny little kitchen, I'd be fine with an under counter sized fridge (as long as it is self defrosting and has a separate freezer) a 2 burner hotplate, a strong microwave, a crock pot and a good convection toaster oven. Honestly I never thought I would be able to prepare backed goods or baked meals in a toaster oven, but I'm doing it and it's working great! Granted, my family is small, but I'm just glad it helps me keep what I cook to meal size! (read: I have a little problem cooking too much food! :)) So, I'm working on a little series on Toaster Oven cooking.

Any of my existing recipes that require the oven, I'll make certain to have some instructions that cover how to best cook the meal in a toaster oven.  I use and suggest the KitchenAid 12-inch Convection Bake Countertop Oven. It really is the best one I've ever owned. The convection baking part makes for very even cooking. Some recipes do require multiple batch baking sessions. For instance, a 6 cup muffin tin fits perfectly in the toaster oven, but most recipes make 12 (Hint: half the recipe!). So I bake in batches or as indicated before, split the recipe into a smaller portion. The best part of all, my kitchen and home stay relatively cool.

I was really missing baking for my family and on a whim decided to try doing it in the toaster oven. One recipe led to another and before I knew it, I was baking all the time. I even baked the bacon for our Club Sandwiches on Tuesday night in the toaster oven and it was perfectly cooked! Tonight I'm making another of my favorite kinds of meals, a One Pot dish. If I'm cooking a short pasta shape in my dish it is easily transformed into a One Pot dish by eliminating the pasta boiling part. Tonight is Skillet Nancy Orecchiette. Be sure to check out the recipe in the sidebar. The trick to cooking any short cut pasta from its dry state in a skillet, is to make sure that for every 2.5-3 cups of dry pasta, that you have 4.5 cups of liquid/water besides any sauce that you want to have left behind. In the case of the dish above, I will be using white wine and chicken stock as my cooking liquid, with cream, pecorino cheese and butter playing the part of the 'sauce' ingredients. Orecchiette is one of my favorite pasta shapes. In Italian it means, "little ear" and I love how the Italians name the pasta shapes with such sweetness. Little Ears...it just tickles me! I hope you try the skillet pasta and I hope you love it as much as we do!

That's it for today. I will continue work on my Toaster Oven series, but for now, be sure to check out the recipe for Scones in the sidebar. Until later when I'll write more about the adventures of family cooking in a Toaster Oven and other nonsense, Godspeed, Voyagers!!

Projects

Good morning! I'm feeling much better today and working on new things. There are always great projects in the works, but I'm not always ready to work on them. This year, I'm thinking of myself and what I want to do, instead of what I should do. Yes, I still want to lose weight. I think it's important to get myself fit, but that's for another blog (read my other blog on this subject, link in the right hand sidebar). In this blog, I want to share what I'm doing elsewhere in life. This week, I begin the process of creating this year's Halloween costume! Okay, so now you're wondering about how important this could possibly be. Since I'm starting on it 3 full months in advance, I guess it's fairly important. A project like this takes lots of organization and design. Therefore, this venture incorporates two of my best skills: creativity and planning! I believe I'm creative and inventive. When it comes to planning, that brings my love of words and design together. I dream things up and then just apply words to the dream. So, my creative and project planning enterprise for the next few months is my Halloween costume. In the past, my office has been very elaborate with its Halloween celebrations. I've won the costume contest multiple times. Here are a few of the entries over recent years:

In recent years I've been Madame Butterfly, A really scary ghost (Boo!! You are VERY Afraid!), A Dark Fairy Queen and The Andromeda Galaxy (for which I dyed my hair, for REAL, BLACK!). The blue hair in the Madame Butterfly costume and white of the ghost were temporary, but not so with the Andromeda Galaxy costume. I really, dyed my hair black. It took more than 3 years to fade and grow out. I looked hideous for those three years! It was supposed to be the kind of dye that washes out in 21 washes. Not so!! My hair is fairly light and it just sucked up the black and so I had to endure, for the sake of Halloween, the growing out process. Never, again! The Dark Fairy Queen was my last costume. It took hours of work to make the tutu! I had wings, a tiara and a wand. I was HOT STUFF!! Okay, not really, but I still won the contest!

I am not certain of what this year's costume will be, but it will involve lots of face makeup, a lightweight costume that I can hand make and props. There is one particular idea that I'd like to tackle, but there is a prop I have to locate before I can even consider it. I'll update the blog regularly on the process of developing this year's costume.

Nancy's Buttermilk Scones

Late Friday afternoon, I baked up some scones! Be sure to check out the recipe for these I've posted in the right sidebar under "Recipes". This is a very basic and easy way of making scones. In my opinion, the best way, too! MaMaw sure did know a thing or two about a baked good. Good for me that I listened and learned a few things! These are really delicious. I hope you try them and I hope you love them as much as we do!

That's it for today! I'm enjoying the weekend and having a blast with my project planning. I hope you're having a great time where you live. Until next time, when I'll share more of life with The HumbleVoyager, Godspeed, Voyagers!!

The Garden Explodes

Wow! The week has really flown by again. I know that this is a product of my advancing years, but really, it can slow down now. Work is keeping me busy and I do like to be occupied for the most part. This week I didn't feel so very well and thus, didn't do anything very special. My focus was on being able to work effectively and it took all of my energy to do that; being under the weather. Yesterday was the worst of it, but I seem to be a bit better today. We'll see how it goes.

On Fridays during the summer, my work hours are reduced to about 6, which is great. This gives me the opportunity to start summertime activities a bit sooner and spend a little more time with my family. I'm very thankful to my company for allowing these summer hours each year. It means I have to eat my lunch while working each day, instead of getting away from my desk, but it's worth it to be able to stop work early on Fridays. Of course, if there is a disaster, I keep working, but so far so good this summer.

Speaking of summer, this has been a really great one; memorable in so many ways. First, it's the first time in YEARS that we haven't seen a 100 degree day before now. The forecast keeps saying we'll be there, but so far no. A few days ago we got a cool front that gave us a high of 72 degrees! What?? In the middle of July??? It's grand! Summers here can be brutal, but this year, lovely! In the spirit of all this lovely weather, I thought I'd give you a little view of the garden show that is our deck:

Yes, the plant you see in the lower right-hand corner of the photo collage is CORN! We put out dry corn on the cob for the squirrels (they give us quite a show trying to get to that corn) and one of the creatures planted a kernel in one of our pots and it has taken off.  What you see is the tassel on the top and we have two ears of corn coming up!  I'll have more pictures of this unusual crop as it matures. We've been reading up on what it's like to grow corn. It's terribly complicated!! The other plants are: Vinca, Petunia, Turk's Cap and a couple of others I can't name, off hand. I love gardening, but don't have time for it. Others in my family handle this and beautifully, don't you think?

We also have some roses, but they aren't producing much at the moment. The bush that grows the largest blossoms is in the shade too much. We got all if it's blooms in spring. The same is true for the climbing rose up along the front of the house. However, we do have a couple of miniature rose bushes that are just amazing at putting out flowers. One has been around for many years and simply can't be stopped. It is constantly under attack by some insect or another, but puts out little blooms regularly. I call it, "The Little Tiny Bush That Could." Here is a blossom cut for me yesterday:

The blossoms my look like they've been a bit chewed by something, but they just keep coming. This one is in a lovely cup of water on my desk so that I can admire it while I work. I think it's a beautiful thing.

That's it from the world of The HumbleVoyager. I'm working on some projects that I hope to share more about soon. Other than that, it's all about relishing the summer. Thanks for stopping by and enjoying the garden! Until later when I'll share more of life here in Central Texas, Godspeed, Voyagers!!