Thank goodness I'm not in charge of the turkey...

Happy Thanksgiving all!!!

When I got home from work this evening {which is now really yesterday evening...I guess...???}, I kicked it into Thanksgiving prep mode.

But before I tell you more about that, confession time. This afternoon {or yesterday afternoon, whatever} while I was hanging out waiting for John Wayne to get off work so we could head home, I pretty much wrote this post based on how I thought my evening was going to go. My plan was to just snap and insert the pictures and wah-lah. Well, the evening didn't go quite as smoothly as planned, so let's just say I had a little editing to do.

I started with the two pecan pies that I needed to make. My sweet Mom gave me two pie crusts that she had made and put in the freezer, so all I needed to do was roll them out and put them in the pie plate. That simple little step, turned into a crying, cursing, abusing of the pie crust, match. Unfortunately, it had to involve John Wayne and then my Mom...and in the end, we have one pie, not two. The one I did get done, isn't the most beautiful pie I've ever made and it looks like for our Friday gathering with John Wayne's family, I'll be doing something very uncharacteristic of myself...buying something to take. Fail. So, my {famous in my own mind} pecan pies, that never fail me, well...


So next it was onto the salted caramel cookies, a recipe that I found on Pinterest. Besides somehow destroying my kitchen in the process, these turned out pretty darn good. I actually just ended up modifying my own chocolate chip cookie recipe by adding half the amount of chocolate chips, and replacing those with a cup of Kraft caramel bits and a half cup of crushed pretzels and sprinkling with salt before baking.



Like I said, pretty darn good. They have the whole sweet and salty goodness going on.

The cookies are for our Black Friday Survival Kits. In case you don't remember, I LOVE Black Friday shopping! Black Friday shopping is a fun tradition for the ladies in my family and every year, my Mom and I put together "survival kits" to help us get through the day. This year, our kits include, among other things: pumpkin bread that my Mom made, the salted caramel cookies, a peppermint mocha, these cute "Santa dollar" candy bars that I found at Alco while shopping on lunch break one day, and a holiday scratch ticket...maybe one of us will win some extra cash to help cover the day! The Little Lady even has her own special survival kit filled with some special goodies of her own.





The last item on my list was the pumpkin pie bars that I shared with you awhile back. As I'm lining the pan with foil, I get half the pan covered and run out of foil. Darn it! It was too late to call my Mom and beg some off of her, but first thing tomorrow morning {or I guess more like in just a few hours} I'll visit the local grocery store {aka my Mom's pantry}, grab some foil and get those done. Thankfully, they're really easy.

So, after tonight {last night, whatever}, I'm for sure thankful for one thing...that I'm not the hostess this year!

May your Thanksgiving be filled with food, football, fun and family!
And may your Black Friday be filled with bargains and more bargains and even more Starbucks!

This and That

This weekend has been a great one so far, we've been able to stay around the house for the most part and I am always thankful for days that aren't spent running from place to place.

Last night John Wayne was updating some cattle records, but then his secretary took over.


I'm sure that the Leap Frog "laptop" that we got her for Christmas will not be nearly as appealing to her : )

This morning I decided to get up early before John Wayne and the Little Lady and make a special treat...homemade donuts!!!




They were pretty tasty. Although, I have to get a candy thermometer because my oil wasn't at the right temperature for all of them and I had some doughy centers.

I made some dipped in cinnamon/sugar and some with a chocolate glaze. They were both pretty tasty, but I thought the cinnamon/sugar ones were the best.


But, after telling the whole Facebook world that I made "homemade" donuts...I must fess up...cheater donuts...TOTALLY. All they are is this...


I found the recipe on Pinterest, my latest obsession.

The Little Lady enjoyed the donut holes for breakfast.


Along with my donuts, I enjoyed some of my favorite creamer...Peppermint Mocha! I finally went to the store yesterday and got some.


John Wayne and I went on a date tonight. Here's the Little Lady getting ready to go to Grandma and Grandpa's for the evening. Do you like her new Old Navy coat? She LOVES it. She especially likes playing peek-a-boo with the hood.


Does The Lincoln County Stockmen's Annual Banquet count as a date?
It does for us : )

Hmmm, my hair looks really flat on one side, I promise it wasn't.


I hope you all are having a great weekend as well!

Save Life As We Know It on America's Family Farms and Ranches

Generally when I write a blog, it’s all for entertainment, but today is serious stuff folks.

The U.S. Department of Labor wants to make it illegal for children under the age of 16 to work on a farm.

If passed, this could change the face of America’s family farms and ranches.

The proposed regulations would make it illegal to allow a child under the age of 16 to do all of the following:

1. Herd animals on horseback;
2. Sort animals on horseback;
3. Operate any equipment;
4. Operate any vehicle, tractor, feed truck, ATV;
5. Operate any tool that is not powered by hand;
6. The list goes on.

So yes, if passed, this means that it would be illegal for our Little Lady to help her Grandpa move cattle. It would be illegal for her to help her Grandpa brand calves. Like I said previously, the list goes on and on.


Activities that we all enjoyed participating in while growing up on a farm or ranch would become illegal, just to satisfy the Washington bureaucrats who claim that they are “protecting” our children, when they in fact have no idea what a huge negative impact this would have on multi-generational farming and ranching families.

I will close with a quote that I saw and loved from another blogger on the subject, "What does our government have against teaching children the value of family, responsibility and a strong work ethic?"

Please visit www.regulations.gov and type WHD-2011-0001-0001 in the search tool to comment on the proposed rule.

*Edit...It is important to note that to my understanding, yes, children could continue to work for their parents, but ONLY directly under their parent's supervision, and not for example, their grandparents. That is why, in my opinion, this proposed law is such a threat to multi-generational family farms and ranches.

And the challenges...

I think I've already mentioned that the Little Lady was quite the difficult little subject for our photo shoot. It took a lot of patience and a lot of work, but we were still able to get some great pictures. I just thought that you should see some of what we went through to get all of those good pictures that I showed you yesterday.

There were tears...


There were little red shoes that kept having blowouts...


There were stressed Mamas...


There was pouting...


There were controlling Mamas...


There were distractions...


There was begging...


There was anger...


There were uncooperative children...


But thankfully, in the end, there were also lots of really good pictures too!

My Favorites

Get ready for photo overload. Here, in no particular order, except for the order they were shot in, are my favorites.

We started out in Mantiou Springs. Manitou has lots of character and cool architecture, which made for a great setting.








We then moved to Rock Ledge Ranch.







What do you think? Which ones are your favorites? I especially like the one of us walking, the one in front of the turquoise window {mostly because it's a turquoise window!} and the one of the Little Lady in the foliage.

My super talented little cous took these for us. Thank you again Kelsey, you rock! {I'm probably breaking a photographer's cardinal rule here...I posted unedited pictures, but you didn't know that they're unedited did you?!? Nope, because she's just that good. Sorry Kels, but at least now you know which ones are my favorite and can edit them :)}

Oh, what a difference a year makes!

Well, we survived last week, barely {more on that in a minute}. But that means that we had our annual family photo shoot yesterday {remember, that one that I get all nervous about}.

Yesterday reconfirmed why I get nervous about this, though. One hour before the shoot, it was raining. Thankfully it did stop raining and actually made for perfect cloudy conditions for the photographer {my amazingly talented little cous}. And the main source of my worries...the Little Lady...she's 20-months-old, I have no control over her mood and how she is going to act...and well, she did.not.cooperate. But again, thankfully, with some patience and some work, we still got some amazing pictures.

We went to several different locations, but we did take a few at the same place as last year, so I just had to share the following.

2011

2010

We have many more great photos, and soon hopefully, I'll share more of them with you guys. Oh, and the ginormous bracelet the Little Lady is wearing in this year's pic, yeh, that's mine. It's one of the few things that were making her happy.

Back to last week. Not to be outdone by my family, I came down with the flu Wednesday night. Ugh, not fun! And the Little Lady had a relapse of it Wednesday morning. Oh well, it's behind us now and hopefully the Goldings have done their time for this season.

It did end up snowing last Wednesday morning too. John Wayne and I headed out, but not too far down the highway, with the snow blowing pretty good, we decided that since we could both work from home, we'd be the wiser to go that route. We are both very blessed to have understanding employers who allow us to work from home when the roads are bad.

We got the calves to the sale and while we may not have topped the market, we still made good money, very thankful for that. Tomorrow John Wayne will take our last load of cows to pasture at his Dad's and we'll be all settled for the winter.

Looking ahead, this week looks to be pretty normal with no travel or special meetings for work, events in the evening, and dare I say it, maybe even no formal plans this weekend. I'm looking forward to getting started on some Christmas projects. One of those being, our Christmas cards. Now that we have our pictures, I can get our cards ordered. I love Christmas cards! It's one of my favorite things about the holiday season. Not only do I always look forward to making ours {this right here is why those photos are so important to me!}, but I LOVE getting cards from all of our friends and family.

Here's to a great week!

This week so far and a winner...

Well, this week can only get better, right? Our Little Lady came down with the flu early Monday morning, so that made for a particularly bad Monday, especially since it was Halloween and that meant no trick-or-treating for her. At least we had had a great weekend filled with Halloween fun and candy; otherwise, it would have been really disappointing. This particular strain appears to be the true 24-hour variety, both the Little Lady and John Wayne were feeling better within a day of coming down with it.

While I hate to see T sick, it’s about the only time she’ll slow down enough to curl up and sit with you, so I did enjoy our cuddle time on Monday.


On a brighter note, Saturday when we were in the city, I found two of my holiday favorites had hit the shelf at Target – Peppermint Mochas and Fudge Covered Ritz. Really, who would have ever thought a cracker could taste so good!


I also snatched up a seasonal favorite when the Schwan’s man made his stop last week...and I just might have eaten that for lunch yesterday.


Do you guys have Schwan’s? When I say my prayers at night, I thank God for Schwan’s, it’s how Rural America gets our ice cream!

So, looking ahead, it looks like there could be a big change in the weather later tonight, into tomorrow. We’ll see what happens??? Thursday, we’re taking some of our calves to the sale. I always look forward to having this task in the books and check in hand, as there’s always apprehension leading up to it. Saturday is supposed to be our family Christmas photo shoot and again, the weather is looking questionable, and again, there’s always apprehension {for me, ridiculous, I know!} leading up to this. And so I’m going to grab a Peppermint Mocha {or the whole pack} and I’m not even going to pretend like I’ll eat any less then the whole box of Ritz, and try to get through this week.

In other news… the contest for Paisley White jewelry closed today. While I didn’t make my goal of 50 new followers {even though John Wayne says I should stick to my guns and not do the giveaway until I get 50, at this rate, that could be a long time!}, because I’m a super nice girl, and I love and appreciate all of my followers, old and new, I went ahead and selected a winner…


Kyla Taylor, you are the winner of a $30 credit to Paisley White. Congratulations, I know you’ll love your new creation!

I hope you all have a good week...even if you too, have to use peppermint and chocolate to get through it.