PA ELK

The weekend of October 23 2010 Pete took Jack and me to view the PA Elk. We stayed in a hotel in St Marys PA. Elk can be found in a small town called Benezette. We saw a ton of Elk and it was a good time to go because the Elk were bugling and very active!

Cookbook

Cookbook
Originally uploaded by Bonnie Matthews

I have had this great idea to put together a friends and family cookbook! I have downloaded a software package to help with this. You can find it here http://www.cookbookpeople.com/ It will really speed this project up. I hope to have it completed by Christmas (Notice I didn't say which one) So please post any recipes that you would like to have included!

Yesterday we went back to school. I don't know where the summer went! We went to Camelbeach, (a water park in the Poconos) we spent a day at the real beach with friends and attempted to go to qualifying at the NHRA Toyo tires Nationals. The drag racing weather was iffy so we decided against plunking down our admission fees and visited with friends instead!

Hello, Last week Jack and I froze 100 ears of corn to have for winter. The process was much more streamlined this year than last! It only took about 4 hours stat to finish instead of all day!

Official start of Summer vacation!

Today marks the official start of our summer vacation! We don't have many plans this summer besides tending the garden and spending a few weekends with friends. We intend to insulate our shop. (Willing volunteers accepted) Just kidding!

I took a photo of a cool flower that was growing in our woods, if anyone knows what it is called I would appreciate a comment.

We planted our garden on June 6th. While this sounds late we still had a frost on June 1st. Hopefully, everything will grow well!

I am anticipating taking a course on photography in the fall. I want to develop my love of photography and learn a few things.

We just spent a great weekend with our friends in Clarion Pa. We enjoyed nature got to go boating, ride a horse and four wheelers! Not to mention the wonderful food we ingested. The weather on this Memorial Day weekend was the best in recent memory.

We are so fortunate to have such great friends who are willing to share their lives with us!

This photo is of one of the resident frogs that lives at their place!

A Day at eagles Mere PA

This is a video of our day at Eagles Mere tobbogan slide! What a great experience. We went with Tim and Barb Henry and their son Andrew. We made 6 slides in about an hour and we had a blast!! I highly reccomend this to anyone.

Shed Hunting anyone??

Well hows this for some afternoon entertainment mountain style? Jack and I went antler shed hunting and we actually found one. It is a 5 point left side antler. We found it in our woods on President's Day! I also took some other interesting photos. One is a hawk (I think) feather one is Jack and the antler at the beaver pond, and the other is ice on our very small creek. All in all a very successful walk.

Scorpion

Scorpion
Originally uploaded by anglerove

Here is a photo of a Scorpion snowmobile that is very similar to the one we had growing up. We had so much fun with that machine. My Dad and I got into lots of mischief with it. Not to mention the fun I had with my friends with it. We had an old car hood we used to drag behind the sled. It might not have been the safest arrangement but it sure was fun.

We had 2 of these. One was short and light like the one in the picture and the other was long and heavy. I was always partial to the short one.

What great memories.

Chocolate Coffee Cupcake

Chocolate Coffee Cupcake
Originally uploaded by mejika

I am making cupcakes similar to these for Saint Paul Lutheran church's Pork and Sauerkraut dinner on Saturday Jan 31. The recipe comes to me from school and is adapted to make 30 cupcakes or one very full 9x13 pan of cake.
the recipe follows:
Oven 360
Flour 3 cups
Sugar 2 1/4 cups
cocoa 1 cup
Baking soda 1 Tablespoon
Baking Powder 2 teaspoon
salt 1/2 teaspoon
Mix dry ingredients together

eggs 3
2/3 cup vegetable oil
1 1/3 cup milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/13 cup hot coffee

Measure veg oil and milk together add vanilla and eggs , slowly mix this into the dry ingredients (using an electric mixer) Add the hot coffee last. Batter will be runny.

This makes a very moist and delicious cake!

You can top it off with some Peanut Butter icing:

This recipe comes to me from Marie Moore's Grange cookbook
submitted by Jackie Clabaugh

1 cup milk
4 heaping tsp flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1/2 cup crisco
1 tsp vanilla

Boil milk and flour until thick. Let cool. Add rest of ingredients. Beat for 4 minutes. Add Peanut Butter to taste ( I think I used around 3/4 of a cup)

This is a delicious combination! I heartily reccomend it!!

Baking

Today we had a snow/ ice day. I started the day off by talking to a friend of mine who I have not spoken to in 3 years. It was great to reconnect with an old friend. Hopefully, we will stay in better contact with each other. After my telephone conversation I moved on to baking cupcakes for St. Paul Lutheran church's Pork and Sauerkraut dinner which is this Saturday. I used a great recipe for chocolate cake that I got from school. See the post above this one for the recipe!

Christmas is over and the tree is put away. Now we can look forward to planning the garden of 2009. This is a photo of our efforts from 2008. We are enjoying corn, green beans, pickles pumpkin and tomatoes from last years efforts. Hopefully, we will expand our green thumb this year and have more home grown vegetables for the pantry.

In the fall I took a class on canning tomatoes and jams and jellies. I am looking forward to trying these tecniques this year. Previously, I have only frozen our bounty. I will have to let you know how it turns out.

This spring I am planning on taking a class on Microsoft Word and Excel spreadsheets. It is a 6 week course. Hopefully, I will be able to get something worthwhile from the course. We shall see.

Merry Christmas and Happy Snow Days!

Hello! this installment finds us at home for 2 consectutive snow days in mid December. jack and I were able to get the tree up and bake cookies. We also did some cleaning up around here. We had rain and ice yesterday and it snowed this morning.

Here Comes Winter

Yesterday I was taking pictures of our Jack-O-Lanterns from this year and today we have a snow day!!! I was not prepared to hear that news this morning. It is not even November yet and we have had our first snow day! We may still be in school in July! This year the school board only gave us 1 day to make up snow days. All others must be added to the end of the school year!

Archery

Archery season has started here in PA. I have been out 3 times already this year. That is kind of a record for me. This morning I saw a lot a deer and even had one come within range. I was even able to draw my bow on him (a nice 8 point) he just would not take that final step that would place my arrow squarely in his vitals. Instead he heard my heart beating and took off!!!

Heat is ON!

We had to fire our outside wood heater up on Oct 2 this year! Our inside tempeture was only reading 62 degrees. So Pete fired up the stove and we have been toasty ever since! It will probably run through May.

Autumn Kayaking

Autumn Kayaking
Originally uploaded by s_h_a_w_n_g_13

Women's Kayak weekend

Last weekend, when it rained for 3 days straight, I went on a women's kayaking adventure down the Susquehanna. I went with a friend, Tina Champlavier, and we paddled 22 miles over 3 days. The first day we went from Tunkhannock to Falls (11 miles) it rained but not terrible. Then we stayed at the lodge at Camp Lackawanna outside of Tunkhannock. The next day we paddled from Laceyville to the camp.(15 miles) The rain really came down on Saturday. We again retired to the lodge and had a lot of good food. On Sunday we did a short paddle (5 miles ) from the camp to Tunkhannock (it rained again)

the weekend was really fun and I met a lot of new people and learned a lot about kayaking!! We also saw 2 eagles. What a beatiful sight.

Back to School!

Now that it is Oct 1st I figured I better do a back to school blog! Jack has entered 3rd grade with with Mrs. Morrison. So far he has enjoyed third grade. He is in class with 2 of his buddies Jessie and Brett.

My back to school has gone well also. This year we are dismissed early on Wednesday's for teacher in service days.

Labor Day wrapup

We had a great time camping out and picnicing over Labor Day Weekend. We had 3 families campout with us. we also had some day picnicers.

This is a photo of Jack giving my Mom a ride in the go cart! It was a truly memorable moment. The other photo is of our camping area. ( shown in the picture is Pearl Oelschlager, Gerri Smith and Cydney Dewitt)

We also got together with our neighbors the Loux's for a campfire, volleyball game and a quait tournament.

We hope to do it again next year!