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One of the best things about being a preacher's wife is that people bring us fresh fruits and veggies during the summer. Later, they often bring us homemade salsa and jelly!
Last night, I was handed a bagful of green beans. Like most recipes, I had to call my mom to see how to fix it. She told me to...
Wash them well
Snap each end and sometimes you can snap them in half
Put them in a crockpot and add enough water to cover them.
(This could also be done on the stove top in a big pot, just be sure to watch the water level throughout the day).
Add bacon juice (it's really grease, but I think juice sounds nicer). Whenever I make bacon, I pour the juice in a plastic container and keep it in the frig. So whenever a "Southern-style" recipe calls for it, I'll have it on hand.
I added about 2 Tablespoons.
Some people I know add a little sugar to theirs. Other's will put in ham pieces.
Stir well, Put on the lid, Set at High and let it go for 4-6 hours.
I remember doing something like this in Girl Scouts when I was a kid. It's simple drawings on a paper. Kids can do a scavenger hunt while they are in the park, out on a hike, hanging out at a boring family reunion....I want to laminate mine so we can use it over and over.
This could easily translate to a city scavenger hunt too. You could draw a hydrant, a blue post box, a parking meter, a bird's nest. The list goes on and on.
Happy Hunting!
About two years ago, my friend Melissa took me to a neat art gallery/frame store in NorthShore Chattanooga. We saw these cool pictures using letters to spell out words. Since then, I've seen these all over the place. I wanted to do it myself but I didn't realize it would take me an entire year to do my son's name. After all, Ben is a small name! We travel all over the place and hike a lot, so I expected to find the letters fairly easily.
The E in his name came first. This was a part of an outdoor grill by Foster Falls. It's the side where you can let down or put up the grill depending on how close you want your food to be to the fire.
I found the B at Cumberland Mountain State Park. It's their famous bridge.
The N took me the longest. Really. I thought I could find branches on a trail or some sidewalk lines in the shape, but I came up with nothing time and time again. I really hoped for something that came naturally, but I finally gave in when I saw this N. It was on a vintage railcar at Coke Ovens Park in Dunlap.
The frame, I believe that is from WallyWorld (WalMart) or Target.
I've seen the letters in color pictures. But I prefer the black and white. I think it makes the letters pop. And for some people, that's important, because these are kind of like the Magic Eye pictures to some people.
Try it yourself. It's fun to see what you can come up with!
I want to be a neat mom, a fun mom. And I hope one day our home will be the one that the kids like to hangout at. I know this will mean that kids will be at our home wanting to eat, sleep, etc. But that's the kind of home I grew up in. My parents were the cool parents. Don't get me wrong, I did have rules to live by and I was respectful. But my friends were always over.
Ben is just 2, and yet, I am always thinking of what we can do for fun. Today, we built a tent in our living room. I'm trying to pull from my own childhood memories of what neat things my parents and grandparents did with me.
I have a book called "101 Things Every Kid Should Do Growing Up" by Alecia T. Devantier that helps. It has a bunch of wonderful ideas in there. Inside, she lists how to bake a cake from scratch (recipe included), how to grow a vegetable garden, how to enjoy a lazy summer day (I liked, "Run through the sprinkler or lie around in a shallow wading pool.")
I'm going to go now so Ben and I can "Lie on a blanket in the cool grass, looking for shapes in the clouds."
