Lin I haven't done much because I had to keep my foot elevated almost all the time but after I finish moving around the middle of April I expect to get back to it.

Happy Birthday Barbie!!

Happy Birthday, Barbie!
Sandy - Love the collage. Robby is a seriously cute little boy.
Marcella

A very happy birthday Barbie! As usual, I am not able to pull off getting a graphic to wish you a very happy day. And of course, many more. I feel sure you will have many hours of music and dancing. Every time I see DWTS I think of you, our dancing sneaker!

Anne: your menus sound so glorious! What a marvelous celebration your family must be planning.

Sandy: the photos of that darling boy takes my breath away. I remember our own little boy at that age. Little boys have a special relationship with mommy and grand mommy! Too sweet!

To the ladies who are cursed with forever youthful looks...oh dear! I will gladly accept your issues. Mine seem to at the other end of the problem. I look at least as old or older than I am. Thank goodness, John seems to be in the same boat. Gray, wrinkled and silly!
Patsy

Love all the old time photos, and what a bunch of beauties you all are! Love the pets, too. Wish I had some of my chocolate mini poodles in our old red MG, where they loved standing behind the seats, ears flying as we drove. But my DS and DD managed to find them somewhere and entered them in one of picture books set to music and I wouldn't know how to transfer them to the computer, so that's that!
Welcome back, LESUTHERI, and I, too, cannot recall your posted name, so please use it at the end of your posts to remind us! So sorry about your melanoma, but aren't you happy it was operable? As far as diet, be patient, recover well, and it will work again!
PHOEBE, your memory is amazing, and I think you are right about "Laura"!
SANDY, here you are worried about snow while we are cowering under a heavy thunderstorm! Congratulations on your nice win!
SHIRLEY, I love anything with Maggie, too! I hope the lady with the car gets a lower estimate. Often, when a garage knows a bump occurred, the give a higher price! Your face is not cut off on my forum!
LIN, what a cutie! And what a memory!
JERI, what a wonderful family and great celebrations! Yes, you will be very busy!
JACKIE, you still look quite young! And what a dear friend you are taking on another dog!
ANNE, you always have such interesting tidbits to impart! Shakespeare's headless body? Indeed!
MARIE, what are your X-Rays about? I can't find your post about it! Be well, li'l sis!
PATSY, your picture must be lying, then , if you think you look older! Very perky-looking, dear one!
BARBIE, a very Happy Birthday to you!

Buzz

Here I am on the first day of school in first grade.


Thank you for all the kind Happy Birthday wishes....I taught my beginner line dance class this morning and they surprised me with a song, a card, a plant, and a gift certificate to a favorite restaurant....there were treats with me in mind---fresh veggies with dip and little french bread slices with hummus.

Good evening my friends, time to post some comments before either the Internet connection disappears or this laptop disconnects itself from the Internet. Yipes!

Jackie, I love the picture you posted. My gosh, you do look like a teenager. Our sleeping beauty!! And what a lovely peaceful kitty. Thank you. If someone took a picture of me while I was sleeping I'd likely have my hair all messed up and would be drooling buckets. And by the way, how are you getting along with the dog minding?

Patsy, is the skylight project completed? Should I have mentioned it? If it is not completed, I hope it is going well. I hope your weekend is enjoyable.

Marcella, did the landscaper ever show up? Glad to hear the electricians sorted out some issues. I did Trader Joe’s this morning and it was busier than usual and they were selling lots and lots of flowers and one woman said she was there from out of town and she had her cart heaping over the top with her stock up items. Apparently she doesn’t get there often. I haven’t been to Whole Foods for a few weeks now. We have such an assortment of stores now, I keep trying out the new ones and in time I am sure I’ll get back to just a couple of stores I visit regularly.

Sandy, did I mention how much I enjoyed the photos of your Gidget. What a little cutie. Your furniture was spectacular! At that point I was of course poor and had some hand-me-down furniture with throws over the couch. Congratulations on your bingo winnings by the way. The photo collage of Robby is tremendous. He looks so grown-up.

Phoebe, how is work going? Where in the world are you guys now?

Laura, I am sorry you’ve not been able to work on your jewelry. I remember you showed us a bit of your work and I hope you’ll be back at it soon. Wishing you continued healing. And please share any pictures that you’d care to, we love photos!

Marie, I am sorry you don’t have any pictures of your childhood dogs. It would have been fun to see you and your pets. It is great that you can have someone to come to the house so you can get your haircuts. And I agree, the store updates can be so confusing. At our Walmart, they moved things all around into interim locations while they would remodel several areas, then move everything again and this went on and on until they finally finished everything. Took quite a while to get accustomed to the new locations but now they’ve let the dust settle for a while.

Shirley, goodness, that car repair does sound kind of expensive but if it does cost that much and you keep it off your insurance it will be worth it in the long run. I have always found dealerships are very expensive. For little dings, I go once in a while to one of those scratch and dent shops where they don’t charge much but if someone else was paying, I would go to the dealership. I love your photo Shirley. It turned out just perfectly!

Jeri, my goodness, definitely a big birthday season. Did you find all the gifts you were hunting for? Let the parties begin!!!

Buzz, you are always on the run. I hope having a nurse practitioner on staff will help you with scheduling the care you need. I am sorry we won’t be able to view your photos Buzz. I would have enjoyed them so much but I also would have no idea who to retrieve them from a picture book.

Barbie, what a doll of a girl! So beautiful with lovely curls, beautifully dressed. Just perfect. You were a cutie for sure! I hope you’ve had a great day.

Anne, it is time for spring. I hope the ice is melting away now. Will you spend part of the weekend with family? And that you won’t have to cook for the Holiday. I had to look up Simnel Cake and found a photo of it and it looks spectacular! Here’s a recipe claiming to be very EASY. I would hate to see difficult. Meanwhile, Charlie has quite the outfit. Ha. What a sweetheart.


Simple simnel cake

Ingredients
• 2 oranges, grated zest and juice
• 2 tbsp Cointreau
• 350g mixed dried fruit
• 100g whole glacé cherry
• 250g pack marzipan

• 200g soft butter, diced
• 200g golden caster sugar
• 350g self-raising flour
• 4 large egg
• 2 tbsp milk
For the caramel almonds
• 50g blanched almond
• 100g caster sugar
For the icing sugar
• 125g icing sugar
• zest 1 orange
• 1-1½ tbsp orange juice

Method
1. Heat oven to 160C/fan 140C/gas 3. Tip the zest and juice into a bowl. Add the Cointreau, mixed fruit and cherries. Meanwhile, grease and line the base and sides of a 2kg loaf tin with baking parchment. Shape the marzipan into a sausage the length of the tin, then roll out to the width with a rolling pin.
2. Put the butter, sugar, flour and eggs and milk in a bowl and beat with an electric hand-whisk until smooth. Stir in the mixed fruit and their juices. Spoon half the mixture into the loaf tin, then cover with the layer of marzipan. Top with the rest of the cake mixture and smooth the top. Bake for 1 hr 50 mins until risen and firm to the touch. (Take care if you are checking by piercing with a skewer as you may pierce the marzipan and think that the cake is not cooked yet.) Cool in tin, peel away the paper once cold. It will keep wrapped in foil for 2 weeks.
3. To make the caramel almonds, tip the almonds into a frying pan and heat, swirling the pan so the almonds toast. Tip from the pan then add the sugar to the pan and heat until the sugar turns to a liquid caramel – take care not to heat it too fast or it will burn. Add the almonds, then pour onto a greased baking sheet to set. Will keep in a cool place for 2 days.
4. Decorate the cake on the day you eat it, as the caramel will dissolve on contact with the cake. Mix the icing sugar with the orange zest and juice until smooth, then pour over the cake. The mix is quite wet and will dribble down the sides. Chop the almond caramel, scatter over the icing and leave until the icing sets.




I am off to attend a funeral tomorrow morning and then will help serve or clean up the luncheon if needed. I’ll just be available. The lady who passed away was a long-time member of the church I attend. I think I mentioned this before. I have never met her children but I guess I will tomorrow.

Hugs.

Lin

How fun, Anne! Rabbits and birds, and squirrels too? Your 'pets' are outdoor friends. My friend once trained a squirrel, he came when called, Foxy. Took food from her hand.
Beautiful day in California. Then heading to North Carolina. Then a couple days off for dentist and Dr appts.
Phoebe
PS, Lin- if first step isn't empty cake mix into a bowl, it's not simple enough for me. Have a good day.

Sandydur wrote: »

Barbie, look at how dressed up you were for first grade, so cute. You had the Shirley Temple curls which I presume were natural??

Have a wonderful day!!
Sandy
One Day at a Time

Sandy, I was all dressed up for first grade because my parents sent me to Catholic school because I was too young for first grade in public school...also we were in Puerto Rico where the uniforms were probably even more severe than in the continental USA....the curls were from a permanent wave done on one of those old wave machines that connected the curlers to a big machine on a pole..

Barbie