The Great Prom Dress Hunt of 2010....... (part 1)

Well we are on the hunt for a prom dress and it is not proving to be easy. Cheergirl has a dress that I really love that we bought over the summer but it is short. She has decided short will not work, she want's a long dress. So far most stores we have visited have mostly short dresses and just a few long. We recently headed up to Phoenix and hit a mall with very little success. Currently we are just in the "TRY ON DRESSES" phase.

This is a dress we picked up in the off season at Dillards. We really love this one and she would be perfectly satisfied if it were long.

This one was very nice, very similar in coloring and gold glitteriness to the short one one above. The back lace up seems very strained though.

Hmmmm, cheergirl really liked this one but there are some obvious things I object to. Just a wee bit too much skin showing on the back and up the sides. There would be some serious issues when she dances. I call this one the Jessica Rabbit dress.

Not bad.

Hmmm, bit of skin showing on the low back on this one too.

My favorite. Good support up top. Good color with the red hair and skin tone.

Our Yearly Poppy Hunt.......

Every year we take a short day trip to Box Canyon which is just northeast of Florence. Some years we are lucky, plenty of rain so plenty of poppies and some years are a dud. Last year was a dud so I was very pleased to find so many poppies this year.

A little ways before the canyon, but just shows there is actually a little bit of green in Arizona
The hill around this saguaro was covered in poppies

Adventures in Sourdough........

I really enjoy baking and am always on the hunt for great recipes. I have found a basic sandwich bread recipe that I adore and have decided to now move on and experiment with sourdough. I have used had a sourdough starter before but it was never as active as the one I started this week.

I am a big fan of the breadtopia.com website and they have a fantastic sourdough recipe.

Sourdough by breadtopia

I chose to make sourdough pancakes for my first experiment with my sourdough.

The recipe starts the night before with a cup of sourdough and a couple cups of flour and water. I was really pleased to see the activity the next morning. This is a whole wheat starter hence the offwhite color.This recipe made some delicious pancakes. Everyone asked for more.

It's that time of year again.......

Spring/ summer garden time.

A few changes in store. First off a couple raised beds.

I really missed having a decent winter garden this year but some health issues really prhibited me from getting out and turning the soil and doing the things that needed done. I had a few decent spots of soil so I did plant broccoli and got a few decent heads. Also planted brussels sprouts but they are being devoured by insects, ahh well, maybe next year.

I am hoping to really have a decent summer garden, I will just dig thru the pain :)

Coupons............

I love when I get an awesome bargain with coupons. February is my favorite shopping month of the year. I have no idea why the grocery stores around here choose February but I can get the best bargains this month.

Awesome trip yesterday...

10 cans chunky soup (great for hubby to take to work for lunch)
4 very large boxes frosted flakes
2 packages hot dog buns
1 ramen dinner

all for just 11.00 and the boxes of cereal kicked out another coupon for me for 3.00 off next shopping trip

Gardening....

I haven't posted anything about gardening in a very long time.

I didn't have much of a winter garden this year because of some foot problems. I did manage to get a few things in areas where the soil was already in decent shape.

Our peppers kept growing strong from summer, thru the fall and thru the winter. The only suffered when we had a couple freezing nights that we weren't expecting.

Still have a pear tomato plant that hung on thru the winter also.

I have a few long rows of sugar snap peas and hopefully will get a good harvest from those soon.

And finally..... picked my first nice head of broccoli today which will be served tonight. I have probably another 10 broccoli plants to harvest over the next few weeks.

Origami girl.........

Origami girl has developed some interests over the last half year or so of her life. I kinda wondered if she would ever find her niche lol.

Pizza boy has always been slightly interested in sports, volunteering, JROTC.

Cheergirl has always been into cheer and dancing.

But poor little origami girl didn't have much interest in anything. She has always been good at origami but that doesn't occupy much time. Just recently she started writing. She writes all the time. She has done several short stories. She recently read a book and didn't like the ending so she sat down and wrote her own ending. She also recently started showing an interest in drawing. Some of her stuff has been pretty good for a beginner.To nurture here interest she received some drawing supplies for Christmas.

This Friday her school will be doing a walk. The theme of this year's march is "It's Time to Totally Fulfill the Dream of Dr. King". Students are able to submit art work dipicting which is appropriate for the occasion. Not really positive on how this works but I believe several students will be selected to present their work. Origami girl really wanted to draw something but was hesitant because she is afraid to present her work if she is chosen. She finally gave into her desire to draw and finished up her work this morning.

She chose to depict MLKs "I Have Dream Speech" in her poster. She even added the Washington Monument in the background.

Basketball Season is Here........

.....and I have only made it to one game so far.

The cheerleaders always do a dance at halftime and on Monday they did their Christmas dance.
The video is a little too big for blogger to I put it on youtube instead.

LINK TO CHEER DANCE

I really wish I could cut the end of this one off, I taped way too long, but have no idea how to edit a video.

2009 Winter performance to Snow

cheergirl is in dance again this year and they had their winter performance on Saturday. Of course I forgot to charge my camcorder so couldn't tape all the dances. I did manage to get most of cheergirl's number. She is pretty hard to spot because the lighting has a reddish tinge. Any other color to the lights would make it easier to spot her because her red hair would stand out. Sigh, but they didn't ask my opinion ;)

The video is just a little too big to upload directly to blogger so I just have the youtube link.....

Snow Performance

I had hoped to get a picture of her after the performance in her costume but unfortunately that didn't happen.

It's that time of year.....

for parties and gifts and and pretty lights etc. I worked my fingers to the bone getting a few things ready for origami girls party today.

Aren't these just the cutest little marshmallow pops? I got the idea from Suzanne McMinn over at Chickens in the Road