Easy Taco Salad

My husband and I came up with this a couple of days ago:

Easy Taco Salad
1 lb of ground beef
1 package of taco seasoning
1/2 head iceberg lettuce, shredded or chopped
2 green bell peppers, diced
1/2 red onion, diced
1 can of mexicorn, drained
sour cream
salsa
shredded cheese
tortilla chips

Follow taco seasoning package directions to cook ground beef. Drain. Set aside. In a bowl combine lettuce, bell peppers, onion and mexicorn. For each serving put salad mix in bowl and add taco meat, sour cream, salsa, shredded cheese and tortilla chips as desired.

Pinterest

I haven't posted in awhile. Quite a lot going on during the summer. I've also spent a bit of time on Pinterest.com. Some of you have probably already discovered this site. For those that haven't let me explain how it works. If a person comes across a website, oftentimes a blog that gives instructions on how to do something, and they want to remember where the site is so they can go back and try it, they pin it. If someone finds a cute accessory for sale or a great furniture design and want to be able to find it again, they pin it. It is like having bookmarks but they are all stored in one place, and your friends can see what you have pinned. If they like it, they may repin it to their own boards (like cork boards but online). You can do the same with things that they have pinned. Good recipes, how to's, etc. The other great thing is that you can search for a certain subject like "magnet" and see all the pins that have been made with that subject. I have found and altered or adapted many, many ideas from making hand soap, to spot removing tips, to easy hair styling, to easy chicken enchiladas, to an easy idea for making magnets (except I am going to make them necklace focals instead). Every so often I will come across one where the site has been deleted but all-in-all this is a great resource site for finding how-to's and ideas. But beware, it can be addicting and occasionally you might find a pin you don't care for. But all-in-all, this is a great one stop shop for finding what you are looking for D-I-Y without having to Google through hundreds and hundreds of sites for the same thing. (Next will be turning 16 cent bathroom tiles into decorative coasters - using the tiles, felt, felt glue, scrapbook paper and Modge Podge.) Can't wait!

Our board is Rachel Cross in case you want to follow it.

Idea for Foster Children - Foster Bags

Growing up I had two little brothers. I begged and begged my parents to adopt a girl so I could have a little sister to no avail. When I was 25 I knew a teacher that in her 30's had never married but decided to adopt a daughter from China. She now has three. So when my dad asked me where I thought I'd be in ten years, my reply was simple. I told him that by age 35 if I wasn't married I would try to adopt a child. Just because I couldn't be a wife didn't mean I couldn't be a mother. (I wanted to honor God by not having sex outside of marriage.)

So here I am at age 35. I am married but we have not yet had any children. We have thought that even if we did have one child of our own we would still adopt. Having 3-4 kids total would be hectic but nice overall. Since I have talked of our thoughts of adopting and that we are very open to the idea, I have found many female friends that are adoptive mothers or have been foster mothers. Now like most couples, the idea of fostering a child, growing attached to them and then having to let them go and perhaps not knowing what becomes of them may be too much to bear. That's why it is such an extremely difficult thing to have enough foster parents and why it has to be such a specific calling, perhaps even more so than adoption itself. One of my friends through the Baptist Student Ministries Alumni is an adoptive mother. I did not know her in school but was contacted by her when it was decided to have an alumni luncheon to raise money for mission trips for current BSM students. So we became Facebook Friends.

A few days ago she shared a blog of a friend of her's starting a ministry called "Provisional Love" http://provisionallove.blogspot.com/. The idea is that this family (that includes adopted children that have been in the foster care system) wants to collect items for children just entering what can be be a scary experience of foster care. They point out that when children are placed in foster care for the first time, they often have no belongings of their own but the clothes on their backs. Imagine as a child, going from the only home you have ever known, to being taken by one set of complete strangers to go and live with another set of complete strangers, leaving everything familiar behind.

This got me to thinking: what if churches and women's groups could come together and make "Foster Bags" for foster children. The idea would be to buy or make bags - perhaps just canvas bags that could be decorated and fill them with a few toys, a stuffed animal, toothbrush, toothpaste, a pad of paper, crayons and pencils. Older children might receive bags with journals. These could be kept at CPS or a foster agency to give to a child. It would be a way of saying wherever you are and wherever you go this belongs to you. I don't know if you could add children's or teen bibles or not. Now I don't have much money right now, but this is a very real need that could be filled for not too much money per bag. A sort of Operation Christmas Child but for local foster kids that are normally poor, neglected, abused, abandoned, or had something happen to their parents and have no one else to care  for them.

My husband, Ray, pointed out that similar bags might be beneficial to the Red Cross to hand to children devastated by disasters.

Hmm, something to think and pray about.

James 1:27

Pure and lasting religion in the sight of God our Father means that we must care for orphans and widows in their troubles, and refuse to let the world corrupt us.

Mark 9:35-37

He sat down and called the twelve disciples over to him. Then he said,"Anyone who wants to be the first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else." Then he put a little child among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them,  "Anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes my Father who sent me."

Videos and photo at the SAME TIME!

So there you are, attending a wedding of a dear friend or relative. You want to take photos and video. But you only have two hands. Taking pictures is going to be difficult because the lighting isn't best, but you don't want to disturb others by having the flash going off and frankly the noises your camera makes can be bothersome. But you don't just want video, you want beautiful pictures because it may be a little while before wedding photos are sent to the bride and groom by the photographer. In some weddings there are no videographers to catch the special moments either.

The solution: If your camera has video capabilities, use the video. Make sure beforehand that you have a back-up battery for your camera and plenty of card space. It might be wise to invest in a few gigs of memory card. I have one that is 16g so that I never have to change cards, and I also keep a couple of 2g in case my 16 card goes bad.

After you put your video clips on the computer, here is how you take photos from the video.

First, open the Windows "Paint" program. If you aren't familiar with it you will find it in the Accessories folder in your All Programs menu in your Start button.

Second, watch the video in as high definition as you can on your computer screen. Use full screen for viewing if you can. While watching the video, hold down the "Alt" key so you are ready to take your picture at a moments' notice. When you see a picture perfect moment, and while holding down the Alt key, press the "Print Screen" key. This is usually found at the top right of your keyboard. Then pause your video, go to the "Paint" program and paste the screen shot you just made by either holding down "CTRL" and pressing the "V" or going to the "Edit" menu in Paint and selecting "Paste".  You can then save the photo as a .jpg file and also print the picture. After you save the file, then go back and crop or change colors or whatever and save that file under a different file name. That way if you accidentally mess up the edited version you can just go back to the original.

So in short:

Take video. Open Paint. View video on computer screen. Alt+PrintScreen to take a screen shot. CTRL+V to paste into Paint and then save or edit or print as you like. If you miss the shot you wanted you can always play that piece of video again to get the shot you like. Now you can have video and pictures that are essentially taken at the same time.

Craft Experiment: New Blue Shoes

Ever had the desire for a new pair of colorful shoes but not the money to go buy a pair? Ever been frustrated by the lack of color selection in discount stores? Ever had a pair of shoes you didn't use anymore? That's what happened to me. So I tried an experiment.

One pair of pumps I no longer wear
Painter's Tape
Plastic bags (to cover my work surface)
One acrylic marker-blue
One jar of Deco Art Triple Thick Glaze
One sponge brush

I set the shoes on plastic bags to keep my work surface from getting painted on.

First, I taped every area that I didn't want to paint.

Then I used the marker and "painted" the shoes. I allowed 3 hours for drying between coats and paint a total of three coats on the shoes.

Then I removed the painter's tape.

I coated the shoes with the Deco Art Triple Thick Glaze using a sponge brush. The purpose of the coating is two-fold. I want my shoes to be shiny and I want to seal the paint so it won't come off if it gets wet.

And this is the finished experiment. I love the color peaking out from under a pair of bootleg jeans!

(I did find that a little of the paint came off while using the glaze and the final look had a little too much clear goo dried on. Next time I will try coating the shoes with Modge Podge Dimensional Magic instead. It makes for a thinner coat.)

Free Online Books to Read

Would you like to read online books - for free. Like to learn about how to's or have a history paper you need to write? Here is how you get access to free online books written prior to 1920.

1) Go to books.google.com 
2) Select "Browse Books and Magazines". 
3) Select "Advanced Search". 
4) Type in the subject you are looking for and select "Full View Only" and then click on the "Search" button. 


Then any book from 1920 or before that Google has scanned into its book store can be downloaded and viewed for free. When you select full view only you are telling it to search only for books you can read for free. These are books that no longer have their original copyright privileges due to age but have been found in large libraries and scanned by the Google company. Be sure that anything needing a Bibliography include that Google provided the book. I have read recipe books from the 1880's, books about the Victory Garden from 1918 and runaway slave stories pre-dating the Civil War (according to the book publish date). There is much of history you will find there that you won't find in ANY history book today. You can search for a subject, name, location, war, etc. and find plenty of great books.

Accessorize!

We can't stress this enough - accessorize! Just because we  may be plus sized ladies doesn't mean we can't look marvelous when we head out the door. Don't leave the house without earrings, find cute pairs of shoes that are comfortable too, and don't forget the belt! My wide stretching belt from Target is my favorite accessory. I can wear it with almost any shirt or blouse for a slimming look. The blouse is from Wal-mart and the jacket and skirt are from J C Penney's. 

We are starting this blog for several reasons: to inspire, to show our hobbies and interests, to add fun craft ideas we've found and to show off our jewelry for sale. As women we are defined often by where we work and whether we have kids. But ladies, we are so much more than that! So as time permits we are going to be talking about crafts, gardening, fashion, feeling pretty, etc. for whomever would like to read about us. 

Blessings

Rachel and Sharon