BIRTHDAYS, DINNER PARTIES AND THE TALL & SHORT OF IT

To begin with, our precious great-great nephew, Jack, just turned two (I think I have enough greats in there!) This is the most recent photograph that we have of him. He's a beautiful child and we are so blessed to have him in the family!

I have had a really busy past week or so. Mid-week several of us celebrated another artist friend's birthday.


There are five of us who get together on our birthdays and have lunch together. We used to all paint together but somehow life has gotten in the way. We all still paint, but not together on a regular basis anymore.

Then on Friday night the "Gang" had a get together and we had a great dinner party at our friend's house.

As always, a good time was had by all. How can you miss with good friends and fellowship!

On Saturday Franklin and Papa went to the hockey game in Dallas.They said that the game was pitiful (the Stars lost) but they had a great time just being together. At least they were dressed as the staunch supporters that they are. I think it's wonderful when father and son can spend quality time together with just the guys. That's very special to us .. especially as we grow older. We really appreciate the time that our children spend with us. They are the lights of our lives.

As soon as we returned from church yesterday I started preparing for Family Day and family birthday celebrations. Once I was out of my church clothes, I started baking. I made a chocolate cobbler that was absolutely to die for! It was the first time I have made it, so I kept my fingers crossed with the hope that it would turn out well. It's not the best looking finished product that I've ever seen, but the aroma coming from the kitchen as it was cooking was unbelievable. The house was filled with the delicious smell of chocolate so I couldn't have gone too wrong! Plus ... it makes it's own chocolate sauce right in the pan.

When they first arrived, Frank decided to have the kids play a game called "Leap Frog" on the computer. It's quite a challenge and it took all 3 of them to figure it out.

Even though Connor is our computer whiz kid, he couldn't figure it out on his own. He wanted to know if the winner got a cash prize but we told him not today!

Here is the link if you want to try the challenge yourself.

Frog Leap Test

I understand that second graders in China can solve this, but this old woman had a very difficult time. I also know that I am NOT smarter than a 5th grader :-)

Since Harry is part of the family now (he's our Granddog), he decided to give one of our furry friends a run for their money.

If I didn't know better, I'd swear that he was licking his chops after dining on Squirrel Stew. Actually, he'd just finished polishing off a T-bone that we had saved for him from a previous meal.

We have decided to rotate where we will have family day each month, so we have made a plan to make it as easy as possible for the "host" person. We also decided that we would always play some games as we are a competitive bunch and all enjoy the fun.

I had bought the Seinfeld edition of "Scene It" so as soon as we all had a little libation in our hands, we popped the DVD in and started to play.

We had a very competitive game ... girls against the guys ... and the girls won. Yeah!!!

We were celebrating Ethan's 14th birthday, Rachel's 32nd and Dayna's 30th, so it was time to open the gifts. They made such a cute looking group that I couldn't resist taking a photo of the birthday people.

The girls posed for me with their new handbags. Ethan had already put his gift cards and money in his pocket.

The weather was beautiful, so we went outside on the deck and the boys went in the jacuzzi and the pool (they nearly froze to death in the pool) We enjoyed Margaritas and Chili con Queso while they were swimming.

We started the mega eat-a-thon with Chili con Queso and Margaritas. I opted to serve pizza for dinner which we ordered from Biraporetti.

Before we ordered the pizza, we had a rematch of Seinfeld Scene It and the girls won again. Ian couldn't resist putting on some old glasses of mine and acting like an alien. The teeth were almost the last straw. He looked so awful to be such a cute boy. Needless to say, with a team effort, we won the rematch. Way to go gang!

After we finished the pizza, we had dessert. The Chocolate Cobbler was amazing! I served it warm and topped it with vanilla ice cream. The family said that it was even better than my chocolate souffles that I make and it was a lot less trouble!

Here is the recipe if you are interested in making a favorable impression!

Chocolate Cobbler

1 & 1/4 cups granulated sugar, divided into 3/4 cup and 1/2 cup
1 cup all-purpose flour
7 tablespoons cocoa, divided into 3 tablespoons and 4 tablespoons
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 & 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 & 1/2 cups hot water
Preheat oven to 350°.
Stir together 3/4 cup sugar, flour, 3 tablespoons cocoa, baking powder, and salt. Stir in milk, butter, and vanilla, mixing until smooth. Pour into an ungreased 8-inch square glass baking pan.
In a small bowl, mix 1/2 cup sugar, brown sugar, and 4 tablespoons cocoa. Sprinkle evenly over batter. Pour hot water over the top. Do not stir.
Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until center is almost set. Let stand for 15 minutes, then serve. Use the chocolate sauce in the bottom of the pan to spoon over servings. Garnish, if desired, with ice cream or whipped cream.
Makes 8 servings.

Everyone went home around 7:00 and we proceeded to watch the Oscars.

I thought they were a class act this year and enjoyed everything except the political speeches. Frank and I are big movie buffs and could watch movies 24/7, so this was right up our alley.
Franklin checked his I-phone just before they left to make sure he was up to date on his messages,

and when they hugged goodbye, we all realized how tall Nicholas is and how tiny Beth is .... and to think that he's her baby nephew in law!

As I was finishing this post, I heard this loud crash and then a woman scream so I rushed outside to see what had happened.

We live down the street from an elementary school and I was afraid that a child had been hit since school was just letting out. As it happened, this young woman was late picking up her child, wasn't paying attention to what she was doing (was probably on her cell phone) and plowed into a car that was parked in front of our house. Both cars were damaged pretty badly, but no one was seriously hurt .... thank goodness! We had a fire truck, police cars and wreckers here for over an hour.

Papa stayed around to see if there was anything that he could do to help. As soon as I realized that everyone was all right, I grabbed my camera so I could document the event.

Needless to say, there's never a dull moment around here! We called 911 as the woman who hit the car was so hysterical that she couldn't do anything but cry. It was a brand new card and the poor thing was so upset.

The mess is finally cleared up and they have just taken the last car away.

It was a real blessing that this didn't happen 5 minutes later or lots of little children could have been involved.

It's cocktail time now, so I'd better sign off and have some liquid refreshment. Have a good week. Tomorrow is Shrove Tuesday and I'll be reporting off and on during Lent, so please stay tuned.

XOXO, Pcasso

VALENTINES, FRIENDS AND GUACAMOLE

Today is Valentine's Day and we have been taking it very easy.



We have several friends who have been wanting me to make my New Mexico style Enchiladas for them, so I decided yesterday that the time had come. These enchiladas are very spicy and you have to have an acquired taste for them as they are really hot. I'd share the recipe with you, but unless you have fresh green Hatch Chiles and red Chile from Chimayo, they won't be any good. Since I use both kinds of chiles, red and green, they are called "Enchiladas Christmas" and they're wonderful.

I set my table yesterday morning and started the beans and my sauces.

I like to keep the table simplistic for this type meal, so I used a small floral arrangement on the table that we could easily visit back and forth during our meal and not have to look around or over the flowers.

Since Frank adores Guacamole, I decided to make that as well to accompany our meal. I don't usually serve a salad since the enchiladas are topped with lettuce and tomatoes, but after all, I could do this little special thing for my Honey as a Valentine extra ;-)

When I was a little girl, I would spend part of my summers in San Antonio with my cousin and his family. His Mother had one child, a son named Lucien Hunter and she loved having a little girl around to share fun girly things with. She taught me how to play Canasta, dance the Rumba and make Guacamole. Back then it was called Avocado Spread and all it had in it was avocados, lemon juice to keep it from turning black, diced onions, Philadelphia Cream Cheese and a little mayonnaise. We ate it on Saltine crackers and I thought it was wonderful. We didn't have anything like that in Fort Worth at the time. This is a photograph of her with my favorite and only cousin. As only children we were pretty spoiled but not nearly as spoiled as as their Wire-haired Terrier named Sir Yippy of York!

Lucien Hunter and I were best friends and even though we he was pretty mean to me some of the time, he was my hero and I adored him. He was 3 years my senior and in my eyes, he could do no wrong. Here we are as children.

Talk about spoiled, he even took dancing lessons from Ginger Rogers! (that was before Fred Astaire came into her life!)

To get back to current times, our guests started arriving at 6:30 with gifts in hand. I didn't expect this but was pleasantly surprised when we received wine and these lovely tulips.

They had no idea how much I love tulips. I've even painted them many times. This is one of my earliest paintings that I did in watercolor.

What a treat the flowers and wine were. I should have dinner parties more often!
Here are several candid shots of the three couples that were here. Frank and I had our photos taken with the 3rd couple so he and I could both be in the photographs. As the photographer, I'm usually not in the picture. As the cook, I'm also usually in the kitchen!

Father Jordan was out of his clerics for the evening and I barely recognized him! We've been friends for about 25 years. We met him when we made our Cursillo.

The dinner seemed to be a big success.

There wasn't a crumb left on any plate, so that's always a compliment to the cook. We finished the meal with Raspberry Sorbet and butter cookies.

After dinner we retired to the den for a nice visit and everyone was on their way home at a little after 10:00.

We were up bright and early this morning sharing Valentine cards and tonight I'll fix us a nice meal and we'll watch Frank's Valentine surprise. I ordered the Silver edition of "As Time Goes By" for him. It's one of his favorite TV shows about an English couple who fell in love during WWII, lost touch with one another and rediscovered their love again later in life. It's delightful and it's on PBS every Sunday night. We never miss it.

I want to take this opportunity to wish each and every one of you a very Happy Valentine's Day and hope that you life will always be filled with the love of friends and family. I've been able to share my life with the man of my dreams and have been truly blessed. He's an angel for putting up with me all these years. It hasn't been easy :-)

With love, XOXOX, Pcasso

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

This poor little guy just can't seem to hang on long enough to be able to get his fill of bird seed. Watch him do a flip on his second attempt before sliding back down the pole again. It doesn't take a whole lot to keep us old folks amused :-) Enjoy!
XOXO, Pcasso

FOUR AND TWENTY BLACKBIRDS

I was being a nature person this afternoon. While I was birdwatching, I couldn't resist photographing these little birds. They are new to our yard and I hope I can find them in our bird book. If anyone out there has a clue, please let me know. They are black with a brown head and I am clueless as to their identity.

They arrived "en masse" this afternoon and always came in waves (not unlike "The Wave" at Texas Stadium) They're really fun to watch. I've just learned how to put a video on my blog, so I have another new way to bore you! There's one with our little squirrel in the next clip. Enjoy and be thankful that he's not living in your attic!
XOXO, Pcasso

OUR FURRY LITTLE FRIEND

This is our resident squirrel. He does anything within his power to try to get to the birdseed as you can see in this little video I took this afternoon!

ICICLES, ILLNESS AND THE FIRST SIGN OF SPRING

As I reported in my last entry, we were on our way to sunny California. It was to be the perfect time to be there since we had a mini-ice storm and there were icicles everywhere.

Texas weather is so funny ... icicles one day and almost a heat wave the next. We looked out several days after the cold weather left momentarily and we had Robins in the back yard. The poor things think winter's over and it's really only just begun.

My precious husband came down with the flu 5 days before we were to fly out to our sun-filled destination and we regretfully had to cancel at the last minute. This was not a short term illness either as he was sick for over two weeks! Even though we were both very disappointed that we did not make the trip, his health always comes first. I spent nearly 3 weeks in the house preparing meals and my only relief was when I went to the grocery store to replenish the food supply. This was not a fun time, but I did get to watch a lot of wonderful movies. I finally broke down and joined Netflix.

Frank still can't figure out why I joined this since we have AT&T U-verse and access to hundreds of movies a day. There were two significant reasons. #1 - I got 3,000 bonus miles on American (which might get me as far as Texarkana) and #2 is that they have hundreds of Independent films plus all the British series that are shown on PBS available to rent. For only $8.95 a month I can rent as many movies as I want and they pay for all the shipping and handling.

The latest films are as far away as your mailbox and you could feasibly get 10-12 films a month for the one time fee of $8.95! It costs nearly that much for one of us to go to the theater plus you can wear your caftan and eat popcorn while you're being entertained. You can't beat that!!! I highly recommend looking into this if you have a DVD player. It's a great deal, especially if you're a movie buff.
Along with watching movies, I did a little more painting. I really think that I am enjoying painting glass more than anything I've tried in a long time. We always seem to have wine bottles around the house, so I can set up a still life with no problem ;-)
Since I had already painted three bottles with pomegranates that were in my last entry, I decided to paint a Triptych.

I painted the one with the strawberry which is above first and then painted the one with the cherries the complete the "set".

The three can be framed this way or can be used separately. I love the simplicity of these paintings with the clean lines. All I did was reverse the placement of the bottle and glasses in the last two and then added the fruit for a little color.

While we were housebound, we also did a lot of bird watching. There is a great site that I found where I could identify the birds I didn't know. We now have about 9-10 varieties in the back yard at once. Here are a few shots that I took. Some of my favorites are the little Golden and Purple Finches.

My friend and housekeeper, Vera, said that they had finches in their yard, so I bought a feeder and the appeared in 2 days. Guess they can communicate better than I thought they could!
Then there are the Great Tailed Grackles, Cardinals,

Cedar Waxwings

and even a Redheaded Woodpecker showed up.

Thanks to some help from many friends, we finally decided that these little birds were Pine Siskins.

Of course there are the ever present squirrels that we keep trying to encourage to leave the bird seed alone. We wish they would stick to the pecans that fall from our trees!

This one and Frank have an on-going battle and I hate to say it, but I think the squirrel is winning :-( It's wonderful to have these little "pets" in our yard and we enjoy watching them .. especially the birds, so much. I always keep a camera with a telephoto lens in the kitchen so I can keep a close eye on our visitors. We also keep our binoculars handy so we can try to identify the birds. Do you think this is a sign of old age?

Our dear friends from Dallas came to Arlington the end of last week and we went to lunch with them. Papa was feeling better so we really enjoyed our first outing since he got sick. They are the ones who have purchased several of my paintings. The one in this photograph hangs in their bar in Dallas.

We went to one of our favorite places for lunch, Piccolo Mondo and had a delicious meal.

The next day we took our Rector, Father Kresowaty, to lunch. He's such a special person in our lives and we enjoy his company so much.

We have been on the South Beach eating program for over a month and we decided to throw caution to the wind and have a vegetarian pizza. It was WONDERFUL!

Saturday night was the big Gala, "Star Shine", at the Arlington Museum of Art. I donated a black and white photograph that I took in Beijing in the Hutongs when we were in China last year. It was entitled "A Clean Sweep". I usually donate one of my paintings, but decided to do something a little different for a change.

There were 3 tables of us there for the event and we sat with our friends the Ashtons and the Mitchells, along with the Bennetts.

There was a silent auction as well as a live one and Frank spent a lot of time studying the program.

One of the ladies that I used to paint with was one of the volunteers there for the evening and here she is showing a painting that was done by another friend and artist.

It was a good show and a lovely evening and hopefully they made a lot of money for the Museum. It's been difficult for them since we are in a demographic location that makes competing nearly impossible. Both Dallas and Fort Worth have world wide recognized Art Galleries and museums, so our little Museum struggles. I was on their Board and it was like a faith ministry. You have to have faith or it won't prosper. Frank and I volunteered to sample their martinis and wine!

We were in church yesterday morning and then last night we went to another function at the church which was a welcome home for some people who had made their Cursillo this weekend.

Cursillo is a movement of the church. Its purpose is to help those in the church understand their individual callings to be Christian Leaders. The leadership may be exercised in work situations, in the family and social life, in leisure activities, and within the Church environment. Leadership, in Cursillo, does not mean power over others, but influence on others; all of us need to be aware that we can exert a positive influence on those around us.
The goal of Cursillo is the goal of the Church: to bring all to Christ. This is done when informed, trained leaders set out with the support of others having a similar commitment. It helps to renew and deepen Christian commitment. Cursillo is one of many renewal movements. Many people have said Cursillo provides an important learning experience which causes many to feel like newly made Christians with a purpose and with support.
Frank and I have been active in the movement since 1985 and feel that it is very worthwhile.

We don't have any special plans this week but the following weekend we will have a family gathering here and celebrate 3 of our family members' birthdays. I'll write more about this later.

Have a wonderful week, With much love, Pcasso