Lil' Monsters Top

“My oldest daughter tried to kill me on Halloween. She deliberately asked me to take her three children trick-or-treating. Before we left the house, my daughter told her kids to behave themselves, be safe, have fun, and not listen to a thing their grandfather said. Within a block I’d convinced them otherwise. The only way to maximize one's haul is to eat candy along the way. That way there's more room in the sack. The first rule of trick-or-treating is to not go home until you’ve thrown up at least twice. I explained they shouldn't waste time on pranks or vandalism. Those things could be done any night of the year, whereas there’s only one night when people give out free candy. I’ve no idea how I survived the night. In four hours, we covered Herriman, Riverton and most of South Jordan. I had to walk fast, then jog and finally crawl to keep up. Next year, I'm teaching my grandkids about drive-by trick-or-treating.” – Robert Kirby

Starz

“None of us ever fully utilizes the people-opportunities allocated to us within our circles of friendship. You and I may call these intersectings coincidence. This word is understandable for mortals to use, but coincidence is not an appropriate word to describe the workings of an omniscient God. He does not do things by coincidence but by divine design. Our lives are like a chessboard and the Lord moves us from one place to another if we are responsive to spiritual promptings. Looking back, we can see His hand in our lives. Think of those times when the Lord has acted in your life. Treasure them as moments the Lord has shown confidence in you. But allow Him to make more of you than you can make of yourself on your own. Treasure His involvement. Sometimes we consider changes in our plans as missteps on our journey. Think of them more as first steps to being on the Lord’s errand.” - Elder Neal A. Maxwell

Bonnie Scotsman

Jon Cluett, a pastor from Stirling, Scotland, was on holiday with his wife and family. They were staying in a cottage on Loch Eilt and woke one morning to find their canoe had vanished. The only other way back to the car was over several miles of boggy ground. Jon didn’t think his kids, ages six through twelve, were up to the hike. He called the police to see if anyone could rescue them. The police told them they’d arranged for the next passing train to stop and pick them up. “Your kids are going to love this,” he said. And they did. The train that came to their aid was the Hogwarts Express – the same one that took Harry Potter and his friends to school in the movies. The Cluett family is home safe, but they wonder about their canoe. “It’s gotta turn up at some point. The thing is sixteen feet long, red and floats.”

Nine Log Cabins

Kidney disease is the ninth leading cause of death in the United States. Every year roughly 50,000 Americans died from kidney disease. Kidneys are the bean-shaped organs responsible for cleaning waste and extra fluid from the blood. Most people have two good ones, but you can get by with one. If your kidneys aren’t doing their job, dialysis can help. But machines are no replacement; in the end the best thing they can do is buy you time. That’s why Wayne Winters is walking the streets of Far West wearing a sign that encourages people to become living donors. His wife DeAnna is waiting for a matching kidney. Until then she’ll spend four hours a day, three days a week hooked up to a kidney machine. “She doesn’t like it,” says Wayne. “It’s terrible.” So he pounds the pavement. “After I get a kidney I’ll have my wife back the way she was, helping people and loving people.”

Four Jewel Boxes

The theme for this year’s block of the month class at Quilt Etc. is Dream Vacations. In September we learned about Hawaii, and this month’s subject was New Zealand. The November class – only nine days from today – will focus on Australia. We were invited to bring along souvenirs from our trips to the Land Down Under as show and tell. I’d be happy to oblige, if only I’d actually been there. All three of these places are still on my bucket list. And since I’d rather visit Disneyland eight or nine times than spend 18+ hours on a plane crossing the Pacific, they’ll probably be on my bucket list for the forseable future. That’s okay. I can always visit the koalas and kangaroos at the San Diego Zoo instead. Or I can walk to Pirate O’s and come home with a bottle of Vegemite and a sack full of Tim Tams. 

Fruity Jack-o'-Lantern

The directions for this fruit bowl said to start with two empty toilet paper tubes. You were supposed to bend the cardboard cylinders into triangles and place them upright in a bowl. You were to fill the insides of the cardboard with fresh blueberries and the outsides with orange slices, then gently pull the cardboard out. That seemed frightfully unsanitary to me. After all, I KNOW where my toilet paper rolls have been. So I took an 8 1/2x11" sheet of card stock, cut it half  and bent the two halves into triangle-shaped tubes. The resulting fruit bowl was a big hit, but I keep thinking I could have done better. If I’d made three card stock triangles, this poor Jack-o’-lantern would have a nose. If I do this again, I might swap the oranges for carrots and the berries for black olives. I could make a mouth out of a hollow bell pepper and fill it with ranch dressing.

Jewel Box Block

I want you to think about the last thing you bought. If it was pink (or lavender or even teal), there’s a good chance you paid way too much for it. According to a study by New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, shampoo and conditioner marketed to women cost an average of 48% more than those marketed to men. Women’s jeans cost an average of 10% more than jeans for men, in spite of the fact that women’s jeans generally use less denim to make. If you’re thinking of buying a new bike or scooter for your daughter's Christmas present, consider getting one in navy blue or camo green. Otherwise you’ll likely pay at least 6% more. When you’re shopping for toiletries, think before you automatically grab the “pretty” shampoo, soap, shaving cream or razors. Not only will the ones with lace and flowers on the package cost you more, but they’ll likely be of inferior quality. Who needs that?

3" Evening Star

“Our strength lies in our freedom to choose. There is strength even in our very diversity. But there is greater strength in the God-given mandate to each of us to work for the uplift and blessing of all His sons and daughters, regardless of their ethnic or national origin or other differences. May the Lord bless us to work unitedly to remove from our hearts and drive from our society all elements of hatred, bigotry, racism, and other divisive words and actions. The snide remark, the racial slur, hateful epithets, malicious gossip, and mean and vicious rumor-mongering should have no place among us. May God bless us all with the peace that comes from Him. May He bless us with thankful hearts and with the will to mingle together with respect one for another, uniting our efforts to the blessing of the communities where we are fortunate to live.” – President Gordon B. Hinckley

Dutchman's Puzzle

Brown garden snails were imported from Europe to California in 1850 as a source of escargot. Now they’re pretty much everywhere; including my aubergine plants. They’re simultaneous hermaphrodites, meaning they’re both male and female at the same time. When they mate they can both produce eggs: lots and lots of eggs. The snails almost exclusively have clockwise-coiling shells. In the rare event that one curls counter-clockwise, he/she is effectively sterile: only capable of procreating with another one-in-a-million counter-clockwise snail. This was the plight of Jeremy, a left-coiling snail from London, until last November Internet notoriety turned up not one but two potential mates. Jeremy passed away earlier this year, but not before producing 56 right-coiling babies. Researchers suspect the left-coiling gene will show up in the second or third generation. They’ll have to be patient, though. These guys (or gals) don’t do anything in a hurry.

Twenty-four Triangles

If you were told to evacuate your home – right now – what would you grab? If you have a pet, it would surely be on the short list of things you wouldn’t leave behind. But what if your cat was a hide-and-seek expert? What if your pooch was a 120+ pound Bernese Mountain Dog? Like so many other people scrambling to escape California’s raging wildfires, Katherine Weaver fled her home still wearing her nightgown. There was no time to change, or to rescue her beloved Izzy. After the smoke cleared, her son Jack and son-in-law Patrick hiked the charred hill to retrieve Izzy’s body. But when they arrived at the place where Katherine’s house had once been, the big shaggy dog bounded up to meet them - unhurt. “She was very happy to see us,” Jack reports. “She’s such a brave dog. We couldn't get back home fast enough. Mom’s in much better spirits now that Izzy is with her.” 

Broken Promises

Mike Rippey was in London getting ready to board a flight to California last week when his brother called with the news: their mother and father had not survived the Napa Valley wildfires. Charles Rippey, 100, and his 98-year-old wife Sara had met in Wisconsin when they were both in grade school. They attended the University of Wisconsin together and were married in 1942. The only time they were apart for long was during World War II when Charles served as a US Army engineer.  They celebrated their  seventy-fifth anniversary last year. Sara had suffered a stroke, so like many of the other victims, the Rippeys may have simply been unable to evacuate in time. “My father wouldn’t have left her,” Mike said. “We knew there's no way either of them would ever be happy, whoever was the last one. So they went together, and that's the way it worked.”

Chisholm Trail

“Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.” – C. S. Lewis

Maltese Cross

Two months ago http://mombowe.blogspot.com/2017/08/framed-chickadee.html I Googled “90% of parenting is” and shared my search results. Yesterday I tried the same thing with “90% of marriage is.” Here’s what I got: 90% of marriage is shouting, “What?!” from other rooms. 90% of marriage is realizing that your wife’s feet will ALWAYS be cold. 90% of marriage is saying, “I was going to do that” after seeing her pick up the thing she’s been nagging you all day to pick up. 90% of marriage is having long, drawn out discussions via text messages about what to have for dinner. 90% of marriage is making sure your spouse doesn’t look fat in a photo before posting it on Facebook. 90% of marriage is learning that seduction can be letting her sleep past 8:00 a.m., or a plate of brownies. Or both. 90% of marriage is remembering that if you’re right but silent, you might still be married tomorrow.

Star and Cypress

“Some of you have family members who have temporarily lost their way. The Savior’s instruction to all who have a hundred sheep is to leave the ninety and nine and go after and rescue the one. His instruction to those who have ten pieces of silver and lose one is to search until you find it. When the lost one is your son or your daughter, your brother or your sister, and he or she has chosen to leave, we learned in our family that, after all we can do, we love that person with all of our hearts and we watch, we pray, and we wait for the Lord’s hand to be revealed. Wait for the prodigal.” - Elder Brent H. Nielson

Quilt Etc. Block Club

This scary photo was taken four  weeks ago; fifteen days after my accident. I still had a huge splint and sling, but the raccoon eyes were starting to fade and I’d just removed the stitches from my nose. I was wearing the only clothes I could pull on without help, and my hair looked like I let my pillow style it. I’m just glad I finished this quilt top several weeks ahead. If I’d waited until the last minute, it might never have been done at all. In the four weeks since this day, I’ve made a grand total of seven different blocks (though I did make four copies of a few of them). The rest of the photos I’ve posted during that time have all been projects I completed and gave to family and friends years ago. I’m very quickly running out of these, so I guess it’s time I get my act together.

Dot Dash

I was in my teens when I first read The Hobbit. It’s the first time I can recall being aware of the fear of the number thirteen. (Missed that, did you? Gandalf suggested adding Bilbo to the expedition because thirteen dwarfs were considered very unlucky.) The unluckiest day of the week is generally thought to be Friday. (This one makes no sense. How could Friday be less lucky than Monday?) So Friday the 13th is thought to be especially bad luck. It’s even worse if Friday the 13th happens in October: the creepiest month of the year. (Don’t believe me? Try delivering newspapers in the predawn darkness. Trees that were harmless the rest of the year look and even sound sinister in October.) So you might want to stay in bed today. Tell your boss you suffer from paraskavedekatriaphobia: fear of Friday the 13th. If that name bugs you, you may have hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia: fear of ridiculously long words.

Four Log Cabins

One of my favorite things about this time of year is that it makes me feel like filling my house with delightful aromas, like this one:

Slow Cooker Beef Bourguinon

5 slices bacon, chopped

3 pounds chuck, cut to 1 inch cubes

1 cup red wine

2 cups beef broth

1/2 cup tomato sauce

1/4 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup flour

3 garlic cloves, minced

2 tablespoons thyme, chopped

5 carrots, sliced

1 pound small potatoes

8 ounce mushrooms, sliced

In a large skillet cook bacon until crisp. Add to slow cooker. Put beef in skillet and sear on each side 2-3 minutes. Transfer beef to the slow cooker. Deglaze skillet with wine. Bring to a simmer and add broth and tomato sauce, and soy sauce. Slowly whisk in the flour. Pour sauce into slow cooker. Add garlic, thyme, carrots, potatoes, and mushrooms. Cook on low until beef is tender for 8-10 hours or high for 6-8. 

Grandma's Electric Fan

We’ve hit that time of the year again. The days, for the most part, have been sunny and pleasant. Normally I wouldn’t complain about that, but even with the blinds down, by three or four in the afternoon the top floor of my house and the music studio with a large west-facing window have become uncomfortably warm. So I turn on the air conditioning, or I open windows. Then night falls and the air inside and out gets downright chilly. I usually don’t notice until three or four in the morning, when I wake up with goosebumps and chattering teeth. When we replaced our heater about a year ago, it came with an impressively complicated new thermostat. You can program it for different times of the day, so it knows when you’ll be awake, asleep, at home and away. The one thing it can’t do is maintain the same temperature when the weather is schizophrenic.

Lil' Monsters Log Cabin

Around 70,000 people attended the Burning Man Festival this year in the Black Rock Desert of northwest Nevada. When they all went home they left behind a lot of trash, including 5,000 bicycles. The bikes, destined to be scrapped, became the subject of a viral Instagram photo. So lots of people saw it, right? A few of those people did a bit more than say, “That’s wierd,” and move to the next picture.  Matthew Rockwell made a connection between thousands of abandoned bikes in Nevada and thousands of destroyed cars in the wake of Hurricane Irma. He rented a truck and a storage unit and started recovering bicycles to send to Houston.  "Lots of people who lost a vehicle can't get to work, can't afford a new car,” says Carter Stern, who is finding new owners for the bikes. “Long after the TV cameras have left Houston there will be a need for transportation options.”

Calico Apples

“The reality is that there are no perfect families. Every family has moments of awkwardness. Like when your parents ask you to take a ‘selfie’ of them, or when your great-aunt insists that you are still single because you are just too picky, or when your opinionated brother-in-law thinks his political view is the gospel view, or when your dad arranges a family portrait with everyone dressed like characters in his favorite movie. And you get the Chewbacca costume. Families are like that. We may share the same gene pool, but we are not the same. We have unique spirits. We are influenced in different ways by our experiences. And each of us ends up different as a result. Rather than attempting to force everyone into a mold of our own making, we can choose to celebrate these differences and appreciate them for adding richness and constant surprises to our lives.” - President Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Tit for Tat

I was on the track team in high school, so I watched it happen over and over. As my teammates became curvier, they took increasingly more desperate steps to keep their anatomies under control. Some layered two or three bras. Others used duct tape. Nothing really worked. Eventually the more well-endowed dropped out. We accepted it as fact: buxom women couldn’t do sports. Luckily for all of us, three University of Vermont students during my senior year weren’t buying it. Hinda Miller, Lisa Lindahl and Polly Smith put their heads together to build a bra that would control the painful bounce. They were getting nowhere until Lisa’s husband came in wearing two jock straps slung over his chest. He was teasing, but it got them thinking. "That's what we wanted: to pull everything close to the body," said Hinda. They bought two jock straps and sewed them together. And just like that, the sports bra was born.

Gossip in the Garden

I spend one Tuesday morning each month in the company of quilters. We chat, show off our latest projects and eat. Here’s what we ate last month.

Britt’s Aloha Chicken Salad

3 romaine lettuce hearts, chopped

2 large cans mandarin oranges, drained

1 large can pineapple tidbits, drained

1 red onion, diced

1 1/2 cups tortilla strips

3/4 cup crumbled feta

3-4 cooked chicken breasts, cubed

Toasted coconut, optional

Toss all ingredients together in a large bowl or layer on a platter.  Serve with:

PINA COLADA VINAIGRETTE

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup Mr. & Mrs. T's pina colada drink mix

1/3 cup rice or apple cider vinegar

1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger

1 teaspoon dry mustard

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 cup vegetable oil

In a blender combine all ingredients except the oil.  Blend well until light and frothy.  With the blender still on, slowly add oil in a steady stream.  Keep blending until dressing thickens.  

Juneau

Before he came to live at GuRuStu, a marketing firm in Tulsa, the tabby kitten lived at a local animal shelter. Before that he was a homeless stray, living in an open field. Now he’s an office kitty, charged with keeping mice and other small vermin at bay. For his first few months on the job his coworkers called him Sir Whines-a-lot, because he demanded so much attention. Then they began to notice small piles of dollar bills near the glass front door as they began their work day. "We figured people must have been using dollars to play with the kitty through the door and he snatched their money." To test their theory, they waved a bill through the crack in the door. In no time the cat had snagged it and added it to his pile. The newly renamed CASHnip kitty is famous. And all his proceeds are donated to the Tulsa Homeless Day Care Center.

Indigo Table Topper

Last Wednesday I took a walk in the neighborhood with two of my grandchildren. We were halfway around the block when we were passed by a truck towing a colorful trailer. It stopped a few houses in front of us and the driver got out. He pulled a high-pressure hose from the side of the trailer and began spraying my neighbor’s trash bin. Then he hooked the bin to a lifting device on the back of the trailer while we stood by, mesmerized. He invited my grandson to come push a button that lifted the can upside-down over the trailer, where it was thoroughly cleaned and disinfected. My granddaughter got to push the button that brought the spotless can back to the curb. Before he left, the man handed us a flyer advertising his business: “Cantastic.” He invited me to subscribe to his can cleaning service. I may take him up on it; if only for the entertainment value.

Four-Patch Dash

Clayton and Brittany Cook had just tied the knot. They were posing for some wedding photos on a bridge over a lake in Victoria Park in Kitchener, Canada. Clayton noticed something amiss in the water below. A small boy who had been playing with friends at the water’s edge had fallen in and was drowning. Without a thought for his dress shoes, his suit and tie or his yellow boutonniere, Clay ran down the bridge and jumped into the lake. He scooped up the little boy and pulled him to safety. His new bride wasn’t the least bit surprised. “That’s Clay,” she said. “It’s just the sort of thing he would instinctively do.” Then she added, “How different would everyone's day have been if we weren't in the right place at the right time?”

Feathered Star

“When I take notes at conference, I do not always write down exactly what the speaker is saying; I note the personalized direction the Spirit is giving me. What is said is not as important as what we hear and what we feel. That is why we make an effort to experience conference in a setting where the still, small voice of the Spirit can be clearly heard, felt, and understood. Oh, how we need general conference! Through conferences our faith is fortified and our testimonies deepened. And when we are converted, we strengthen each other to stand strong amid the fiery darts of these last days. The greatest blessings of general conference come to us after the conference is over. Remember the pattern recorded frequently in scripture: we gather to hear the words of the Lord, and we return to our homes to live them.” - Elder Robert D. Hales