The boy loves fish.

Ever since our trip to Uncle Andy's G has been lobbying for a fish tank and some fish. He can be somewhat convincing so it appears that we will be enlarging our family in the midst of June.

Tonight he and I visited the local pet store and I admit, I fell in love with a couple of little slimies called Kissing Gourami, aka "kissing fish". We'll have to have a few of these... :)

I hope they get along with Nemo and Dori.

Food Memories

I have ordered a book--Kitchen Memories by Anne Snape Parsons and Alexandra Greeley. I can not wait for it to arrive. When I read the commentary, I knew I would love it.

Memories of grandmother's cooking are warm, inviting, sustaining and comforting, but most people have not taken the time to preserve their family's favorite recipes. As a result, many treasured recipes are lost to the fast-food generation 'overtaken by pizza delivery, eating out and convenience foods. Kitchen Memories aims to slow that trend down with a lovingly compiled collection of 120 family recipes from 25 countries' handed down from one generation to the next and gathered from families and cooks. The authors, leaders in the Slow Food movement, have interviewed hundreds of people who have shared their most precious recipes, the ones they want to pass on to their children and grandchildren. The process of talking about family recipes triggered many happy memories for the book's contributors, and as such, each recipe includes detailed homespun cooking tips and sidebars rich with personal stories of family and food. Twenty-five countries are featured including the U.S. and some of its distinctive regional and ethnic cuisines.

Pages at the end of the book are provided for cooks to preserve their own favorite recipes, thoughts, tips, photos, and memories. The authors have tested all 120 recipes. A helpful glossary and appendix offering a brief sketch of each culture are included. Insatiably curious about traditions and cultures, food and travel writer Anne Parsons is a native of Scotland and has traveled extensively around the globe. During her trips, she spends most of her time with local people, eats regional foods and visits their places of worship. She is currently writing a medieval mystery novel with the spice trade as its focus. Ms. Parsons lives in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina where she is a leader of the Slow Food Convivium of East North Carolina.

What a way to make a living, huh. :)

I have many food memories...my Nannie's biscuits cook in an iron skillet, my grandmother's coconut pie, the reason everyone calls my mom, "Pud", the legendary birthday cake that my dad made for my grandmother, my diatribes on Sweet Tea in Mississippi, Pistachio Salad, and so on...

What food memories will my children have? Oh dear. I hesitate to think about that too much. I have to do better on those.

What food memories do you carry with you?

Honor

Wood County Texas, specifically Holly Lake and Hawkins, honored our boy with a very nice Texas Bar B Que dinner on Saturday evening.

More shortly.

Andy (May)

Cory took this picture of Andy at church...I thought I would share it...flashy fashionista sunglasses aside. :)

I have the pleasure of leaving on Friday to go to Tyler for a dinner on Saturday night honoring Andy in his former hometown of Hawkins, TX. Andy's first gig as a volunteer fireman was at the Holly Lake Fire Department, near Hawkins. Those folks seem to think quite highly of him..LOL!

It'll be a family affair--Mom and Dad, Daniel and I, possibly others. It will be a fast trip but I'm excited. I'm going alone this time and that's not something I get to do very often.

--Sarah

Most Popular Questions #1

I get asked about scrapbooking by a variety of people and one of the most popular questions is "how do you ever catch up?" (and variations of such.)

The answer is very, very simple--I don't.

Not to be snarky, but getting "caught up" is not even a goal. I would surely be sunk if it were. This is my hobby--something I do because I enjoy the process. If there was a bunch of pressure to make some kind of quota, I wouldn't enjoy it. At all.

I scrap the photos that I like and the stories that I wanna tell. I ignore chronology. I have fully embraced the concept of "scrap the best and store the rest." I take thousands of pictures every year...there's no way it could ever be practical to scrapbook every single photo. (I'd have to build a wing onto my house to store all those books!)

So what to do with all those photos that I don't scrapbook?

Well, I'll let you in on the secret. I edit them heavily--meaning I don't print them all--just the best ones. Then I pull the super dooper ones for scrapbooking and put the remaining photos into these lovely subdivided page protectors. Each page protector holds six 4x6 photos on each side. The beauty of these page protectors is that they fit perfectly into a 12x12 album...just like my layouts.

So, I can store the layouts and the unscrapped photos right together. How's that for a little touch of organization?



Each album holds about 50 pages = 600 photos (at least). The albums are photo-safe and not too expensive. The photos are organized and can be easily enjoyed by my children/family, just as a regular scrapbook. (They are stored on the same shelf as my finished scrapbooks.) If a mood to scrap something in the album strikes, I can pull out the photos I want and scrap them, but there is no pressure and this prevents me from being completely overwhelmed by feelings of "I'm so behind I'll never get it all done". It also prevents me from loosing out on all those back up pictures--the good ones that I can't bear to throw pictures away. This keeps them safe and accessible--and well-organized.

The sub-divided photo protectors are Ultra Pro item #57020 is available at Hobby Lobby and at www.ultrapro.com