Bacon Turtles!

I can now join those experienced baconneers who blog beautifully~Thankfully, there are so many bloggers out there who cover this amazing culinary science of mixing bacon and nature, I had a bit of trouble starting out, but with help was able to dominate! I got most of the information on Bacon Weave Turtles from http://followmyrecipe.blogspot.com/2010/02/super-carolines-bacon-turtle-burger-fun.html

It was by far the most informative and helpful blog I found on the subject and rather than repeat Caroline's entire blog, I will add my own personal thoughts.

First: the burger. Our burger was elk mixed with an herb mix. I used way too much and have enough left over for an entire dinner when we are hungry again. Second: The bacon. Our bacon, as you can tell, is too thick for this project. Although, it is the VERY best bacon ever (raised by a friend and a neighbor), I recommend a less sturdy brand to weave.

After patting out two burgers I placed onion on one and a layer of cheese, then firmed them together. I wish I had a different veggie besides onions for a veggie in this delight. Grated carrots would have been really nice!

As our bacon was too thick to remain woven (I would not have had enough for one turtle, much less 3), I had to wrap our burgers. It was interesting and I used a great many toothpicks!
When I was done with the wrapping, I added the appendages. The eyes are cloves and I had to substitute hot dogs for the legs and tail and head instead of those lovely sturdy miniature sausage links.But, it worked. Well, except for when Jon took out the cloves and ate the head of the turtle. He didn't realise how strongly flavored cloves were!

Here are the three little guys pinned and ready for the oven. I covered them with foil since I detest the mess grease can leave in an oven.

Unfortunately, they needed longer to cook. So, I took off the foil for a few whiles and let them smoke away. I also should have turned them over, but I didn't realise that was necessary til they had already been served. The bottoms and inside bacon were cooked, just not as crisp as I would like.

Jon's turtle turned out so CUTE!!!!! I love how his mouth is open. Jon suggested they kinda looked like Muppets.

Here they are! An aerial view of our turtle dinner with the side of tater salad. I really wanted to make coleslaw, but I already had the taters, to this is what we got. Next time, I will do slaw. Veggies go much better with turtle.


The insides of the turtles. Mine just had cheese and Jon's (the poor thing was sliced and left gaping!!!!) had the onions as well. The bacon does not look very done, but Jon and Steve said it was fine...

All in all, it was a great deal of fun work and I'd do it again with less sturdy bacon. Later. Much much much later!!!!!!!!! I think putting them on a bun would have been overkill, since I didn't even finish mine! Jon and Steve felt a bun would have been a good idea, but we'll wait til next time.

O, Spring, where is thy...spring?

Three weeks ago, it was lovely out. March 10th, I wore shorts and a tank top and did all kinds of yard work. I even moved the compost bin, which is where this first photo comes in. It appears that composting over here IS a more archaeological experience. This SunChips bag was put in the compost bin in the fall of 2009, I believe. I found 3 bags, this was the oldest one. On the bag it suggests it will compost down in a few weeks. I'm still waiting!

Then, the following week we got snow. Not too much, but my crocus which were just coming up got lightly frosted. Poor things.

It grew nice again and although this crocus appears to be sideways, it is not really. I took it that way! The white blossoms are thick on my verigated rock cress.

This week, I was able to get FREE tulip bulbs from someone's yard. I was so thrilled to dig them all up! It was raining, but I cannot wait to get them in the containers I have for them. I'm going to put them in the half barrels we got after one of THS's plays. Then, when I find out their colors, I will see where else they can go. At this time, they are still in the bag waiting to be planted.

Because, this week has been ridiculous! We have had rain and wind and yes, snow. My poor Shultz looks like a poodle!!!!!! And my crocus? They were not frosted today, they got buried! But, at least the fog we had last night was not freezing. I am not sure the plants could handle being encapsulated in ice, snow melts (and as of noon 30, it has!). It is super wet outside now and rather pretty with the sparkling water drops falling everywhere. So very pretty it has been, in spite of the strange weather!

Reading Anne of Green Gables, am going to find a Redwall book soon, and House Upon a Rock.

Kristen's Birthday-

This was perhaps my favorite present! Steve came home and said he brought a wiener dog home from his mom's house. I was rather not impressed til I looked out on the porch and saw this little guy! I call him Schultz.
The kids gave me this gift--it is perhaps the most used of all my gifts and is very warm and cozy.
Mom's box arrived and this is a shawl Janet made me-it is very soft and comfy. The cats adore it! It is in the shape of a triangle.
This great book was fought over for a couple of days before everyone got thru reading it. Now, it resides in the little house awaiting a time when it can encourage more giggles!

when you don't have snow-----

You gotta make your snowpeople anyway you can! This first little guy is actually several recycled things. His body is made up of 3 Ovaltine containers wrapped in fun foam. I don't recall what I used for his hat (he was made a couple of weeks ago), but I definitely used a ton of hot glue to hold it all together. The snowman comes apart for easy storage.

Here are my sister and brother snow people. I wanted to make a family when I saw some clever ideas online. I knew we had some white upholstery tubes and I had Steve cut them into different lengths. After they were cut, they sat around for ages on my craft table til the creative bug finally bit! The sister was fairly simple. Her hat is scraps of polar fleece sewed together and tied at the top with a bit of pipe cleaner (chenille stem!) and her scarf is a longer bit of the same fabric. The brother was harder to make. I wanted a 'straw' hat and was coming up blank. I didn't want to buy anything and so I had an idea. I found a very aged basket and cut it up and bent it to fit the shape I wanted. It had a hole in the top, so I stuffed a bit of blue fabric in it to and added the foam sea creatures to make it more festive. His scarf is a bit of island fabric and his nose is a wooden peg.
The mom in this snow family is wearing my favorite bit. I made her hat from an old tissue box (I actually think it was Kleenex!) and flowers, feathers and yarn. I learned how to make hats during Music Man at THS and never thought it would come in handy for a tiny art deco thing! She has a bead nose and ended up a tad shorter than I anticipated! The dad was frustrating. I wanted one of those old DQ sundae cups for a ball cap, but couldn't find one anywhere!!! His nose is a part of a bullet and his hat is a 'just do it' sewn fleece snow hat. His scarf is also a scrap of fleece and the mom's shawl is another scrap of fabric. All of the hats are detachable for easier storage-
This critter is my favorite one EVER. I knew what I wanted to do with this, but wasn't sure how I was going to get there. The 'hat' is an old sock--most of it is stuffed inside the tube. I had a heck of a time with the ears and had some fun foam cut out, but they just were not right. I wanted to crochet a tail, but couldn't find my crochet hooks. I had no clue what to do with the whiskers. However, inspiration struck when I was choosing all the eyes and noses for my family (I recalled I had a snowcat rubber stamp and borrowed some of the ideas for this little guy!) His nose is a tiny button and his eyes are plastic jewels. I did discover when hot gluing the eyes on, they were not the same color! However, I rummaged around in my craft debris and found another green eye. (they had spilled in the bottom of my google eyes/jewels/tiny pom poms box!) I was cutting out the hat for the brother when the bottom of the basket fell apart into small sections. I looked at them and grinned! Huzzah!!! One strip of whatever the basket was made of and cut into lots of thin strips made GREAT whiskers!!!! I then remembered I had a bit of furry white fabric left from something (proof--save EVERYTHING!). I even knew where it was and it was perfect! I cut some triangles and glued them to the foam ears I had made and added teeny pink foam triangles on top of that and glued them all to the sock. The fabric for the tail naturally curled up in a tube shape, so I let it and glued it on as well! Jonathan calls the kitty Arctic Cat---which makes me laugh, cuz it does not look like a black and purple snowmachine!!!
Anyway, these are my Cylinder Snow Creations! I was pretty impressed and reckon there are more things to do with those darn upholstery tubes than you can imagine!!!

Jonathan Rocks, AGAIN!

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked for a biography of Jonathan by the school. So, I sent one. Then, last Thursday I was told he was one of the three students to win this award. Meanwhile, we had to finish up Jon's Eagle project. We were amazed-his project logged in over 150 hours and had 27 people volunteer to work on it. He also saved the government over 3000$ by using the volunteer labor and recycled materials. (he had coordinated the making of picnic tables for the Umatilla County Forest Dept). I can't find all the photos for that, so I am not posting them at this time!

THEN it was Monday night and we hauled Jon off to the Athena Chamber of Commerce Awards dinner. It was great fun and we learned a lot about the area.

Jon, and two other Seniors were honored with the award of Youth Citizen of the Year. Cool, huh?

The Icing is NOT on the Cake!

This week of January has been full of weather! MLK Day was pretty tame, but there wasn't any school. Tuesday night it started to snow, by Wednesday it was nice and wet and fun. So, school was cancelled (there was quite a bit of it!). I made my yearly edition of Frank the Flower (see The Pushcart War) and by the time I finished around 930am, the snow was grainy and not as good as it could be. Then, the weather deteriorated! We got rain and freezing rain! Today was the first day I could take good photos. And as you can tell, Frank is now doing the Limbo and the path of grass where I rolled the snowballs is now ice!

our sidewalk is a narrow skating rink. But, that doesn't matter, the whole YARD is a skating rink! and although this picture of the car was from Thursday, it is pretty amazing. Notice, it has TWO layers of ice. There was water in the middle!

The birds have been a lot of fun. They were rather chilled yesterday (the first two photos) when the freezing rain was coming down on them, but they gamely went after the seed. Today, I scattered seed on the ice lawn and the birds were perching on the antlers of Steve's deer. It was hilarious watching the birds skate across the lawn to get the seeds.



These last four photos were by Jonathan-Jack the Frost is pretty cute; the grill on the front of the Bronco is totally cool; I love the foot hovering above the iced grass; and the dove is just precious! Cold, but precious!

Cuppy Cakes!

Mom sent me a lovely cup cake decorating book for Christmas. So, since the SR class was providing the cakes for the cake raffles during the games--I made cuppy cakes!

My first ones were snowmen. They are so cute and very easy. I did spend way too much for the cookies to make the hats, but everything else was pretty inexpensive.
Are they not just CUTE?

Then, I decided to try the ducks. They are featured on the cover of the book (What's new, Cupcake?). I thought it would be a fun cupcake since the Oregon Ducks won the Rose Bowl and there are a LOT of duck fans in our little town! However, my ducks, as you can see, are definitely not the same as the ones on the cover of the book. I knew they would be a tad different, but they were more than a tad! I regret to say, I do not think ducks are in my future.
Jon called these the 'ugly ducklings' as they were not good enough to go to the raffle! The smooth one was the first one I made, the rough one was using a textured look also featured in the book. I'll save them for Jon and Steve to eat!

TREE, finally!

Up on the ranch, looking for trees and turkeys.
They found a tree! I was told over the phone it was a little over 10 feet tall. I believed them.

It took a bit getting it into the house and it needed several inches cut off. I think they removed about 15 to get it into the addition.

Later, Steve cut off another 30 inches (see measuring device-) to get it into the living room. The living room is 9 and one half feet tall.

The first tree is the 2011 tree. The second one is 2010. Notice, the 2011 tree still needs a tad trimmed from the top to fit the star atop? This year's tree was definitely full of character!

Before we decorated it, KiLa decided it was a wonderful place to play. After it was trimmed (so to speak), we managed to keep him from everything cept the water in the stand. I was also pleased to see the lego train being placed around the tree. It is neat to see how lego bricks and trains can bring people together, even if everyone is 'grown up' now! Jon took lots of other tree photos, but I cannot find them anywhere. Hence, the reason it has taken me so long to put this 'Tree' Blog up!!!