bountifulplate

Why is it that gray/silver/white hair on a man makes them look distinguished, but on most women it ages them?? My first gray hair made it's appearance when I was 17 and they have steadily multiplied throughout the past 31 years.  I'm not even sure my hair could be considered to be gray anymore, it's current color is white as snow.  I went a really long time before I started coloring it myself.  I only started about eight years ago.  Since I wash my hair every day, the color starts fading quickly, so I have to do it every two weeks. When I first met my husband his hair was very dark brown.  Over the 21 years that I have known him, his hair color has changed.  It's now what you would call, "salt and pepper."  On him it looks great!!  I pay about $2.50 a box for my hair color and I do a reasonably good job of applying it myself.  I'm too frugal to go to the hair salon and let them do it.  I did ask the last time I got ...

A few days ago as my son and I were waiting in the car for my daughter to come out of a sports practice, I was reading a magazine.  I didn't bring any snacks for him, so when I heard him eating something, I knew I better check that one out!!  When I asked him what he was eating, he said, "pretzel!!"  He had reached under the seat and found a part of a pretzel to nibble on. Yuck!  I don't think it was too old, maybe about a week, because I remember taking some pretzels in a baggie in the car about a week or so ago.  I guess the one he found must have fell out of the bag!  Growing up my dad had a rule that you couldn't eat or drink in the car.  If I took a poll of ten of my friends of when the last time they or someone in their car ate or drank something in the past day, I bet all ten of them would say yes! Times have really changed.  Families are so busy these days going from one activity to another that in the car  is sometimes the only time ...

I consider my friends to be special "gems."  I treasure each and every one of them.  To have friends you have to be a friend.  Simple, but true!! Some of my friends I have had for a long time, others a relatively short time. According to dictionary.com a friend is "a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard."  With me, what you see is what you get.  I am 100% trustworthy and very loyal.  I don't try to be someone that I'm not.  That is definitely a really good way to lose a friend.  That or go around spreading that person's business all over the place.  I have told other moms stuff that I thought was in confidence, only to find out it had been spread around.  I consider my friendships like my marriage, it's built on trust.  I have friends that have seen me at my absolute worst. I have friends that have passed on, but I still keep them in my thoughts and prayers.  Unfortunately, I ha...

In the past six months, two popular soap operas went off the air permanently, All My Children and One Life to Live. Currently, there are only four daytime soap operas remaining on the air. The highest number on at one time was 19 (that was in 1969-1970).  I originally started watching daytime soap operas back in the late 1970's.  I started out watching General Hospital and then moved over to CBS and started watching the "soaps" over on that station.  I have been watching Young and the Restless off and on since the mid-1980's.  As more moms went back to work, the viewership of daytime soap operas went down. One thing about "soaps" is that you can miss several months and within about a day or two you're all caught up!  I can remember watching a show called, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.  I am really dating myself here, it was on in the mid-1970's.  It only lasted two seasons, but it was considered to be a nighttime "soap."  Who can...

Three words, "read a story."  I have waited since my son was 3 and just learning to talk to hear those words.  Just in the past couple of weeks he has been requesting a story be read to him.  Our house is full of books.  All of us love to read here, we have overflowing bookshelves. From the time my son was 3 -5 years old if we even attempted to read him a book, his response was to grab it out of our hands and throw it on the floor.   He would also flip through the book not even attempting to look at the words or pictures and then slam it shut. It wasn't just his books he would toss around.  He would throw my daughter's books across the room.  Once he took a hardback book that I had taken out from the library and threw it up in the air before I could catch him.  The book fell on the floor and right out of the binding.  I paid close to $40.00 to the library. An expensive lesson was learned from that experience.  Parents of typically deve...

I was in my local dollar store a few weeks ago and ended up in the aisle with the books.  I started fishing around and found a book written by Kate Gosselin of the now defunct, "Jon and Kate Plus Eight"  fame.  The original price of the book was $14.99.  Did she fall so far that her book can now be bought for a buck???  My daughter and I watched  "Jon and Kate Plus Eight" all the time when it first came on television.  At first, we really liked that show. It was fascinating to me to watch how a family dealt with twins and a set of sextuplets.  As the show went on I stopped liking it.  Kate would treat her husband like he was one of the kids.  Jon and Kate's marriage kind of started unraveling before my eyes.  Marriage can have its challenging moments, but when you start putting all your private stuff out there for millions of people to watch, I think it made it really hard for them to work on the issues they were having. Reality sho...

My grandmother was born on this day in 1903.  She had a great marriage to my grandfather until he passed in 1969. She was a wonderful mother to my mom and my uncle.  I don't remember ever seeing her upset or in a foul mood.  She had the most upbeat personality and I could talk to her about ANYTHING and she would just sit there and listen for however long I wanted to talk (and with my big mouth that could sometimes be a LONG time)! When we cleaned out her apartment to get ready to move her into assisted living I was lucky enough to get some of her possessions.  I got her yellow couch that she kept in her spare bedroom in her apartment.  I also got some metal mixing bowls that I use frequently. When I went through my many years of college she was one of my biggest supporters.  I remember when I was debating whether to take a typing class in high school she said, "Cathy, you can ALWAYS get a job if you learn to type!"  How very true that was....

I love to bake and it truly is a passion of mine.  I guess you can say it's in the "genes." My great-grandfather on my mom's side was a baker in Missouri.  I like to think he would have loved that I find so much happiness in my baking! My favorite things to bake are any kind of quick breads, such as muffins, biscuits and scones. I actually found a copy of my great-grandfather's biscuit recipe from 1959 that I will be putting on my blog in the near future! One baking item I have never used in my entire life are cinnamon chips.  I didn't even know that the grocery stores sold them. One of the first recipes that I sent to MomsEveryday.com was my cinnamon scone recipe.  I tinkered with the recipe a little (reducing the cinnamon and eliminating the nutmeg). I added 3/4 cup of cinnamon chips and the end result turned out pretty well. Scones sound like something really fancy and make you think they are hard to make.  It is quite the opposite. Ingredients: 2 1/2...