Cabin Search & Road Trip

Last Saturday we drove up to Idaho City area to search for a cabin that us girls were going to possibly rent this summer for our girls getaway. It was only $86/night. And the cabin itself was very nice, but the winding single lane dirt road covered in pine needles was enough for me to say nope - don't think so! Plus the fact that one of my friends is leaving her 3 teens home alone during our outing and there was no cell service up there! So it was a nice drive & a great way to get out of town for a few hours, but not an overnight (or 2 or 3) stay. So here's our adventure for the day. (It has been confirmed by my husband & daughter that I am not a country girl - although they did admit that this was "back country" and that definitely isn't me. Tiffani said we weren't city girls either, so I guess that leaves us with small town girl?! )

This is the corner of Highway 21 and Grimes Creek Road. We followed this creek for a few miles before turning off again.



Grimes Creek Road - at least it was 2 lanes & paved.



We pulled off to get a closer look at the creek. It was full and moving very fast.

This is moving on up into the single lane dirt roads.

The owners of the cabin actually have two cabins up here. This is the start of the driveway up to the main one. To the right is a shorter driveway up the rustic cabin!

The rustic cabin...

A small portion of the main driveway up.

The cabin at the top of the driveway.

It was a very peaceful spot, secluded and very lovely to just be out there in the fresh air. But, oh that driveway!

The inside, upstairs of the cabin. There is a bedroom on either end of the bridge. Les & I had to tilt our heads sideways to walk across the bridge.

The owner was there cleaning up the yard when we went and he had his 3 dogs with him. Just behind the dogs and down the "hill" is where the rustic cabin sits.

You can kind of see the rustic cabin here. There is a slight path you can walk to it if you so desired.

Photo by Tiffers - This is the surroundings, nothing but trees (and beautiful blue skies at that moment).

Idaho City

Just loved the white picket fence and the boardwalk.

Another neat area in town.

A pretty cool looking flower shop. It just looked so inviting.

This was a really neat looking yard. Loved all the daffodils, bench & creek. Just out of the picture at the bottom, along the road side, was full of daffodils, too. Looked very peaceful and inviting.

Another neat location for a house. Steps right down to put your feet in the water. It would be fun to stay at a place like that for a day or two, but I don't know that I could live there!

A pretty neat mailbox set up on an old wagon wheel AND it spins around!

Just a couple of shots of the Wilderness Ranch Area.

A very low Lucky Peak - the docks aren't even touching the water!

Well, that was our little day trip to explore. It was fun, but I do believe our girls get-away is going to be more towards the Tamarack/McCall area. That's the current plan anyway.

Dogs, Dogs, Dogs

Blogger upgraded somethings so this is more of a test post to see how it all works. So thought I'd post some dog pictures to test it with. First a very wet Simba. Les was giving him a bath and Tiffani looked out the window and couldn't believe how long his neck actually is!!

He does look like a very sad wet dog.

He is a little drier now - Looks like Tiffani put gel in his hair or something!

Look at the blue eyes on this dog. He came out from under the cabin we went to see. He was friendly...

...though I'm not sure about that by the looks of this picture!

All three dogs lead us down the driveway when we left. It took some serious whistle blowing & calling by the owner to get them back up to the house. They were quite content to continue walking down the driveway with us. It wasn't until one of the small ones went all the way back up that the other two finally decided to follow.

And there is a little sneak peak at the area we went to see the cabin. Working on that post next.

Projects Started and Cupcakes!

I didn't think there'd be much to blog about this week so I took a picture of dinner on Tuesday (new recipe...) but here I am with lots of pictures from the week after all. :)
We'll go back to last weekend, when we had the curbing put in. That was a frustrating event (They rescheduled 3 times after Les took a day off work to be here for the original time!) and it's still not a completed project for a few reasons.
Here is the front yard after they cut out the grass getting it ready to put the curbing down. I only post this picture because it is the one that you can kind of see the neighbors curbing on. The dark gray concrete. Well we went with the same company and ordered the same curbing and stamping that she had done 1) because I really liked it and 2) since they were going to "meet up" on that front flower bed I thought it would look better if they matched. Now keep that color in mind when you see what's here...

We've got lots of dead spots in the back lawn so Les started shoveling out the grass in the one big spot so we could replace it with the rolls of sod that they removed for the curbing. Hopefully it'll take - so far it looks pretty good.

Here's the new curbing with the stamping... the stamping matches the neighbors quite well, but the terra cotta color that is visible now is a long way off from the dark gray! (Les is making sure they didn't bury the sprinkler head that is right in the corner there.) The company does have to come back in a few weeks and put the sealer on, I don't know how much that will change the color! Then we also need to remove the little bit of bark that is left in all the flower beds and put down weed blocker and rock. So it'll be a few weeks before this project is finished.

This lovely fire pit (I do mean that, I really love it) hasn't weathered very well and all the tiles are loose and falling out. I finally decided it just needed to get taken apart and the tiles reset. So I cleaned out all the tiles and put them in a bucket and then Les came through with a hammer and crowbar and pounded out the extra grout that was in the bottom of the metal tray. Now it is waiting to get finished. Went to home depot yesterday and wasn't even thinking about that project so didn't get what we needed to finish it up. Soon....

This is a new dish I tried - the supposed only subject matter for the blog this week... I'm not sure what it is (hamburger or meatloaf!) or how Salisbury Steak got its name other then it says it was invented by a Dr with the last name Salisbury, but you mix the hamburger up like you would if you are making a meatloaf, but then you divide it into patties like you would for hamburgers, so why isn't just called a hamburger steak!? Anyway - you make the patties and fry them until browned. Take them out and then put the potatoes in the pan with the carrots, onions, onion soup mix, some spices, tomato paste & water and cook that all up, put the steaks back on top and heat through. And the best part - the leftovers were yummy in my lunchbox. :) Next time though I think I will make extra potatoes - can't ever have too many of them.

Tiffani made cupcakes for her friend Kaitlyn's birthday in yearbook on Wednesday. She used store bought frosting and there wasn't quite enough for all the cupcakes so she spelled out her last name with almond bark to put in the other cupcakes. Love the purple color of the frosting!

This was just a really cool picture Tiff took of the "B", how it glows all around.

Tiffani missed her Exploratory Foods class on Monday because she had to take her AP Chemistry Exam. That means she had to do a make up dish at home. They made a Vege Stir-Fry that day so that's what she had to make at home last night.
All the veges ready to go (step 1 was to have all veges cut and ready to go) I'd say she passed that!
Stir frying it all.
The finished dish. It was really yummy. Though making the dish as the recipe was given to her didn't really make a meal - Les and I got a few tastes, but Tiffani ate the rest. Next time she will make a little bit more of it and we will make our favorite marinated chicken to go along with it.

Tiffani was also asked to make cupcakes for an 8 year old boy for his birthday and Dillon wanted a hunting/Cabela's themed cake. Well none of Tiffani's books that she usually gets ideas from had anything along those lines. So she came up with the idea to frost the cupcakes with "camouflage" frosting and then we'd put cut-out deer in some of the cupcakes. The first plan was to find a deer cookie cutter and make cookies like we did for the light bulbs on the Christmas cupcakes or to soften some chocolate and cut out chocolate deer. We didn't find a cutter, so we made chocolate deer from melted almond bark instead. That was easy enough, the tricky part was getting those deer into the cupcakes!
Completed herd of Chocolate Deer
Chocolate Deer
Tiffani frosting cupcakes with her camo frosting (chocolate and white (colored green) cream cheese frosting in the same bag.)
The completed herd of deer/cupcakes. Ended up piercing the cake with a knife so we could slide the legs into the cake. A few ended up in there whole (standing in the cake), but the rest broke at various points so they appear to be sitting on the ground instead and the front two turned into does rather quickly when their antlers broke off. We made 15 deer thinking we'd do half of the 24 cupcakes with deer in them, but with how fragile they were we ended up with only 9 whole ones, so used 8 in the cake which worked out as well, since Dillon was turning 8 - Only we had another fatality upon delivery so only ended up with 7 deer. (We'd left the one extra at home...) I think we need to keep our eyes open for a cookie cutter for the next hunting themed cake Tiffani is asked to make. And stay away from chocolate statues that have "toothpicks" to support itself!!! And Dillon liked his cupcakes so all is well! :)

Jr/Sr Prom

Saturday night was the Prom. We didn't want either of the girls driving down by BSU on a Saturday night so Les & I were Chauffeurs for the evening. The advantage to that was we got to eat at Ohana's for dinner since that is where Tiffani wanted to eat. :) Not sure if Les thinks that is an advantage or not since he ended up "working for his supper". They were really busy when we were there, every table ended up being full and Tiffani really wanted to go back and help Gma J by plating the food. I told her no way in the dress she was wearing and so Les jumped up to go help. Us girls ate our dinner and Les would come grab a bite now & then. When it was time to go & they were still busy Les stayed to help and I took the girls down to BSU - the Prom was in the Skybox. It was so crowded down there with a track meet going on and some other event in Taco Bell Arena - crazy! Anyway I dropped the girls off and went back to Ohana's. We stayed there for a bit and then went to Wal-Mart to kill some time before picking the girls up at 11. Here's some pictures from before Prom.



I just love her happiness!

Tiffani & Michala

Ordering dinner in Prom dresses at Ohana's :) I know it doesn't look busy in this picture; there were 2 families eating when we arrived, but they just kept coming!




Tiffani did "sneak" back there to tell Gma bye. :) And then Les stayed and got a quick lesson in making the Mac Salad.

Just had to share this video... Still have not figured out sound on the old camera, but the only thing you'd hear is all of us laughing. Simba was so cute! Les & I were watching something (Oh, wait - it was probably that game show Minute To Win It.) and Tiffani had just gotten home from youth group and walked in grabbed a handful of chips and stood there watching tv. As she is standing there eating chips Simba is watching her very carefully and would turn his head as she put another chip in her mouth. He was on his hind legs the entire time - at least 5 minutes before I got the camera up & running.

These last few weeks

As usual not much new to blog about, but here's a few pictures anyway! :)
I finally got myself a new camera - like the one we bought mom (except they didn't have any purple ones left!). I use the camera that Les got from Micron & there a few rare occasions that he's going somewhere and wants the camera and that leaves me without. So these next few shots are of the seemingly unwilling subjects that we took pictures of so we could mess around with the camera.
I think Tessa didn't stick around after this picture. She wasn't terribly impressed with the "red eye prevention" flash!

Clearly Simba wanted the attention on himself and not on the camera. "Please play with me."

He's just trying to get as close as possible.

This was a few days later - guarding the bathroom door while Tiffani was showering. He will not move from that spot until she opens the door.

Yummmm - Danish Apple Cheesecake I made for Easter Dinner.

Equally as yummy is Tiffani's home(school)made apple pie. The crust was wonderful! She did an awesome job on it for a 1st pie. I missed getting a picture of the whole pie, we were to anxious to dig into it!

I have done crosswalk at Crimson Point a few different times through out my 3 years there. My friend who has cancer (I made one of the pictures for her from a previous post) usually does the crosswalk though. When she had to quit work a sub took her spot. Well, the sub doesn't come in as early as we do so the crosswalk was going without someone out there early enough. So I volunteered to go out there again and started Friday morning. A few different people commented, jokingly, how I waited until Spring and it was nicer to go volunteer. Well the joke was on me!!! Woke up to snow STICKING to the ground, as in the grass is covered and it's still snowing! Ha!
This is what I stood in for 45 minutes yesterday morning. Now, I did go prepared since I knew I was going to be out there, but it was snowing big flakes and the wind was blowing. I was warm enough, except the snow was blowing & sticking to the back of my pants & coat. My backside was soaked when I got back inside. I hope winter is now over for the year and these last four weeks I can enjoy being out there in the morning! :)
Well, I can admit it was kind of pretty with the snow on the pink blossoms of the tree. But....it was the end of April.