Having A Great Day

(Bryan Adams)

October 25,2009 has been a very good day.

It started with a wonderful sermon by Christy Snow called "Mastery" but was really about being who we really are--our authentic selves. I needed to hear that. I sometimes play to an audience just wanting people to like me. I guess we're all a little involved in that.

The music at church is always inspiring and, since I am also a musician, I appreciate the effort that goes into creating a beautiful, harmonic sound. After church, we had a surprise lunch of my favorite food, chili and cornbread with delicious desserts. Loving the desserts, too.

So, filled up with some good spirit, my sister and I went to see Bryan Adams who is doing an acoustic concert. It was just Bryan with his guitar and Gary on piano--no band or loud electronics. I never realized how much his lyrics meant until I heard them sung without the big band behind him.

He was funny and kind, explaining how he came upon certain songs and he managed to good-naturedly put up with some members of the audience who were listening to the football game with the Panthers (who apparently lost.) He encouraged the audience to sing along with him and we did--most enthusiastically.

I like the McGlohon Theater because of it's beautiful stained glass windows with back lights and charming ambiance but it's also an intimate place. The audience and the performer get to have closeness even if you're in the last row at the back. For those of you who don't know the place, it used to be a church in downtown Charlotte many years ago and was converted into a theater for the performing arts.

My day was not marred by a single negative energy or event. The worst thing that happened was that my sister and I didn't get to stay to eat the food we ordered--but they gave us our coffee for free because the service was slow and I felt that that made up for it.

Tomorrow may be crap. The sky might fall or a bill come due, but for now, I had a great day and just wanted to share it with you. I have to treasure perfectly good days because they don't happen that often and must be held in graditude. And so it is.

Sarah

Halloween's Comin'

Halloween Is Coming


This is a photo of me with my pumpkin cake. I made it for my friend’s Halloween party some years back.

Halloween is just around the corner. It’s my favorite holiday because I can become anyone or anything I want from a witch to a walking hamburger. My most inspirational costume was a dead foot on a flip-flop—a sort of after the accident clean up object. I used a green sheet as the foot making sure to create each of the toes and painted the toenails with red fabric paint. The flip-flop was created from a piece of egg crate foam used on mattresses and a large flat piece of cardboard. I was the foot with the flip-flop hung over my back using a strap wedged between my head (the big toe) and the stuffed stand up toes that ran across my shoulder. It was a pain moving around but worth it.

My friend, Kathy Groce used to give a Halloween party every year and each year had its own theme. So one year, she decided to make it like a carnival. Each guest played a game to win tickets for the other events. Her brother, Dave, who is a tall, handsome schoolteacher, was a tattoo artist. Okay, actually, the tattoos were the kind you apply water to and they come off on your skin. A couple of showers and they’re gone. My “booth” was the fortune-telling booth. I read palms and gave a little gift of a fortune telling fish to each of my “customers.” I found the little fortune telling fish at a magic store up the street. What I loved most was that some people actually believed I had the ability to tell their future and one person wanted to hire me for another party. Were they just gullible, or was I just that convincing in my roll?

Madeline, my 8-year-old niece, is as excited about Halloween as I am and planning her costume as we speak. I think she called it a witch princess outfit. I guess that means it’s Cinderella dressed in black. I’d like to figure out how to make a Pez container costume. How do you get the candy to shoot out of your neck?

I hope your Halloween is fun and safe.
All good things to your corner of the universe.
Sarah

Welcome to my new website

I hope you all like my new website that Jodie designed for me. Things still need a little tweaking but I think it's looking pretty fine right now.

LIST OF PRIZES FOR TWO LIPS REVIEWS CONTEST

Oh my word, I had no idea how many prizes were being given away for the TwoLips Reviews Scavenger Hunt. Here is the tag to see for yourself what the prizes are. Someone is going to be mighty lucky!!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TalkingTwoLips/files/

Scavenger Hunt

The TWOLIPS SCAVENGER HUNT is on and I am a participant. Look for their icon here on my website. If you need to know the rules and what you can win, here's how:
www.twolipsreviews. com click on scavenger hunt and you will find the rules! come play with us! and win win win! over 100 prizes to be won come on and play!
So start playing already!
Sarah

RECEIPES!!

HELLO my darlings. In case you missed these recipes when I posted them during my featured Author Day at The Romance Room, here they are:

Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies
½ cup butter or margarine 1/3 cup Hershey’s cocoa
2/3 cup sugar ¼ teaspoon salt
1 egg yolk (set aside the egg white) Vanilla Filling (below)
2 tablespoons milk Granulated sugar or
1 teaspoon vanilla 3/4 cup walnuts or pecans finely chopped
1 cup unsifted all-purpose flour 2 dozen Hershey kisses

Cream butter, 2/3 cup sugar, egg yolk, milk and vanilla in small mixer bowl; blend into creamed mixture. Chill dough about an hour or until firm enough to handle. Keep the egg white at room temperature until dough is ready to handle. Then beat the egg white until frothy and place in a small bowl. Roll each ball in either the granulated sugar or the ground nuts and place on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Make a thumbprint in each cookie.
Place in oven preheated to 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes.
While the cookies are cooling,
Prepare Vanilla Filling:
Thoroughly combine ½ cup confections’ sugar, I tablespoon butter, 2 teaspoons milk and ¼ teaspoon vanilla
Once the cookies have cooled, place a dollop of vanilla filling in the thumbprint and top with a Hershey Kiss.


VANILLA THUMBPRINT COOKIES
¼ cup butter ¼ cup shortening
¼ cup brown sugar (packed) 1 egg separated
¼ teaspoon vanilla 1 cup unsifted all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt ¾ cup finely chopped nuts

Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix thoroughly butter, shortening, sugar, egg yolk and vanilla. Work in flour and salt until dough holds together. Shape dough into 1 inch balls.
Beat the egg white until foamy. Roll each ball in the egg white then roll in chopped nuts and place on lightly greased cookie sheet. Press thumb in the center of each ball and pplace in oven for 10 minutes.
After cookies have cooled, place a dollop of vanilla filling (below) in the thumbprint and top with whatever turns your key—candied fruit, Hershey Kiss, Walnut or Pecan half, etc.
Vanilla Filling:
Thoroughly combine ½ cup confectioner’s sugar, 1 tablespoon butter, 2 teaspoons milk and ¼ teaspoon vanilla

WACKY COCOA CAKE
3 cups unsifted all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon salt
2 cups sugar 2 cups water
½ cup Hershey Cocoa ¾ cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons baking soda 2 tablespoons vinegar
2 teaspoons vanilla
Combine all the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Add water, oil, vinegar and vanilla and beat for 3 minutes at medium speed until thoroughly blended. Pour into a greased and floued 13x9x2 inch pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 35-40 minutes.
Cool and frost as desired. Personally I like White Mountain icing but some of my family prefers peanut butter icing.
I got this recipe from the Hershey’s Cocoa Cookbook that was free when I bought a can of cocoa many years ago. I have never known it to fail to rise into a beautiful cake that is delicious and always moist. My best friend and I used to make it for birthdays when we worked in coronary care years ago and everyone loved it.

Remembering An American Hero

I received a message from a friend of mine, Kathy Groce, a veteran from The Gulf War and The Irag War where she helped med-vac soldiers and cared for the injured in an Air Force ground base hospital.
It is amazing to me the things that we Americans choose to honor. There are heroes among us, men and women willing to do whatever it takes to help others, to protect us all and do what needs to be done quietly and persistently—every day ordinary people we seldom hear about because they aren’t entertainers or politicians.
So, I ask you to read about this American hero and let this story sink in deep in your heart and remind you that this is what it means to be an American and a human being.
Subject: Ed Freeman
No matter what your race, creed, color, religion or political preferences, this deserves to be read and honored.
Michael Jackson dies and it's 24/7 news coverage. A real American hero dies and not a mention of it in the news.
Ed Freeman
You're a 19-year-old kid. You're critically wounded and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley , 11-14-19 65, LZ X-ray, Vietnam . Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8-1 and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the MediVac helicopters to stop coming in. You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns, and you know you're not getting out. Your family is half way around the world, 12,000 miles away and you'll never see them again. As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.
Then, over the machine gun noise, you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter and you look up to see an unarmed Huey, but it doesn't seem real because no Medi-Vac markings are on it.
Ed Freeman is coming for you. He's not Medi-Vac, so it's not his job, but he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come.
He's coming anyway.
And he drops it in and sits there in the machine gun fire as they load 2 or 3 of you on board.
Then he flies you up and out, through the gunfire to the doctors and nurses. And he kept coming back, 13 more times, and took about 30 of you and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out.
Medal of Honor Recipient Ed Freeman died on Wednesday, June 25th, 2009, at the age of 80, in Boise , ID. May God rest his soul.
Medal of Honor Winner Ed Freeman!
Since the media didn't give him the coverage he deserves, send this to every red-blooded American you know.
THANKS AGAIN, ED, FOR WHAT YOU DID FOR OUR COUNTRY.
RIP