Kathleen Smith's Blog, page 20

2016 It’s Been Quite the Year!

It’s hard to believe another year is almost done, but it is. And what a year 2016 was!

Let’s break it down by each month, shall we.

January was a pretty ordinary month I’d say. My family did all our normal stuff. My husband went to work. The kids went to school and I kept up with our house, promoting my books and blog. I also took my son to his basketball games and my husband and I went to all his games. You can read about my son and his basketball game in another blog.

February started out with a huge scare for our family. Something we didn’t expect to happen. On February 1st my husband had a heart attack. I won’t  go into a lot of details here. What I will say is after his heart attack he had quadruple bypass surgery on February 5th.  The was one very stressful week. Probably more so on me than my husband. You can read all about his heart attack, surgery and recovery in a 3 part blog series I wrote.

March was a month full of my husband home recovering from his surgery. It was also a month where I got to spend lots of precious time with him. Oh yeah it was also my husband’s birthday. We were happy to celebrate it this year. Or we were till my son started to not feel good when we went out to eat that night. Instead of eating out and going to a play we ended up in the Hospital. It turned out my son was dehydrated. Apparently all those times I told him to drink water so he wouldn’t dehydrate he didn’t listen. Teenagers!

April was the month my husband went back to work. Something he was looking forward to and something I was dreading. I was used to him being home with me and doing stuff with him. As much as I knew he needed to get back to a normal routine for me it was heartbreaking. I literally cried the day he went back to work. That might sound silly, but I loved spending that time with him and helping me recover.

May must have been an ordinary month because I don’t remember that month. I know we were slowly getting ready for vacation. And the kids were in school and all that. But other than that I think it might have been a boring month.

June was an exciting month! Right after school was done for the year all 5 of us went on our first overseas trip to Ireland. It was awesome! We went to as many places as we could. Took lots and lots of pictures. We saw the area of Armagh where my mom’s dad’s family started. And we got to meet my friend for the first time. You can read more about our trip to Ireland in that blog.

July we celebrated our youngest daughter’s birthday. She had her first sleepover pool party with her best friend. They had a great time together. We also celebrated the 4th of July and we helped out at our Churches booth at our local County Fair. At the end of July my husband and I celebrated our anniversary (22 years). We spent that weekend in NYC. We ate at an Irish pub and an English restaurant. We went to see Jersey Boys and did a lot of walking. You can read more about that in my anniversary blog.

August was my birthday and our oldest daughter’s birthday. We went to Maine and Prince Edward Island for my birthday. Something my oldest daughter and I have wanted to do for years! You can read more about that in my PEI blog.

September was the month where school started back up. It was a busy month for me because I was busy getting my fourth book self published. This book is a compilation of a bunch of my blog posts from over the years. I decided to put them into a book for people who like to read, but don’t like to read on their computers. You can find this book along with my other books on my books page. It was also the month I decided to start getting up early so I could exercise before I took my daughter to school. I started using the Cize DVD’s by Shawn T. I have seen great results and am still doing them. You can read more about that in my exercise blog.

October was my son’s birthday month. Since he didn’t want anything this year it was a pretty boring month.

November was Thanksgiving. My dad came to visit us for Thanksgiving weekend from Brooklyn. We kept him busy by going to as many places that we could. We had a good time with him. This was also the first Thanksgiving that we have gone out for that day in quite a few years.   Instead we were invited to our Pastors house and we had a good time. The food was yummy. The games were fun.

December the last month of the year! So now we are in December. It’s been a busy month, I’d say. We went to our Church’s Christmas program and our daughter’s school Christmas program. It’s taken my husband and I longer to get our Christmas presents shopping done this year. But we did get it done. We finished buying the last present on Christmas Eve. We even bought stuff or our dog Yogi a coonhound mix.

Today is Christmas Eve. Tonight we will go to our Church’s Christmas Eve candlelight service. After that we will go over to our Pastors house for a party. When we get home we will hand out the stockings and we will see what goodies are in then.

Sunday is Christmas Day. We will most likely get up early. Open presents and then get ready for Church. This is our first year of it being just the 5 of us at home for Christmas. It will be a very different Christmas for sure.

So that was my family’s 2016 and like The title says it’s been quite the year!

CHRISTMAS CARDS sending & receiving

I have loved Christmas cards for many, many, MANY years. Let me explain.

Growing up my mom sent Christmas cards to our family and friends. She also gave to our Church family. I can remember watching my mom as she sat at the Dining room table writing out the cards and addressing them.

I use to ask her what she was doing and with a smile on her face she would say “I’m writing Christmas cards”. 

When she was done I would walk to the post office with her to send the ones to family and friends.

Our Church had its own version of a mailbox for Christmas cards and I would always ask my mom if I could put ours in it. In fact I would ask if I could check to see if there were any for us too. She always said yes to me.

I love checking our home mailbox for Christmas cards too. I always got excited when we received them. Since they were always addressed to Mr & Mrs Angelo Christiano I asked if I could open them before I did.

After I got Married I started sending my own Christmas cards out to family, friends and Church family. My husband and I would buy boxes of Christmas cards at Walmart.

When we started to have a family we sent Christmas photos cards.

For years now I get out my address book and start my Christmas card list. By the way you don’t want to know how many I send out now.

I absolutely love sending out cards. I also love receiving them. From December 1 to Christmas Eve I’m like a little kid checking the mailbox for Christmas cards. And do I get excited when I see those cards in the mail!

Sometimes we get some after Christmas too which always makes me laugh.

This Christmas was no different. I made out my list and we ordered our cards at Walmart. But this year we put pictures from our families first trip to Ireland.

I mailed out the cards to family and friends and I handed out the cards to our Church family. And yes I still get excited when I see those Christmas cards in our mailbox!

CANNOLIS, my favorite Italian Pastry

CANNOLIS, my favorite Italian Pastry!

Growing up Cannoli were one of my favorite Italian pastries if not my absolute favorite. My great aunt Jay use to make them for Christmas along with lots of other cookies, cakes and pies.

What I didn’t know at the time was how she made them. Nor did I know how long they took to make. All I knew was they tasted yummy.

It wasn’t until after I got married and wanted to make some cannoli that I found out you need a Pizzelle maker to make cannoli’s. Basically a cannoli is a pizzelle rolled up with a yummy ricotta cheese filling.

A couple of years ago I bought a pizzelle maker on eBay so I could make them. I was so excited my first time making them. What I didn’t know though at the time was what a long process it is to make them. Making the dough doesn’t take that long, but making the cookies and the filling, that’s time consuming.

I haven’t made cannolis in years. Probably because of how long it takes. Last week I decided I wanted to make cannolis this week for our Church’s Christmas program.

The other day I took my pizzelle maker out. Took a look at it and wondered if it still worked. It looked a bit on the gross side and figured it needed a good cleaning before I used it.

On Friday while my husband and I were out shopping we looked for a new pizzelle maker. We figured I would be better off with a new one rather than taking my chances with the old. We bought a Chefs Choice 835 Pizzelle Pro.

Saturday night my husband and our daughter helped me make the cannolis. I made the mixture and the pizzelles. My husband rolled them up while my daughter made sure they kept their shapes. This took us about two hours. After that my husband made the ricotta cheese filling.

Sunday night before the Christmas program I filled the cannolis with the filling. Yes, it takes two days to make cannolis, the filling and putting it all together. But when you see people smile as they take that first heavenly bite of that delicious cannoli while they sigh in contentment you know it was all worth it.

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Below are the modified recipes I use for Cannoli and Cannoli fillings. I modified these recipes based on instructions that came with my Pizzelle maker https://chefschoice.com/pizzelle-recipes-for-chefschoice-pizzellepro-pizzelle-makers/

Pizzelles

6 eggs

½ cup vegetable oil

2 tsp. anise extract

3 cups all purpose flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1 ½ cups sugar

Directions

1 Beat the eggs until smooth.

2 Add the oil and vanilla or anise extract.

3 Onto the mixture, sift the flour and baking powder.

4 Add the sugar and blend vigorously all of these dry ingredients into the egg mixture until smooth. The mixture will be sticky and stiff.

5 Test by dropping the mixture from a small teaspoon or demitasse spoon. As needed, add a few tablespoons of water so that the mix drops conveniently as a ribbon in two to three seconds. If the mix is too thin, add a few tablespoons of flour.

6 When removing the pizzelle from griddle immediately roll around a dowel to create the rounded canoli shape.

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Italian Cannoli Filling

1 lb. Ricotta cheese (low moisture)

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup confectioner’s sugar

Directions

1 Make certain to use the low moisture cheese to ensure that the filling will be sufficiently stiff.

2 Add granulated sugar and confectioner’s sugar and rum extract to the Ricotta and beat with a power mixer at a medium speed for 10 minutes, scraping the bowl periodically to ensure ingredients mix well. Then add chocolate chips or fruit and beat for another 3 minutes.

3 At this stage the Ricotta mixture should be creamy, but stiff. If it appears too stiff to extrude from a pastry bag, slowly add more confectioner’s sugar to the mix and blend for another 2-3 minutes until you have the right consistency. Refrigerate for a few hours before use. (It’s safe to hold for 2-3 days).

4 Load pastry bag with mix and fill each cannoli shell fully. Decorate the ends of the cannoli with ground toasted almonds or pistachios.

5 For added decoration I add mini chocolate chips to the ends of each.

CHRISTMAS TREES real vs artificial

Growing up my family had a fake Christmas tree. From the time I was born till I got married we had a fake tree. It was the same exact Christmas tree every year. So you can imagine what that tree must have looked like by the time I became an adult.

My dad was always the one to get the box from our basement and he was the one who put it together. Until one year when I was in my teens and he had the Flu. He couldn’t get out of bed so he reluctantly agreed to let me get it. That was the first year I put up our fake tree.

Even before I was born my dad’s family had a fake Christmas Tree. I guess it was tradition.

After my husband and I got married we needed to get a tree. I was all set to buy a fake tree. My husband on the other hand was all set to buy a real tree.

The idea of a real tree never entered my mind. So when his sister asked if we wanted to get a real tree with them from their property I thought why not. Sounds like fun. My husband tried to tell me that a tree from the woods wasn’t what he was talking about. But I had to learn the hard way – hahaha.

When our kids were little our family we went with my husbands entire family to get real Christmas Trees. We would go to a  – cut your own – Tree farm and we all picked the trees we wanted. Afterward we would all go back to grandmas house for hot chocolate.

After so many years that tradition ended. My husband and I still wanted to get a real tree with our kids so we use to go to a local tree farm. We would pick a tree, cut it down, bring it home and get it set up. We also had hot chocolate and watch a Christmas movie.

Over the last couple of years my husband and I thought about getting an artificial tree. Our kids were pretty appalled at that idea. So we didn’t do it.

Now that our kids are 21, 18 and 12 my husband and I decided it was time to make life easy on us and buy an artificial tree. No more figuring out how to get the real tree in the house. No more making sure it was straight. No more watering the tree. No more sweeping up the mess the tree bristles left. No more of it taking me hours to take everything off the tree and struggling to get it out of the house.

We bought a beautiful artificial tree for the first time and we love it. It really does look like a real tree, but without the hassle. This will make life so much easier. Our kids are surprisingly okay with this new tree.

So after years of an artificial tree growing up I went to a real tree. Then after years of a real tree with my family we went to an artificial tree. I have to say I think I’m good either way, but I like the idea of not watering the tree anymore.

Tell me your thoughts. Does your family prefer a real tree or an artificial tree?

Thanksgiving Weekend

AH, Thanksgiving weekend!

This Thanksgiving my family and I had planned to eat at a restaurant and then go to a movie. We didn’t want to stay home this year by ourselves and we had nowhere to go. My husband made the reservation and we thought that was that.

Then we were invited to our Pastors house for Thanksgiving. What a nice surprise that was! We happily accepted their invitation and my husband canceled the reservations.

It was nice being able to spend Thanksgiving day with my Pastor’s family, another family from our Church and of course my own family including my dad. We ate. We played some games. We had dessert. We played some more games. Then my family and I went home.

The next day, Black Friday we decided to brave the mall and we went to Crossgates. That place was packed! We didn’t do a lot of shopping ourselves, but we did do some. We actually found some great deals at Five Below of all stores. Go figure!

Oh yeah, we bought a Christmas tree too, but that’s for another blog.

On Saturday we went to a Japanese Hibachi restaurant. This was my second time going and I had just as much fun as the first time. If you’ve never been to a place like this – it’s where they cook the food in front of you and then serve you. I always get the chicken and fried rice with the rice being my favorite to eat.

After the Japanese food we went to see Fantastic Beasts. I have to say that was a great movie. Much better than I expected it to be. I highly recommend it to anyone especially Harry Potter fans.

It’s pretty safe to say my Thanksgiving weekend was busy with shopping, movies, good food and great company.

Exercise with CIZE!

Exercise is something that’s good for everyone to do. it doesn’t matter how young or old you are, how short or tall you are, the simple fact is exercising is good for everyone.

For me personally it isn’t something I usually like to do alone. I used to exercise with some ladies I know, till I had to many things on my “plate” and I had to give something up. I chose exercising.

Over this past Summer I wanted to get back into exercising, but I don’t like to by myself. That left me questioning what to do.

That’s when I saw a video on Facebook of someone I know doing the Cize workout. It looked like a lot of fun and you got a good workout at the same time. And you got to learn how to dance. Even better it can be done at home any time of the day or night!

The Cize work out is six weeks of different dance moves you learn through exercise with Shaun T.

I made the decision in the Beginning of September to get up early Monday – Friday and do these exercises. I did the videos according to the schedule provided with the DVDs. It wasn’t easy for me to get up early. And the videos were challenging for me, but I did them.

I finished all six weeks and loved them so much I started them all over again. What’s even more awesome for me is the results I’m seeing. I lost some weight and my muscles are toning.

I’m seeing the results of my diligence with my exercising at the end of each week. My stomach is slowly getting leaner and I’m liking what I see when I look at my shape in the mirror.

In fact I bought a new dress size 6 for me and I love the way I look in it. I hardly ever like how I look in a dress, but this one looks super nice on me.

I can’t even begin to tell you how thankful I am for this exercise – cize DVD’s. I would highly recommend these DVD’s to anyone. In fact if your reading this blog and you want to give it a try, let me know and I can put you in contact with my friend Bridgette who helped me get my DVD’s. You can order Cize from Bridget’s page here.

 

Below are before and after pictures of me. The one on the left is from August before I started the exercise and the one on the right is from yesterday (November) after nine weeks of Cize.

It’s OVER!

It’s over people. It’s over!

The Presidential election is over. Election Day is over. The campaigning is over. The debates are over. The he said – she said is over. The pointing of fingers is over.

The people of America went out on Election Day. They voted and they voted for Trump. They voted for a change in the Country. The people have spoken and they say enough is enough. The people said it’s time for a change in this Country of ours.

I know there are some people out there. Mainly Liberals including the news media who are trying to figure out what happened with this Presidential Election. They are trying to figure out why Clinton didn’t win. They are trying to figure out how the news media got it so wrong.

It’s pretty simple really. The people in rural America are smart. They don’t listen to everything the news media tells them.They do their own research. They use the brains God gave them. They weigh the pros and cons.

Why did so many rural Americans go out and vote this year? And why did they vote for, guess who, Trump? Because they are tired of how our Country is being run. They are tired of the Liberals getting everything they want. Rural America has said they had enough.

What I don’t understand is why there are some Liberals out there protesting and acting like two year olds. Haven’t these people ever lost at anything? Or were they always given a trophy or a medal, whether they came in first, second or third?

Don’t they realize there has to be a winner and and looser? These people need to give Trump a chance. Let him show you what he can and will do. He may just surprise you.

Praying for our next President

This Tuesday is Election Day. The day we Americans vote for our next President.

For the last week or two I’ve been praying every morning and every night for our next President. Honestly I’ve been asking God to allow Donald Trump to become our next President. I’ve been asking God to have mercy on this Nation of ours. Whether we deserve it or not.

I know depending on who you talk to people will either say “Oh Clinton has it” or they will say “Trump is going to win”. In reality nobody knows who is going to win and become our next President.

I for one will be voting and I will continue to pray for Trump to win. If Trump does win I will be a very happy American. If Clinton wins I will be a very sad American.

At the end of the day no matter which candidate wins I will continue to pray for our Country and ask God for help. I will ask him to watch over our Country and Keep us all safe.

Cause let’s be honest when this election is over and we have a new President that we either like or don’t like – God is still God and He is in control.

Book Review of The Amish Firefighter

Today’s blog will be my very first review of a book I’ve read! I am hoping to do this after each book I read for now on. It all depends on how well I liked the book.

Please bear with me if this review sounds like it’s all over the place. Because as much as I love to read books and put my thoughts down in my blog – when it comes to explaining a book I’ve read to people I don’t do so well.

Laura V. Hilton, @Laura_V_Hilton and I are actually followers of each other on Twitter. We are both authors. The first time I saw the cover of The Amish Firefighter I was intrigued and knew it was a book I wanted to read.

In the beginning of this book Laura gives her readers a glossary of German words and phrases the Amish use to help the reader since the author uses these words in her book. At first I found that confusing but it didn’t take long to get used to.

The Amish Firefighter is a book of a community of Amish people living in Missouri. 

I loved reading this book! From the first sentence on the first page I was hooked. That says a lot about a book.

I enjoyed reading about Abby and Sam. About their growing relationship. The way they met at a burning barn.

The farther I read into the book the more twists and turns it took.  While Sam tries to figure out who is causing all the barn burnings Abby finds out she has relatively she didn’t know she had.

At one point of this book the author had me laughing. Can’t remember what it was now, but at the time it was funny.

I enjoyed this book from cover to cover and would highly recommend it to anyone. In fact I loved it so much I purchased another of Laura’s Amish books: The Snow Globe.

All of Laura V. Hilton‘s book can be bought on Amazon and are available on the kindle and paperback. You should get your copy of The Amish Firefighter today!

Deer in the Headlights

If you live in Upstate New York you know what it’s like driving along country roads and seeing deer here and there. You also know what it’s like to have a deer come out of nowhere and hit your car.

For those of you who don’t live in Upstate New York be grateful you don’t have to deal with this problem! I would imagine there are other states that have deer, but I don’t know what it’s like in those states with deer and cars.

First let me tell you up until last night I had no blog for today. I told my husband so. He told me maybe God would give me something to write about in the morning. I said maybe but I doubt it and we both went to sleep. This morning my oldest daughter was on her way to work and she hit her first deer. That got me thinking about the deer here in Upstate New York and that gave me today’s blog. So I guess you could say today’s blog is at my daughter’s expense, but she said to go for it so I am.

You see here in Upstate New York you can see deer year round at random times while you’re driving on country roads. You can even see them sometimes on the highway. Usually the driver or a passenger can spot the deer from a good enough distance. This gives you the chance to slow down and to avoid the deer.

Then you have deer hunting season. Seems like this is the time of the year when the deer like to show up the most and you can usually see a dozen or so together in a field. Deer season is also when we usually see the most car accidents when deer come out of nowhere and run right in front of a person’s car. When this happens you slam on your brake but it’s too late the damage is already done. When this happens you usually have a deer all over the front of your car and a lot of damage to your car as well.

Sometimes when the deer come out of nowhere it might only get the side of your car. Or maybe only a part of the front of your car. Either way the deer causes damage and it can be a scary experience.  Obviously my daughter is not the first person to ever hit a deer, but this was her first deer. I think all drivers at one point or another in Upstate New York hit at least one deer in some point of their lives. I myself have hit two. My husband has hit some and I know one of his brothers have as well.

I suppose you can say that a part of living in Upstate New York is learning how to deal with deer all year round, but especially during deer season. You need to watch out for those things so they don’t hit your car and go SPLAT all over the front.