Tournament News

Part of my art this week was decorating frames as my donation to the "Elite 8" goody bags the parents prepared for VolleyGirl's team. The team left Tuesday after school. I had asked the mom that takes hundreds of photos at each match if she was giving a photo to the girls. My plan was to get my supplies early Tuesday to hot glue and write on the frames. My biggest concern was finding appropriate frames at a decent price since I had to have 13. I did not get an answer until Tuesday morning but I found frames at Dollar Tree, only 11 white ones so I picked black ones for the 2 seniors. Headed to Michael's for flowers, stones and little bows. Feeling I wouldn't have enough to get ready by 3:00 (sarcasm), I decided to go to Party City and purchase black, green, white and hot pink M&Ms plus bags for them. I arrived home at 1:40 grabbed some items in the kitchen and headed up to the rec room to prepare 13 bags of candy and 13 frames....oh yeah.....I can do it!!!!!!!! Plugged in the glue gun then prepared my candy bags, writing on each bag: "From Mother Falcon - Elite 8 Vitamins". A whole other story of my being dubbed "Mother Falcon"....comment if you are interested in hearing it! Next I laid the frames out and went to work!

Here is the white finished frame. The green flowers were two layers topped with a stone, all seperately glued. Then the hot pink bow with a pearl in the center. I wrote with a hot pink pen, the green was too blue and the black wanted to look purple. The school colors are green and black but the tee shirts the seniors picked out this year have hot pink on them and let's get real.....the ladies have to have some pink!!! That is the reason behind the hot pink candies in the mix. Here is a snapshot of the team on the court (VG is #10) with the awesome students courtside cheering them on! There were five busloads of students that came to the match in the afternoon, the largest crowd of students there! They won the first match but it was a battle, went to five games, very emotionally draining..........for me! That win put them in the top 4!!!!! There next match was against the number one team and unfortunately we lost but the girls received a medal and being in the top four isn't too shabby! VG and the team had a terrific time with the whole experience. That ends the school volleyball for this year. Can you believe it? The first club tryout is this Saturday. They really won't start practicing until January and only 2 or 3 times a week. VG will have time to let her foot heal! Go here to view some of the action: http://highschoolsports.al.com/videoplayer/2042/ahsaa-elite-eight-quarterfinals-trinity-presbyterian-vs-catholic-huntsville/

Barely Doodled....

Yeah, just got in a little art Wednesday....sorry it won't enlarge. I do not scan in my photos, it's either from my digital or phone camera. Why I cannot get a decent photo of smaller pieces with the digital photo beats me so I defer to the cellphone camera. Must get alot of art created by the end of this month for the display next month while I still complete 'maytagaramas'.

VolleyGirl's team is playing post season right now. They hosted the area tournament this past Monday and won the championship! I cheered so hard that I am just now getting my voice back.....sadly my fibromyalgia didn't enjoy my cheers whatsoever. My back and knees add spice to the mix that is very unwelcome. The bleachers are not my friend. Feel like I've been beaten up and thrown in a corner. Misery may love company but I feel very alone in my pain and limitations and so often this week have wondered how much longer I can tolerate it. Wasted time on such thoughts, not a choice. Perhaps I am getting close to hitting bottom so as to force me to make some changes. Okay, enough. Each family is assigned something to bring for the team food table and I was assigned spaghetti but VG said some of the girls have been wanting my "volleyball pasta" again so I made that too. It's fun, a table full of healthy, energy packed food and snacks for the team, crockpots for the hot food. We leave early Saturday morning for the regional tournament that is over an hour away. The team is expected to do well tomorrow and compete in the substate tournament that will be next Thursday at a school practically in my backyard! If the girls come out of that, they would have made it to the "Elite Eight" that goes on to the state tournament. This is only the second time in the school's history that their volleyball team has made it this far so it is exciting. VG is still coughing and on antibiotic and so far her foot is holding together! Yea!

Treat and Trip

Tournament tomorrow which means pack tonight. Lovely 'collage' of volleyball gear that includes three uniforms, long pants, cover shorts, team t-shirt, long sleeve shirt....extra socks.....get the contact solution VG took out the other week....ALL DONE.....should be going to bed. We drive 40 minutes away and will be there until 5:30 at the earliest, never fails, it runs late.

Remember the teammate that moved from Chicago area this year and the grandparents came to visit a couple of weeks ago? The girl's grandfather is an artist, he's 82. They left for the airport from a tournament and I sent one of the zentangles he had liked. His daughter said the snow covered bridge is near their home in Illinois. VG's favorite is the rose. We both are fond of them since Rose is our middle name and was my mother's name.

He sent a package of notecards with his watercolor paintings printed on them with a kind note letting me know he has hung the zentangle in a place everyone can see it. How sweet!!! I love the animals.

Such variety....I love the florals and the country. I certainly plan to keep in touch.

Get back with you later, maybe not until Sunday. Should have already went to bed! Have a nice weekend!

Very Sweet Easter......

BigBoy's request was this stove top drop cookie made of chocolate, peanut butter and oatmeal.

My neighbor's mom passed away so I made this cream cheese pastry for them.

Mr. Unplugged's favorite is the coconut cream pie - he is finishing off the very last piece now!

The in-laws grabbed some of these before we even had the meal. It is a well known Paula Deen recipe, Gooey Butter Cake...though it really is cut into bars.

This was the new recipe, another Paula Deen recipe, Decadent Chocolate Layer Cake.

The middle layer is cheese cake.......it was very, very good. I do believe that milk was left out of the ingredients for the icing. I made it Saturday evening, which was the very last thing I mixed up. It was like concrete, I thought the big mixer was going to tear up, I had to add some milk, a little at a time to try to get it to a spreadable consistency. It was it a big ball clung tightly around the beater. I probably read over that part of the recipe a dozen times making sure I had not left something out.....12 ounces of chocolate melted, a cup of butter and six cups of confectioners sugar with only 3 tablespoons of Amaretto liqueur was not going to work.

I had started my baking Thursday with a cinnamon pull apart cake for the neighbors but I took a quick shower and left it in just a bit too long and left it here and made them the cream cheese pastry. It is one of their favorites. Needless to say, the family here was thrilled with that. Next, I made BigBoy's cookies so they would be here when he arrived, double batch, they stayed here and he took remainder back to school with him.

Friday I made the coconut cream pie, baked the chocolate cake and the cheesecake layer, the butter cake and the pasta dish for the tournament on Saturday. The pasta has chicken, bacon bits, cheddar cheese, celery, spiral pasta and mixed with ranch dressing.....the girls love it....it's actually called 'Volleyball Pasta'. I also mixed a tortilla chip dip made with cream cheese, chopped green chili peppers, shredded parmesan cheese, sprinkled with bread crumbs and baked. It was the first time I made it.....all of it was eaten at the tournament. The girls did well at the tournament but only came in second in their pool play.....VolleyGirl played very well. We arrived at the tournament before 8 a.m. and left around 5 p.m. Our last club tournament is this weekend in Atlanta, we will leave Friday and return Sunday. Guess what...school volleyball starts that Monday. Thankfully, I will not have to bring food this weekend. In-between the baking I was doing wash. My goal was to get the baking done by Friday so that I could have Friday and Saturday night free except for mixing the icing and putting the cake together. BigBoy helped me finish up the icing...........We went to my in-laws, came home, got BB off to school around 4:00 then I went to my brother's for awhile. Today, VolleyGirl's school was still out so I taxied her to meet friends for lunch and a movie. It's at a shopping center so I browsed awhile then went to the bookstore, plopped down and finished my drawing. I will post that tomorrow. Okay.....that's a 'not so quick' rundown!!!!! I probably still won't get around to all of you till tomorrow....have to clean kitchen after preparing supper....VG is doing homework!! Love ya!