Busy, Busy Bees

I feel like I've done nothing but run for the past three weeks! It's been straight from one fire to the next until I feel like I'm almost out of water... and it's still February!

The past two weeks, especially this past weekend and this week have been crazy! We had our revival at church starting Friday night and running through Sunday night. On top of that, Saturday morning, I met friends for breakfast at Akins before going on a quick grocery trip to get the final ingredients for my contributions to Marnie's shower food! BTW... Cream Cheese is a life saver!!

After breakfast, it was a quick trip home to get all my food ready and get a shower before running back to Trenton to get a shower gift (I know, I know... talk about procrastination!) before heading north of Bell to set up for the shower. Heather's home was absolutely beautiful and was decorated in the wedding colors perfectly! Carrie's Cake was awesome, and all the rest of the food was pretty amazing as well! My contribution was a three super easy dips which all have a cream cheese base...

Caramel Fruit Dip: Spread a container of Mazzerotti's (sp?) caramel apple dip over a block of cream cheese, serve with Apple Slice or other fruit.

Buffalo Chicken Dip: Layer Cream Cheese and Canned chicken mixed with wing sauce. Top with shredded cheese and bake until bubbly, serve with tortilla chips... YUM!

And of course, my favorite!
Pepper Jelly: Spread a jar of pepper jelly over a block of cream cheese. Serve with crackers (It's unbelieveable, even if the pepper jelly isn't my recipe!) ( like the pretzel flip crackers that are half pretzel, half town house cracker)

After we got everything cleaned up and packed up from the shower, I headed home to relax for about half an hour before I headed to revial. I went early, because we are working on a picture directory and we were putting together the first set of pictures. Dale did such a good job building the display boards and the pictures look great too!

Sunday after morning services, we had a pot-luck dinner at the American Legion Hall between Trenton and Bell. There was tons of food which was all delicious! My contribution was a Spinach Salad that my Aunt Myrtle gave me the recipe for. It's super easy and as Eric says "off the chain" good!

Here's the recipe for that...

1 bag spinach
1 pkg bacon- fried and crumbled
2 cans mandarin oranges (drained)
1/2 cup toasted almonds

dressing:
1/2 cup ketchup
1/2 cup oil (I use olive)
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup vinegar

Shake well and pour over the other ingredients right before serving.

The only problem is that this salad doesn't keep well... but when you've got a crowd, it's amazing!

I did actually make time to read a book that Carrie gave me to read "The Wedding Machine" and boy did it make me think of "The Sisters". I probably should have used that time to do something else, but oh well, it was nice to just zone out into another world!

Monday it was back to the grindstone... and Since it's National FFA Week... we've got all kinds of things going on... I am thinking about running away soon! All I can think is if I can make it to spring break, I can really just disappear for a couple of days and catch up on all this sleep I've been missing!

On a side note: Week Three has ended and we are still on track! I personally have not purchased fast food for breakfast or lunch and I have either been cooking supper or just skipping it which has led to losing 7 pounds over the past two weeks... see... something good has come of this! Now if I can just keep it up!