Merry Christmas to all my little feathered friends...

Thanks for sharing your songs with us all year long!

 I found this little bird feeder at Sam's.

The lights just sucked me right in... I couldn't resist it. 

Lord knows I needed one more thing to hang on my tree out front :)

  

Here's my very favorite recipe for Christmas 2012...  Meets my criteria of FAST & EASY..
I'm making several for friends and neighbors......  and really does only take minutes to make.

Five-Minute Fudge Wreath

Recipe courtesy Rachael Ray

Prep Time: 5 min

Cook Time: 5 min

Level: Easy

Serves: 32 servings (2 pounds)

 

Ingredients

• 1 (12-ounce) bag semisweet chocolate morsels
• 9 ounces (3/4 of a 12-ounce bag) butterscotch morsels
• 1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 (8-ounce) can walnut halves
• 1/2 cup (a couple of handfuls) currants
• 8-inch cake pan, lightly greased with softened butter
• Candied cherries, red and green, for garnish, optional

Directions

Place a heavy pot on the stove and preheat it over low heat. Add chips and milk and stir until chips are melted and milk combined. Save the empty condensed milk can. Stir in vanilla and remove fudge from heat. Add nuts and currants and stir in immediately.

Cover empty condensed milk can with plastic food wrap and center it in the greased cake pan. Spoon fudge into pan around can, making sure to recenter can if it drifts.
The fudge will set up almost immediately. Garnish can only be added in the first minute or 2 the fudge is in the pan, so work quickly. Decorate your wreath with "holly" made from cut candied red and green cherries. A wreath left plain can be garnished with a pretty fabric bow when serving. Chill covered in the refrigerator and slice fudge very thin when ready to serve, a little goes a long way.

Random Memory = Cousins

Cousins, Buddy Sanders & Patsy Foster about 1950

 

 

It is just so much fun to find these really old photos!  Mom had a box of them in the bottom of her hall closet and I have been scanning them so they can be more easily shared with friends and family....

This is a picture of me (Patsy) and my cousin Buddy (Phillip Ray Sanders) when I was about 3 or 4 years old.  After Mom & Dad were married in 1946 they moved in with his sister (Maggie) and her family.  So for the first 5 years of my life, I had Buddy and Lavern to act as my older brother and sister.  I'm still looking for pictures of Lavern.  I know there must be some here somewhere...

Luv ya Buddy!

Random Memory = Thanksgiving with Granny Hess

Today I was making out our Thanksgiving menu and grocery lists.  It got me to thinking about my Grandmother (my Dad's Mom)... if you didn't call her "Granny Hess", you called her "Miss Alice".  She was one of the sweetest ladies I've ever known and a wonderfully nurturing grandmother. 

All the family would get together at Granny Hess's at least twice a year.... Thanksgiving and Mother's Day.
All the ladies in the family brought dishes to help fill out the menu, but Granny Hess did the majority of the cooking.  I remember one thing all the kids loved was her 'Pink Cake'.  She made the white layers from scratch and I found out later that the pink icing was seven-minute frosting with a few drops of red food-coloring.  It was always the first desert to go....

Alice Alderson Sigman Foster Mills Hess

Granny Hess was born in 1895 in Potts Camp, MS, She out-lived four husbands... She had two sons and one daughter by her first husband, Mr. Sigman...  then she had my Dad by her second husband, Mr. Foster (Forrester)  She had another daughter by Mr. Mills, but that little girl died when she was about 3 or 4.  She had dozens of grandchildren who loved to visit and then she had even more great-grandchildren before she passed away in 1970.

Granny Hess taught me how to cook and to this day I use her recipe for cornbread dressing at Thanksgiving.  I can still remember the wonderful smells in her kitchen.  She made the absolute best chicken and dumplings I've ever had.

I miss you Granny Hess...I wish my boys and grandchildren could have known you...
Maybe I'll try my hand at your 'Pink Cake' this Thanksgiving.

Random Memory....

Summer - 1985... all the cousins went to Grandma Foster's to spend a week and she took them to Mickey D's to see Ronald McDonald... (Looks like Maclain started making fashion statements at a very young age :)

l-r= Mic, Amy, Allyson, (Ronald McDonald), Maclain, Steve, David

Random Memories.....

 I've been trying to retrieve some photos that I thought I had lost on an old computer that was infested with a devastating virus... By some miracle, our youngest son Dave was able to  get access to the 'my pictures' files and I have several years of photos to pick and choose from.    I've decided to write about a random memory each day based on the photos we've retrieved.....

This first trio of pics was taken at the Memphis Zoo back in 2006....  This is Steve, Vanessa and Gavin enjoying a beautiful day at the zoo...

 Gavin enjoyed playing in the water at the zoo, but refused to get all the way in.  hands and toes only was the most fun of all.

Looking at the zebras....

Raven & Daddy have a great day at the Memphis Zoo!

Raven met the Panda bear mascot at the entrance of the Memphis Zoo.

 He posed with Raven for a picture....

Daddy & Raven studying the albino tigers.  very pretty....

 Raven loved the playground at the zoo.

This slide goes round and round.

 This train goes around the animal farm at the zoo.

 Raven riding a tiger on the carousel at the zoo.

Raven taking a 'funnel cake' break with Daddy.

It's going to be a beautiful Saturday so we decided to take the family to the Memphis Zoo.
I'll post some pictures later....

Family Tree Project

I'm still working on our Family Tree on ancestry.com and need more detailed info on our descendent family members...  It's much harder to get info on our living cousins, nieces, nephews, etc than it is on our deceased relatives.  So this particular post is geared to all FAMILY MEMBERS.   If you are reading this, please email me your full name, birthday, and where you were born.  Also the same info for your spouse, children, parents, etc.   Any family member you have any info for will be appreciated.

If you have any family photos old or new that I can add to our family tree, please email them also.  Or if you have OLD photos for parents and grand parents or even great grand parents, that would be awesome!
If you don't want to scan old photos, I'll be happy to do that for you.

I have a folder of old family photos that I can't identify.  Mom (Aunt Lou) had them tucked away in her closet... If you can help identify any of these family members, please put their name and birthday, etc in the comments.... Here's the link to the folder.   http://www.flickr.com/photos/mississippimom/sets/72157627876767878/    I know there are a lot of Carters in the folder, I just can't put the names with the faces....

If you want a link to my Family Tree Project on ancestry.com, send me an email and I'll get it to you.

At it again....

Looking forward to more posting on this blog location...  For some reason I've never thought anyone else would be very interested in what I do or what I think about things... Mostly this blog will be used to keep memories alive as I get older and so family and friends who may just wonder what I've been up to will have a place to check it out....