Friday, August 8, 2008

On the Newsstands August 7, 2008

Arts & Entertainment: Count the Blessings by Gaynell Parker



Have you thought of what this earth would be like if Satan had won? He had promised that we'd never have pain, never be hurt and would all come back to Heavenly Father...

In thinking about that today, (I had loads of time to think, I was working at the cannery, and you know it's not a real brain job...grin) I realized this is one of the reasons we have The Arts.

The Plan of Happiness, is just that -- an eternal plan for our happiness.

Just think if we didn't have the arts in our lives -- there would be no music, theater, no real color, no upliftment. (I'm not sure if that's a word...) The many gifts and talents we have been given as children of our Heavenly Father enrich our lives. -- Read More

Arts & Entertainment: Review of Mama Mia by Candace E. Salima




Last Saturday Alvin let me decide what movie would we would see for my birthday. I chose Mama Mia even though I'd already seen it. It is the true measure of the love my husband has for me that he didn't even groan, just bought the tickets and took me to see it again. -- Read More

Books: Surprise Packages by Anderson Littke and Morris by Alison Palmer


For those of you who have been anxiously waiting for the third and final installment of The Company of Good Women series, it’s here! Surprise Packages by Nancy Anderson, Lael Littke, and Carroll Hofeling Morris is now available and you won’t be disappointed. Surprise Packages is a little like going to a family reunion. There are those few awkward moments at the beginning, where you’re trying to fit everybody’s names, faces and places together, but once you’ve figured it out the next hours fly by as your caught up in each other’s lives.

Surprise Packages contains a few of those awkward moments in the first handful of pages as the authors tried to reacquaint you with the characters. Every once in a while I’d stumble over a sentence or two that said something current about a character then followed it up with an, “Oh by the way, in case you forgot or didn’t know this is what has happened to them already and where they’re coming from” moment. But once everybody is done saying, “Hi, remember me?” you’ll settle down for a long and rewarding talk with women who are just like the rest of us— struggling and learning their way through life in the best ways they know how. -- Read More

Clothing & More: Dress to Make an Impression by Nichole Giles



Though I’ve been writing mainly about jewelry for the last few months, I was delighted when the Your LDS Neighborhood higher powers informed me that my scope has been extended to clothing and accessories as well. Yahoo!

This week I’ve given a lot of thought to what a person (mostly me) should wear in certain situations. It’s one thing, for instance, to wake up in the morning and throw on our favorite jeans, T-shirt, and flip-flops before going to the grocery store.

Heavens, I’ve even been known to take my daughters to early morning soccer practice in my flannel pajamas. (Since I’m confessing, I’ll admit to taking them to school that way as well—but usually I have no intention of getting out of the car!) -- Read More

Health & Food: Recipe: White Country Bread by Candace E. Salima


Last week I gave you the recipe for my mother's amazing chili beans. I kid you not, I have many memories of sitting around the dinner table digging into Mom's chili, laughing, talking, just catching up with everyone's activities during the day. That's what the dinner table was for us, the place where we got together and bonded as a family.

So here's the incredible bread recipe that goes with Mama Micki's chili. You can cook it as a loaf, or break it up into balls of dough, flatten them out and fry them in hot oil for, what we called, flapjacks. They make great scooping implements. -- Read More

Health & Food/Dutch Oven: Fire and Ice by Keith Fisher


It’s been so hot lately around my house I’m beginning to identify with the Wicked Witch of the West. “I’m melting—melting, what a world, what a world.” If you’re like me, the heat puts a damper on outdoor cookout plans. I remember a cook off when it was so hot we almost didn’t need charcoal. The heat from the coals raised the already high temperature into triple digits.

What if I told you about a cold treat you can make in a Dutch oven? Would you consider staying outdoors? We often associate cooking in Dutch ovens with heat from square charcoal briquettes. Have you ever considered cooking with square ice cubes? What’s that you ask? No, I’m not crazy, in fact I’m going to tell you it’s best to use an aluminum Dutch oven, although, cast iron will work too. The reason for aluminum is simple. Since the material heats up quickly it also cools quickly with no adverse affects. You must be careful with cast iron because it doesn’t react well to quick temperature changes. -- Read More
Home & Family: In Olden Days by Muriel Sluyter


In olden days, a respected man was loved by his friends and feared by his enemies. If he were insufficiently love or feared, he was less than he should be. He had failed in his quest to become a truly honorable man. Modern people are much inclined to take issue with the fear inspired by a man of honor in ancient days, but we must remember that the code required it.

An analysis of this code will bring us to an understanding that if a man were feared by his enemies, those enemies had good reason for their fear. It proved that he had the power to destroy, and power was the bottom line. A man of power was great; a man who lacked power was less than the dust of the earth. -- Read More

Home & Family/Preparedness: One or Two Preparedness Questions & Answers by Barbara Salsbury


Sometimes when we are wrapped up in our little corner of the world and have questions about our preparedness program, we might think we are the only one with questions. Or we might think that what we have to ask is dumb (printed in a whisper). So to put your mind at ease and to catch up on mail (method to my madness) I thought I would answer one or two questions in the blog, then everybody could benefit. (At least that is what I hope.) And just as an after thought, I would like to receive your questions. And if I might say so, I would suggest that in this wide, wide bunch of blog readers you are not the only one wondering the same thing. Ask away.

S.T. of Orem, UT asks: How do I make food storage foods palatable when the family is used to sugary, instant foods? -- Read More

LDS Outlet/Gardening & Landscaping: Nicotiana, Adding Sweetness to Your Garden by Heather Justesen


I'm always curious and interested in different plants to add to my yard. I love the old standbys--my gladiolas are blooming beautifully right now--but I'm all about adding interest--and if the price is right, so much the better.

Last winter when we had first moved into this house and I was planning out my landscaping, I managed to get in on a few seed swaps and picked up a host of unusual seeds I had never heard of. One of my new favorites includes Nicotiana—also known as Flowering Tobacco.

Flowering Tobacco comes in whites, yellows, pinks and reds and grows to three or four feet tall. Depending on when you get the seeds in the ground, it starts blooming mid summer and keeps up a steady show until frost. -- Read More

LDS Outlets/Humor: Milk of Amnesia by C.L. Beck



Like many of you, I’ve had a few medical procedures done. You might wonder why someone who wouldn’t normally tell her best friend that she even has a hangnail would tell the entire LDS community about her surgeries. I think that must be one of the side effects of inhibition-erasing drugs being injected into your veins. Doctors say the medication in the I.V. is to relax you, but we all know the truth. They don’t call it the “milk of amnesia” for nothing. You can bet no one is going to wear the hospital gown with the natural air conditioning in the back unless there’s a way to keep you from remembering that you paraded around and mooned everyone.

There’s no doubt in my mind why the doctor requests that you bring someone with you to the hospital, either. It’s not to drive you home. It’s so there’s a witness who can tell you the crazy things you did that you don’t remember. -- Read More

New Neighbors: A Fairly Good Time by Cheri Crane


I love this time of year. We're beginning to see the fruits of our labor in the garden patch and my flowers are finally all in bloom. Girls' camp will soon be behind me.(We leave tomorrow for that adventure.)The huckleberries are almost ripe and ready for picking. And next week is the traditional county fair!

I love this tradition, a delightful aspect of our rural culture. I love wandering through the buildings full of produce and seeing all of the 4-H projects. I like observing the animals in the barns and patting a furry nose here and there. My favorite thing to look at would be the artwork and photography exhibits. Sometimes I even enter a photo or two of my own. -- Read More

Religious: Baptism, a Fundamental Principle by Rebecca Talley


A fundamental gospel ordinance is baptism. We believe that those who perform the baptism must have the authority to do so. Many people, when investigating the church, say they have already been baptized and don’t need another baptism. We believe that in order for a baptism to be recognized by God, it must be done under his direction using the priesthood.

In the LDS Church we do not practice infant baptism. Children are baptized when they are eight years old because that’s when they are accountable to the Lord for their actions. (Doctrine and Covenants 68:27).

We believe in baptism by immersion as demonstrated by the Savior himself when he was baptized by John the Baptist. Baptism by immersion is symbolic. It is as if laying down your old life into the grave, and then coming up into a new life, a new birth. -- Read More

Scrapbooking & Crafts: Tag Time by Kim Thompson


Recently, decorative tags have been one of the most popular new trends in the scrapbooking and stamping industry. There are lots of fun techniques for decorating these accents and countless ways to use them.

Tags are easy and fun to decorate and a great way to use all of those left over scraps. Tags add dimension to scrapbook pages and make your scrapbook unique. They can be used for titles, journaling, color accents, and more. You can write a fun poem, joke, or event information on them.
The design, color and content of your tag is as varied as your personality or creativity. Tags can be big or small, square, angled or custom cut. They can be white, generic shopping bag brown, or colored. Tags don't even need to be restricted to paper products. Some of the most interesting tags I've seen were made out of wood, fabric, plastic, tinfoil--pretty much anything you can imagine. -- Read More

Service: A Service for Gentleman Farmers by Liz Adair

Ideas for what to blog about on my Service Blog come to me in odd ways. This one came as I was on Francis Road, a winding county road that cuts through farmland and is the back way from Mount Vernon, where I work, to Sedro Woolley, where I live. I got behind a mobile slaughter unit and thought, aha! I have intimate knowledge of what a service that is.

At the beginning of my Mother Earth Decade, from about 1974 to 1984, I was determined that, when we got our farm, we would do everything ourselves, including slaughtering and butchering of animals we raised. I had read lots of books and, to practice, we bought half a pork and prepared to cut it up ourselves. It had been scalded and scraped, so the skin was still on it, and as we laid it out on the kitchen table, it was all there: half a snout, half a face, one ear, one eye, two legs (one front, one rear), half a body, and half a tail. -- Read More

Sports & Recreation: Let the Games Begin by Steve Christensen

The 2008 Summer Olympics are finally here. The opening ceremony will start on Friday evening of 8/8/08. The excitement is starting to mount for the athletes, the countries, and the many fans throughout the world. I thought it would be interesting to review the history of the Olympics and talk about when and how it all began and how the Olympics got to be what they are today.

According to the online reference Wikipedia.org: "The very first Olympics were in Olympia, Greece from 776 BC to AD 393. Interest in reviving the Olympic Games proper was first shown by the Greek poet and newspaper editor Panagiotis Soutsos in his poem "Dialogue of the Dead" in 1833. Evangelos Zappas sponsored the first modern international Olympic Games in 1859. He paid for the refurbishment of the Panathinaiko Stadium for Games held there in 1870 and 1875. -- Read More

Return to the Neighborhood.

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