To see more picture from our camp fire, go here.

Something Different. Something New.

Tonight we're having some friends over to have a camp fire in our back yard. We'll have hotdogs, french fries and a few other snacks.

My mom sent Danny down to the store this afternoon to see if he could find any good bread for the hot dogs - Hot dog buns are nonexistent in Hungary. He, sadly, came home empty handed.

Here's where I come in... about every other week or so I make bread or rolls (always using your recipe Alli, it's still my favorite!) And my mom figured that I could use that to make hot dog buns if I made them a bit long-ish and not so round like a normal bun.  So I did, and they came out almost perfect. I say almost only because they don't look exactly like normal hot dog buns, but they're close enough and they taste good. So hey, as far as I'm concerned, they're fine.

I never thought that I'd ever be making hot dog buns, of all things! It's just something that, in the States, you would normally never ever think twice about. You just go to the store and buy some. But to me, this was way more fun.

Too many options

Okay, here's what's up... On Thursday I finally found fabric for the inside of the two bags I made. Now all I have to do is finish the outside of the second one, and then sew the fabric onto the inside of both of them. My only problem is that I can't decide which design I want on front of the second bag. So, if you would be so kind as to lend me your brain for a few minutes, I would love your help!

See what I mean? I have too many options. 

But anyway... moving on...

So there's this one...

Or this one..

Or this one.

Please, leave a comment and let me know what you think.

I Need You (Show Me)

This is something that I wrote a few months ago...

Open my eyes, help me to see
through these tears that fall, so carelessly 
I know You're there, so please 
won't You show me that You're listening?

If I won't be humble, 
then show me humility.
Break my pride,
come inside of me. 
If I won't come willingly, 
then show me You're willing. 
Gently whispering;
You're waiting, patiently

Open my eyes, please, help me to see
through these tears that fall, so carelessly 
I know You're there 
so please, won't You show me?                             
Just show me that You're listening

If I run and hide, 
then show me that You see me. 
Crumbling these walls,
I made to protect me. 
If I fall, when I'm feeling so strong,
show me that You'll hold me. 
Safely in your arms, 
is where I'll be

Open my eyes, help me to see
through all of these tears that are falling, so carelessly 
and I know You're there, so please 
won't you show me You're listening? 

I've tried to be so perfect, to do it all on my own.
So show me that You can humble me
That I cannot do this alone. 
Show me that I need You here beside me. 
Lord, show me that you're listening. 

Won't you open my eyes, and help me to see?
You, through all these tears that are falling, so willingly 
I know You're there Lord, waiting so patiently 
for the one who does not deserve to be sought out by your wonderful mercy.
won't you show me? Lord, come and show me.... 

Does this look like school to you?

Yeah, I didn't think so either... but it sure is cute.

He's been bouncing this little yellow ball almost all morning trying to see how many times he can do it in a row. I really don't get it, but he seems to enjoy it.

He finally got it up to 104 times, gave some kind of joyous scream and then announced that he was tired. 

Yup. Definitely cute.

Okay, enough. Back to school! Right now!

It's finished... finally

At the beginning of January I was given several skeins of blue yarn. I figured that I had enough to make a blanket, so that became my new project for the next few week. Almost half way through I decided that I wanted to change something, so I pulled everything out, and start over, that was fun. Around that same time my mom came home from the store one day and surprised me with many many more skeins of this same yarn. I love my mom :)


So now, it is finally finished.
The yarn is a blend of wool and acrylic, and it's nice and warm. We all love it. Everyone wanted it to go in their room, so for now I just put it downstairs on the couch. Actually, I'm curled up in it right now as I type.


This is all that's left of my wonderful stash of this blue stuff. Before I made the blanket the yarn filled up that whole space. And I still have all that left! - It kinda reminds me of a yarn store every time I look at it.

My mom wants another blanket... so I guess that'll be my next project. Blue Blanket #2.

Anyway, I'm just glad the first one is done. So I wanted to share that with you.

------------------------------------------

I still haven't been able to find the right fabric for the two bags I was making. So they're still sitting, up in my room, on my couch, waiting to be finished...

So, I was wondering.

Which is correct, "I am a terrible procrastinator" or "I am a wonderful procrastinator"?

If you think about it they both really do mean the same thing. But which one truly is grammatically correct? Are neither of them correct? Or is it simply just personal preference? And if so which is more common? - I guess you hardly ever hear the second one being used, so that answers that question. But still, why would anyone say "I am a terrible procrastinator"? It just doesn't make any sense. And what kind of word is procrastinate anyway? Who came up with that? I know this is just one example, and a very poor one at that, but it is my belief that the English language it completely insane.

So anyway, I think now is a good time to announce that I do procrastinate... from time to time... when I feel the need to... or if it seems like a good thing to do...

That's all.

Addictive?

Yes, VERY!

So, how could this one little blue candy effect you if you were to pop it into your mouth? Well, it would automatically make you crave more. That's all you need, just one. And you're hooked.

I've heard people compare them to Peanut M&M's, however, I strongly disagree. I truly despise Peanut M&M's (weird I know), but I LOVE these. They don't really have a name. But the brand name is Big Ben, so we just call them Big Bens. And they're great. You really can't eat just one, or 2, or 15. If you eat one you're bound to end up eating a handful. The sad thing is though, they don't have them in the States... I don't know what I'm gonna do when we leave Hungary. :P

- I've never eaten a whole bag, not all at once anyway. The most I've eaten at one time was half a bag, well, actually I've done that more than once... Becky and I like eating them while we're watching movies. So yeah, needless to say, I've eaten a lot of them.

Rainy Day

Yesterday was a lovely rainy day. - I love it when it rains. It's my favorite type of weather (and yeah, I think thunderstorms are awesome.) 

So, it's cold outside, the wind is blowing, and it's raining. Perfect weather for taking pictures right? Well, I thought so... 

And I really enjoyed it. On my way home from Hungarian class I walked down a few of the back roads, that I've never been on before. It was a nice walk, it took a little longer than my normal walk home, but it was nice. 

Hungarian Class

Lately in Hungarian we've been learning about suffixes.
- We've covered the suffixes that you add to make a word plural.  In Hungarian you pluralize adjectives, if they come after the noun. 

- We've learned how to conjugate verbs. There are at least 11 different ways to do this. And then there are what we call the "Ick Verbs" or irregular verbs that do not follow the regular rules of conjugation and have their own set of rules.

- Next we learned the suffix that you add to show that a word is the direct object in the sentence. This, for the most part, is actually pretty simple.

(if you're confused at this point, and are about ready to forget about the Hungarian language for the rest of your life, keep reading, it gets better...) 

- Then last week we learned that there are suffixes that that you add to a word to add a preposition to that word.  Here's an example. In English we might say, Into the store. In Hungarian it would look like this, A boltba. The word bolt means store, and you add the suffix ba to show that you are going into the the store. 

Hungarians really seem to love adding suffixes as often as possible. You can start out with a simple 4 letter word and by the time you've added all the suffixes it's a 17 letter word.

It all makes sense when you're talking in Hungarian, but when you're thinking and talking in Hungarian/English and trying to sort things out it gets confusing sometimes.



This week, we learned how to tell time.
It's actually very entertaining when you think about it, and that's exactly what you have to do, think about it.
In English if you wanted to know what time it was I would say "It's 12:14"
In Hungarian... we would say "It's one minute until 45 minutes until 1 o'clock" (I'm not even going to try and type that out in actual Hungarian)
And then there's the simple way of saying it " tizenket ora tizennegy perc." Which literally means "11:14" (even though it's 12:14, we still say that it's 11.)
The way our teacher explained it was that even though it's 12 we've passed 12 and are now in the 11th hour.

It's all VERY confusing at first, but once you start wrapping your head around it, and it starts to click then it can be really fun.
Still very confusing at times, but I'm learning... slowly, and it is fun.
And the more we learn, the more we're able to laugh at our mistakes.

(anybody wanna guess what any of this means?)

Last week our teacher was having us translate Hungarian sentences into English, and then English into Hungarian. We were each supposed to take a sentence and then translate it.
It ended up that one of us would start translating, then get stuck, and the rest of us would help out. By the end of the lesson we were pretty much just going through the sentences and each of us was translating one word. So we made a joke that now we can finally go and talk to a Hungarian as long as we're all together so that we can help each other out.-- And yes, even when we're all being totally serious, it does sometimes take all 6 of us to translate one sentence. 

I'm still laughing at the fact that I randomly decided to pull out my camera in the middle of class and start snapping away, and my teacher didn't mind. So I turned Hungarian class into a mini photo-shoot. :)  

What did I do this moring?

Well, let's see. I woke up, took a shower, and ate a quick breakfast. Then I started making whoopie pies (I also made some bacon and brown-sugar wrapped hotdog bites) for our party tonight.


I decided that I was going to make the whoopie pies bite sized - I know, I know, you can't really tell from the pictures that they're little. But they are! I promise. - And I really like them this way. I love the way the "Mini Whoopie Pies" look.


This is the second time I've made them this month, I made them 2 weeks ago and everyone loved them. So, I made them again.


Over all I made 139 of them, I don't think I've ever made quite this many before, but I am used to making lots of 'em. Whenever I make them I usually end up making them for a large crowd.
Lunch came and went, and I was still pulling baking sheets out of the oven, I was so glad when I finally got to sit down and start frosting them.


I had been frosting them for about an hour, when I ran out of frosting. I had about half of them finished though, so I figured that I'd just wait till tomorrow to make another batch of frosting and then I'd finish filling them.
Anyway, it was fun. And all the people who are coming love them, so I'm glad that I could make them for them.

And this would be?

This would be the rice sock I made for myself a few weeks ago.

Usually you sew a bag , fill it with rice, and then all you have to do is pop it in the microwave for a few minutes, and it stays warm for up to an hour. 

 I decided to crochet a little pocket for mine. I know, I just had to find some way to be different didn't I? :)

Before Christmas break we went to the Christmas Market in Budapest and I picked up some very nice wool yarn for an equally nice price. The first thing I did with it was start to make a bag, I almost have it finished... actually it would be finished... but I hit a little bump when I realized that I don't have any fabric (that matches the yarn) to line the inside of the bag with. So, I decided that while I wait for the next trip to someplace where I can buy fabric, I'd make myself a new rice sock. And this was the result. It is a bit smaller than a normal one, but I still like it.  

They are very easy to make, and they stay warm for a pretty good amount of time.

If you want to know how to make one for yourself you can find the instructions here or here.

After I finished this, I started making another bag. So now I really need to find myself some fabric. Anybody want to take a trip into Budapest with me?

Whoopie Pies

Okay here is the Whoopie Pie recipe.

Whoopie Pies

Stir together:

1 c. boiling water

1 c. cocoa

1 t. vanilla

Mix and let cool

Cream:

2 c. sugar

1/2 c. shortening

Till fluffy

Add:

2 eggs

1 c. sour milk

3 1/2 c. flour

2 t. baking soda

2 t. baking powder

Beat well.

Add cocoa mix and mix well.

drop onto cookie sheet and bake at 350 for 7 min.

Cream Filling

Beat:

2 egg whites

1 1/2 c. shortening

3c. 10x sugar

4 T. Milk

1 t. Vanilla

Add cream filling to cakes.

Clay

A simple lump of clay
Sitting, reserved
For only the Artist
So that one day
He would start to shape it
Using it to create something beautiful.

He had promised it to me,
Whatever He was going to make.
I was excited;
He had always made beautiful things,
And now He was going to make something,
Something for me.

Soon He began to use this clay
Making it into…
Well no one really knew
Exactly what He was making
At first it looked flat and smooth
But then later it started to curve...
So I gave up trying to guess what it was.

I decided to ask Him what it would be.
He just looked at me, smiled, and said,
"My child, be patient, you will know in time.
Don't you trust me?"

It was hard for me to wait for Him to finish it;
I wanted so badly to know what it would become.
But I did trust the Artist
And knew He would let me know
What it was when He was ready to tell me.

Two days later I decided I would see how it was going.
I thought I would just peek in on Him
You know, see what it looked like now .

When I looked through the door,
All I found was an empty room
And in the middle, on a stand,
Sat a delicate cup and saucer.

I was so confused as I gazed at it.
As I had expected,
The He had shaped it
And had put it in the kiln,
But it was so plain.
He had not started to glaze it
Or paint it with an intricate design.

Over the next two days
I would peek in on the room,
The room in which sat the cup and saucer;
And every day the room was empty
And the pair was as plain as it had always been;
Plain, unglazed and un painted.

On the third day
I went again to peek on the little cup and saucer,
And again I found it untouched and unpainted.
I knew that the Artist was still in the shop;
I saw Him everyday,
I talked with Him everyday,
But we never talked about the cup and saucer.

So later that day I went to Him,
I asked Him why he had not painted the pair.
He only looked at me, smiled, and said,
"My Child, you must be patient.
You know I love you and only want to give you my best.
You must learn to trust me. "

I told Him I would try.
I thought I could be patient;
For a little while longer anyway.

For some reason,
Later that day,
I decided to go and look into the room,
Just to see if He had started to work on it again.

What I found left me feeling upset;
The cup and saucer remained untouched.
I decided that maybe,
Maybe if I started to paint it,
Then maybe the He would start to work on it.

So I went and gathered the glazes and the brushes,
The ones I though would be correct
For such a beautiful delicate project.

I decided I would start with the saucer.
The moment I picked it up,
A part of it chipped.
I didn't know what to do;
I felt so ashamed.
I knew I should have let the Artist do it.

A few minutes later He came in,
My Artist, the one whom I loved so dearly,
The one who had made this delicate gift for me.
I sheepishly told Him the whole story.
When I had finished He said nothing.
But, seeing that I was truly sorry,
He picked up the saucer and fixed it.

He made it look as if I had never chipped it,
And He told me that I should have waited and trusted Him.
He told me that His hands were the only hands
That could touch the pair in this stage.

I'll never know how He did it,
But from that day on
I've tried very hard to be content with the things
He does tell me,
And be content waiting for my cup and saucer.

No,
He still hasn't finished it,
But I trust that His hands will take care of it
And turn it into a beautiful creation.