Re-post Eagle Scout Ceremony Decorations

My old site gathered lots of visits from people looking for Eagle Scout Ceremony decorations. Since the old link doesn't work, I'm re-posting it here.

Post from June 07:

I had to feed a crowd of about 50 - so lots of prep time. Mostly buying the items and setting it all up at the Scout building. I did make the vegan "garbage cookies" -(oatmeal/raisin/choc chip/nut/everything cookies!)....the flaxseed "goo" to replace the eggs was, well, goo-ey!

This was the first time I had cooked using carob instead of chocolate chips. For some reason, if the carob chip was at the outside of the cookie - it charred. Everything else was just right. The bottom was not even brown - just nice cookie-color just the way I want it....

So, I just got a sharp knife and trimmed the charred carob chips - and - wal-la - perfectly presentable cookies! These were labeled "VEGAN" and added to the assorted food for the Eagle Ceremony. (As were a separate pot of baked beans - the vegans did not starve!)
Speaking of the Eagle Ceremony, I spent a good part of a day making and organizing the decorations. I just searched for the emblems on the web, cut and pasted into my paint program, duplicated the emblems, and printed them on 24lb paper stock.
I used them along with a hot glue gun and some decorations for July 4th to make the table centerpieces and other trim. I bought the $1 bows, the $1 "balloon weights", $1 frames. I just glued the cut-out emblems on everything! Total cost - about $15 (a Scout is Frugal!)

Here are some links to the emblems: Eagle Scout Badge

Fleur de lis

Eagle Medal



Here was the table at the entrance with the programs....

The tablecloths were all $1 each at the Dollar Store also!

This cake was made by Harris Teeter - they had the Eagle Scout Ribbon as one of their choices. Very nice and one less thing I had to do!
Here is a table set up (mostly to encourage the younger Scouts) showing Robert's trail from a Wolf Cub up thru Eagle. It was fun to put together - lots of old photos and stuff from a box in the attic (started in 1996!)
This is the plaque that is at the Scout building showing all of the Eagle Scouts from the Troop - Robert's name is already engraved - a little hard to see here.
This was the setup at the front of the room for the candle-lighting ceremony. All of the visitors from ND participated in the ceremony - The Man gave the invocation, of course. T read a very nice story about chickens/eagles, and the man-cub read the poem "The Eagle" by Alfred, Lloyd Tennyson. They were a great part of the ceremony and I'm sure Robert will always appreciate it and remember it fondly.
This is Robert's Scoutmaster "roasting" him a bit -
Here is the reading of the Eagle "Charge" -
And here is one of his "mentors".

And then we all ate!!

Enough for now - more tomorrow!

Our Friendly Florist

I drive by this shop most every day on my way to Siler City Airport.

For the past year or so, they have kept this sign in the window that reads "If your name is XXXXXXXXX, stop by for free flowers!".



I keep hoping that some day, they'll choose Karen as their name-of-the-week! I'll be sure to buy something nice when I go in for my free ones also!! I'm just amazed how many strange names they've put up in lieu of such a plain one like mine!!

Mini-adventure last night

Since the recent lay-offs at IBM lately, Duane has been swamped with work (having to pick up the slack of the departing engineers....) I phoned him at about 7:30 last night to find out when he was going to be able to break away. The response was that it might be pretty late, that he was preparing for a big meeting Friday that would be (hopefully) the end to most of the recent rush.

He has about 45 minutes of commute from RTP - so it has been working out to the following lately - drive home at 9pm - eat dinner - sleep until 6am-ish - drive back to work. Not very pleasant!

So, I offered to find us a cheap hotel for the night! He said, "sure, you sound like you're up for an adventure tonight!" I went on Priceline.com - just for kicks did the 4 star hotel - offered 50 bucks. That didn't fly, but they have a new process that immediately offers the same hotel to you for a slightly higher fee. Seems like a little bit of a scam, but I ended up with the room for sixty bucks. Seemed like a good idea at the time!!


So I quickly gathered his work-clothes for Friday, a change of clothes for me, our ever-ready boat-bag full of toiletries, and the dinner that I already had waiting. Off I went to RTP!




And on to the hotel - I had been here before back in my IBM days (15 yrs ago!) to pick up visiting vendors, but have never stayed here.


It was a nice comfortable room - don't think I would give it 4 stars, though!


I had made rice/tofu/chicken/veggies for dinner. I just took out some of the catering boxes that I scavenge from some of our corporate flights and made it seem like a "catered" meal. Duane got to the room about 10pm (a 5 minute drive from his office.)

I think he enjoyed the prospect this morning of a quick 5 minute scoot back to the office.....and I'll do my normal Friday grocery shopping/chores on my way back to Pittsboro!!

More Flowers!

Sorry, Sis, I had to post more flower shots!!

It's always so wonderful when the daffy's are blooming before anything else. I once had some other early bulbs- crocus and hyacinth, but the squirrels and/or voles must have a "hankering" for the bulbs.


These beauties are always second to bloom - they are much bigger and multi-layered....I'll snap a shot when they're fully open.


We are over-run with deer. Even though there appears to be plenty of grass around, they are really munching on some of my plants. These are "red-hot pokers" (a.k.a. Torch Lilies) . The deer are eating them down to nubs. Same goes for my iris shoots and my burning bush. I think it's worse this year now that we don't have Princess around to scare them some....

If it's like last year, once the grass really starts to green, the damage will stop!

OK Marianne, here's a post for you!

My friend Marianne is complaining that I didn't post anything yesterday....well, nothing much was happening yesterday! About the most interesting thing that I did yesterday was clean out the fish tank! So here's the best photo I could manage of my fishies. (Remember, these were Richard's fish from a year or so ago...but I've been nursing them for a long time, so I consider them my fish for now.....)



They are pretty "skittish" so I had to take the photo from the other side of the room. I'm not sure how big the tank is, but I believe it's 40 gallons.

Because the bigger orange/white fish is an Oscarfish - I have to drain about 10 gallons of water every couple of days and add fresh water/salt back to the tank to keep them healthy. They are fresh water fish, but a small amount of salt keeps their gills healthy.

Yaaay! Finally "guests" for the guest room!!

Can you believe it? I put out an open invitation several weeks ago for visitors....and no-one has taken me up on it until now!! Mom and Frank came for a short visit - they didn't recognize it as Richard's old room!

Two more appetizers - wieners and salmon

I'm still a little hard-up for anything terribly interesting to post! So, there's always fun food!!

Here's a couple of appetizers I made for our Friday night "gathering" - both really easy.

First is a really simple bacon-wrapped cocktail wiener. Here are the ingredients:





You cut the bacon in thirds (the recipe said half, but I thought that made the bacon too bulky.) Wrap a piece around a wiennie and stick a toothpick thru.

Almost done!



Do this to the whole package - then sprinkle brown sugar on top. Bake at 375 degrees for about an hour. Sprinkle more brown sugar on top about half-way thru. I forgot to snap a photo as they came out of the oven. (All gone now!!) But, you get the idea - the bacon bakes crispy - just remove from the pan and serve. Might work on a broiling pan also to drain the grease, but I haven't tried that yet. The guys loved these!



Next up is something I thought up on my own. I had a can of my trusty biscuits - what to do, what to do??


I sauteed the onion in the butter, cleaned all the "yuckies" from the canned salmon:


Combined the sauteed onions, the softened cream cheese. Decided that wasn't "jazzy" enough, so I added good ole' Texas Pete hot sauce and some worcestershire sauce. Then added some cayanne pepper too!


Did my trick of separating the layers of the biscuits, making 30 "mini-cups" out of the 10 buscuits. Spooned the salmon mixture into each cup - baked at 375 degrees until the edges were brown and the filling was melted.



Ready to serve!! These were quite good also...

Forgot to post on Valentine's Day

One of my sweet employees left me this tasty morsel at the airport on Valentine's Day. It is ALOT of chocolate (I put the sunglasses in the photo to indicate just how big the hunk of choco is!) We're still eating on it, bit-by-bit!

Very Weird

I found out yesterday that my blog is posted on a local web list. I find that REALLY creepy!! It's one thing for my few (wonderful) friends to stop by and visit online. It's an entirely different thing for my local community to see my day-to-day activities!!!

So, I've just moved the blog address and I hope they will just drop my old one off when it no longer works. I'll keep an eye on it and let you know how it turns out.

Sorry for the trouble - but be sure to Bookmark this new website on your computer. I'll completely delete the old website in a few days when everyone has had a chance to see the new address.

Back to business as usual!!

Homemade Girl Scout Do Si Do's

Yummy! These were better than my sis said!! (I used real butter and real eggs, of course!)

This will be a favorite - here's the recipe I used http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Oatmeal-Peanut-Butter-Cookies-III/Detail.aspx Nice thing is, you'll have all the ingredients handy (except whipping cream - I used milk instead - turned out fine).

Easy as pie too! ('course, I don't think pie is easy, so that's not really germane....)

I'll have to work on making them look like the Girl Scout cookies, but the taste is terrific!


I need to make the cookie "drops" a little smaller and "squish" them really flat, I think. For a neat effect, I think I could put a hole in the middle too.

Yum. They're all gone!!

Not much happening!

It's really a "slow news day" in my world!!

I brought some of my pretty daffodils inside - rather cheery!



Oh, and Richard has started his EMT class now....he does some of it online and some of it at Elon College north of Burlington. It will take about a year or so of training to be fully qualified. He seems to be liking it so far.

More about Asian "Fruits" Cake

I opened one of the little cake packages for my breakfast. I chose the one labeled "Lichi Fruit".


I remembered that fruit from my trip to China in 2007. I went back and found one of my (hundreds of...) market photos. The Lichi fruit can be seen in the top left side of this photo:



It was quite nice - definitely no resemblance to our fruitcake. Just like a rich shortbread crust filled with firm/not-so-sweet preserves. Not exactly something I'd want much of.....but neat to experience other culture that way.

First real signs of spring

Always the lovely daffodils!! These have been budding for the past month - thru the snow and lots of cold weather. It came a warm rain last night - and these pretty little flowers were waiting for me this morning!

Business gift from Taiwan

Duane has a business associate visiting from Taiwan this week. As is their custom, he brought Duane a gift from home. It is a box of individually wrapped fruit cake. Not fruitcake like we're used to - more like a pastry with fruit.


Notice how the box is labeled...."fruits cake"


For a gift from our homeland, Duane is taking him a "fruitcake", North Carolina style....the Bear Creek, NC - Southern Supreme Nutty Fruitcake! These are very rich and yummy - mostly just nuts, sweet pineapple and cherries. (Not a bitter citron to be found in these babies!) You can see them here http://www.southernsupreme.com/prodinfo.asp?number=01003

Yard Work on a Beautiful Day!

I couldn't resist the urge to get started on a project I've been meaning to do for a year or more. Our basement "entrance" (that everyone uses) is a bit on the "plain" side....(neighbor's cat was visiting)....


I have a bunch of Liriope (from Mom's garden, I believe). It's been happily reproducing for several years in this flower bed. It's not really appropriate there - I just stuck it there for lack of better planning.


So, after much sweating in the 75 degree warmth, it was all dug up and ready for transplanting.


Next was the really tough work - digging up a trench beside the sidewalk.


And just like magic, I have a nice, "manicured" looking entrance. I'm sure it will look really cool when it fills in a bit and the grass starts to grow this spring. I'm thinking of filling in the right hand "triangle" with a green garden soon. More later!