Sweet Adeleine

Sorry this post is a little late! I wanted this project to be done last Sunday, but I kept noticing details that could be added to make it a little better. This post might seem a little random, but it helped me to practice the drawing skills and techniques that I know. This includes: drawing dragon heads, adding small details to half-finished ideas, and adding shading. The idea for this design came from my Mom, when she saw me drawing dragon head designs and challenged me to draw the seven-headed dragon from Revelation 12:3 "And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads." My initial idea looked like this: Click to enlarge. I realized that this wouldn't work, for my drawing skills at least, so I changed the design to this: Click to enlarge. I wanted a large center head that captured attention, so I worked on that next: Click to enlarge. Click to enlarge. F...

I'm currently working on a graphic design to post here on the blog, but since it is not finished yet I thought I would post a little something from the PCC Blog again. I always enjoy these short posts written by the students there, and the one I chose today was written by Sean on December 11, 2015. Here it is: I come from Illinois, where winter temperatures usually range from about zero to the low thirties, and snow on any day other than Christmas is not a wonder but the norm. Many of you that come from "Yankee territory" know the sort of weather I'm talking about, but Floridians take a different attitude. To some Floridians, snow is almost more myth than reality. Since I've been here, we've had snow once, and even then, it was less snow and more frost and freezing rain. But I've never seen so many people as excited to see a quarter-inch of snow ever before or since. What I marvel at is the weather we usually have here. We're only two weeks from...

Today I have a cold-weather dish that is great for potato-lovers. Click to enlarge. This recipe has a little twist in the ingredients to make it unique to other Shepherd's Pie recipes. Here is what you'll need: 2 pounds potatoes, peeled and chopped garlic powder (to taste) milk (to taste) 1 stick butter or margarine salt and pepper (to taste) 1 1/4 pounds ground meat 1 package fajita mix 1 can (2 cups) whole kernel corn 18 ounces brown gravy (canned or mix) 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese If you want a slightly easier version of how to make this, you could buy 24 ounces of mashed potato mix and use that in place of the fresh mashed potatoes. You will still need to add garlic to the potatoes. Here's how to start this recipe: Click to enlarge. We used gravy mix versus canned gravy.  Click to enlarge. Mash the potatoes to desired consistency, whether smooth or chunky.  Click to enlarge. Click to enlarge. Click to enlarge. ...

Today, I have a recipe for you that captures fall flavors, but without pumpkin spice! This is a nice simple recipe, but delicious. For the ingredients, you will need: 1 package Apple Cinnamon Muffin Mix 9 cups apples, peeled and sliced 1/2 cup sugar 1 teaspoon cinnamon 3/4 cup brown sugar 1/2 cup margarine, softened 3/4 cup rolled oats *One pound of apples equals approximately 3 cups. Now, to start, pre-heat the oven to 350º F. After that, place the apple slices in a greased 9x13 pan.  Sprinkle the sugar on top.  Sprinkle the cinnamon on top.  Next, in a separate bowl, stir together the brown sugar, margarine, muffin mix, and oats.  Spread that mixture evenly over the apples.  Once everything is in the pan, bake for 40-45 minutes. Yum! This recipe is great by itself, or served with ice cream. I hope you try this recipe and enjoy it! If you do, or have any other comments, feel free to leave them below or on Facebook.

Recently, I started my first job! I actually had my first day of work on August 21, but my onboarding process (getting fingerprints and paperwork done) was not complete so I had to take a break and finish that before I could work more. Now, on Friday, September 1, was my second day of work and hopefully tomorrow will begin my first full week of work. As it says in the title, I work at IDEA Public Schools and I work as a lunch and bus monitor. This means that I am supposed to monitor the children during their everyday-school activities such as walking the halls, getting water, going bathroom, playing at recess and, of course, eating lunch. I also guide children to the correct bus and then monitor them during the bus ride to make sure they aren't standing or fighting. So far, everything seems to be going well, although I have yet to actually monitor a lunch. 😁 This is because monitoring lunch and taking Pre-K students home on the bus fall around the same time, so I usually end up...

Recently we went to a Back to School festival near to us. At the event, they had a car show, snacks, booths for school children to get supplies , and also booths from the local police and border protection agencies. One of the booths, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, had a variety of unique items on display, including gem-covered beetles, vials of weevils in food products, leather from a sea turtle and elephant, and a bird claw. The officer on the right talked about all the items on display. Click to enlarge. What do all these items have in common? Well, we learned from one of the officers at the booth that these were all illegal items to try to bring over the border. Lets start with the gem-covered beetle. This is not the beetle the officer had on display, but simply an example. While this may look like a harmless product, it is actually quite cruel. That is because the beetle is captured while still alive and has the jewels pasted to its back before being put on sa...

I went to summer camp last week and they had a theme chapter of the Bible, Hebrews 11. This chapter talks of the faith of many people in the Bible including Abraham, Noah, Sarah and many others. We were to memorize as many verses of this chapter as possible, which earned points for our team. I did not manage to memorize more than eight verses, but I liked verse one of chapter 11. In English, this says "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." The whole chapter is a great testimony of the faith of these people, but verse one is a great encouragement to keep faith, even if we can't see the current path ahead of us.

I stated in my post yesterday that I would write about a tradition we have for Fourth of July. Our tradition is very similar to many other  people's tradition, with a slight twist. That's right, we make s'mores. But not just any s'mores, we recently started making a recipe called s'mores dip. I thought that I would share this very simple recipe with you. For this recipe, you will need: 1 bag or more chocolate chip morsels marshmallows graham crackers To begin making this, start your oven on its "broil" setting and move the rack to the top notch. Meanwhile, do this:      Once the marshmallows are placed, put the skillet on the top rack of the oven and let it broil for a few minutes. Keep an eye on it though! Marshmallows will brown, then blacken, rather quickly. Pull out and test the chocolate once the marshmallows are the desired color; the chocolate may not have quite melted yet. If this is the case, make sure the oven is turned off, then...

Fourth of July is coming up tomorrow, and I thought I would put out a survey asking what you do each year for family activities, games, food, etc. Come back tomorrow and I'll share with you one of our traditions!

Philippians 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice. Philippians 4:4

One of my favorite desserts that we rarely eat is cheesecake, especially if that cheesecake is chocolate. Generally, we limit how often we eat cheesecake because the excessive amounts of cream cheese gets expensive, but today I have a recipe that is a little better on your budget than normal cheesecake. I love this recipe because it is cheesecake and chocolate chip cookie combined, yum! Also, it is slightly cheaper than normal cheesecake because it has less cream cheese and no other expensive ingredients. Here is the list of ingredients you will need. For the cookie part 2 1/4 cup all purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 3/4 cup granulated sugar 3/4 cup packed brown sugar 1 cup melted margarine or butter 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 eggs 12 ounces chocolate chip morsels (your choice on flavor ie. semi-sweet, milk, etc.) For the cheesecake 16 ounces cream cheese, softened 2 eggs 1 cup sugar If you don't want to make your cookie dough, the recipe also states t...

So, we recently went on my senior trip to Corpus Christi. We had four main activities planned: horse riding, visit a turtle rescue, the U.S.S. Lexington, and the Texas State aquarium. My souvenirs from the trip. Click to enlarge. The first day we went to a local horse riding stable (on South Padre Island) and got a two hour ride. Even the trip to the stables was interesting, as you can see from the pictures below. Click to enlarge. While waiting for the horses to be fed and saddled, we met the other inhabitants of the stable/ petting zoo. Click to enlarge. Click to enlarge. While we were in the area we visited a local turtle rescue, which had large pools and tanks filled with different sea turtles. The photos of the turtles did not turn out, but you can see the nice stone turtle statuette I bought in the souvenir photo above. The horse stable was, unfortunately, not close to all the other activities, (being on South Padre Island), so after we were done in the area, we...