The Life of Mrs. Miles

BLACK FLOWER ELEMENTS

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Wow! You folks blow me away with your response to my blog. You make this a happy place to be daily - like tea with a good friend. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

I was touched again yesterday by a story - and I could not help but respond. It was a request for an RAK posted yesterday at RAKscraps. This is part of it:

My 3 1/2-year-old son, Joshua, has a very rare brain tumor called a Hypothalamic Hamartoma. There is an esitmated 200 of these rare tumors in the world. In 2003, a technique to remove these tumors was developed in Austraila. It has since been taught to a doctor at the Barrows Neurological Institute in Phoenix, AZ. My son will have his tumor removed sometime this fall once they have access to new equipment (an interoperative MRI) which will allow the doctors to image his brain during surgery and hopefully give my son the best chance at removal without brain damage. We will be away from our home in Masachusetts for at least 2 weeks and quite possibly a month. I was hoping to put together a scrapbook of all his family, pets, friends... his life in general. As his surgery will cause damage to his memory we are hoping the scrapbook will help to stir some recollection -- while comforting him as he is away from everything he knows.

So Janine, the mom, is asking if the scrapping community would consider making pages for her - and I just can't say no! If you would like to reach out why not visit the forum thread HERE

I made some muffins for my sweetie yesterday, as he laboured over my laptop. Food to sustain him through the long, long process of restoring my computer. We wont' talk about that though, will we? Anyways, I saw a recipe on the internet that looked good, so I decided to try this one, but I modified it due to the fact I did not have the same ingredients. Regardless, they turned out very well, indeed. Miles was dubious to say the least... eyeing the grapes with a critical eye until I pointed out that a raisin starts as a grape, and that the recipe called for blueberries, which would be closer to a grape than a hard shrivelled up raisin. What intrigued me about the original recipe is that it called for mayonnaise insead of oil - and it works!

REALLY GRAPE MUFFINS

1 1/2 cups flour

3/4 cup oats

1/2 brown sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1 cup small grapes (or 1 cup large grapes sliced in 1/2)

1 cup milk

1/2 cup real mayonnaise

Before you put your paper muffin cups into the pan, toss them lightly with your flour and shake them off gently before placing them in the muffin pan - this helps to make it so your muffins don't stick! ( my own trick, no less!) This recipe makes 12 nice size muffins.

Place the oatmeal and milk into a large glass measuring cup and put it in the microwave on high for two minutes. When this comes out, mix in the brown sugar, salt and cinnamon. Next, fold in the egg and mayonnaise. Then add the grapes, fold, baking powder, fold and finally the flour.

Pour into the prepared muffin cups and bake at 400 degrees for 20 to 25 mins

I have another hint, but I will not put it in my hints section because it is only for Canadians - I will add it here as an extra. Its a Canadian magazine that you can order. Its free and it comes to you in the mail. Its about the size of a pocket book and it is filled with advice and it is to promote P & G products - Olay, Whitestrips and Clairol products. The magazine includes about a dozen money saving coupons (get this... whitestrips renewal - $7.00 off!) You can sign up for yours HERE

BARB'S HANDY HINT # 100

Make News

My friend Kristin (wyowoman) gave me this amazing little link, where you can create your OWN newspaper articles. this is truly a neat idea... and you could easily create 'articles' to insert in your scrapbooking layouts, as you can save them as jpeg images. Have fun!

THE NEWSPAPER CLIPPING GENERATOR