Hearts in Service Blog

I tried out a new recipe today and these were terrific! They were crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside and delicious. Dutch Butter Cookies Beat in order until well blended: 1 cup of butter 4 Tbsp. Crisco 1 1/2 cups sugar 2 tsp. vanilla Combine and mix in until well blended: 2 1/2 cups flour 1/2 tsp. baking soda Roll into 1 and 1/2" balls and flatten with a fork. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 350 degrees for 14 minutes. Enjoy!

It's Bloomin' Tuesday over at Jean's Blog . My flowers really did not last as long as they normally do this year. We have had so much rain and I think that really affected them. I planted sunflowers this year and only 3 of them came up. This one is looking a bit wilted, but it's the only one in bloom right now. I love these and I think the bees do to! My black-eyed Susan patch is doing well. Unfortunately, my bee balm and echinacea have all died at this point. Many of the other flowers that normally are up by now aren't in bloom at all. Hopefully, things will do better next year.

There is a local trailer park near here that is known to be full of drugs and alcohol. Our church has had a burden to reach the people here for Christ for a long time and we have done various outreach events there over the past few years, usually with little success. Last night, we had a musicians and evangelists, Howie & Debbie Campbell come and share in music and a message. Members of our worship team joined in with them to play and we offered free food. It ended up being very successful. As the team was setting up, it started to pour. The group got together to pray that the weather would clear, and within 15 minutes it stopped a beautiful rainbow came out! The weather stayed beautiful for the rest of the night. We ended up with about 100 people turning out for the event which was huge compared to what normally happens there. Free food helped. Here are our refreshment ladies and they are a lot of fun! I know Dan especially liked the free food! ;-) Everyone enjoyed the musi...

I still have tons of plums left and found a yummy recipe for plum cobbler. Mix together: 4 cups of plums 1 cup of sugar 2 Tbsp. corn starch 1/4 tsp. cinnamon Put in a 9"x13" pan. In another bowl, mix: 1 cup flour 1-1/2 tsp. baking powder 1/4 tsp. salt Cut in 1/4 cup butter, until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs: Stir in: 1/4 cup milk 1 egg, lightly beaten Drop the batter on the fruit. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes. Enjoy!

Every Thursday a couple of moms and our daughters have been meeting next door while a woman from our church teaches us to sew. I already know how to sew, but I've learned all sorts of neat little finishing touches from her. She is a wonderful seamstress and taught 4H in our town for 30 years. The girls just finished making drawstring aprons. Here they are modeling with their teacher. They did a great job and were so proud. They were so cute yesterday, bouncing around outside with them on. :-)