A Rare Summer Picnic

Since this week Jim and I will be busy celebrating our August 14th Wedding Anniversary, I will be AWOL from my computer the rest of the week. That being the case, I am linking to several other sites for this post and they are listed at the bottom.......please be sure to check them out! :)

As many of you know I'm hooked on Scrapbooking.............

I've gotten several e-mails lately asking when I was going to post more of my scrapbook pages so I've decided to feature pages from a spur-of-the-moment picnic we had a short while back. Here in the desert there are virtually no picnics after Memorial Day or then again before Labor Day, primarily because of the heat. That's my world. Now picnics and BBQ's around backyard pools are an entirely different story......here in Phoenix people live in their pools all summer. No, the kind of picnics I'm talking about are the" picnics- in- the- park" type of meal. Some years you can't even be sure it will still be cool enough by Memorial Day. Fortunately, in this particular year it was still relatively cool, and when we realized this we headed to Cortez Park at the last minute with a few friends.

As I've said before I now do digital scrapbooking exclusively. While I loved doing it the paper and paste way I found that with the volume of photos I want to scrap it was so time consuming that I would never stay caught up. I scrap chronologically with a scrapbook for every year. I keep each page fairly simple by arranging the photos with whatever clipart strikes my fancy at the time. I don't use this many "talk bubbles" every time but in this particular layout I wanted to use humorous conversation to move the story along.

We had a lot of fun with this insanely large frisby. None of us were used to doing this anymore so it was quite comical in itself.......a fact that was not lost on our teenagers!

You see? Teenagers.....gotta love 'em.

I create the layouts using Photo Shop, print each one out on my regular printer as an 8x8

page, then add to my 8 x 8 sized scrapbook. I also love the fact that I can make CDs of each years albums and keep them in a safe place as a back up "just in case".

The end of a long day......time for a nice siesta under the trees.

I'm leaving you today with a recipe that I took to that impromptu picnic that day...... Janie's Baked Beans. Now these beans are quick,easy, and definitely not baked. They can be prepared on top of the stove or in an electric skillet with not much effort. You can serve them warm, but I much prefer them cold. It's a good idea if you're taking them somewhere other than your own backyard that you chill them first, put in a plastic container and pack in your ice chest. These go so well with any kind of outdoor meal. Yummy and foolproof.

Janie's Quick Baked Beans

I call them this because this started out as

my baby sister's recipe a long time ago....

then I took it over :)

Ingredients:

4 slices bacon, diced

1 chopped onion

1/2 bell pepper, diced

I can pork and beans (31 oz)

3 Tbs dark mollasses

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 tsp prepared mustard

1/2 tsp tabasco

1/3 cup Ketchup

2 Tbsp Worcester Sauce

In electric skillet or large frying pan saute first 3 ingredients until they are tender. Mix other ingredients in, cooking over low heat. Simmer until well seasoned. Serves 6.........but I often double, triple, or even quadruple this recipe for a large crowd. It is very forgiving......you can experiment with each of the ingredients until you get it just the way you like it.

Enjoy!

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