30 Dec 2012 Leave a Comment
in From My Kitchen Tags: cooking without gluten, Gluten-free, gluten-free conversion chart, non gluten mix for baking, xantham gum
Found this link to a conversion chart so you can bake gluten free and impress your friends 
Apparently Gluten-free baking is not all that complicated. Using the chart, you can make your own flour mix by combining the rice flour, potato starch and tapioca starch and sifting it together well.
Don’t add the xantham gum though. Add the xanthum gum when you make whatever recipe you were going to need the ‘flour’ for. Use the mix like wheat flour. You store the mix just like flour. Easy peasy!
29 Dec 2012 2 Comments
in idaho, Life in Idaho, Out and About, Through my lens Tags: 83858, fireworks, Fireworks 2012, greensferry, lancaster, new year's eve in rathdrum, rathdrum, rathdrum new year's eve fireworks
Well, 2012 is almost history. The new year is just a couple days away. I don’t know if I’m ready for a new year. It doesn’t really feel like a new year. When you are a teacher, you are on a totally different mental calendar! For me the new year is in September. June means it is the end of the year…and summer is just the wonderful buffer between the end and the beginning.
In our family, we have our own way of celebrating the New Year. First off, we tend to celebrate the New York New Year’s Eve. It is just like any other end of the year celebration…it includes standing in the cold, kissing a loved one at the stroke of….9:00 and a ball dropping large burning object. Most people call it a yule log, but we do things big in north Idaho…we have a yule tree and sometimes some sparklers or leftover fireworks from the 4th of July. It all wraps up by about 9:30!
After that we just want to be in our jammies. The girls watch some sort of scary movie (perfect for ringing in the New Year, huh?) and we curl up with a flick in front of a warm fire.
So, it’s not that we haven’t stayed up until past midnight. I remember vividly one particular New Year’s Eve not that long ago that seemed to never end. I didn’t drink any alcohol and I STILL felt hung over the next day. Not my idea of how to spend the 1st day of the New Year if you ask me.
Shortly after we moved to Rathdrum, a group of businesses in our little town started a new New Year’s Eve tradition. We have an impressive Fireworks display to ring in the New Year! It rivals that of the likes of CDA and Spokane. Winter is the best time to do a fireworks show, no risk of fire and it’s at an earlier hour because it gets dark so much earlier than in the summer. This makes it that much easier for all the little kids in town to stay up to watch it.
Below are pictures from last year’s fireworks. If you have missed it in the past, this year might just be your chance. The show starts at 6:45. It will be in the field along Lancaster and Greensferry, West of highway 41. You can park along Lancaster Road. But not on Highway 41. You can also see it really well from Greensferry…or if you live in the neighborhood off of Nagel, you should be able to see it really well too.
Dress warm, the low on New Year’s Eve is supposed to get down into the teens!
27 Dec 2012 Leave a Comment
in Made Local Tags: cold, country, country music, easy as breathin', Idaho, jeremy mccomb, local musician, music, post falls
I was playing on Google and found something fun. A local boy making country music.
His name is Jeremy McComb and from what I can tell from his bio, he grew up in and around Post Falls, Idaho. He is a talented musician and songwriter. He worked at a radio station in Spokane where he met Larry the Cable Guy. This meeting got him a new job as Larry’s tour manager. He traveled and made some connections and played and wrote music. He even earned a grammy nomination for a movie soundtrack.
From his first album, 3 singles were released and one of the songs, Cold, broke the top 50 on the Music Billboard Chart.
My favorite is from his newest album. It’s called Easy as Breathin’. It’s got sweet lyrics and a beautiful melody that stays with you long past the song ending. You can download any of his music on I-tunes. Support a local boy and check out his music!
Here are a couple music videos to go with his first two releases. He has some clever, fun lyrics and an obvious sense of humor.
09 Dec 2012 1 Comment
in idaho, Through my lens Tags: lakeland cheer, photography, portraits, seniors
This year’s Varsity Cheer Seniors will have their senior night at a basketball game in January. This year we have 8 seniors. 7 girls and 1 boy. Leo’s photography came to take their pictures…but more often than not, somebody is disappointed in how their photo turns out. So for the Senior Night program, I took their pictures…
Here are our seniors:
And our only Senior boy this year….
I don’t have the huge fancy camera that they have, but the girls liked being able to pick which picture they liked best rather than waiting three weeks and hoping that the one Leo shot was a good one.
We are proud of our seniors and very excited that a third of our Varsity squad are seniors this year. It adds a lot of maturity when we travel and compete. Thanks Seniors!
09 Dec 2012 3 Comments
in Breathtaking moments, Through my lens, Girls like to shop Tags: lakeland, cheerleaders, winter semi-formal, dance, pretty dresses
I remember during high school…the school year was not marked by the months or the quarters, but by the chance to dress up fancy and go to a school dance. We had formal dances all through the year; Homecoming, Winter Formal, Sadie Hawkins, Junior Prom, Senior Ball.
These dances weren’t in the school gym or cafeteria…we did have some of those too…but these were at nice places and always followed a nice dinner with cloth napkins.
The high school my girls go to has not really believed in too many fancy dances. The Homecoming dance was right after the game in the cafeteria…very informal when you consider all the football players and cheerleaders are sweaty and dirty.
But fortunately, the parents involved with the booster club came from my generation of school dances. This year they put together a very nice Winter Semi-Formal. So we did the shopping, and primping and prepping to get ready for the event.
Last night my camera and I sat for an hour waiting for all the girls to get themselves ‘put together’ for the dance.
It was worth the wait We have girls that wear sweatshirts, jeans and boots by day…but clean up real nice!
They can still be kind of goofy though
Lots of sparkle…but they definitely out shined even their dresses!
My two girls! Holy cow they are growing up fast!
Getting them in one place for a picture took an hour But it was worth the wait!
Then they headed off to dinner…at Taco Bell…before going to the dance. No cloth napkins there!
There are some things that are hard to change….
16 Nov 2012 1 Comment
in Family Moments, Through my lens Tags: cheer, Idaho, lakeland cheer, lakeland high school, rathdrum, stunting
So being a cheer coach and being a cheer mom are two different things. As a coach I can watch, guide, expect and perform. As a mom watching a practice, I bite (my lip), grip (my seat) and hold (my emotions).
Watching your daughter fall from the flyer position over and over is tough. But she gets up every time and that’s a good thing. Taking pictures keeps me busy and lets me catch the cool stuff when it happens (most times).
Two of our freshmen flyers were learning some new tricks last night. Both look petrified, but they got brave and trusted their team and did it! It was so cool to see their excitement when they worked past the fear of the stunt.
Here is my daughter. She had to do a back flip. And after a couple tries…she got it
But only after she had to sit with a bag of ice after a different stunt didn’t go as well.
Here is one of our other freshmen flyers….can you see the look on her face!? The fear was pretty tough for her in the beginning. She was learning to do a forward flip.
But she tried…and tried…until she got it!
And then the look on her face showed what working through fear will get you…pride in yourself!
Great job last night girls!!
11 Nov 2012 Leave a Comment
in Life in Idaho, Through my lens Tags: cheerleaders, lakeland cheer, Moscow, sports, University of Idaho, vandal cheer clinic
All the cheerleaders worked hard yesterday at the clinic…but as my oldest daughter said “Our team is different mom, but that makes us fun”.
Yup, sometimes they are a little different. :)
and yup, it does make it fun!
10 Nov 2012 3 Comments
in Life in Idaho, Out and About, Through my lens
We had a great opportunity today. Our high school cheer squad went to the University of Idaho in Moscow for a stunt clinic. It was run by the U of I cheerleaders. A very talented bunch of young men and women. We got to be in the Kibbie Dome which was a great place to practice. It was so very cold outside, but inside the dome it felt like summer!
Our high school cheerleaders learned a lot and are excited to do more now that they fine tuned some of their skills.
Here is a slideshow from today….
Some of the pictures didn’t load into the slide show 
So here are the poses in front of the Vandals wall in the Kibbie Dome.
09 Nov 2012 Leave a Comment
in Life in Idaho, Through my lens
So last night I posted a picture of the first snowfall…we had a couple inches when I went to bed…
6 inches later…
This is what it looks like now….
And it’s still snowing!
So now I have my first drive north in the white stuff. Hopefully the snow plows have been out…cuz it typically snows even more in the town I work in now! ugh!
I will have to take my camera along because what normally is a pretty drive…should now be a gorgeous drive!
08 Nov 2012 2 Comments
in Life in Idaho, Through my lens Tags: first snow, mcdonalds, North idaho, winter
For the past week they said we were going to get some snow at the end of this week.
Weather forecasts in this region can vary. I will give the weather people credit though…it is a big region and you have everything from plains to mountains to lakes to anything in between.
So one thing I have learned is that whatever the Spokane weather people forecast…double it for us!
The forecast was for from a dusting to just a couple inches.
Well, we have at least 2 inches outside right now and still falling.
This is a kind of a quick fun shot I took with my phone tonight in the parking lot at McDonalds.
