These are some great tips that really work.  I have tried many of them and sure enough, they worked!!!

Reheat Pizza
Heat up leftover pizza in a non-stick skillet on top of the stove,
set heat to med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza. I saw this on the cooking channel and it really works.

Easy Deviled Eggs
Put cooked egg yolks in a zip lock bag. Seal, mash till they are all broken up. Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up mixing thoroughly, cut the tip of the baggy, squeeze mixture into egg. Just throw bag away when done easy clean up.

Expanding Frosting
When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar/calories per serving.

Reheating refrigerated bread
To warm biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place them in a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.

Newspaper weeds away
Start putting in your plants; work the nutrients in your soil. Wet
newspapers put layers around the plants overlapping as you go cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic they will not get through wet newspapers.

Broken Glass
Use a dry cotton ball to pick up little broken glass pieces of
glass- the fibers catch ones you can’t see!

No More Mosquitoes
Place a dryer sheet in your pocket. It will keep the mosquitoes away.

Squirrel Away!
To keep squirrels from eating your plants sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn’t hurt the plant and the squirrels won’t come near it.

Flexible vacuum
To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge add an empty paper towel roll or empty gif wrap roll to your vacuum. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow openings.

Reducing Static Cling
Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not
have a clingy skirt or dress. Same thing works with slacks that cling when wearing panty hose. Place pin in seam of slacks and - voila - static is gone.

Measuring Cups
Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill it with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don’t dry the cup. Next, add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out.

Foggy Windshield?
Hate foggy windshields? Buy a chalkboard eraser and keep it in the glove box of your car. When the windows fog, rub with the eraser! Works better than a cloth!

Reopening envelope
If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include
something inside, just place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two. Voila! It unseals easily.

Conditioner
Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It’s a lot cheaper
than shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It’s also a great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn’t like when you tried it in your hair…

Goodbye Fruit Flies
To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass fill it 1/2″
with Apple Cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dishwashing liquid, mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!

Get Rid of Ants
Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it “home,” & can’t digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, esp. if it rains, but it works & you don’t have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!

Take baby powder to the beach
Keep a small bottle of baby powder in your beach bag. When your ready to leave the beach sprinkle yourself and kids with the powder and the sand will slide right off your skin.

This year so many families have been affected by natural disasters.  For those affected by such trajedy you’d hope that they would be able to receive assistance.  Mariposa County faced a devasting year of fires.  The Telegraph Fire and Oliver Fire left many with only ashes of memories.  With hope of assistance from FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) many were ready to rebuild thier lives and build new memories.  However the hope of aid from FEMA was declined.  FEMA has now turned their attention to the victims of the hurricanes.  Is this fair?  Why is FEMA doing this?  Should everyone who needs it, receive it?  I was shocked to hear on the channel 30 news that local residents of Mariposa will not be receiving any assistance from FEMA.  I don’t think this is right.  One victim needs just as much help as the other. 

Where would you rather live?  In an area that gets bombarded each year by hurricanes or tornadoes or would you rather live in an area that may experience an occasional earthquake?  I can’t help but think what those individuals have to deal with each hurricane season as hurricanes threaten their homes.  As Hurricane Ike builds in the Gulf of Mexico and many mainland towns are are threaten, I wonder why would anyone want to live in an area that has to deal with this type of disaster each year.  I personally would much rather take the chance of having to go through an earthquake.  I like not knowing when something devasting will happen.  I think the anticipation of a hurricane or tornado would do me in.  What type of natural disaster would you rather deal with?

We are certainly seeing a change in weather here in Eastern Madera County, California. As I ride my horse in the foothills of Coarsegold, the days are getting shorter and the nights are cooling down.  I was told we are coming into autumn.  I thought we were going into the fall but was corrected that the proper term is autumn.  My research showed that autumn, also known as fall in North American English is one of the four temperate seasons. Autumn is the period between summer and winter, usually in September (northern hemisphere) or March (southern hemisphere) when the arrival of night becomes noticeably earlier. In the northern hemisphere, the meteorological start of autumn is on 1 September and it ends on 30 November. In the southern hemisphere it starts on 1 March and ends on 31 May. The astronomical start of Autumn is on 23 September and ends on 20 December in the northern hemisphere, and 20 March and 21 June in the southern hemisphere. In Ireland, autumn begins on 1 August and ends 31 October, due to the Irish calendar.As for me, fall is easier to spell and it will be fall until I see snow and cold.

Sara Palin- smart move, bad move, bold move, or brave move??  Gosh, I think McCain’s Vice President choice was smart, bold, and brave.  What a terrific candidate!!!  Here she is a female that stands true to her beliefs and fights for what she believes in.  She is well qualified and has more experience than Obama.  By the way, where does the Obama campaign get off saying she is not qualified and does not have the experience necessary to be VP.  Have you looked at your candidate?  What experience does he have?  Palin is more experienced than Obama so maybe the Obama campaign should lay off the accusations of Palin not being qualified.  In this election that will be based on race, gender, and ethnicity- McCain stepped it up by putting a female on the ticket.  It was a great move.  Obama, maybe you should have chose H. Clinton- too late now!!

This crazy real estate market so many of us are caught in is frustrating and confusing.  We have seen the prices of homes drop throughout the Eastern Madera County area.  Ahwahnee, Coarsegold, Oakhurst, Raymond, Bass Lake, Fish Camp, Yosemite Lakes, O’Neil’s, and North Fork are no strangers to the dropping market.  What can we do?? It seems as there is nothing we can do.  Not only is finding a buyer a problem but once we have a buyer and start the escrow process we run into so many more problems.  A huge problem that is emerging is the appraisal process.  Appraisers are being quite conservative, as if that is not bad enough.  Then the lending institutions want to send out their own appraisers at the buyer’s expense.  This is getting to be ridiculous.  Sales agents are getting frustrated, buyers do not want to pay for an additional appraisal (of course), and sellers are finding it hard to get through the escrow process.  Is this vicious cycle ever going to stop???  I find an interesting article on appraising that you might enjoy reading just go to the following link http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/17/RELP12AF53.DTL

My favorite thing to do in August is to hike up to the top of Fresno Dome in Eastern Madera County and lay back to watch the Perseid Meteor Shower.  The night sky will be filled with grazers and shooting stars.  There can be up to 60 shooting stars per hour.  They are best viewed at pre-dawn but can be seen all night long.  Fresno Dome is a perfect place because it is quiet and peaceful, away from any lights, and just a short drive up Sierra Sky Ranch Road.  This meteor shower takes place every year in mid August.  I look forward to this annual event and can’t wait to share it with my children.

Surviving the Heat Wave

With record breaking temperatures, what can we do to keep cool?  We are so lucky to live in the mountain community; there are many places to go and activities to do to avoid the heat.  Cooling centers are opened to the public at the Coarsegold Community Center, Oakhurst Sierra Senior Center, in North Fork and Mariposa.  If you are looking for some fun, indoor activities try visiting Chukchansi Gold Resort and Casino for food, fun, and entertainment, going the Met Cinema to watch a movie, or visiting the local Oakhurst branch library.  If you have children, the Children’s Museum is a great place to take the kids as well as Have a Ball which is an indoor sports arena for kids of all ages.  If you are looking for an outdoor activity to keep you cool, consider driving to Yosemite Valley or Mariposa Groves for a hike, cooling off with a swim at Bass Lake or renting a boat or jet ski to enjoy, or you could visit the pool at Yosemite High School’s Baker Swim Complex.  There are many ways to stay cool in our mountain community.  Use your imagination and let me know what other ideas you can come up with. 

I thought this article would offer hope to many of us out there.  It can only get better.

On the Path to a Housing Rebound

By Shawn Tully, CNNMoney.com

Jul 2nd, 2008   

“The pain that homeowners and homebuilders are feeling now is a sign that things are going to get better.

NEW YORK (Fortune) — The news that housing starts have fallen to their lowest level in 17 years sounds like one more reason to be depressed about the shrinking value of your home. In fact, it’s an almost certain sign that the path to a housing recovery is finally in sight.

If prices are going to stabilize, let alone rebound, the United States needs to produce far more first-time home buyers than new houses. That’s the only way to tame the glut of “For Sale” signs dotting front yards from the Inland Empire of California to the Gold Coast of Florida.

Builders constructed far more homes from 2002 until 2006 - the peak bubble years - than could possibly be absorbed by the normal growth in households.

Slideshow: Summertime poolside living

As a result, the market is now swamped with one million new and existing homes for sale that aren’t occupied, and hence need to sell quickly. That’s a multiple of the figure in most downturns, and it testifies to the duration and girth of the bubble.

“For the recovery to begin, builders need to eliminate the standing inventory of finished, unoccupied new homes,” says Mike Castleman, founder of Metrostudy, which assembles sales data on four million subdivisions across the U.S.

The massive overhang of unsold inventory has remained stubbornly high. Sure, builders cut back, but sales dropped just as quickly.

Now that excess supply is finally beginning to shrink. In April, the number of new homes for sale stood at 456,000 according to the U.S. Commerce Department, still a big number, but 93,000 below the mountainous figure a year ago.

The return of the first-time buyer

The key player in any recovery scenario is the first time buyer. The housing market operates with a pronounced laddering or ripple effect. When entry-level buyers flood the market, they not only stimulate production of new homes, they purchase existing homes. Those purchases, in turn, allow the sellers to move up to bigger houses.

But when the first-timers are absent, the entire buying chain gets frozen.

Today, newbies are coming back. Why? For the first time in years, entry-level homes are affordable. Builders have slashed prices, and what they’re building tends to be far smaller than the McMansions of the boom, selling for far lower prices. KB Home’s average selling price dropped to $248,0000 in its February quarter, versus $267,000 a year earlier. In 2006, KB’s basic model in Victorville, Cal., a former boomtown east of Los Angeles, took up as much as 3,800 square feet and sold for $328,000. Today, its stripped down offering goes for $220,000, at less than half the size.

So the first time in a decade renters can carry the mortgage payments and taxes on a new house for what they’re paying a landlord. Call it the New Affordability.

Here’s how the numbers play out: Single-family housing starts are now running at fewer than 500,000 a year. The normal demand for housing, based on immigration and household formation, is around one million units.

We won’t get back to that figure for a while because so many people rushed to buy homes during the boom.

But with first timers returning, sales should rise to almost 700,000 units by the end of next year, according to Bernard Markstein, senior economist for the National Association of Home Builders. That means sales will soon exceed new production by as much as 250,000 units a year.

That margin forms the foundation of the housing revival that comes in four steps.

Step 1:

First, the return of first-time buyers will shrink the overhang of new houses for sale.

Step 2:

Second, because so few new homes are being built, first-timers will start buying existing homes from owners who want to move up but have been trapped by the dearth of buyers. Their improved fortunes, though, come with a big caveat: The prices of new homes are now lower than comparably-sized existing homes. It’s as if used cars are selling for more than new ones. That can’t last. So move-up buyers are going to have to accept less than they had hoped to get for their current homes.They’ll get a big break as they trade up, however. Unless they bought at the height of the boom, they’ll still sell at a profit. They can then use that equity to buy bigger homes at bargain prices. During the bubble, homebuilders started pushing up home sizes to 3,500 square feet or more. It’s those behemoths that are selling for the steepest discounts today.

Step 3:

Next, housing starts should start rising, probably next year. The increase, however, will be slow and gradual. For the next two years at least, homebuilders will compete ferociously with existing home sellers for customers.

Step 4:

Eventually, the glut of existing homes will disappear as well. The excess of new-home buyers over new homes being built makes that inevitable. But the oversupply is so enormous that the healing process could take as much as three more years. Only then will prices in former bubble markets start rising again.

What could go wrong?

One event has the potential to slow or even derail the recovery: A sharp rise in interest rates. Right now, the first-timers are gorging on 6% loans guaranteed by the FHA. But rates may not stay there.

If they rise to 8% or higher because inflation rebounds, it would take a far bigger drop in prices to make new and existing homes affordable.

The New Affordability is now in place. But if rates rise, we’ll have to establish a New New Affordability - at even lower prices.”