I like the vintage prints of people caught in their everyday lives. My mom did not teach me very much about how to cook or make pies. The other day, I made hubby a homemade apple pie, with my own home canned apple pie filling...he is in heaven. I use a pie crust recipe from Susan Branch. I cut the recipe out of a Country Home magazine long ago. It is not anything special...I think the real trick is chilling everything for the pie crust for an hour or two. When making crust, keep it cold...and take it easy with the dough. Overworking the crust makes it rubbery and tough. A light hand will keep it nice and flaky.

I used to be a terrible pie crust maker, it would stick to anything. I could not roll it out. I was so frustrated that I would just put it in the pie pan and press it with my fingers. I learned with practice, and watching Martha Stewart make pie crusts. A nice flat dough scraper is essential, it helps so much to getting the dough lifted and ready to go into the pie pan.

A Home in Newberg Oregon

We are driving 3 hours tomorrow to look at this home. It looks really nice online, and we are hoping that it will be good.  Rentals and apartments in the Portland Oregon area are sky high, with only a 2% vacancy. Nicole and Bryan are living in a nice apartment, but the rent keeps going up, up, up.


The idea here is...purchasing a home with our credit. Then, they live in it and make the payments, etc. This will be less than the rent they are paying. Sometime in the future, they will get a loan and purchase from us. The theory is that we will help the kids now, when the need is greatest.


This home is fairly new, and we think that it will be a good investment property. It backs to a greenbelt with a small creek, on the city growth boundary. It would be a long time before the city might look into going outside the current boundary. That fact appeals, that there are no homes beyond.