Here in the Texas Panhandle, we do love our cowboys. There's just something about a man in a Stetson and jeans that makes my heart beat faster. I'm not much of a cook but I love to do genealogy and I'm a bit of a rock hound. I'm also a NY Times & USA Today bestselling author of historical western romance. You can contact me through my website and I'd love to connect with you on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and more. HAPPY READING!
Wow, and here we are at New Year’s Eve! How did that happen? This month has zoomed. Cookies have always been favorites of mine. They’re just so yummy either by themselves or with something hot. Here’s one I hope you enjoy and very simple. No eggs, flour, or sugar. It’s really healthy and good for diabetics of which I am one unfortunately.
PUMPKIN OATMEAL COOKIES
2 1/2 cups Rolled Oats
2 cups Pumpkin Puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
1/4 cup Maple Syrup (can use Agave nectar)
Optional – Chocolate chips (or any kind of chips)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 F. In a large bowl mix together the oats, pumpkin and syrup. If using chocolate chips, add them also and fold in really well.
Roll into balls and press down on a cookie sheet. You can put them pretty close together since they don’t spread.
Bake for 10 minutes. Remove and cool.
There are any number of substitutions. You can add vanilla, nuts, cranberries, and pumpkin pie spice to make them even tastier.
I eat these for breakfast and also as a snack. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
When I was growing up, we usually didn’t have a Christmas tree. This picture of me and my family was taken in 1953 and one of rare times we had a tree. I’m on the far left. You see, my parents later joined a church that believed it was wrong.
The other time I remember we had one was the year my brother came home on leave from the army after being stationed in Germany for two years. I was 15 or 16 and it was a big deal.
We were so excited to see him and finally have him back with family. I remember my mom baked for days before his arrival. She made everything she knew he liked and we cleaned house until it sparkled. She wanted everything perfect.
I always hated not having a tree and after I left home and got married, I always made sure we had a tree. There might not’ve been much under it, but my children had a beautiful tree. In the beginning, it was always live and I remember well going to the tree lot and picking one out. That was fun. But as the kids got older and allergies began to be bad, we went with artificial. My kids couldn’t wait to get it set up and always loved to decorate it. That was special to us.
Christmas means a lot to me and it also does to Gillian Everly in Love Comes to Christmas. In fact, she owns a Christmas store and sells everything related to the holidays. But someone is trying to make her think it’s haunted, which she doesn’t believe for a second. She knows it’s someone who breaks in and makes her toys come to life, jarring her awake. She is also a very accomplished pianist and is preparing for a big program on Christmas Eve. But will she get to?
A new customer, a rancher named Brett Love, is trying to make sure she’s able to perform. So he loans her his dog named Zema as protection. Gillian and Zema get along famously, so much that Brett gets a little jealous. Along the way, love grows between Gillian and Brett and she sees his big heart that’s longing for a family.
I really enjoyed writing this and hope you find the warmth seeping into your heart as you read it.
I hope you have a blessed Christmas and the very best 2025.
I’m giving away a copy of Love Comes to Christmas (print or ebook) to one commenter so tell me a favorite Christmas gift of yours. Maybe it was a puppy or a pony. I always wanted a horse but never got one except the stick kind.
Are you familiar with the Christmas carol, Love Came Down at Christmas? It was written and sung in 1895. This song plays an important part of Love Comes to Christmas. My character Gillian Everly is a very talented pianist with plans to perform on Christmas Eve. But sometimes plans go awry.
A haunted Christmas shop? Sudden, mysterious occurrences in Gillian Everly’s beloved Christmas store keep her unsettled, still she doesn’t buy into ghosts and spirits. An intruder has to be getting seemingly through locked doors. With a big Christmas Eve performance planned, she doesn’t have time for strange shenanigans.
Brett Love, a new customer, is taken by the beautiful shop owner and tries to help. He loans her a dog to keep her safe against whatever is happening in the shop. It seems the perfect solution.
The unthinkable happens when Gillian confronts the intruder, and she’s left with a maimed hand. Will she ever be able to perform again? Watching another dream die will shatter her fragile hope.
I hope everyone has the best Christmas ever!
I’m giving away a Christmas ornament to two people so leave a comment.
And don’t forget about the awesome Grand Prize Quilt to be given away!
Now, let’s play a game!
Yes, we know. It’s that time of year when we sometimes feel less kind than we should.
Re-write the sentence in red to something less naughty and more nice. For example:
NAUGHTY: “Grandma’s eggnog is too thick and chunky.”
NICE: “Isn’t it wonderful Grandma is still with us to make her eggnog?”
OUR HOUSE IS SO SMALL, IT FEELS LIKE EVERYBODY IS ON TOP OF EACH OTHER.
Here’s an ornament I’m giving away but it might not be exactly the same.
All entries will be eligible for our oh-so-beautiful Grand Prize, too!
Winners announced Sunday, December 15!
(USA Winners only, please.)
In the event the piano ornament becomes unavailable, we will happily make a substitute.
As most people already know, I’m a bit of a history buff. I’m always running across things that surprise and interest me, so I found an article quite by accident that’s provided material for a blog.
With Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, it’s a given that we’ll be eating tomatoes. But did you know that in the early 1800s, tomatoes were only used as medicine and not eaten? In fact, people thought they were unappetizing, poisonous in fact!
Compliments of Pixabay
An Ohio doctor put them in pill form and sold them as a medicinal tonic that would cure indigestion, jaundice, and a host of other problems. But when F. & J. Heinz began making and marketing ketchup, people decided they were tasty.
In 1883, the Supreme Court declared tomatoes as fruit due to them having seeds and growing from a flowering vine.
This has always been a bit weird to me because they seem to be a vegetable.
But ketchup changed the way people thought of tomatoes and began eating them.
* * * * *
Compliments of Goosebumps on Pixabay
Another weird article I saw was about cucumbers. They weren’t well liked prior to the 18th century and people saw them only as food for livestock. They called them “cowcumbers” and that continued until after 1870.
Louisa May Alcott joked about cowcumbers in a letter to her sister Anna. Food was a scarcity from the 14th century to the 20th and people could’ve been eating them all along. Just seems so strange to me to starve when there was food.
So when you’re eating your Thanksgiving dinner, you’ll have something to tell your guests. Tomatoes were medicine and cucumbers were cowcumbers. HaHa!
* * * * *
I have a new Christmas novella coming on November 30th. LOVE COMES TO CHRISTMAS is #7 in the Christmas Stocking Sweethearts series by seven of the Fillies.
I loved writing this story and making some Christmas magic. It stars Gillian Everly and Brett Love. Also Zema the border collie.
The launch date is Dec. 4th and I’ll have a post then also and tell more.
But, here’s a blurb. Also, there is no mention of tomatoes or cucumbers in this story.
Someone is going to great lengths to convince Gillian Everly her beloved Christmas store is haunted. Sudden, mysterious occurrences keep her unsettled, still she doesn’t buy into ghosts and spirits. An intruder has to be getting seemingly through locked doors. With a big Christmas Eve performance planned, she doesn’t have time for strange shenanigans.
Brett Love, a new customer, is taken by the beautiful shop owner and tries to help. He loans her a dog to keep her safe against whatever is happening in the shop. It seems the perfect solution.
The unthinkable happens when Gillian confronts the intruder, and she’s left with a maimed hand. Will she ever be able to perform again? Watching another dream die will shatter her fragile hope.
Tell me if you’ll be eating tomatoes and/or cucumbers this Thanksgiving. Or you might mention if you like this cover. I’ll give away a $10 Amazon gift card.
Surprisingly, if you said a pharmacy, you’d be right. Before gas stations, pharmacies sold gasoline.
It seems car inventors didn’t give much thought to where a person with a new auto would buy the very thing it took to make it run. He kinda put the cart before the horse so it seems the neighborhood pharmacy stepped in and sold fuel in addition to medicines, made soda pop, cut hair in some towns without a barbershop, performed surgeries, and pulled teeth.
The gasoline they sold was not pumped or put directly into a vehicle. The car owners brought cans into the pharmacies to be filled and they in turn, put it into their auto.
While there’s some disagreement about where the first drive-up service stations were, most think it was in downtown Pittsburg and the company was Gulf Refining in 1913. The cost was 27 cents per gallon. With the U.S. inflation rate, that would’ve been $8.60 in today’s prices.
Pretty crazy, huh?
I admit I never really gave it much thought but if I had, I would not have said a pharmacy. But, if you’d considered that pharmacies also sold kerosene for lamps, it would make sense. I have no idea how it was kept but seeing how strong gasoline and kerosene smelled, I only hope they kept it far away from the medicines they prepared or any surgeries they performed. Good heavens. I just can’t imagine. I wish I had a photo of this.
I love these little tidbits like this that I find on HistoryFacts.com. Some of this stuff is so amazing.
Today, it’s much the same. Electric cars came way before the charging stations. Thank goodness they’re not in pharmacies though! My car is one of the regular kind that takes gas but my niece and her husband have an electric car. They get stranded sometimes when their battery goes dead and forces them to to sit for two hours while the battery recharges. Not for me!
What is your opinion of electric cars? Do you want one? Or what do you think about buying fuel from a pharmacy? I’m giving away a copy (paperback or ebook) of LOVE’S FIRST LIGHT to one commenter.
This book came out in July and readers seem to like it. At least, we don’t have to go to a pharmacy to buy it!
Here’s the blurb:
After suffering a devastating accident, Rachel Malloy wakens with a stranger. He bears no resemblance to her perception of God, nor does he have a halo so she must not be dead. Regardless, after taking her entire family and leaving her, she and God are not exactly on speaking terms.
Rancher Heath Lassiter has prayed fervently and long for a wife. Is she the one? The appearance of a rare white dove shortly afterward seems to be a sign.
Despite Heath’s unwavering faith and kindness, Rachel refuses to marry him. Dark secrets haunt, secrets that blacken her name, making marriage to anyone impossible. Though disappointed, Heath rebuilds her burned-out house. There, her world again shifts with the discovery of a newborn near her family’s graves and a white dove perching nearby. Love grows as Heath becomes a constant in her life. Yet Rachel lives in fear of losing this baby. When the infant becomes very ill, she desperately promises God she’ll return to her forsaken faith if He’ll heal the child. But first light brings uncertainty. Will the dove return as a symbol of divine mercy, or will Rachel’s fragile faith be shattered once more?
This book is on sale for $3.99 and it’s also on Kindle Unlimited for free if you have a membership. CLICK HERE to buy.
I also have another book, WINNING MAURA’S HEART, on sale for $1.99 until the end of the month. This is a sweet romance about a woman who’s father is a hangman. The town shuns Maura and her sister and banishes them from their midst. They take the town’s orphans and go to an abandoned Spanish mission. CLICK HERE for more.
Everyone knows I just love history and go down rabbit holes fairly frequently. I just love finding little-known things from the past and more often than not, I build a story around them. So I subscribed to Historyfacts.com and they email me every week with something historical.
Do you know how Abraham Lincoln used his top hat? This president was 6’ 4” and this top hat added nine or ten more inches which made him look like a giant. But this accessory was the rage in his day and the majority of men wore them. Even tall ones.
Back to the subject. How did Lincoln made good use of his hat? He stored papers in it. He kept all sorts of different, and sometimes important, documents on top his head inside his hat. And when he was in meetings with his generals, he’d often throw the papers at them to make a point.
Lincoln also kept correspondence in his hat. In 1850, he received a letter from politician Richard S. Thomas and stuffed it inside his hat, going about his business. Then he went out and bought a new hat, putting the old one aside. Weeks went on before he remembered the letter and finally had to apologize to Thomas for not replying sooner.
Maybe a lot of men had the problem of using their hat for a file cabinet! Any kind of document could be stored on top of the wearer’s head. So…the writer in me immediately conjured up a man getting a marriage license and putting it in his hat then forgetting about it. Or any correspondence that needed immediate attention. Or even food. So funny!!
Why haven’t I used this???? It’s a goldmine. The scenarios are endless.
But back to Lincoln. His hat once saved him from an assassination attempt when a gunman shot and the bullet went through the president’s top hat. Secret Service agents found his hat lying in an intersection and were able to discover the position where the gunman fired. I don’t know if they ever knew exactly the gunman’s identity or not. The article didn’t say.
Lincoln had to give many speeches and he stored them in…you guessed it. His top hat. So he’s at the podium, takes off his hat and gets his speech out. Then when he finishes, he stuffed it back in his hat and everyone had a good laugh. True story.
I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. I never knew this about our tallest president.
Wildwood Healer, a women’s fiction, will release October 8th and you can preorder now. To do so, CLICK HERE.
Question: Have you ever run across something fascinating, maybe some historical fact or something you read in a book? Or how about this. Think of a funny scenario that should be in a book involving a top hat. I’m going to give away a copy of my Christian historical Love’s First Light, either ebook or print, to one commenter.
2 1/2 cups Rolled Oats
