[Insert Clever Title Here]

I started another pair of longies on Friday. Actually, as you can see, they are almost done.

This is the "Whales Road" colorway from Malabrigo. I think this is my favorite colorway EVER!! The pictures aren't great because the sun is missing (again, thanks a lot sun).

Wow. That picture really sucks. *shameful feeling*

This last one is probably the best, but still not as wonderfully awesome as the longies themselves are. I am so totally going to make a sweater some time in the future out of this - FOR ME. It's crazy beautiful for a blue/purple/green lover like myself.

In other news:

My 4 year old daughter has been desparately asking to make "Christmas cookies", which apparently is any sugar cookie cut into shapes, be it a heart even. So I finally gave in and made up a triple batch of dough. I *cut* corners (hahahaha) by just rolling the dough into balls and then rolling it in colored sugar crystals I had in the cupboard. Then I flattened them with a spoon and baked them. She thought it was awesome and had lots of fun rolling them in the sugar.

I like my cookies soft and chewy. So naturally, I did not bake them for very long to acheive this goal. My husband thought they were awful. Really. He would not even take the "extra" to work because he didn't want anyone to think I was a bad cook. Sometimes my husband can be very silly.

The kids like them. I think they're kind of ho-hum but that's because I would prefer chocolate chip, which is what the next batch will be.

And in other, other news:

1 week till Advent starts. I am taking the time (I hope) this week to prepare maybe 1 activity per week for us to do this year. Advent is historically a big FAIL around here as far as my wanting to celebrate the season/prepare with the kids/do activities to it actually happening.

Cuteness? Anyone?

It seems to me that in this drought of blogging I have not given you anything sweet to lay your eyes upon. For your pleasure I bring you this:

Cuteness upon cuteness. He knows he's got my heart. Just look in those eyes. Can you even imagine anything more sweet?

And for my next trick: I present "Cyclops Blue"!

This is what happens when you don't use icing tips on the frosting tubes AND you don't know that the gel stuff runs. Freehanding a Blue's Clues cake is harder than you may think. Admitting that you even made a Cyclops Blue is even humbler.

And this is my baby girl having her candles blown our for her. Isn't she cute? She's three years old now. Too cute. Too old.

And just for fun is my little Lovey, eating his share of Cyclops. Love the frosty blue lips.

Week 2

The menu continues to go well.....as long as I keep up.

Shopping has been a breeze and the leftovers are welcome escapes for trying to figure out what to do for lunch everyday.

I did finally get too busy one day and "skipped" a day of dinner. That is a bad idea, and not something I will repeat. It makes it far too easy to continue skipping dinners as you try to figure out when to make the missed meal.

Wednesday, the day after I skipped said meal, my husband went to the fridge and then gave me a strange look. Then he looked at the calendar, with my menu on it, and looked in the fridge again. Another strange look shot I was (sorry, we're watching Star Wars this morning).

He said, "Hmmm. Where's the mexican rice?" I told him I skipped it....too busy to cook last night.

"Well, why bother having a calendar if we're not going to keep to it? You know I have a calendar up there for work with my schedule on it. What if I decide to just 'skip' a day? Can I do that? *shakes head* Then why can you??"

He had a good point.

~H

A Bone to Pick.......

.....with Pillsbury.

Let me explain.

In my short lived experiment with couponing (read about it here) I had purchased some Pillsbury refrigerated cookie dough. I know, I know. I usually make my own cookie dough - it's cheaper and tastes better.

But, I thought, I have a baby and a toddler, and a COUPON, so I'll buy some dough. It'll save me the time of having to make sugar cookie dough, then refrigerate, then roll, then cut out, then bake, then frost before eating our Christmas cookies. I get to skip two steps! Woo-hoo!

Was it worth it?

Um, not so much.

Perhaps a picture demonstration would be better? Ok. Here you go:


Exhibit A -

Notice the size differential between the cookie cutter and the resulting cookie? WTF! When I make my own sugar cookies THEY RETAIN THEIR SHAPE AND SIZE. Period.

Not enough, you say? Want more evidence? I give you Exhibit B -

Star of Christmas Cookie Cutter and resulting blob of confused squares. Again, I do not know what happened to these cookies. Does Pillsbury put some kind of super-human strength baking powder in their cookie-dough? Do they not understand that while it is OK for your chocolate chip cookies to conquer and divide among the cookie sheet it is quite impolite for sugar cookies to do so.



And, yes, there's more. Exhibit C-



Went in a Gingerbread Man, came out Frosty the Snow Man. This poor guy gained about 50 lbs. just because he agreed to undertake baking.



Exhibit D -

From left to right starting at the top: heart, bell, heart, bell, stocking, heart, stocking, gingerbread man. Oh-so-wrong on so many levels.

And finally, for your viewing pleasure, finished and frosted cookies-

To top off this wreckage of cookies, we had placed the remains of cutting out shapes into a blob and decided to bake a "large" sugar cookie by itself. It was the last "batch" that went in the oven. It was forgotten. Forgotten as the other cookies cooled. Forgotten as we made frosting (the green frosting is mint flavored, YUM!). Forgotten as we frosted the cookies. Forgotten until 30 plus minutes after it went into the over I got up to pee and smelled something off.

Found a large, brown hockey puck in my oven, complete with putrid smell of burnt popcorn wafting through the air.

Ah, the joys of baking. The cookies taste ok, although nothing compares to real butter, which Pillsbury obviously forgot about. And it was fun to see the little kids all covered in flour as Wobbs tried to roll out the dough. And his funny face when he realized his line of paper-cut-out gingerbread men had become poor souls that needed surgical help to regain their shape. My Flower, being the wisest of us all, refused to touch much less take a bite of the cookies.

Happy Advent!!

~H

P.S. Blogger has gone stupid and will not respect my formatting wishes in the above paragraphs.....melding then together as only Pillsbury could do!!! An ironic twist of fate, maybe?