Tea Box

Hello Friends! Whoops, yesterday totally got away from me. How has everybody’s week been? Mine has gotten of to a great start. I have been eating well and worked out everyday! That is such an accomplishment for me after not doing much at all and stuffing anything in my mouth that caught my eye.

I have done some cleaning in a couple of the closets, I haven’t finished the closet in the spare room but I took some things out that didn’t need to be in there, which will give me room for other things.

Jules, We love cookies here! We used to make some every weekend but then we kind of got away from it. I am happy to spread the cookie love around. I am glad you are want to try the recipes. I look forward to hearing what you think of them. I am not sure I could say which one I like better. They are so different from each other. I have everything to make pizza at home too but I was feeling last weekend. The dough I got at the store is very good, made fresh everyday. I have a waffle maker as well, just a cheap one from Aldi’s. It works well for the few times we make waffles. Maybe I will get some waffle inspiration from you 😉

I haven’t been reading Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest but as I mentioned a couple posts ago I went to the library to return books that Little Man had checked out and the library’s powers took over my mind and made me check out two books. Ok, maybe I just can’t stop myself from looking at the books on the shelf.  So here is what spoke to me this time.

The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel is a collection of short stories. I have only been reading short stories since last year and this is my third book of short stories. I have read a few of them and they are different than other short stories I have read. A couple of them I really enjoyed and a couple of others I didn’t quite get. I am still looking forward to the other stories.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley is the second book.  I got this book because in the new book section there was the seventh book in this series, As Chimney Sweepers come to Dust, and it sounded really good but I always have to start a series from the beginning. It’s about a young girl named Flavia de Luce, who is an aspiring chemist, and comes across the body of a man and is intrigued and investigates. I hope it is as good as it sounds, especially since I want to read the seventh book.

In sewing news, I did finish my box that I was making with these squares

Here it is filled up with tea 🙂

Here is closed and some of the sides and bottom

It came out a lot better than I thought it was going to. I am really happy with it. It’s the perfect addition to my other tea boxes.

I am off to enjoy a little dessert and tea before bedtime. Enjoy your day/night my friends!

Lemon Cookies

Hello Friends,

Hi! How are you doing? I am doing well. The weekend has been very relaxing and enjoyable. Yesterday Little Man had his first basketball game. It was so fun and funny watching the kids play basketball. They are fourth and fifth graders and they just go for it. Sometimes they are all over the place and the throws can be kind of crazy. Little Man did really good though and one of his shots was super close. Most importantly he had fun.

Once we got home we had lunch and then it was time to get on the couch for the National Readathon Day that I told you about in the last post. Did any of you participate? Little Man read to me for half an hour and then I read to him for half an hour. Then we made our cookies followed by an hour of reading to ourselves.

The cookies we made are Lemon Sugar Cookies. Mmmm the lemon flavor is wonderful and it is one of Little Man’s favorite. We followed the recipe as written except that we did not roll them in sugar before baking. Also I did not have large lemons so i zested four smaller lemons.

Here are all the ingredients. I didn’t use the lemons pictured here because i started zesting one and it just didn’t smell lemon-y to me. My mom gave them to me and sad they were Meyer lemons, which are supposed to be the best lemons. I have bought them at the store and they smelled better then the ones she gave me. SoIi just used regular lemons.

We poured and mixed the dry ingredients.

Mixed the wet ingredients.

Then mixed the dry and wet together. And made cookie balls. 🙂

Baked them for about 10 minutes and after 2 minutes of cooling put them on the cooling racks.

They came out beautifully and taste so lemon-y and delicious! I tried squishing a bit to many on a cookie sheet so some of them ending up sticking together, which is why some looked like they have a flat edge, I had to do some surgery to separate them 🙂 My husband tried to say that those just counted as one cookie and didn’t need to be cut apart. We will be making these again!

After reading for an hour, I went into the craft room and managed to sew another one of my squares on that I mentioned on Friday. I also sewed the last and first square together to form the main body of the box. I still have to sew on the bottom and then the lid. Maybe I will try to work on it after I am done posting this.

Then we had homemade pizza. I was going to make my own dough but then I got lazy so when we were at the market store, they have fresh pizza dough you can buy. It;s really good so I just picked up some of that. We each had our own mini pizza. I made mine a veggie pizza. It has broccoli, red onion, red pepper, and mild peppers.

Well i have laundry calling me from the dryer so I will end here.Tomorrow we are all back to school and work. I don’t have any special plans for the week. I forgot to take pictures of the books that I told you the library made me get. So I will share those with you in my next post. I am thinking that will be on Tuesday.

So I wish you a wonderful a week!

Soup and Fabric

Hello my Friends! How is everyone today. I hope you are all doing good. Today Little Man had a half day so after i picked him  we made lunch together, then drew some pictures. I worked out…it’s my second day and my muscles are yelling at me. Then Little Man and i looked for a game on the computer that we can both play and meet in, so a virtual world. We decided on Wizard 101. It’s actually a lot of fun. You make a character and right at the start you have your first battle, before you can even register for wizard school! Something mysterious and evil is happening in wizard city and you have to get to the bottom of what is going on. There are a lot of different missions and characters for you to help. I must admit i have gotten hooked. Of course Little Man loves it.

Yesterday i told you i started a new sewing project. It’s a small one and I haven’t gotten far but i will show you the fabric i am using.

My grandma sent me this fabric scrap last year sometime. I found it when i was looking for fabric to throw together to make a quilt with. Anyway, i just had the sudden urge to do something with it.

I grabbed this fabric scrap for my back.

And i cut some squares out of both of those and some batting.

My original plan was some coasters. Not because i need any but i thought they would make cute ones. But once i had sewn them, they were too small for my liking to be coasters. Sorry in advance this pics were taken at night.

So i decided i am going to sew them together to make a box like these, that my grandma made me a long time ago and that i put my tea in.

I did not bind mine like she did, i did not have the right fabric to make my own bias tape or any in a color that would suit and well that was too much work for me. I have three squares sewn together, after sewing on the fourth i realized it was upside down in relation to the others, so i had to rip it off. Then i set it down and haven’t picked it back up. Not because i don’t want to but i have come to realize that a big part of my hand issues is the pinching action i am doing when handing sewing or holding knitting needles. So i thought it best to take a break and then things to just busy. I hope to work on it some more but i am not going to push myself. It will only make things worse. I think it will be really cute and can’t wait to finish it!

Now on to the Cream of Broccoli Soup I made yesterday. It is from my book The Drop 10 Diet Cookbook. I got it last year when i was starting to get tired of the same old healthy meals and needed some new ideas. It has some pretty good recipes in it and i am finally getting around to testing some of them. This is my second one this week. The other one was Peanut Chicken Finger and those were pretty good as well but because you aren’t frying them like most chicken tenders are, so the breading made it a bit dry, you needed something to dip your chicken in. Anyway on to the soup.

I am going to tell you up front i made a huge mistake right at the beginning with the edamame, i didn’t take them out of their shells. I don’t know why, i just got it stuck in my head that i didn’t need to. And this is my first time using them. So right before pureeing i was digging in my soup to get all the beans out of their pods. I missed a couple but it could have been much worse.

I gathered up all my ingredients. Did my chopping and dicing.

Put the olive oil, broccoli, onions and curry powder in the pot.

Oh my the smell of the curry powder was wonderful!! Then i added the potatoes, edamame(with shell, silly me) and broth.

Let it simmer, with a lid on, until the potatoes were done. Added the broccoli and Half and Half.

Let that simmer for about 10 minutes or until the broccoli is done. I would let it cool a bit before pureeing if you are using an immersion blender and then if you are me, you dig furiously around with a spoon and your fingers to find all the edamame and the shells that happened to come apart while cooking so you can save your soup. Then puree and pour into a bowl.

And Enjoy. I was quite worried about how this soup was going to taste. I hate cream of broccoli soup in a can or soup mix or bag, basically store-bought in any form.  It’s just too thick for me and i don’t care for the taste. This soup was delicious, i think the curry spice really added something special to the taste and i could have eaten the whole pot.

So, friends grab yourself a bowl of soup, curl up with a good book and take a moment for yourself.  Especially tomorrow, or possibly today when you read this, because its National Readathon Day. Little Man and I will be grabbing some couch time for sure and doing some reading. Together and on our own. Hopefully i can make some more of a dent in my Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest. I am about 1/3 of the way through. I went to the library today and i always say i am not checking anything out, i have plenty at home to read and…I ALWAYS WALK OUT WITH A BOOK!! Even if it’s just a cooking or craft book or something for Little Man, i can not walk out of there with nothing. I think they have some sort of mind control going on in those places 😉 I got two today, yep they get me every time.

Little Man and I are making cookies tomorrow so I will share those with you next time along with the books i checked out.

Friends, have a wonderful day, do some reading and eat some soup!

Well…

Well, I had all these plans to sit down and write a post today and again the day has gotten away from me! I had the day off of work and got a lot of stuff done so I can’t be too disappointed.

Jules you asked about the oatmeal cookie recipe i had in my last post. I got it from from Here. I followed the recipe as written except that i didn’t have any molasses, so i left that out and they were some of the best i have made!

So i will be back tomorrow for sure!! I have some fabric to show you that i am playing with and here is a sneak peak at the broccoli soup i made today for my lunch and i will be sharing that with you as well.

Have a wonderful day Friends!

Slow

Hello Friends! How is everybody doing? Work and School started back up for Little Man and I last week, so we have been getting back into routine and I have been a bit lazy in the evenings. We have had bitter cold and it seemed like everyday there was a little bit of the white stuff falling from the sky.

Last post I talked about getting my sewing table cleaned and i was successful. Less so when it came to pulling out some fabric and cutting it up, maybe this weekend. I have so much fabric and a lot of it i bought because i just like the pattern, so I want to do either strips or squares and make a quilt, something to use my stash up. It’s all fabric that i say “oh but it’s so pretty i have to save it.” This way all my “so pretties” can be in one place and treasured!

I also mentioned Little Man’s new game Forbidden Island. We have played a couple more times and still have not won!! The island beat us every time.

I think Little Man is starting to get a little frustrated. We have been halfway there a couple of times and he gets his hopes up and then an important piece of the island goes under water and the game ends. I have looked online to see if we are doing something wrong and it doesn’t seem like we are but some comments are about how easy the game is or how quick to beat and all i can think is “What are we doing wrong?” I am not giving up yet though! Little Man does enjoy playing it though so i know we will get there eventually.

I have been using my duct tape wallet that I mentioned in the last post and I love it! I don’t normally carry such a small wallet except for work because i don’t like to leave stuff like that in my locker so i just have a small wallet in my pants with the important stuff i need. My duct tape wallet is thin and much more fun than the boring brown one i was using!

I finished my P.D. James book that I was reading for the Bringing up Burns Book Challenge. Now I am on number two: A book that was made into a movie.  I chose Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larrson.

It is the third book in a series, it started with Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I am not sure an English version of the third book was ever made but i know they made a Swedish film. I read the first two books a couple of years ago right after the other and then i needed a break from Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. If you have not read them, they are great books and I feel like they move right along and are suspenseful. They do touch on some topics that some people might not want to read about and can be quite graphic.

In the past week I finished the puzzle that I you can see started in the last photo. It was a fun one and i love these Sheep World Characters!! I have only seen them in Germany.

Today I made some Oatmeal Raisin cookies. Half of them are a gift for a friend because it is their favorite cookie and the other half are for us to enjoy. I forgot how much i love homemade Oatmeal Raisin cookies. It has been years since I made some.  I had already started when i thought, oh I should share with you guys. I soaked my raisins in warm water while I got the dough together.

Here is the butter, sugar and eggs mixed up and i added the vanilla:

Then i put the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a bowl.

I mixed the wet ingredients with the dry and added the oatmeal and the raisins to be mixed in.

That part was a bit tough.The dough is very thick and sticky.

Then i put my dough in the fridge for about a half an hour so the cookies wouldn’t spread quite so much. Rolled them into balls.

And baked them up for 11 minutes and then let them sit on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes before putting them on a cooling rack.

Yummy!!!! I will be enjoying a couple with my bedtime tea!

I hope you all have a wonderful night or day depending on where you are! I will be back soon! No more long absences like this if i can help it.

A Few Things

Hello Friends! It is a cold, rainy and dreary day. I have been doing some cleaning and organizing in the crafty room. Last post I said that I wanted to do some more sewing this year. Well this is a big part of the problem:

I have managed to clear off most of the items and pretty soon I will have a clear table!! That will definitely help with being able to sew 😉

Yesterday Little Man and I had a fun day. We went for a walk after lunch and then played some games. I got Ticket to Ride for Christmas and he got Forbidden Island. So we decided to try them out. They are both really fun games that require some thinking and planning. Forbidden Island is a teamwork game and we played twice yesterday and were not able to win the game so we are determined to try to beat it sometime this weekend. Little Man is feeling a bit under the weather today so he has just been resting but maybe later this evening or tomorrow.

After dinner we made duct tape wallets. It was a bit tricky and sticky 😉 and took longer than I thought it would but we still had fun and are both very happy with how they turned out. I used a couple different tutorials online because of how Little Man wanted his wallet to look and one had some easier steps than the other one.

Here we are making our duct tape sheets.

Then we cut it down to size and since we made our duct tape sheets big enough we had enough to make the pockets, which Little Man was happy about. He was struggling a bit with the sticky and making his sheet.

Here we are setting up the pockets and I.D. section to be taped.

Here they are all done!

We are super happy with how they turned out, especially for our first time. There are little things that could be better, wrinkles and some crooked tape but overall I think they turned out great. I am super proud of how Little Man’s turned out and he did most of it himself and barely wanted my help. It is a bit sticky but I see us making these again.

On Instagram the other day I came across a reading challenge that is on Bringing Up Burns. It’s called 26 Books to read in 2015. There are 26 prompts that you follow. You don’t have to do them in order and I am not sure if I will or not. But to start I am doing the first one.  It is A book you own and haven’t read. I am not lacking in choice.

Some are newer and some have been around for a while. I wanted to make sure I picked one that has been sitting around for a while.

I picked this one up at a library used book sale. I have never read P.D. James before but I have heard good things and I really enjoy mysteries.

So after making donuts this morning for breakfast as requested by Little Man. I go the recipe from here.

I sat down at the table and enjoyed a couple of chapters and a couple donuts. They are really yummy. I didn’t have buttermilk on hand, so I just used regular milk and they came out fine.

Well dinner is almost done so I hope you all have a cozy weekend.

Happy New Years Cheesecake

Hello Friends! How are you? This post should have been up hours ago but my computer had other ideas and did not want to recognize my iphone that I had my pictures on. After tons of google searches and messing around with my laptop I finally had to uninstall and reinstall Itunes and everything was working. So here I am.

It’s a new year! I almost can’t believe it. I hope everyone had a nice time ringing it in or sleeping in to the new year. Little Man and I stayed up and played Minecraft and then at 11:30 we had cheesecake (recipe to follow) and watched the ball drop. After that we went for a walk around the block to see some of the fireworks and bang on pots and just make some random noise to welcome the new year.

Do any of you have resolutions? I really don’t, I have never been much of a resolution maker. There are some things I am hoping for in this year. Some more sewing, getting some projects off the needles and really taking in the day-to-day more. I have realized how much just flies right by me and I don’t notice or take the time to enjoy it and really treasure it.

So Little Man and I decided last week that New Years Eve dessert would be Chocolate Chip Cheesecake. We were playing a game yesterday that he was training to be a Jedi Master. Along with the light saber training, I told him that to be a true master he had to do some cooking too. So he made bean dip and cheesecake with his master 😉 watching over him.

So we got all our ingredients together.

2  8oz packages of cream cheese, soft

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

3/4 cup chocolate chips, I normally use semi-sweet but Little Man picked dark chocolate

1 crust, store-bought or homemade, ours was a store-bought shortbread crust. Really good, I normally do a graham cracker crust.

Preheat your over to 350 deg F.

In a mixing bowl add your cream cheese and sugar. Mix well. Then add your vanilla and mix.

Add eggs…and mix.

Then you will want to fold in almost all of the chocolate chips, save some to sprinkle on top. Recipe says to mix in a half a cup, I just eyeball it.

Pour the cheesecake mixture into your crust and add the chips on top.

Then very carefully into the oven it will go.

Bake for about 40 minutes depending on your oven. You want the middle to be set. I probably could have taken mine out a minute or two sooner as we got a crack in it.

Then you let it cool for a bit before putting it in the fridge for about 3 hours or overnight.

Here it is all settled and cool and so super yummy and delicious!! I haven’t made this in such a long time. It used to be one of my favorites. I always wanted my mom to make it for me for my birthday.

Little Man did a great job and he was promoted to Jedi Master!

I wish you all a Happy and Healthy 2015!!!

Christmas and Cookies

Hello Friends! How are you? How was your Holidays? Mine was wonderful! On Christmas Eve we went to my father-in-law’s house to celebrate with him and his fiancée’s family. She made a delicious dinner of pot roast and lobster. She decorated the table beautifully.

When I said something about it, she said ” I just thought Forest and decided that was how I was decorating the table” We even got to take home the cups or pots on the table. In each one she had put a bulb and right now I can’t remember what she said it was. It will be a surprise for me 🙂

After we got home, we put on our Christmas Eve pajamas and sprinkled reindeer food outside, got out cookies and milk for Santa and off to bed we went!

In the morning we woke up to this.

We were all spoiled and received some wonderful things. We spent the rest of the day relaxing and enjoying our presents before it was time to make dinner.  I didn’t even think to take a picture of our dinner. Lane was in charge of the turkey and I made the stuffing, cheesy potatoes, head salad and a peanut butter pie. I did get a picture of the pie!

It didn’t set up as much as I was expecting it to. It was still super yummy to eat though! Everything was perfect!!

Now on to the cookies I mentioned in my post before Christmas. On Tuesday I was on a mission, I got all the butter out I needed and set it out to soften. I cleaned some dishes, got the cookies sheets, cookie cutters, cookie racks and mixing things out and ready. Then I did the most tedious part of making my cookies.

I ground my almonds. It actually wasn’t as bad as I remembered. After I got started on the first cookies, which actually became my second cookie since I didn’t read far enough in my recipe to the part that said the dough went in the freezer for 45 minutes. Oops. But no problem I just made the Vanillekipferl first.

Then back to the freezer for my Chocolate Snowcaps. It’s a chocolate dough that you roll in powdered sugar.

And then after they have baked they come out looking like this.

They have some instant coffee grounds in them and it really brings out the chocolate flavor and makes them so yummy!!

After those I made the ZimtSterne, (Cinnamon Stars, that’s not the recipe I use but it gives you an idea) which are my absolute favorite cookies ever. They have this slight crunch on the outside but are so moist and gooey on the inside. Yum!!!!

I saved the ones that are the most work for last. These are the Spitzbuben, i have also heard them called Linzer cookies. There is lots of cookie cutting and rolling of the dough and in and out of the oven. They are worth it 😉

Then I put Raspberry jelly on the bottom part of the cookie. Put a top on it and dust them with powdered sugar.

Christmas cookies are some of the best!!

Also in my last post I told you about the package i received from my friend Jules. I have opened all her little Advent surprises now.

So much fun stuff!! When she said she still had quite a bit of Diddl stuff she was finding, I never imagined all this! Every bit of it is a new treasure!! I can’t wait to look at the books and postcards more in-depth. The new Diddl friends are already meeting my old Diddl friends! It’s a Diddl party over here! Thank you again so much Julia!!!

I hope everyone enjoys their weekend!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas my friends!! I hope you have a beautiful day however you are spending it!!! Cherish every moment, they fly by so quickly.

Spoiled by a Friend

Hello Friends! How are you? Things are going well over here! Christmas Vacation has started for Little Man and I. Today we went and took care of the grocery shopping for our Christmas meal and Christmas cookies that I am going to be making tomorrow. I didn’t make cookies last year so it has been two years since I made cookies and I am feeling a bit nervous about it! Kinda silly, but hopefully they all turn out well. I will be making four different cookies. Three are ones that my grandma makes for Christmas and one is from a magazine that I cut out a few years ago and really like. But I will show them off tomorrow.

We had a really nice weekend. Little Man is in cub scouts and they were doing a special nights with discounted tickets for the hockey team in our area. So on Friday we went to the hockey game.

It was a lot of fun, I am not really a sports fan of any kind, but even I got into it. Our team is in red and the white shirts was a team from New York. Little Man really enjoyed it too, it was his first time. The scouts all got a patch, water bottle, hockey puck and a nice backpack at the game. The first 5000 people got a free Christmas-y T-shirt, and we were three of those lucky 5000. Little Man even got a practice puck after the game from one of the attendants.

I finally finished my tree over the weekend.

Better late than never!

Little Man went off to spend the night at his aunts on Saturday so I wrapped his presents while he was gone.  Then we had a nice dinner with my father-in-law and his fiancee and watched a movie at their house. By Sunday my cold had hit me full force so Hubby and I did nothing. It was so nice. We watched the last Inspector George Gently available on Netflix and then some Wallander.

Another big highlight of the weekend happened on Saturday.  I got a package from my friend Jule. Oh what a package it was!!

I already started opening it when i remembered I must take pictures. And I apologize, some of the pics are a bit blurry and I didn’t realize until I loaded them unto the computer today.

😀 she made me an advent calendar!! How totally sweet and awesome is that!!

Inside the binder were some stars.

I have already stuck them in my Christmas tree.

There were all kinds of goodies. You will notice a lot of Diddl stuff. That was part of what started this whole swap between her and I. She had some stuff she was getting rid of and I am a huge fan and was happy to take it off her hands to add to my collection.

There were some other goodies in my package too!

In the Anna magazine there is a pattern for some fox gloves and Jules bought me some yarn to make them.

Aren’t they cute! I am really looking forward to casting them on.

There were some other magazines.

I have already looked at the Nooz one. It’s a super cute little magazine!! Once the Christmas cookies are all eaten up I am going to make the button cookies that are on the cover of it. There were some other things in there I want to make as well. Like I said, super cute magazine! I am looking forward to sitting down and enjoying the others.

One more thing before we get to the Advent calendar.

It’s a diary. It’s one of those that has more that one year in it. So this one is a three year one and you write just a little highlight of your day. And it even has the weather and little faces. So cool! I have seen them around here but the are smaller and don’t have those little extras. I am really looking to starting this in the new year.

Next up is the biggie! The Advent Calendar!!

So I went back and forth a lot on how I was going to open up my little presents. For one second i did consider opening them all up to the 20th but then I knew I didn’t want to do that. So then I thought about just starting from day one and going day by day from there but I was not patient enough for that. So I figured out how many presents I could open a day until Christmas. It came out to four a day and then on Christmas day I will open five.

Here are the four I opened on Saturday.

And here are Sunday and today.

Wow!! What great stuff!! Little Man already has plans for us to play the memory game. I can’t wait to open my other little presents!

Thank you so much Jules! Your package made my day! I never expected so much. I appreciate all the time and thought you put into putting this package together for me!