I’ve been using my blog to keep myself accountable for the amount of cookies I’ve made… plus…. It is a way to go back and see, oh I’ve made X number of batches of cookies. Score, right? So that means I keep inundating you with the cookies I’ve made. See above pictures.
The next round of cookies are made. One minute I think I’m totally happy and the next minute I feel like I totally screwed them up. Gosh. I may be hard on myself, I don’t know… We’ll see. Oh wait, they’ve already been delivered and eaten. These were made in the middle of the month for a friend’s daughter’s baby shower.
Today I was walking through TJ Maxx and saw this book. Then I realized I actually knew this book. When I was initially hit up about doing these cookies I had no clue what the book was. Isn’t that funny how things like that work out? (more…)
Over the weekend we had our 5th Annual Chili Cookoff and silent auction to raise money for less fortunate kids for Christmas. I always hate to say it that way… I’m just not sure the best way to say it (politically correct), so for now, we’ll leave it that way.
Going into Saturday I was nervous. I was nervous about a lot of things. Worried people wouldn’t show up. Maybe that we wouldn’t raise much money at all. Who knows. All these different thoughts flew through my head.
Part of the reason I was worried people wouldn’t come was that bad weather was predicted to hit Saturday evening. Of course. A week before there was nothing but clear skies in the forecast, then it changed to severe weather predictions. Luckily it held off until the event was over and cleaned up. We sat and chatted and relaxed for maybe 30 minutes, then the wind blew. Jared asked if we felt that cold chill, and he said that meant hail was coming. I quickly said I’m outta here trying to outrun the storm and get home only to get to set under an overpass for 10 minutes waiting out the hail.
The other day I ran across a recipe for spiced cookies. I thought… mmmmm those sound good. Problem was, they called for 3/4 of a cup of butter. I hate when recipes make me cut a stick of butter up like that and don’t finish it off. Silly I know, but true no less.
So I continued on my day and ran across another recipe for spiced cookies, this time it used 3 sticks of butter (1 1/2 cups). Okay, so that’s better. But truth be told, I prefer to use my butter in even numbers. I’m totally weird.
All day for 2 days I’d randomly look back at these recipes thinking, boy they sound good but the butter amounts are bugging me. Finally, I decided to make the batch that used 1-1/2 cups butter, but possibly use the seasonings in the smaller batch. They were different after all. So I pulled 3 sticks of butter out of the refrigerator to come to room temperature. Then I went back to staring at the recipes at hand. Both of them. That’s when it hit me… It’s just a sugar cookie recipe that they are doctoring up with spices… why not use the sugar cookie recipe that is my own unique one?
It’s no surprise that I LOVE CHRISTMAS. I do. I can’t hide that fact. Some people ask why I like it so much. This is kind of hard to put into words but I’ll try. There is something so magical around the time of year between Thanksgiving and Christmas. There is something in the air. The air is crisp, which it is also known I hate cold weather, but that time of year you know you need snow so that Santa can deliver his presents. Duh!
But there is a spirit among people. Yes, a lot of people are stressed out by Christmas and they say that the suicide rate is up around this time of year, but there are a lot of happy people around this time of year. They are out and about shopping for just the perfect present for their loved ones and friends. There is Christmas lights and Christmas music and little kids getting so excited that Santa will visit.
That is the thing though… Little kids get extremely excited about the thought of Santa visiting. Some little kids though are sad at this time of the year. Their family is going through some struggle and the thought of Christmas is far from their mind. That’s where Santa’s helpers come in to play.
There are organizations that are working year round to make sure that every little kid knows what Christmas is and knows that they aren’t forgotten. Santa’s helpers run fundraisers and ring bells, and everything else to raise money for presents for those deserving little kids.
I’m sure we all know this, right? So why am I discussing this? Well, because the last few years I have been working with one of those organizations. I have been volunteering my time to help raise money. To help raise awareness. All little kids are deserving all year round, but I want them to know my favorite time of year and have fond memories of it just like I have.
I was actually questioning my self on spelling consciousness correctly. Oddly enough, I did. So a new piece of information about myself I don’t think I’ve ever shared… back in grade school when we had to do those spelling tests, I always complained. My dad told me I needed to learn to spell and I remember clear as day smarting off at him, “Why does it matter if I can spell, it’s not like I’ll ever write a letter to the president of the United States.” That has always cracked me up. And prior to the last few years, I was a really good speller, now I’m just a decent speller.
For the last few days I have been writing blog posts in my head, but they haven’t been put anywhere but in my head. That makes me sad. I really like blogging, but in the last few years, my readership has gone down. Maybe that’s because I’m not a good blogger? Maybe not as many people read blogs? Maybe it’s a combination of both… I’m not really sure. It makes me really sad though.
Today is my daddy’s birthday! Happy Birthday, daddy! I’m not sure though, that a birthday on a Monday is much fun. First off, I’m not sure of many people who like Monday’s… and secondly… read the first statement. Poor Monday does get a pretty bad rap… I wonder if people who Monday is their Saturday/Sunday hate Monday as bad as the rest of most of the world… Just a thought that has absolutely NOTHING to do with my daddy’s birthday.
Abug and I have spent a lot of the summer learning (her not me, I’ve been teaching) how to bake. I’ve kind of created a monster really. Whoops. She wakes up a lot of mornings and asks what we are going to bake today. Haha. So I knew that she needed to bake Papa a birthday cake. I set out to decide what kind of birthday cake we were going to bake him. Little did I know, she had her own agenda. I finally decided upon a Cinnamon Roll Cake, but she changed my plans.
Wednesday night my baby girl started dance class. Yes, I know, we’re about a month late, but every time we talk about putting her in dance class we forget about the sign-up date. Luckily we found out we could still enroll her, so that’s just what we did. She was officially enrolled in dance class Tuesday and Wednesday night she had her first dance class.
I was in ballet for 10 years while I was growing up and loved it. Although I do remember sitting there at times wishing that the hour dance class would be over because I was bored. Things you remember…
She was quite nervous. So they put the littles in the smallest room. The rooms all have video cameras and so you can watch their lessons on a tv monitor. I saw that the teacher gave them all a circle that they went and placed on the floor. That was where they were supposed to sit. My poor baby must either have extremely good manners or was extremely scared. She sat while the other girls sat, did summersaults, spun around, etc. She just sat there.
Don’t you think that football and cheerleaders go hand in hand? I mean seriously. It seems like you have both when you’re watching a game. Maybe not with the younger boys who are just starting… I’m not really sure. Someone please correct me and set me straight!
