Vanilla Icing

Bracelets for Bullies

This is Butterfly. She belongs to my friend, Rachael who rescued her. Rachael does a lot of charity work with Hello Bully which is an organization that helps pit bulls and tries to educate people about them. She recently created a website of her own in order to raise money for this organization.

Bracelets for Bullies has lots of information where you can learn more about pitbulls. So often people hear or see 'pitbull' and immediately think the worst! It's not fair especially when you think about how their recent bad reputation is mainly from being mistreated or bred to be nasty---the fault lays with humans! Anyways...
Bracelets for Bullies is where not only can you find a wonderful piece of jewelry for yourself but where you can also be helping out these poor creatures that are so often mistreated.

This bracelet is created with Tiger's Eye.

This one is Turquoise with small glass Czech beads in between.

These are only a few of the ones Rachael offers. She even offers custom made bracelets. Go check it out!

Purple Plaid Pretties

To my delight, yesterday I sold another set of note cards on Etsy!  It was my Woven Hearts Notecards which probably took me longer than all of the others to make due to way they are constructed.  That makes two items so far--which makes me very excited and eager to create more!

It was too early at 6:30 a.m. today to start playing with paper,  but I thought I'd post up a very small set of notecards that I made some time ago.  It's a small set deliberately because sometimes I think there are many people out there that would like to buy handmade things but just can't afford to pay lots of money for them.  Or, it would be good for someone who prefers to buy from a wide variety of people in order to get many different styles.

I'm still figuring out how to best photograph cards so please keep that in mind!

The flowers are raised up slightly.  No boring flat cards here!

I like to dress up the envelope a bit too because who likes a plain envelope????

Crafty Tristyn

Tristyn has been watching me a little bit everyday work on his scarf. On Saturday he asked me if I could teach him to knit, too.

!!!!

I didn't want to deflate his confidence in me by telling him that I hardly know what I'm doing and quickly decided to offer to teach him to crochet first.  I sorta kinda mumbled something about it being a bit easier since there was only one needle involved and he thought I was making perfect sense so away we went.

I let him practicing the hooking motion first while I held the rest of the yarn.  I'm sure my technique is hardly any good but it works.  Technically this picture is Maia giving it a try...her explosion when she couldn't do it was so phenomenal that while I was trying to soothe her and help Tristyn with this step I couldn't manage the camera.

Ahh...here's Tristyn.  In a few minutes he's getting the hang of it.

It wasn't long before he was confident making a chain and then I taught him how to start the next row using single crochets.  He completed 2 before it grew late and it was bedtime.

The next morning Rick was up earlier than I was...but Tristyn beat us all!  He woke up at 5 to 6 (that's A.M. people!) and got to work.  I woke up to a very, very proud 8 year old who showed me this:

A blanket for Keroppi!

Saturday is Family Movie Night

but first....we need snacks!!! After we came home from dinner at a local pizza shop and settled in, Tristyn, Maia and I got busy. First, I mixed the dough and set it to rise while they kids showered and got into jammies.

And then.....we began!

Tristyn wields the knife and cuts 8 pieces.

I gave him one of the duller knives and so they had to make sure the pieces were completely separated before we gave the dough a ten minute break to relax.

Tristyn starts rolling out the first pretzel.

Shaping the long pieces of dough was their favorite part.

Don't worry...no toes got into our pretzels!

I had the most exciting job (not really!) and dipped their pretzels into the slightly sugared water and then they put just a little bit of salt on the pretzels.

The bakers taking a moment to ham it up during the 10 minute rising period.

Maia brushes the just baked pretzels with butter. Some people like to try to be healthy and skip this part but I tell you it just isn't worth it. The butter is what makes the pretzels soft...and more delicious than the ones you find at the mall. And...let me just say...this pretzel is only 171 calories versus the 300+ of the ones you find at the mall. Not too bad I say!

The goods....This whole recipe from start to finish takes about 1 hr and 15 mins.

The pay off!!!! The four of us had fresh piping hot soft pretzels to enjoy while we watched Evan Almight together. =)

.......???

now that i'm sorta kinda working...a whole new range of amusing things has opened up to me on the internet....

Recipe Exchanges & Candy Trains

The last few days have been pretty busy.  Aside from the usual Wednesday dance/Thursday piano I went to a Recipe Exchange on Thursday night with a friend who had invited me along.  The theme was bread and soups and unfortunately I didn't have enough time to make either of those to share.  What I did do was this:  I took a small basket and placed 2 jars of my homemade strawberry jam in it.  Behind them I placed the recipe cards that I had written out for White Bread/Dinner Rolls while I was waiting for Tristyn to finish his piano lesson.  Then I tucked a cloth napkin that I had embroidered a kitten onto all around all of it.  I figured it wasn't what the them was...but jam compliments bread...right?  =)  There were several other women at the Exchange and it was very nice.  I felt more awkward than I would have liked because a few of them I didn't know at all but I'm really glad I went.  Hopefully, I'll be able to attend the next one!

Friday was pretty full too.  Work was busy --I spent 30 minutes on the phone with Foremost and I'm STILL not able to quite understand what they were trying to explain to me.  Dummy me.  After I got the kids from school we went up to Cathy's house where there was the most massive pile of candy and goodies on the table.  Cathy had gotten the idea from a fish candy sculpture we saw at the library after Daisy Scouts and decided that it would be fun if all of the kids got to create their own candy sculptures.

Cathy made this one herself.  I'm a bad mommy--I liked her sculpture best!

Last night Rick and I really attacked the house to get it all up to par.  Not a great way to spend a Friday night but now it's spotless and worth having spent our evening like that.  Today, so far, we've had some visitors, I straightened up, treadmilled, showered, made a grocery store run and baked chocolate chip cookies.  Not in that order.  It's been pretty busy.

I think I'm going to go look for a movie to watch and see if I can't finally finish Tristyn's scarf. 

Right after I set some bread dough to rising.

Yay Boston!

No, unfortunately I'm not going back there....at least not until October!  Anyways, I was on my PC scrounging around specifically for this picture:

2 years ago..and thanks to that !#@%ing treadmill (and my rollerblades, running and biking and most of all SPARKPEOPLE!!!)...roughly 25 lbs ago.  Yay me!

Okay I'm sorta done patting myself on my back...hang with me...

I sign into flickr to upload it and find an email stating that Schmap (some tourist-y map thing) would like to use one of my Boston pictures in their map/guides!!!!

This picture to be precise:

It's a restaurant in the North End called Assaggio that we ate at.  I guess all it needs it a final approval but they had to wait on my permission to use it first..so keep your fingers crossed that it gets used!

Okay, I'm done tooting my own horn now...I promise!  Here's a few things to remind me not to be boast too much:

1--I slept in AGAIN today, thereby causing myself to dash madly about this morning getting everyone ready and cramming lunch money into my children's hands instead of making them a proper lunch.

2--I banged my hip--HARD!--on the filing cabinet at work today.

3--Which happened right after I got a paper cut while opening the mail.

4--Which was  20 minutes before I nearly crashed into Bob in the hall.

5--I disconnected at least one person I'm sure of--maybe two.

6--I called some company repeatedly asking for a form to be re-faxed over...that was never supposed to be faxed over in the first place!

7--And I hid in the basement folding laundry so Rick would have to do the bedtime routine because I could not abide reading Curious George another time nor searching for Waldo again. =(

8--Finally, I'm going to get an awfully short night of sleep again because I simply MUST wake up early tomorrow and didn't go to bed early tonight like I planned and will probably have a similar repeat of today!

My last bit of rambling here is this...it is really nice to look over a list like the above and be able to appreciate that none of it was truly bad.  I am very lucky and blessed to be able to say that!!

And grateful too!

Accidental Hiatus

I've seem to have taken an accidental hiatus. That's what happens when you do things like making frogs waltz.

And spending time at a friend's house with even more friends with hot chocolate and knitting (my scarf is about 10 inches long people!) and rice krispies with lovely chocolate chips in them watching others play games while dinner is cooking. And such a delicious dinner it was too. To my surprise I found I prefer eggplant raviolis over chicken raviolis!

Or get stuck waiting in lines like this at Wal-Mart. For 30 minutes! <---This is just not right. Reason #19 I dislike Wal-Mart is because inevitably I end up waiting in lines like that one while I glare at all of the CLOSED check-out lines. Thirty-five check out lines---and only a maximum of ten are ever open.

Usually I avoid Wal-Mart like the plague. But in this case I had one specific thing I needed that I can only find at Wal-Mart. Okay, well I probably could find it online somehwere but I'm not paying 5 or 6 dollars to ship a 10 dollar item. Wondering what it is? It's a hot shot. Probably that's not what it's called but basically what it is is a very small appliance that has a top well that holds about 8 oz of water. You put the water in, push a button and in 1 minute you have 8 oz of boiling water. Sans cold spots or burning hot crockery due to microwaving. You put your cup (or bowl) under the well push another button and it spouts out. It's wonderful quick when you are making something like tea and have yet to find the perfect, small, musically whistling beautiful teapot.

I had great success with my crockpot today meaning that I did NOT burn anything!!! Using the leftover ham (and bone) I made the other day I brazenly stole a dinner idea from Blue Yonder. Except I didn't have split peas and used pinto beans. Oh, and I didn't make sweet potato pie because well...I just don't like sweet potatoes. Though the one pictured at Blue Yonder is almost enough to make me give it another try. Almost. I also didn't manage to take an appealing picture of the soup--I tried and it mostly looked like cat yak.

Yeah, I'm a failure! But lookie...

These turned out well if a trifle pale on top for my tastes. But Peter Reinhart from the Bread Baker's Apprentice says internal temperature of 180 degrees and 180 degrees these puppies were.

I <3 Peter Reinhart.

Catching Up

...Boredom at Work on Thursday.....

...leads to...taking an off day on Friday.  Ahem!!  I mean being sick.  I got a much needed day to catch up on loads of things today.  I really needed it.  Really, really needed it.  The cold that has been brewing has even been reduced to the sniffles.

Anyways, enough about that.  Dinner tonight was at Nakama.

Typical cell phone picture...not as crisp as one would like...but in freezing cold weather I was NOT going to do a re-take.  Nakama's website probably has a picture that does it justice.  They feature sushi and hibachi.  We went with hibachi as sushi doesn't appeal much to either of us.

Office Sweets & The Pied Piper of Donuts

There sure have been a lot of them around lately....

Gloria brought these back from Disney World...chocolate pecan caramel clusters.

I have no clue where these came from.  Very creamy.  Too much milk chocolate and not enough dark chocolate!  More hershey kisses in the little purple container.

Mmmm...GIANT Hershey Chocolate Plaque in the gold box.  Strange cookies--but pretty tasty--in the package on top.

No clue what this is.  Some type of cake.  I bet it was very delicious at one time..but it's been hanging around a little too long for my tastes.  This is also the cake that almost cost me donuts this morning!  GRRRRR.

This is a maple icing pastry thingy from Oakmont Bakery.  Russ brings stuff from this bakery. They make good stuff--but I'm not so fond of the Maple Icing.

Mmmmm  Donuts.   My donut is already missing because I gobbled it up.  Bob brings these in on Thursdays.  And he always 'hides' my donut in the lower left corner where it's not easily seen by other office workers so they can't snag it.  I like glazed best. =D  I haven't the heart to tell him he doens't have to hide it because he is the Pied Piper of Donuts and as soon as he walks in the door and past my desk I follow him directly to the kitchen!

I brought these in and they sit on my desk.  Luckily I'm not too fond of caramel kisses or heart shaped butterfingers so I don't touch them.  They are for tempting everyone else!

Look what I found Missy to be eating.

GREEN BEANS. 

Nothing more to be said to that!