January Randomocities

 

It took a bit of time after Christmas before I was ready to start baking again. Partly because we had baked goods around that needed to get eaten!

 

I started off with something I knew Todd would like ... so he wouldn't roll his eyes too badly about the fact that I was baking again! This is a variation on my basic Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe. I've finally gotten to the point that I've got it memorized. Instead of regular chocolate chips, I made this a half-and-half batch: 1 part Cranberry-White Chocolate, and 1 part White Chocolate-Macadamia Nut:

 

Here we go.... and off the top of my head:

1 cup butter-flavor shortening (Todd would prefer butter over shortening, but I think it keeps them more tender.)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar.

Beat those together, then add:

2 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla (mmmmmmmmmmm.... I love the smell of vanilla extract. Only the Real Thing, please!)

When that's well combined, and scraped down off the sides of the bowl and beaters, add the dry ingredients:

3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

At that point, I take it out of the mixer stand, and I mix in the chocolate chips by hand. It seems like no matter how careful I am, if I mix the chips in with the beaters, it chops them all up.

2 cups (or 1 12-oz package) chocolate chips -- or other chips.

Since I was making the variations, I divided the dough into 2 sections, and then added the nuts and chips and dried cranberries.

By the way, have I mentioned that I love my Silpat mats? No? Well, I do.

I'm kinda weird about shaping the cookies. I like to form them into flattened cylinder-shapes. I know.... I'm way too worried about it, huh.

Anyway. Bake at 375 degrees for exactly 9 and a half minutes. Well, in my oven, that is. Just bake 'em till they're done, and NOT overdone. I hate crunchy cookies. A little gooey in the middle is the way to go!!

There's no final pictures. Sorry! Maybe because we ate them???

So, about this same time, we finally took down all of the Christmas decorations, and put the living room back to normal. I'm thinking it was at least January 17th for that.

Yes, we were SOOOOOOooooooooooooo sloooow.

In that process, you'd be amazed (or maybe you wouldn't) at the odd assortment of junk stuff that finds its way under sofas and tables.....

(And that was after I'd already put away the spare Lego pieces and threw away most of the actual garbage.)

And, on another unrelated thought.....

Last week, Todd and I went out to dinner with his parents. We don't have a lot of restaurant options, but we went to one of our favorite national chain restaurants. It turned out to be not one of the better trips there. The service was not bad, but the food.... um, ... needed a little help.

So here's my question. When you go out to dinner, don't you expect to get a little something that's perhaps a step above what you might eat at home? Isn't that part of the point of going out to eat, anyway?

Besides the I-don't-have-to-wash-dishes-afterwards part.

So, I ordered a hot chocolate, which is not typical for me, but it sounded good because I was cold. (Hello -- winter in Idaho, especially lately ..... BRRRRRrrrrrr!)

So my hot chocolate came, and it was a bit disappointing. First, it wasn't hot. Second, it wasn't all that chocolate-y. Maybe the fact that.... Third, it wasn't fully mixed------ had something to do with that. And fourth, it was pretty darn plain, for being Restaurant Hot Chocolate. The thing is, even when I make hot chocolate at home, it's more exciting than what I'd gotten that evening at the restaurant.

The next morning, which was equally cold, I decided to make hot chocolate, and do it RIGHT. Please don't think you're going to get some amazing homemade-from-scratch hot chocolate recipe here. I've used up my one recipe quota, and let's be real: I use hot chocolate mix ANYWAY. I'm kind of a need-it-now kind of person when it comes to hot chocolate.

This is more of a thought on ........ how I DRESS my hot chocolate!

Ok, usually I don't put marshmallow creme in my hot chocolate, but I have a partial jar leftover from Christmas that I wanted to use up. And I was really in retaliation from the previous night's not-hot chocolate, so I went a bit over the top. I do keep mini marshmallows on hand for hot chocolate.

Marshmallow creme first, then the whipped cream. The canned stuff comes out looking all decorative, which makes it nice for catching the chocolate curls:

Chocolate curls are so easy, just a vegetable peeler and a bar of chocolate. Temperature of the chocolate can make a difference, but I was probably too impatient to even worry about it. If I'd used a thicker bar of chocolate, the curls would have been wider.

(When the hot chocolate really is HOT, then the whipped cream melts down before you get too many photos snapped of it!)

And yes, in case you were wondering, it was pretty delicious!

Then, after my Writing on the Wall Post, I knew I was long overdue for update my board with some inspiring thought:

No, that's not the whole thought, but at least I caught the misspelled word before the rest of the family saw it!! HA!!

And finally, my little four-year-old is growing up! In Primary, at Church, she received her first CTR ring! You know.... the cheap one with the green face that rots on your finger? Yep, that one! CTR= Choose the Right. It's a great reminder, for anyone.

(She was pretty excited!) And she's at that wonderful stage where she gives you that super-fake grimace every time you ask her to smile for the camera.

LOVE that little girl!!

The Writing on the Wall

 

I think I have a lot of people "snowed". They seem to believe that I have some sort of creativity gene that lurks in my psyche, and is somehow available at a moment's notice. Sometimes I even believe that, myself.  But usually, I'm a realist. I try to discourage other people from this belief, but for some reason, it persists.

 

The reality is that most of my "good ideas" merely are a C.A.S.E. result. It stands for Copy And Steal Everything.

 

Which is also why Pinterest is a potential problem for me. Seeing all these amazing ideas there is a huge temptation to gather them all to my boards, spending hours in categorizing them, and never really actually trying out MOST of the ideas there. So, I try not to overload on Pinterest posts, because that would be a HUGE timesucker.

 

This idea is one that I came across on a blog that I follow. It wasn't put forth as a "you-should-try-this-too" idea, but just as something that this family does. The difference here is.... this is like the poor man's version of it. Because the REAL idea involved an actual chalkboard, instead of my white board. And it was framed in a contemporary finish, positioned at the top of a grand staircase, and was a bit more artistic than this is.

 

Pshhhh. Whatever.

While I would love for my version to be just as cool-looking, I had to adapt it to fit my resources.

 

So, the goal here, is to have an inspirational phrase on a [chalkboard] board, in a high-traffic area in the home, so that everyone who passes it, will see it and..... well..... be inspired. I am NOT known for brevity, so my inspirations phrases have tended to be a bit on the long side.

 

Our main white board is in the dining room, and it serves as a family message board, note board, shopping list board, calendar board, reminder board..... and there was no way that I could do inspirational thoughts on it. So I took this to the laundry room. While it's not something that everyone sees, at the rate my kids use the laundry room as their personal closets, they see this pretty often.

 

Here are the ones I've put up over the last few months. Ok, SEVERAL months. It started with this one:

 

 

I figure, since I don't have the shabby-chic look of chalk, that I would make the most of the colored markers.

 

 

Tried to get creative with the typography.

 

 

Yeah, that was a fail.

Here's a close-up look at the scripture (in red) on the blessings one.

 

 

I guess I can't help tossing in a scripture for good measure on these thoughts. Maybe it's the Seminary Teacher in me.

 

 

And finally, the latest quote:

 

 

 

Which would be very good --- if I'd kept up with this. But instead I dropped the ball, and the same quote has been on the wall for a long time. It's time to change it.

 

Any ideas?

 

 

 

How I Spend My Time. Lately, that is.

 

Life keeps kicking right along. Most days, Emma comes to work with me, and she's there until her loving sisters rescue her come to pick her up in the afternoon, after school. She has her own playroom there, and things to do, so she's usually not bored. Her latest game is to play Hide-and-Seek with me, and let me tell you, there are a lot of places that a little four-year-old can hide in a stove store.

 

Sorry for the quality of these photos, but they're phone pictures... what can I say? We decided to have a little fun and take some self-portraits:

 

 

 

(That was supposed to be a sign, to send to Cameron. When I realized we'd not gotten the message in the photo, Emma decided that she was done posing. Oh well. I sent him a picture of just me with the sign. I hope he's ok with that!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Party at our House. And again!

Several weeks ago, I was sitting in church, it was the third hour, and I was in Relief Society -- the women's meeting. Christmas activities were coming up, and there were sign-up sheets being passed around for various volunteer things: loan a nativity set, bring food or desserts, feed the missionaries for dinner, how about some Middle-Eastern décor, or some lengths of fabric?

I had signed up for three things, and just knew that I would forget them as soon as I walked out of the room. So, I was trying to be efficient -- I pulled out my phone, the only electronic device I had to work with, and I was creating some reminders, so these events wouldn't catch me off guard during the mad-dashes of the hectic holiday season.

The lesson had already started, the clipboards had passed. The topic was Bringing up Children in Light and Truth. I admit I was not focused on what was being said, just trying to get those reminders keyed in. The next thing I know, the teacher said,

".... and I think Marilyn has a house like that."

My antennae went up! I may possibly have had a deer-in-the-headlights look on my face.

...uhhhhhhhhh......

Caught!! Yes, that was the "oh, crap!" moment when I was sure that I really should have been paying attention to the lesson. I have WHAT kind of house? Messy? Clean? Cluttered? More shabby than chic? Smelly? Fresh-smelling? Frantic? Ummm.... what was she saying??

It turned out that the very-sweet teacher that day (who is also my amazing visiting teacher), was talking about having the kind of home where your children want to be, and where their friends feel welcome. The kind of home where teenagers gather. The kind of home where they get together for parties.

"Whew!! Because that could have been a lot worse...."

That afternoon, I thought about that for a while. We hadn't had a party around here for quite a while. Maybe that reputation didn't have any basis in reality. So I took a breath and told my two lovely teenage daughters about my experience in Relief Society. And then I told them that perhaps we ought to live up to the reputation that we seem to already have. And I told them that... they ought to plan a party.

I know. What parent in their right mind does such a thing? I must have been on something.

They were quick to jump on that offer, and planned not one, but two parties. See what I get for being generous?

So in December, we ended up with two parties at our house. The first, which I regret to tell you I have no photos for evidence, was an Ugly Christmas Sweater Party. I only had one old Christmas sweatshirt to offer for wardrobe possibilities. Imagine my relief when I was told that, "it's not even that bad."

They followed up the Christmas party with a New Year's Eve bash. I think it was actually a follow-up from last New Year's Eve party (also at our house), because it followed the same format: our version of "The Amazing Race" to New Year's.

The girls got together & planned it all out. That afternoon, we planted clues, and enlisted a few other parents to help out with some activities along the way. I wish I'd also enlisted them to take photos of the kids while they were doing their Amazing Race challenges. We had enough Amazing Racers that we had them on four teams. Their route took them to various places in town -- a park, the mall, our store, the library, other kids' homes, and not to be missed: Locomotive Park. They were told they had to get a photo of their group dancing with the penguins:

 

**Insert the "Linus and Lucy" song here.**

(That was Alyssa's group) We decided that there wasn't a good location to hide the following clue, so I waited at Locomotive Park, snapped pictures, froze my fingers off, and handed out the next clue to the teams.

 

 

(Darcie's group)

 

When they got back to the house, we fed them grilled pizzas (always a good option with teenagers -- and besides, the last party featured build-your-own-nachos, so we wanted a change), and then Alyssa and Darcie planned a number of Holiday Minute-to-Win-It games at our house.

 

Of course, I can't remember all the game names, (and you can Google search for them and find even more) but this one was using a gift box to fan the ornament over to a taped-off square on the floor:

 

 

The "Jingle in the Trunk" game:

 

 

Balancing ornaments on a yardstick and paper towel tube:

 

 

Hanging candy canes on a string... and no, not the easy way:

 

 

(You can see our paper snowflakes from an earlier Family Home Evening on the window. Oh, and Darcie's amazing facial expression, too.)

Here's the real way the canes hang -- balance -- on a string:

 

 

By the way, just in case you were wondering, finding candy canes in stores on New Year's Eve: NOT possible.

Using your musical skills to play "Jingle Bells" on water-filled glasses... made more difficult by mixing up the order of the tones:

 

 

The "Candy Cane Nutstacker" game.

Seriously, I do NOT make these names up.

In one hand, they had to use a candy cane to lift and stack regular hardware-store-nuts, on a plate that they have to hold in the other hand.

 

 

After games was a movie, and when it was time for the countdown, (wish I had taken a panorama shot of this) they tossed confetti, shot off the poppers and had a sparkling cider to ring in 2013!

 

 

I have to say that although I always worry a bit during parties (mostly I worry about keeping them all entertained and fed!), my girls have a great group of friends. Some of these kids are friends from church, and some are friends from school. Some of these are Alyssa's friends, some are Darcie's friends (some are both!), but all of these kids are really awesome and fun.  Everyone is positive with each other, and they include people -- not exclude. I love these kids and I love that my girls have chosen them to hang with.

 

Friends are such an important influence on youth, and it does my heart good to see these kids get together. And if that means at our house, and for a party, all the better!

 

Happy 2013!!

 

 

Reflecting

This past weekend, a friend passed away. He was much too young, and left behind an amazing wife and a large family. Another friend had a fire destroy her son's house, which is not the first time her life has been tragically hurt by a fire. Last month, another friend had a heart attack, which he survived, but it was a close call. I think his heart was hurting from losing a son earlier this year.

I wonder why it takes seeing things like this happen to friends and their families, to make me stop and think about the fragile nature of life. Any of those circumstances could have happened to us. And if it had happened -- what would I have done? How would I cope? Would I have been strong enough to weather those storms of life?

The biggest lesson that I know I have taken from this, is that we never know when something will turn our lives upside down. We are not immune to tragedy, and it can come at any time, without announcing its arrival.

So, I find myself wanting to make sure that my kids know that I love them. That Todd knows that he is my whole world. Because what if tonight were the last time I could tell them that? What if the last words they heard from me were hurtful? What if their final memory of me (or my final memory of them) were full of harsh words or hard feelings?

Pretty sure that I would beat myself up over that. So, with that in the very back of my mind, I've been trying to reach out a little more to others. Hugging my kids. Not missing that kiss good-bye. Stopping what I'm doing to pay attention to that sweet 4-year-old bundle of energy. These precious souls mean everything to me. I hope I'm doing enough that they can feel that, too, and that they know that their wife/mom loves them with every ounce of her soul.