scribbles

So, as I mentioned before, I got a Wacom Bamboo Fun tablet for Christmas. Yes, I like to say the whole thing all the time. Yes, I like to lie. Just kidding....or am I? Anyhow, it takes some getting used to, since you draw on a little pad and the image is on the computer, so you don't look down as you draw. Also, you're basically "painting" with a pen shaped object, which is a bit weird. They've gotten better though, because there isn't as much of a delay as there used to be in earlier models. So, I've been experimenting and come to the conclusion that I'm obsessed with trees and birds. Who knew? Of course upon uploading these, I've realized that the background is white and blends into the background of the page...oops. This is just the pencil and water color applications, there is still acrylics and oils, pastels and crayons (oh yeah!) and oh so much more...sigh :) I can now paint and such without the mess!

I know it's monday, and I saw a tip today that I'll share, but I'll be upfront with you. I'm mainly going to talk about Christmas. On the Today show this morning, a woman was talking about ways to organize your house. Most of them were pretty run of the mill like "label" and "put stuff in labeled boxes" and "label the troublemakers in your house...no I'm just kidding about that one. Anyhow, she actually had a pretty cool idea on how to keep your linen closet organized, and that was to fold all of your sheets and put them inside of the coordinating pillow case. Now, they all stay together and you just pull out one thing at a time without the avalanche of sheets! (btw I am not against labeling, but it's just not a new idea)

Okiedokie, Christmas time! Apollo didn't actually act any worse than last post's which was good. He annoyed my mom's dogs, and they taunted him, and he drew and quartered his gift from them in about 5 minutes. (it was a not stuffed monkey toy, and that monkey no longer has limbs.....) Other than that though, he acted alright. We joked that he'd sleep for 3 days straight once we got him home and that was just about right. He passed out in the truck on our drive home and has slept pretty much the past couple of days. Enough about Po though. We had 2 Christmases. The first was with Brandon's mom since they got a gift to go on a cruise during Christmas week, but I've already talked about that. Then, the actual day we spent with my folks and sister and almost brother-in-law....and actual brother-in-law come to think of it. Between barks and squeeks (did I not mention every dog got a squeeky toy...no? Yeah, all 3 dogs got squeeky toys) we opened gifts and ate and had a merry old time. I got a wacom tablet that will allow me to draw straight onto the computer (or write, or paint or edit photos, or scrapbook...which I don't do, but I could) it is a lot of fun to play with. Now all I need is a desk..... If you give a mouse a cookie...Anyhow! Brandon got a lot of camping stuff and now he's itching to go camping. I'm hoping he'll wait until spring. He also now owns a ps3 and a universal fancy pants remote. I've never seen him happier. Not even on our wedding day....just kidding. (I think)

Merry Christmasish

Ok, I know Friday is actually Christmas and all, but I've already celebrated one Christmas with Brandon's family and I'm just in the holiday frame of mind. Although, I have the fourth of july song stuck in my head from Holiday Inn (a Christmasy movie) weird, I know. However, I am alive and well and in San Antonio for a weekish. Apollo is with us, and he's already been distructive. He's only really been bad the first day. He chewed through his leash, broke his old collar and dug a little hole. (Not having a yard ourselves...we didn't know that he dug. Now we do. Sorry Mom Palmer!) That was just Wednesday morning. After that though, he's actually been pretty good aside from repeatedly spilling water in his x-pen. (I don't know why it's called that, but it's a wire pen that is about 3' tall, and luckily is taller than Apollo's confidence to jump.)
The cookies have been a hit, as well as the pecan brittle and the fruit cake. I've already recieved a cake decorating library, as well as Gilmore Girls coffee cups, which I am thrilled about. It's a set of two coffee cups (or bowls) one has Luke's Diner logo and the other, the Dragonfly Inn. :) I can't wait to give my nervous system a jolt as soon as we get home!

MSM tuesday edition

I have been under the weather this past weekend. I'm now at the same level as the weather and hope to soon be over the weather by mid week. Now that I'm feeling ok again I'm still not quite up for making more booger...uh..... sugar cookies, so I've stopped baking for other people. You're welcome. I did, however, manage to complete the thumbprint cookies, pecan brittle and fruit cake. I didn't get to the snowflake cookies or the pizzells and I made gingerbread muffins instead of cookies. So, no food this Monday, instead I came across an article that I thought was pretty cool. It was of course from my favorite magazine (real simple) and you may already know this stuff, but I didn't, so I thought I'd share it with you. We're making the most of Google searching.

To find: a product you saw online, but can't remember where...
Use: intitle:
Example: intitle:"dark chocolate and mint chips"
Why: "the term 'intitle' searches the words in the title bar of web pages and can be particularly helpful if you remember the name of a product you liked but not where you found it. Just be sure not to put a space after the colon and to use quotation marks around the phrase."
This particular search lead me to the blog "Lovin' from the Oven" where a woman is doing a clever 12 days of cookies! (I've tried the nestle dark chocolate and mint chip cookies and...let's just say we don't have any more and my pants aren't happy about it.)

To find: PDFs, Excel spreadsheets or Powerpoint presentations
Use: filetype:pdf, filetype:xls, filetype:ppt
Example: grocery savings filetype:pdf
Why: "If you include the file type in you rsearch, Google will turn up only relevant files." My example gives you coupon mom's guide to saving money while grocery shopping.

To find: narrowed down info
Use: a hyphen (a minus sign more like it)
Example: boxer -underwear -fighting
Why: "you want information about Boxers- the dog not the undies or the fighters. Placing a hyphen before terms you want to exclude will omit pages with those words. Type a space before the hyphen, but not after"

You can also do the following

• look up addresses-type in a persons name and phone number and if they're listed you can get their mailing address
• find movie showtimes- just type in movies followed by your zip code to see theaters and their showtimes for the next three days
• convert measurements-How many cups equal a liter? type in "cups in liter" and it'll pop up for you (btw 1L=4.22675284 cups) You can use this for currency conversions too.

cookies part one

The sugar cookies are completed! I've already decided to nix the gingerbread men, because I'm out of powdered sugar to make the icing. The mittens have a crushed peppermint dust along the bottom, which is so tasty I wish I used it on more cookies!

Holiday amnesia

Have you ever experienced it? Holiday amnesia? You do something every year for the sake of tradition, just to remember that you actually hate doing it. Usually it hits halfway through whatever you're doing. For me, it's making sugar cookies. Yep, I'll admit it, I hated making sugar cookies. All that sticky dough that clings to stuff like a parasite, no matter how much flour you use to combat it. Then, if you use too much flour, it destroys the dough all together. When you cut out your favorite shapes, you pray that it won't tear or scrunch in the transfer from counter to cookie sheet. At the end of the day, you end up with more dough and flour in your hair than in the cookie jar, and you've scared off the dog (who is also covered in flour) with all of your growling and moaning. The Christmas trees end up looking like shrubs and Santa looks like the stay puffed marshmallow man. Well, not anymore! I just couldn't wait until Monday to share this, because I'm so stoked about it! I came across this anonymous tip on cakecentral.com and it changed my life. Maybe not my life, but my cookies!

When you're making sugar cookie dough, usually you have to refrigerate the dough before you roll it. That's where the trouble begins. Instead of doing that, do this...

Once you've finished mixing the dough, immediately transfer some dough on to some parchment paper (waxed paper will work too) cover the dough with another sheet of the paper and roll out to your desired thickness. Place the rolled out dough on a cookie sheet and place in the fridge. Repeat this step until all of your dough has been rolled out. Once you're done with rolling out all of the dough, the first batch will have cooled enough to pull out and begin cutting out your shapes. The dough is already rolled out, you don't need extra flour at all and the dough is chilled, so it keeps the shape so much better than before! The extra scraps can be combined with other scraps to be re-rolled out between the parchment sheets and set in the fridge for a few minutes. Oh, it's so much easier and cleaner!

MSM

So, I'm in a bit of a tough spot this week as to what to make. I've been working on one thing in particular, but I can't show you because it's a christmas gift (if you've got facebook, you can see it, and if you don't...don't sign up for it until after Christmas) So, I guess I'll have to fall back on recipes this week.

Have you ever had left over chicken breast that you just don't know exactly what to do with? Sure you could eat it as is again, but the magic of chicken is that you can make it in to anything but beef! For instance, yesterday, I just grabbed a can of condenced cream of chicken soup, a bag of mixed frozen veggies, threw all of those into an oven safe dish and topped with dumplings that I made with bisquick and milk. Bake at 350 for 25ish minutes and Bada bing, chicken pot pie-ish dish! (I have since become Italian...it happens from time to time)

I was making another Christmas present that called for cheesecloth in the list of ingredients. (No, I'm not making cheese) Well, I don't have any and didn't really know where to find any, so you know what I do have that works just as well for the purpose that I needed? A coffee filter! Yep. And if you know where I could find cheese cloth...let me know! I looked in the baking aisle, but it was so crowded in there, I could hardly find flour much less something like that.

Sorry, I don't have much for this week. I'll be spending a lot of time in the kitchen this week working on Christmas cookies, so I'm hoping that next week will be better. I've taken on a big challenge this year and have decided to try to make all of the following cookies
Sugar that will of course be decorated
gingerbread
thumbprint
snowflake
pizzelle (if i can get to my pizzelle maker...)
pecan brittle

within the next two weeks...Lord help me find my sanity

It's beginning to look a little like Christmas

All the same, it's still looking like Christmas :) That's right, I've finally located enough of my Christmas stuff to decorate enough to make me feel better. As promised, I've attached the pictures to kind of illustrate my post from Monday! Woohoo!

Ok, so like I said, I don't have a Christmas tree, so I got 5 (one is turned so that you can't see it very well) ornaments, and hung some from our dining room light fixture.

...as well as placed some on a cake plate. See, it's not super fancy or anything, but it's festive enough for me. moving on...

I apologize for this next picture, the photos look all crooked and there is glare and such, but I figure you get the gist. I actually found some cards from last year (weird, because I usually don't keep them) So you can see how they can look framed and in a little cluster, like so. I used some scrapbook paper that I purchased last year to put in the other frames. As soon as Christmas is over, all I have to do is peel off the paper and it'll again reveal our wedding photos. Yes, I covered our wedding photos....please don't hate me.