Holiday Treats

This has been a super busy month with graduating from WCTC with my Associate degree in Hotel & Restaurant Management and searching for jobs in my field.

Being so busy, I didn't have much time to think about Christmas cookies as much as I wanted to make some. I was fortunate to receive a care package from my mom about a week before school finished. It was a variety of homemade cookies. YUM!!!!! Needless to say those cookies didn't last long and since I still had a taste for Christmas cookies I wanted to make some cookies. I started by making Mint Moments, which are a version of Melting Moments that are rolled in powdered sugar and crushed candy canes. They are so delicious and melt in your mouth (hence the name of the cookie). Unfortunately the recipe only makes about 2 dozen. So much for sharing these with others. I guess I'll keep these to myself. Well, I did share some with my friend, Susha. She totally loved them and refers to them as 'Cornstarch Balls' because the recipe uses 3/4 c. cornstarch. She is so cute.

I was invited to a friends house for a holiday get together last night and was asked to bring a small dessert since there was only going to be a few of us. I thought I would try my hand at Cake Balls. I've heard about them, but have not had any or made them before. I found a recipe on one of my favorite recipe website: http://www.allrecipes.com/ I attempted to make these the night before the get together. Unfortunately the balls were not holding their form when I tried to dip them in chocolate. Therefore, I thought I'd freeze the balls and then dip them in the chocolate. That was the trick. Here is a picture of my holiday cake balls. Unfortunately I didn't get them finished for the get together last night, but they are delicious. They look like truffles, but have a soft inside. And the batch makes so many, I have some to share if anyone wants some.

Oh How Projects Grow

About a month ago I found a wall cling at Goodwill that reads "Life is too short, to drink bad wine." As some of you may know I have a wine theme in my kitchen, and not a lot of wall space. The price of $3.99 was very appealing to me. After I got home I located the perfect place to put the wall cling. But then started to think..... the current wall color (dark brown) which I like, had been patched from the previous owners when I bought the house and it didn't match exactly so you could see their patch job. And since wall clings are removeable but not reuseable, I thought I had better paint the kitchen before installing the wall cling.

Off to my favorite paint store (Sherwin Williams) I go. I had picked out a paint color for my kitchen when I first moved here but the painting wasn't high on my priority list. Now, that I had the lovely wine wall cling I wanted to repaint the kitchen and I debated about repainting the pretty dark brown color or going for my previously selected "Rare Wine" color. (Don't you love the name of that paint color???? It fits so perfectly with my wine theme.) Well, I decided since there are splashes of purple throughout my house, I'd take the plunge and paint the kitchen "Rare Wine", which is a pretty plum color. In prepping the room, I thought I'd paint a small spot on the wall to see how I liked the color. OMG!!!! It was really dark compared to the dark brown. What have I done??? Oh well, I'm going to paint the kitchen Rare Wine, because I bought the paint.

Here are before and after pictures. Tell me what you think.

After having the entire kitchen painted and everything back in its place I really like the color and am so glad I finally decided to get this project off my to-do list. However, a $3.99 item turned into over $50 and a weekend project. Oh well... I love it. Hope you do too.

Cooking and Knitting, Oh My

Last weekend I put together a Christmas Sale in an attempt to sell the many Christmas decorations I don't put up each year. Plus I was hoping to make a little money. In preparation for the sale, I made homemade Chili and my grandma's / mom's recipe for Apple Squares. YUM!!! I made these two recipes because I knew I would have enough food for whoever was here when it was time to eat. My friends; Jackie, CJ and Phil enjoyed the food and we each enjoyed each other's company.

Since the traffic at the sale was SO slow, I thought I would use my time wisely and do some knitting. The sweater I'm working on has a very complicated pattern that I need to follow closely so I wouldn't be able to work on this and chat with my friends. Therefore I decided to start making another Itty-Bitty Hat. I was going to make another simple hat like the last three, but saw this cute striped pattern on front of the book. So I did a little shopping at my own garage sale and picked out three skeins of yarn from the sale trunk and started working on this hat. Oops. I'm supposed to be trying to sell myself. Ha!!!

Anyway, I started to make this cute striped Paper Bag Hat. I knitted about 2/3 of the hat on Saturday (at the sale) and finally finished the hat tonight. It is so cute. It makes me want to make more in different colors. These would make cute gifts.

Well, I need to focus on my studies now and put the knitting aside. I have two exams on Friday.

Got a Facelift

Finally after 4 years, my house finally got a well needed facelift. When I bought my house in Sept 2006, the paint on the wood shutters on the front of the house was peeling badly and made the house look a bit shack-like.

The above picture is a before picture of what the house used to look like.


The two pictures below are what the house looks like today. I was fortunate to have my cousin's nephew install the new burgundy shutters and I painted the front and side doors to match. I really like the color, I think it pulls out that reddish color in the brick. So proud of getting this project off my to-do list.

Since the pictures on the blog are a bit small, if you click on each picture you can see a larger view and more detail in how bad it looked than and how much better it looks now.

Girlfriend Crafting Weekend

I had a wonderful weekend with my friend Kathy from Kenosha. She came to visit on Friday afternoon and stayed through Sunday afternoon. We spent the entire weekend crafting, eating, shopping and enjoying each other's company.

We began the weekend by visitng to Ruhama's Yarn shop in Whitefish Bay on Friday evening and enjoying dinner at El Guapo's Mexican restaurant.


On Saturday we drove to Brookfield and spent the afternoon at River Boutique and Yarn shop in the knitter's circle. They have cool looking comfy charis for us to sit and knit with the regulars. (Photo on left.) We both love this shop and the way it has a warm, comforting feel. Plus the staff is very welcoming too.




We also visited a couple of bead shop and a consignment shop. You'd think with all of that, we wouldn't get much knitting or beading done, but we did. This picture shows the two Itty-Bitty hats I knitted from Susan B. Anderson's book. Susan lives in Madison and I had the opportunity to meet her at a Knitting Guild meeting earlier in the year.

I also worked on a sweater that I had started probably 20 years ago. I only had the back and one sleeve done prior to the weekend. I finished the other sleeve and began the front. My goal is to finish this sweater by the end of the month, so that I can begin a new project. Pictures of the finished sweater to follow.

Sweet dreams Domino

I know this post is not about a creative project that I am working on, but I had to post something on my blog about my kitty, Domino. He passed away in my arms last Monday morning (Sept 20th) at 8am. He was such a special kitty and brought so much joy and love to my life. I will miss him dearly. He was 9 years and 3 months old on Sept 20, 2010.



Some of the cute things that my Domino did that I'll always remember.

• he chewed on plastic bags and scrapbook page protectors
• his goofy meow sounded like a pigeon
• he escorted me down the stairs in the morning to his food bowls
• he guarded the bathroom door while I took a shower
• all of his paws were white, with his left front paw had a black spot

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• he chased his tail in circles like a kitten
• he loved to bat around craft pom poms
• nuzzling my face in his soft, white belly

• he would always come when I called his name
• snuggling with me on the couch
• he was my mouser

Sweet dreams Domino. You will always be in my heart. I will miss you so much!!!!

XOXO

Back to School Cookies

How many of you would come home from your first day school to warm chocolate chip cookies made by your mother? Today was my first day of school for fall semester 201o. And since my mother no longer lives with me, I decided to make my own chocolate chip cookies. Actually I tried a new recipe from the Midwest Living Magazine website called Awesome Chocolate Peanut Blowout Cookies. They are the first cookies I've ever made that were still soft after they cooled. I think I need to keep this recipe and make them again.

Since I don't have a sense of smell I forget that other people can smell when I'm cooking or baking. My roommate came downstairs and said 'was there a peanut butter explosion?" Ha!!! I'm going to call them Peanut Butter Explosion cookies from now on. For those of you interested in making the cookies yourself, here is a link to the recipe. Please note, I did not use peanuts and increased both the chocolate chips and peanut butter cups by 1/4 cup each.

Enjoy!!!!