YAY

I found a photo (that I actually took myself) that isn't too large of a file for Blogger to accept!!!!

I feel less cheap now!! Woo!

I also have a few new recipes to try and put up soon, that are MINE. hehe.

This is progress!

A Conflict

       I haven't really posted much of my cooking projects lately, and for a particular reason that I think I need to talk about.

       All my recipes lately have come from other people's food blogs. I feel very cheap trying their recipes, taking my own photos, and reposting! And I don't know how to get over this. Part of me wants to quit looking at other people's blogs, spend a little more time being creative and concocting my own recipes, and then post them guilt free on my own.

       The other part of me feels that if I stop looking at other people's ideas I'll stagnate. I have cooker's block. I can't think of anything tasty lately until I search for something!

      To make things worse, I am very dissatisfied with the appearance of my blog right now. Blogger won't allow me to upload any pictures for my background over 300K, which is a pretty much unreasonable limit. Either I pick one of their stock photos (which also makes me feel cheap) or I tile a small photo, which does not make me happy. Add to this that most of my photos are difficult to access due to a complete wipe of my laptop last week, and you get a pretty lame blog.

       That was a lot of complaining and not a lot of solutions.

       On a lighter note, I do in fact have a few original recipes, and am working to compile a cookbook! Not to sell, but to create as sort of a family heirloom. Bookemon and Blurb both have applications to create cookbooks and have them printed up for around 50 bucks. Maybe the fact that I only have 5 recipes so far will encourage me to stop stealing other peoples recipes and work harder to create me own. Wish me luck!

P.S. If anyone has solutions to my problem, please advise. Also, if you find better applications for creating cookbooks, please share!

My Computer Sadness

 My laptop that I got in June is dead. Its still under warranty, so I sent it off to get fixed, but until then I'm not very happy. A lot of my data was lost, and I am stuck using the computers at work, or this ancient thing on the floor in my spare room. I got it up and running and miraculously I got internet on it and I can do some basic functions. CJ was impressed with me. But, this is part of the reason my blog had a Christmas background and theme until just now, and the reason the current background and theme is rather crappy. At least I didn't give in and use a pre-made Blogger background!

For Christmas I got a food processor and a magazine full of recipes. Hopefully soon I'll have time to cook some of my own recipes and take pictures and give a good update.

Until then, good luck enduring these cold non-holiday months!

One More!

I've been a little lazy with the posts lately. So here are two in a day to make up for it. 

Skamania Lodge 4th Wedding Anniversary!

It was so romantic I forgot to take anymore pictures!

Treats in Plastic

No presents this year. A lot of people I know are staying home, having romantic little Christmastimes alone this year. Sometimes things out of our control (like the economy) can force us to remember what times like these are really about... 

Crafts and treats and surprising friends!!

I vowed no presents, but I didn't say I would give random people random little home made treats, just because (wink).

My dear friend Alison and her sweetheart Brent reportedly had a somewhat bare Christmas tree this year. As it is their first Christmas together, they hadn't yet accumulated many decorations. So I had a fun idea.

At the local dollar store I picked up some candy and some plain Styrofoam ball ornaments. Above are Nerds hot glued to a ball in a random pattern. Nerds were one of Alison's favorite candies as a child.

I had some wire that I bent and used to secure 3 Reese's cups together in a stack. The Reese's were for Brent's sweet tooth.

CJ's favorite candy were the dinner mints his grandpa used to give him. I still had some of this wire mesh left over from school project, ahem, 6 years ago.

If you try this yourself, just be very careful. That wire mesh can slice right through flesh!

My SmoreMan's smile ran a little. My advice: Don't use a sharpie for his smile. Instead, use black bead or pins like I did for his eyes and buttons. He now looks a bit like a blood thirsty SmoreMan.

I had a box of liquid polymer coating left over from another project I did a few years ago. So I dipped all my candy creations into the plastic to help preserve them longer. 

Gummy initials dipped pretty well, but they didn't solidify as much as I would expect. They are however smooth and not sticky.

The plastic was going really far and I ran out of things to dip! So I strung some lifesavers I found at the back of the cupboard onto a string and dipped them.

The Nerd Ball worked out very well. 

What I learned: Don't dip anything waxy or greasy. Laffy Taffy didn't hold the plastic. As it dried, the plastic oozed off and didn't coat the taffy much at all. I'm hoping Alison can spray some lacquer on it, but if it goes in the garbage I'll understand. 

Also, my Smore Men worked about half way. The marshmallow worked although was a lot softer than I thought. The chocolate was too greasy and didn't hold all the plastic either. The reason the Reese's worked was because the sides were paper, and the plastic pooled on top of the chocolate.

I packed them up with some old ornaments that we bought for our first tree when we got married, that have slowly been replaced with homemade or gifted ornaments. I sent them away with a little note. I just got an email from her with the following pictures! (She's quite the photographer, isn't she!)

Merry Christmas!

From Fall to Winter

We had a delicious Thanksgiving! Every part of the meal was amazing, thanks to Marie and Kelly. I brought the pies, and they turned out well too!

But as soon as Thanksgiving is over, I can't wait to use my long weekend to decorate for Christmas. Fall to winter, in one weekend: 

My mantel usually supports my antique camera collection. I moved the cameras to the bookshelf, and set up my Christmas village on the mantel instead. My favorite part of the village are the docks, and the Fish Co.

All my old stuff reminds me of A Christmas Story. 

Next weekend we get a tree!

Flat cookies

This is the actual recipe I used for those cookies. In the last update I linked to the wrong recipe, thinking it was Ghirardelli chips that I had used. I found out that it was NOT the right one when I made a second batch, and they turned out something like this picture I found when I googled "flat chocolate chip cookies":

I went to the store and found the bag of chips I actually used, Guittard. I'm curious to try the recipe again and see if they turn out so well again.