What Happens When...

They turn me loose in the kitchen...

I decided that I wanted to make one of my favorite cookies, Million Dollar Sugar Cookies.

Anytime I volunteer to cook anything, Missy just kind of raises her eyebrow and lets out a mostly quiet groan. I don't often do anything in the kitchen besides walk through and get something to drink, or do dishes or clean the stove or mop the floor.

I do cook a little bit once in a while, in fact last night I made a one skillet dinner called Mexican
Dinner (a real original name). It's also one of my favorites and is really easy.

But I wanted sugar cookies. When it comes to light weight stuff like flour and powdered sugar, I can sometimes get a little messy. A lot messy. I bought this mixer for Carol (Missy as I sometimes call her) last year for Christmas.

I, once again, don't usually do anything other than carry it to the table for her to use. In fact, I think today s the first time I've used it since we brought it home.

I mostly did okay with creaming the butter and sugar together, but then I added a cup of powdered sugar. Not being familiar with the speeds on the mixer, I turned it up too fast and, whoosh, the powdery stuff went flying.

No problem, slow it down and add more powdered sugar, right? Right. Then after the oil, vanilla, and eggs are all creamed in, I put the rest of the dry ingredients in a bowl and started mixing them in, nice and slow.

After adding about half of the flour, being the bright person I am in the kitchen, I decided that,
since it was thicker I needed to speed it up a bit. Whoosh, there it goes again. After that fog I just put it on nice and slow and left it there.

For those of you that haven't had enough of sugar cookies, or like me, can't get enough of sugar cookies, I will post the recipe on the next post.

The cookie dough is in the fridge right now. The recipe says it's easier to roll 'em into balls to smash if you put them in for a couple of hours, so when I do the next step and cook them so you can see the results, I'll share the recipe with you.

But I'm warning you now, these cookies are sooooo good they are bound to become favorites. If you need to lose 20 pounds like I do you may want to disregard my next post.

Just try, I triple dog dare you!!!

Whew...

Well, I've survived another Christmas at my baby brother's in Ft. Worth. I say survived because, literally, there is a whole mess of kids and grandkids. Since my brother and his first wife divorced, the kids split time at Christmas and this year they all came over in the late afternoon for gifts and supper. There ended up being about 50 of us. What fun.

Ben smoked pork loin, pork chops, ribs and chicken breasts, turkey breasts and then everyone brought something to go with it, mac and cheese, green beans, potatoes and so on so forth. We all ate until we foundered, then ate desserts.

Home-made banana pudding, turtle cheese-cake pies, cookies, fudge, turtles, more cookies... I couldn't bend over to tie my shoes for two days. We have some folks in our family that can flat out cook.

Then, on Friday, all of us sibs got together. All three of my brothers and my sis and I met for lunch to visit and we got one of the nephews to take our picture together. My sister went home after lunch because she was suffering with a pulled muscle in her back from lifting something too heavy (probably a grand baby) on Christmas day, and baby brother and his wife went home because her back was needing heat.

Bro and I went over to our oldest brother's home and visited with them for about an hour. It was so nice. I hadn't had a visit with them for much longer than to say hi for about three years. As soon as I get photos, I'll post one or two up so you can all share.

In the meantime, I'm going to play catch-up on my reading and see if I can come up with ideas for my blog. It is good to be back.

Merry Christmas To All...

Merry Christmas to all...


Hope you all have a joyous and peaceful holiday.


Helen

Fruits And Nuts, and Kings

Contrary to the title, this post is not about my family. Well, it is sorta, but not in the way you
would normally think. When we were little, we went to church at Second Methodist Church in Okla. City.

Every year on the Sunday night before Christmas there was the Christmas celebration. There would be the reading of the story of Jesus' birth. Then came the entertainment. There would be singing of Christmas songs, both by the congregation and by the choir or the church quartet accompanied by Aunt Myrtle, who was not really our aunt, but was close enough to the family to be called our aunt by all of us kids.

Also helping out on the accompaniment was an older gentleman on bass fiddle, you know those 4 stringed instruments that were bigger than cellos, and his son on the xylophone or the marimba. At the end of the service came the part long awaited by all of us kids...

Santa's visit. Santa would come in and pass to all us kids a Christmas Bag. In it would be an apple, an orange, assorted nuts and ribbon candy in a brown paper bag. It was, at least to us kids, the highlight of the evening. I still can almost feel the anticipation to this day and see the sparkle in the eyes of the other children and, I'm sure, my own eyes.

I rode the train down to Ft. Worth last Saturday and spent the rest of Saturday helping my SIL run errands and wrap gifts, just trying to help out and earn my keep. Sunday afternoon I went with my brother to go shopping for his sweet bride. Ben wanted to run by the church to see if they needed any help to take down the stage that the children had performed on earlier. The pastor and his wife, whom I just love, were getting into their cars to head out, and I just had to jump out for my hugs from both the pastor and his wife.

We visited just a few moments before we got back into our respective cars and JoAnn took off running to her car, reached in, grabbed a bag and came running to my side. I rolled down my window and she handed it to me and said, " Merry Christmas!"

Imagine my delight when I opened that brown paper sack and saw an apple, an orange, some nuts and some ribbon candy.

I hope each and every one of you have a peaceful and joyous Christmas holiday. Embrace each other with love. Rejoice in being free to worship and praise the Lord for sending his son to show us the way, the truth and the light.

He is, after all, the Reason For The Season.

A special thanks to Rick at Organized Doodles for this art work.

Time To Go...

Don't these two look kinda lonesome? These are the last of a fantastic first litter.

The darker brindle pup is the little girl that I fell in love with and the lighter brindle pup is a little boy that our friend Pat fell for...

Unfortunately with 5 people and 3 dogs already at our home we could only love them from afar.

My niece sent these photos to me since I'm in Texas for Christmas and she knows I have pupaholics that drop by to check on their progress.

The other 4 puppies have gone to good homes,
Christmas surprises all. They were getting such cute personalities and starting to worm their way in to hearts at home.

Nancy and Steve were both saying last week when I was there that they had to get these pups to new homes. They were both getting too attached to them.

I sure can't fault them for that 'cause I was getting attached myself and I was only seeing them once a week.

I guess we all will have to wait until around this time next year for our next round of puppy fixes, and I know it will be very hard to wait, at least for me... and Nancy and Steve... and several of you who like my puppy fixes. Dang.

But let me ask you something... Is it just my imagination or is Maddie smiling about breast feeding being almost finished?

I Love My Gloves...

You know, somehow one of the things I never thought I'd be professing love for would be a pair of gloves.

But these gloves, these gloves I love. I keep track of them and don't just take them off and put down anywhere. I usually put them right by the front door on the floor or on the floor right by my chair.

When I go out to do anything outside, I usually tuck them in the back of my Levi's until I'm ready to do the weed-eating, digging in the in the garden or the flower bed.

Are you getting my drift? I love my gloves. They helped me to catch a snake, pull out an incredible amount of weeds and brush, they've protected my hands pulling dead wood out of the trees, running the chainsaw, the cultivator in the garden, mowers and weed-eaters.

When I recently went with my Bro to Ft. Worth to move his stuff out of storage my gloves went with me on both trips.

On the second trip, coming home, my little pickup started coughing and sputtering and choking and I told Bro to pull over and stop.

I'm also very attached to my little Ranger pick-up. I was worn out, it was after dark, I don't deal well with stress and I was getting stressed not knowing if my p.u. was breathing it's last breath or what.

Of all the stupid things I've done in my life, the one, for sure, smart thing I've done is my AAA
membership. I've been a member since 1969 and for the last 10 or 12 years I've gotten the more expensive, 100 mile tow package. If you, like me, drive older, well used vehicles you need to
work that expense into your budget.

If not AAA, some type of auto assistance club. I called my 800 number and before long, the operator had the wrecker service in my area call me. He assured me that they could load my truck and pull the loaded trailer, too, so I wouldn't have to set out in the cold and wait for my niece to come hook up her pick-up and pull the trailer to the house. So what does that have to do with my gloves?

My gloves were the only thing, besides my Diet Pepsi, that I took out of my truck. I tucked them in the back of my Levi's, as usual. The tow driver was wonderful. He took Bro and I home, unhooked the trailer where we asked and then took my pick-up to the repair shop in Norman.

Since we had been on the side of the road for a while and I'd been out in the cold for a while and I wouldn't go pee behind the trailer like Bro, when I got to the house I told Carol I would tell her all about the pickup in a minute. I headed for my bathroom, dropped trou and, sweet relief... then I got up and turned to flush.

You're right. My gloves hit the pot. I gingerly fished them out and laid them in the tub to dry.
Did you know that you can wash heavy leather gloves? Yep, you can. But with the dogs, I'm now afraid to leave my gloves on the floor. You see, their sense of smell is so great and I've seen them pee where each other has peed, trying to show that they are the top dog, so I figure, even after washing, they will be peeing on my favorite gloves...

Their one chance to tell mom that they're are boss.

Snippet Time...

When I can't sleep I get to thinking and sometimes it gets a little crazy in the confines of my mind, but I can't help but wonder...

Since the Imus fiasco is Santa Claus going to have to quit saying, "Ho, Ho, Ho?"