My Leap Year Thoughts!

Hello!  It is one of my favorite days!  I love the special day that only comes around once every four years!  I have been trying to decide what to do with my special day and how to make it memorable.  After reading countless ideas I have a plan!   I am going to answer the questions from this website.  Place them in a box and read them in 4 years! 

I am not a stranger to the answering questions and rereading them later.  In fact when my beautiful sister was married a few years ago we pulled out the list of our dream guy qualities.  She was 14 and I was 12 when we wrote it.  Let me just say it definately made my toast a bit more fun when I read it at the rehersal dinner!! 

So what are you going to do this year to celebrate leap year?

Lazy rainy weekend!

Here in west Texas the lack of moisture last year was horrible on the farmers. But this month we have had a lot of moisture! Snow, sleet, and rain. So this weekend when I woke up to the sound of water in the streets I decided it was time to bake!

Yummy rolls!

So I have always heard how hard it is to make rolls. I found a great recipe from Our Best Bites and had at it. I love their recipes because of their great detailed directions. So instead of giving you my break down of their recipe I thought I would share some of my baking tips!

Baking tips:

• Follow the directions.
• Make sure your water and sugar mixture is not to hot. I used to kill my yeast all the time.  I just make sure it is "warm" 
• If it is cold or dry where you live place a bowl of water in your oven and heat it to 350 degrees. Turn off your oven and put your dough in to rise. Crack the door of the oven to let some of the heat dissipate. I always reheat my oven in between letting the dough rise. Make sure you remove the bowl of water when you bake your bread.

All in all the rolls turned out great!

Kip thought so too!  He snuck a bite on the way home!

Sweetheart! You shouldn't have!

So here is a special valentines edition. For all you singles I found that fun food to share makes the day a bit better.

This valentines day I made some yummy sugar cookies that looked like message hearts!

In real life I am not the biggest fan of the actual candy hearts but I do love the bittersweets from despair.com

So to begin I made up some of my sugar cookie dough. I made a double batch and ended up with around 4 dozen hearts. While they were cooling I hopped on the Internet to look up sayings for the hearts. I wanted to be authentic.

Then came the fun part! I mixed up some buttercream frosting and separated it into 4 bowls. I made three pastel colors: blue, yellow, and green. I also made red to write the inscriptions.

So here are my favorite cookies!

Click click click

That's not Santa's reindeer it's my knitting needles! I have been knitting away and wanted to show you what I've been working on.

The Saroyan

This beauty of a scarf is made out of malabrigo yarn twist and is so soft! I knit it up once but the pattern was written more for a shawl. I don't really do shawls so I just ripped it out and did not do nearly the amount of increases it called for. I love how in knitting you can tailor things to your liking!

Twisted Ribbons Scarf

This is a fun pattern and my first attempt at cables! It is in a pink cascade 220 not as soft as the malabrigo but is growing on me.

Maybe it is just me but sometimes it seems like a yarn has a mind of its own. I tried several different patterns before this one would seem to behave.

Apparently this pattern and type of yarn are a good fit. Especially with size 5 needles.

Oh the weather outside was frightful!

So this past Sunday we had winter...all in one day. So here are some pics! I love the snow!

Yummy! Homemade Lunches!

Hello!

I am eating dinner at my desk at work and wanted to share my yummy new favorite meal: Homemade Lean Cuisines! 

I watched this fabulous video and decided I had to try out my own version!

Here is the link if the video is broken  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=815tZP0zwmI



So here is the quick walk through.  Watch the video for a in depth how to.

First I found about eight containers close to the size of the lean cuisines.  Made a pound of pasta and after it cooled dished it up!

Then I sauteed all my veggies: carrots, green beans, peas, and broccoli.  Yum!  When it cooled I add it to the dish and then cut up some left over turkey and added it to the mix. 

This is the end result!  Yummy!  If you noticed at the top I went with an Alfredo sauce.  I am not to concerned with the amount of calories in the sauce because I am a little low right now on them in my diet right now! 

Give it a try and let me know what you think!