Cookie success!

I will NEVER bake with margarine again!  I bought shortening while grocery shopping today and I decided to make chocolate chip cookies when I got home.  They were perfect!  SOOO good!  That may be a bad thing.  One batch made 4-5 dozen cookies and I sure would hate for Daniel to come home in the morning and all the cookies be gone...lol.  Wanna see the lovely little morsels of wonderfulness?  Ok, but only cause you asked :o).

 

Keyboards, Cookies, and Chocolate

I'm not sure how long our keyboard was broken (as in unusable)...2 weeks maybe?  Maybe it was a little longer.  It all started about a month ago when I had my coffee a little too close to Jace and he grabbed it and pulled it over onto the keyboard (luckily it didn't spill on him).  The keyboard was fine for a day or two, but then the keys got really sticky.  No problem, Daniel could just take it apart and clean it.  He'd done it before, he could do it again.  Well that worked for a little while, but then letters and numbers would randomly start appearing while I was typing and just kept coming as if I were holding a key down.  It made it nearly impossible to type a sentence so we just started using the on-screen keyboard.  I got so fed up with that that I started to missing my good-for-nothing keyboard!  On-screen is definitely way more trouble than it's worth.  It's great for if you're in a pinch, but not meant for long term use.  There was definitely no way I was typing out a blog post with that...lol.  Anyway, I said all that to say this- we got a new keyboard today!!!  YAY!!!  It's nothing fancy, but it does the trick and that all that matters to me!

Smooth transition sentence to introduce my next paragraph.  I have a really big sweet tooth.  I could seriously eat dessert after breakfast, lunch, dinner, and again before bed. I think...I've never tried it.  Anyway, the problem is, I don't buy sweets very often cause I tell myself that if I don't have them, I can't eat them.  Then I crave something sweet and dig around in my cabinets and fridge til I find the ingredients for cookies :o).  Unfortunately, I seem to suck at baking (cookies, anyway).  Imagine the suckiest a person can be at something.  That's how much I suck at making homemade cookies.  I may have found the problem, though, cause all my cookies have the same thing in common: I substitute shortening for margarine.  It's all I ever have.  My cookies tend to get too fluffy for my liking.  I like the flat chewy kind.  I'm going to buy shortening on my next shopping trip and if that doesn't work, then I'm never baking cookies again.

So speaking of sweets, while we were at walmart getting our keyboard, I got chocolate :o).  They are aerated Hershey's kisses.  I thought they would have more of a mousse type texture, but it was much harder.  Other than a few air bubbles inside, it tasted just like milk chocolate.  I was a little disappointed.  Oh well, it was still chocolate.  You can't go too wrong with that!

Time for a couple of pictures!

My Hershey's kiss!

Daniel, Kelsie, and Jace

Jace banging pans...his new favorite thing to do :o)  It's really blurry, but I love that it shows the motion of the pans moving through the air.

Kelsie on her scooter

Ashlin posing all silly like.  She just started sitting like that and I had to get a snap of it.  I love this kid!

 Jace in the middle of saying momma (with his gums), but it looks like he's saying "cheese" so this is currently one of my favorite pictures of him.  SOOOO cute!

Wordless Wednesday's: Dog Days of Summer (2)

Processed with PTM's wonder quickie and vanilla pop (tweaked)

Jace is crawling!

He's been army crawling for a little while now and he's been rocking on his knees lately, too (but not going anywhere), but starting today, he got on his knees and crawled!  I couldn't believe it!  He's so darn cute when he's crawling, too.  I'll need to get a video of it so I never forget it.  On another note, I saw a vintage rosette headband quite a while ago and fell in love with it, so I finally looked for a tutorial on how to make them.  I'm a pretty crafty person, but I tend to start things and not finish them.  It's a real problem...lol.  Anyway, it was surprisingly easy, but I did get a cramp in my hand with every flower.  Regardless, I'll definitely be making more.  The picture I'll post today is my sweet eldest daughter modeling the headband :o)

 

Wordless Wednesday's: Dog Days of Summer (1)

Since this is my first post on this, I should probably explain.  A friend of mine (Amy McMaster from http://amymcmasterphotography.com/ has started something called Wordless Wednesdays: Dog Days of Summer.  From now on, they won't have words to explain the picture, but it'll be a picture of what goes on around here during the summer (or something like that...lol).  All I'll post is what action/texture I use on it.

 Processed with Sands of Time (tweaked) and Sand Dollar Texture from Amy McMaster's Olive Juice Shoppe

My sister-in-law's b-day

Yesterday was my youngest sister-in-law's birthday.  She turned 5.  I can't believe she's 5 already!  And what's more is that means Kelsie will be 5 in a mere 4 months!!!  Good grief, these kids are growing up too fast (which means I'm getting old too fast...lol)!  Anyway, it was a fun little party at my mother-in-law's house.  My favorite thing about it was another of my sisters-in-law, Mary, made her clowning debut.  She made the sweetest clown ever and the kids absolutely LOVED her!!!  She painted all the kids faces, but I didn't get a picture of those.  (I'm hoping to have a little face painting gathering/photo shoot for her soon to really capture her work.)  Mary welcomed all the kids to the party with silly string, which was a big hit.  She plans on introducing juggling and balloon animals soon, so I can't wait for that!  Without farther ado, some pictures from the party :o).

Mary (official clown name TBA)-

Jace wasn't too thrilled, but part of the reason is cause mommy wasn't holding him...lol.

Kids left to right: Kelsie, Reagan, Abby, Jada (the birthday girl), and Ashlin

  Jada with her cake:

 Last, but not least, Jada's "I'm excited about my presents" look:

 

 

Tasty Tuesday

I decided to participate in Tasty Tuesday with a friend of mine.  Pretty self explanatory, but every Tuesday, we take a picture of what we made for dinner and post it.  I thought I'd put some effort into it and make a nice meal to show off, but that so didn't happen...lol.  Instead, I threw together a quick buffalo chicken salad (for me...the kids just had chicken tenders and fries).  The only thing that would have made my salad better would have been some carrots and maybe some celery :o).