Best Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies EVER.

Ever, ever.  Really.

I have a terrible time following recipes.  Which means I could never master pastries or French cooking...BUT! I make amazing meals from scratch and can even tweak a dessert recipe to make it into something fantastic - in my own humble opinion.  ::cough::

So, I present to you my most recent creation - the BEST chocolate chocolate cookies EVER.

Preheat oven to 375F

1/4 cup sugar
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1/2 cup brown sugar

 In a Kitchenaid mixer, mix together the above ingredients until blended.  Add:

1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp orange juice
1/2 cup butter - cubed

Cream together for 3 minutes, scraping the bowl at 1 minute intervals.  Then add:

1/2 cup rolled oats
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt (I use Half Salt)
chocolate chips to your taste - I use 1/2 a bag or approx. 1 cup

Mix thoroughly for 3 minutes, scraping the bowl at 1 minute intervals. 
Using a teaspoon, spoon batter onto ungreased cookie sheets.  Place in oven and bake for 10-12 minutes (although my oven seems strong, so I bake them for 9 minutes).

ENJOY with a large glass of milk.

*hugs*

The Santa 'issue'.

The holiday season is in full swing.  There are cranky people everywhere just waiting to push past you on the street, jump in front of you in line at the mall and sneer in utter unhappiness at the slightest...well, ANYTHING.  I don't know why this season seems to bring out the worst in people.  Seriously.  If buying gifts makes you THAT unhappy - STOP. BUYING. GIFTS.  It's not that hard!  Your kids are taught what to think of the holidays, they don't need that expensive toy or a room full of crap.  It is the parent's job to show them why.

In the spirit of the season, I do give a couple of gifts.  Our parents, my nephew, Mr. Penguin and the girls (as well as a few Secret Santas).   Which brings us to our new predicament...Santa.  With Monkey's speech delay, we never brought up the story of Santa and how he supposedly comes to the house, as she didn't have the vocabulary and we didn't want to scare her.  So until school, where she is now learning about Santa, she just knew that we bought each other gifts and opened them on Xmas day.  And that Santa could be found at the mall.  However, Baby Penguin will be coming up next year on when kids are normally taught about Santa.  But we're not sure we WANT to start Santa at our house.  I don't want to lie to my kids, I don't want to give gifts from someone else, and I definitely don't want Xmas to become about GIFTS.

At the Penguin household during the Xmas season, we bake: cookies, muffins, cakes, bread - anything we feel like.  We cook: spaghetti, chili, casseroles and pasta dishes.  We donate: our time, our money, our toys, our clothes.  We cherish: each other, our friends, our family,and what we have.  But most of all, we create: drawings, paintings, things out of play doh, blanket forts, play picnics, whatever we feel like!  We choose to use the holiday season to spend time with our girls and experience the joy that can be had during this holiday season. 

On Xmas Day, I like to give my girls colouring books, art supplies, books and usually one toy each.  This year the baby is getting a soft chair for the toy room, a colouring book and a stuffed puppy - with crate and accessories to take care of it - to prep her for the puppy we may be getting next year.  Monkey is getting 4 books, Play Doh, some toy cars (she's obsessed) and a storage case to store them in - to help her learn to organize her smaller toys.  That is it.  There will be The Grinch movie, a wonderful breakfast by Mr. Penguin and tons of snuggles on December 26th this year (Monkey has Xmas with her father, so we'll be celebrating late).  It all sounds wonderful to me.  Even if the girls had no gifts under the tree, I know for a fact that it would still be an amazing day at our house.  <3

So, did you pass the tradition of Santa and gift giving on to your kids (or will you)?  How do you celebrate the holidays?  What is your favorite thing about December that just makes your heart soar?

Happy Holidays!
*hugs*

Our love story

I'm creating our love story.  Actually, I've been "creating" it for almost a year now on Blurb.  It's 42 pages so far of copied love letters, emails, notes, cards and photos...it's the perfect thing to be working on the week leading up to our anniversary.  <3

It should be done and here for his 30th birthday.

I love my handsome man.  And to be honest, while compiling all of these things in one location, and considering we've been together for 3 years...we have got quite the love story!! 

*hugs*

Do you ever relive YOUR love story?

Yummy coolness

The heat here is insane.  Not a good insane either.  We're experiencing 35 degree weather for the past 3 days before humidity (which is currently at 75%) and mugginess like no one's business.  Yesterday it was over 42 degrees when it was all combined.  People are irritable and wanting rain or at least a break in heat.  I'm ready to live in my freezer full-time.

As I was searching for local water pads in my area I came across a brilliant recipe that I will be making tonight.  Behold...Coffee popsicles!  (originally found here)

Coffee Popsicles (only for parents!)

These are best served in oppressive heat when spirits and energy are flagging and you can’t get yourself something cold and caffeinated at your local coffee shop.

You will need:

• ⅓ cup sweetened condensed milk
• ⅓ cup hot espresso or very strong black coffee

Yummy!! 
Maybe I'll make a batch and bring them to work in a cooler for the boys to have tomorrow morning.  We all need our morning caffeine, but the hot stuff isn't so nice now that our a/c at the shop isn't working properly.  Maybe it'll lift some spirits.

*hugs*

Deck it to me!

I'm currently relaxing on our swing drinking my morning tea and watching my babies play. Life is peaceful and wonderful.

My thoughts last night involved thinking I might attempt to add onto our deck next year. I have a book with simple deck plans and how to expand and create different levels, and it uses basic tools that we currently have in my workshop. Now the plans themselves are a little scary, but I only looked at them briefly, so I think it could be done. It would definitely be an awesome project to take on with Mr. Penguin!! I'll see what he thinks.

*hugs*


- Sent from my iPod.

Goals.

I have quite a few goals for this year:

• To make my new job into something I will love and be proud of for years to come.
• To get healthier than I was raised and have become -- making exercise a daily occurrence for me and the family and good food the norm.
• To show my darling babies new things.
• To get out with Mr. Penguin and try at least 2 new things.
• To make our house into a warm and inviting sanctuary...and actually be able to find the floor in all of its rooms.
• To keep discovering who I am, what I love and what it means to be me -- which includes taking some sort of class.
• To continue learning about photography, how to edit photos and utilizing our camera to its full potential so I can continue with our plans for a side business.
• To be ready for Xmas...in October.
• To continue with my scrapbooks so that I can preserve our cherished memories for years to come.

........................and the list goes on and on.

For this coming month of March, I'd like to edit some of the photos I've taken.

 

This requires some more studying of Gimp on my part.  I'd like to make this shot into something amazing that I can frame for our office.  It just screams home to me and I want to have it where I can see it -- but looking its best of course.  ;)

And I also want to finish my Mom's Xmas gift in March -- the one for 2009 that I didn't have time to finish in time.  Oops.  I am finishing a half-stitch that she started when pregnant with me.  It was of a boy and girl praying.  She 'ruined' it (her words, not mine) and cut off the boy part she had started.  Funny enough that left the girl part -- and then she had me and kept it for 18 years.  LOL  I had to restart the stitch as I ran out of the original blue wool it came with.  So now I've updated the blue to a emerald teal-ish color and am hoping to frame it and give it to her.  I thought it would be something really meaningful and sentimental.

She probably won't even know where it came from.

Oh well.

It's still a gift!

Have a good hump day!

*hugs*

Quick note.

Today I have some motivation -- so I'm going to go with it while it's still here.  ;)

Off to make vanilla muffins, cheesy beer bread, egg salad for lunches tomorrow and clean the kitchen!

Whew!

Have a good one.
*hugs*

Scrapbooking.

I LOVE to scrapbook.  I have tons of stuff to scrapbook.  Have I really been scrapbooking the past 4 years?  Eh.....not really.  Here's my one page for 2009:

 It's the ultrasound for baby penguin.  She was born in July of last year -- you do the math.  I'm not exactly what you'd call up-to-date.  LOL

It's time to get back into it.  I went to a friend's place today and completed a page of me and the kids from the wedding.  I like it -- I must make more.  My new goal is to make a page a week.  Simple, yet productive.  I have such great photos of the kids and Mr. Penguin and I...they should be in nice albums, not stuck in boxes or forever stored on my laptop.

I may post them from time to time, but for now I'm putting the goal out there to help keep me motivated.

*hugs*

The art of canning.

I've always been interested in anything that makes life simpler...or more homemade.  I enjoy the idea of making things from scratch and living off of what's around me and my family.  This is how canning my own stuff came to be a new fascination.  ;)

I started in 2004 with the traditional jams -- strawberry and raspberry...which turned into peach & cherry jam and blueberry & pineapple jam.  It was quite fun!  I made sure to make them in the littlest jars possible so that I could rotate the flavors frequently.

Then I pickled carrots -- which is on the list again for this year.  If you haven't tried them you are seriously missing out!  I am a dill pickle lover and I'd reach for these first any day (unless it was for a cheese and dill pickle sandwich.....mmmmmmmmm...).

So this year I discovered the Preserves cookbook by 'Company's Coming' and want to try out as many of the recipes as possible.  Ideally, I'd like to have my own veggie garden that will supply for our family during the summer and produce enough to can for most, if not all, the winter.  Ideally.  So I looked through and have marked a bunch of basics to try.  We'll see how it goes.  I figure starting now, in February, I'll at least figure out what not to waste my hard grown veggies on.  :D

So far I've canned my own tomatoes to be used in sauces and my homemade chili recipe.  It was simple enough and looks yummy!  I'll have to see the final result when I open the cans.  But for now it's a start.

*hugs*