Cookies are my favorite!

Have you ever noticed that you collect recipes of a certain kind more than any other kind of food?  My favorite to collect are cookie recipes. Must have almost 4 times as many cookie recipes than any other type.  Last night I tried one that I had seen on the Pioneer Woman website back in October and have been wanting to try ever since.  Mmmmmm, they are delicious!  Citrus Butter Cookies, using lemon and orange zest and juice.  Make sure you have a microplane zester, though, to make your life easier.

The whole house smelled absolutely yummy while these little beauties were baking!

More chocolate!

Last night my daughter and her high school class sold snacks at the basketball game.  Look what we have left over!  A whole box full of chocolate!  Yay........ just wake me up out of my sugar coma in time for work tomorrow morning..... :)

Long weekend turned into Craft Weekend!

This past holiday long weekend turned into a very very craft weekend!  One of my friends who is proficient in knitting had taught us all how to knit.  (the rest of us would not be considered proficient, ha!)  Then she saw the quilted bag I had made a few weeks ago and wanted to learn to do that.  So we all gathered up our various craft projects and met up on 3 of the 4 days of the long weekend, counting Friday afternoon as one of the days.  The following photos are all from a Google search since I forgot my camera at every stage of the weekend.

This is what we all did for the past several weeks - knitting.  Now we are branching out and doing some other things too!  Before starting the "workshop" for the quilted bag, we had to go shopping for supplies, which involved looking through all the local fabric stores.

Then I taught them how to cut the fabric using the rotary cutter and self-healing mats.

Then we took turns with 2 sewing machines and worked on our various projects.

By the time last night rolled around, my one friend had finished her quilted bag (sorry no photo), another friend had made good progress on a needlepoint project, another one had finished and/or started 2 different coffee cup potholders with ideas for making mini versions as coasters, and another friend had been inspired that she, too, could be a quilter, had dug out her sewing machine, and had made 2 practice blocks!  3 cheers for a very fun and productive weekend.

Happy V-Day wishes

Happy Valentine's day to all..... one of the bloggers that I follow had this on her post today and it is so good, I am blatantly copying it!  It will have special appeal to those of you who are Downton Abbey fans.

Another blogger is the one who created them.  Here's his link:  http://chad-thomas.com/?p=553#more-553

"Sisters"

Being an only child, I was truly blessed with 2 cousins that lived close by and we were able to see frequently.  These two lovely ladies are really my sisters and not only cousins.  We have been through a lot during our lives (like most everyone) and we are great friends.  Both live out of state and were here visiting this week, so we met at a favorite restaurant yesterday.  Without any prior planning, look how color-coordinated we were!!  Ha!  Long live the beautiful blue-green color family!

More progress...

This weekend I was able to work a little more on my batik chain blocks.  A friend and I worked on our sewing projects during the Super Bowl.  Here is an updated photo:

The day before, I was able to finally give my girlfriend her "grandma bag".  She loved it!  I'm so glad, since it took me longer than planned to finish it for her.

Groundhog Day

So this morning on the news Punxatawny Phil (or whatever his name is) saw his shadow, and that is supposed to mean that we have 6 more weeks of winter.  In my part of the world, Southern California, that is just fine by me!  We have mild winters - what most people would consider fall weather really - and just get light dustings of snow on our local mountains.  Occasionally we have frost, and even less occasionally we have snow.  It will last only a few hours, but it creates real excitement.  Here is a picture of the last time we had snow, I think it was 2007:

Usually our winter months look like this and are really the most attractive time of year for us.  Sorry if there is a little bit of gloating in my voice.  :)

Have a happy Groundhog Day everyone!