Malaxate Monday

malaxate ~ to soften by kneading, rubbing or mixing with a liquid

Happy Victoria Day to my fellow Canadians! And condolences to my American friends 'cause you'll have to wait for your holiday weekend. :-D

So . . . I got a new printer last week. Now you might be wondering why this is such a big deal, people get printers all the time, right? Except getting this printer meant shuffling some furniture around in my office, including changing out a couple of book cases. The fact that this little project took the entire weekend means it's worthy of a post of its own, so I'll use it for the subject of my Wildcard Wednesday. And just to make it worth your while, there'll be pictures.

Daphne and Donald (and their nest full of eggs) are doing well, despite the drop in temperature lately. Daphne's been pretty much glued to her nest, so my neighbor has taken to feeding her. The irony of this is this is the same neighbour who chides me every year for doing the same thing. So ha on her! :-)

We've passed the mid-point in the month of May. Aren't we supposed to be complaining about being too hot by now? Despite the fact we had sun yesterday (first time in almost a week) it was still cold enough for a coat, and this morning the heat was coming on. The rest of the week it's supposed to be around 14 C, which is mid 50s F.

Yesterday (among other things) I went on a baking marathon. Baking was on my to-do list almost every day last week, and what stirred me to finally get around to it was the expectation of a friend from out of town coming to visit. The friend never showed up, but I'm still glad I got the baking done. Before lunch I did a double batch of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (one for the hubby and one for the daughter); 36 mini banana muffins (12 of which had chocolate chips in them); 36 mini cheese muffins; and then later in the afternoon I did two dozen chocolate cupcakes and even iced them. What can I say, I was on a roll! LOL

It's been in my head for a while now to bake mini muffins and freeze them so I'll have a variety and can thaw out just a few at a time, like if I need to take something to a coffee date or have someone drop by unexpected. The key to being a good hostess is to be prepared. ;-)

Last week I not only got both the installments for Earth posted, as promised, but I got a wee bit of other writing done as well. I've been playing around with a horror short story and actually got some work done on it. Go me!

This week's challenge will include finishing this story, working on Lucky Dog and catching up on my email.

Congratulations to Maureen, Alex, and Wendy, the winners of An Elemental Water from the Goodreads giveaway. I think it's my best Elemental book yet, so I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.