I gotta tell you, it's 1:30 a.m. as I'm writing this and my heart's not really in it. All I can think about is how tired I am and how much I want to go to bed. This might come as a surprise to anyone reading this who knows me. I normally stay up until two or three in the morning. But I had a busy weekend, and most of that busy was physical.
Saturday the hubby and I finally got a chance to buy some bedding plants for the gardens. I think I'll save the story for my Wednesday post 'cause there's not a lot new to report on the nook. Maybe to sweeten the pot I'll add a few pictures. You know how I like to take pictures. :-) Like . . . remember my little gourd plant? Wait until you see it now.
Sunday I got into baking cookies (after more gardening - filling the planters with plants). You may or may not recall that for the daughter's birthday I gave her the gift of a cookie of the month. Each month I make her a batch of cookies and this month's cookie was Soft Molasses Cookies. They made the house smell like gingerbread and they were so yummy I made myself a batch after supper. Then I made a batch of oatmeal chocolate chip that the hubby's been
You might, at this point, be wondering why I consider baking to be physical . . . I do it because my back tells me it is. I can only be on my feet for so long before my back starts bothering me, and I'd already tested its limits with all those plants.
Has anyone else noticed the abundance of birds lately? And not just the regular robins and starlings and mourning doves, but we've had a few baltimore orioles, and a couple of woodpecker type birds that we haven't been able to identify yet. And speaking of birds . . . the hubby and I were sitting on the deck taking a break and I saw a little chipmunk. Even though he disappeared, I went inside to get some peanuts in case he returned. I had the peanuts on the table in front of me, and looked up to see a blue jay up on the second story eaves trough. Next thing we know, he swooped down, nearly hitting the hubby before settling on top of the table's umbrella (which was down) and then casually dropped down to the table and helped himself to a peanut. He couldn't have been more than a foot away from me. Cheeky little devil.
The Great Book Migration is slow going, mostly because I'm cataloguing my books as I go. I started out intending to create a database in Microsoft Access, but since I first learned how to use the program I've upgraded and now it's pretty much incomprehensible. And then I thought about using an Excel spreadsheet, but my heart really wasn't in it. So then I went online and found a free database program and downloaded it. It allows me to assign my own categories and I can add a description if I want, and there are filters to apply for searches, and it even allows me to keep track of who I've leant a book to (should I be persuaded to do so). Anyway, it's a lot of fun and if you ever want to keep track of your books or movies or CDs, you can find it HERE.
And just to show you what a nice person I can be, I'm going to share my recipe for the molasses cookies. :-)
Soft Molasses Cookies
1/2 cup soft margarine
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup molasses
1 egg
3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 cup water
Cream the margarine and sugar until fluffy. Blend in molasses and egg. Combine the next 4 ingredients. Dissolve the baking soda in the water and add alternately with the dry ingredients to the molasses mixture. Blend well. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto cookie sheets lined with tin foil. Bake at 400 F for 10 to 15 minutes. Makes approximately 4 dozen.
Keep your eye on them if they're in there for more than 10 minutes. I don't know if it was the cookies or just me, but they seemed to go from not quite done to burnt on the bottom pretty quickly.
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