"Be Mine"

I am indeed happiest when I am creating !!  I'm sure there are things that make me happier - time with family and friends; talking about Jesus and the scripture - especially fun facts to know and tell that fill in some of the blanks!  I really love to have a craft project going at all times and since I now work seven, I mean five days a week, I don't always have time to make things.  We've been in our house since June and on the surface, my craft room looks pretty good.  In reality, I have NO IDEA where anything is located.  I was going to organize it this winter, but this winter is quickly slipping away from me!  I was able to find red and pink and white cardstock and some pink ribbon and over the weekend, I used my trusty silhouette cameo to create a valentine banner.

I cut the basic flag shapes out of red cardstock.  I made the scalloped edge hearts with white.  I then layered a red polka dot heart on top of those two pieces.  At that point, I cut the letters out of pink cardstock and glued it all together (I had to BUY glue sticks because I had NO idea where they are located in this house!!).  I hung it up and you couldn't see the pink letters at all.  You had to walk up to the banner to tell there were letters at all.  Laura suggested that I cut another set of letters and I did - out of white cardstock.  I layered the white on top of the pink and if you look very closely, you can see that I placed the white letters so that you could still see a hint of pink behind - sort of like a shadow.

I'm much better with paper than cookies evidently.  We had box lunches at a recent meeting from Lunch Box Express.  Sandy O'Kelly, in our UMC conference office recommended them and if you need lunches - Lunch Box Express is the way to go!  Very reasonable prices and delicious - yes!!  We had snickerdoodles as our dessert and they were yummy so I googled "recipe for snickerdoodles" and made some.

Are you laughing yet?  At the point where I removed the cookies from the oven, I googled "why are my snickerdoodles flat and stuck together?"  Do you know why?  My baking soda was old!!  It is not really old, but it was evidently not doing its thing.  I have a repertoire of baked goods that I make well and as of this baking, I think snickerdoodles are not on that list!  They tasted good.  Mark took them to work in a baggie and people ate them!

I didn't take a picture of my most recent baking adventure.  I should have.  On Saturday, I decided to make King Cakes.  I was going to use Southern Plate's recipe.  I have tasted this king cake and it is good (my friend, Lori is a much better baker than I - she made king cakes for our Bible study using this recipe!).  I took the frozen bread dough out and put it on a paper plate to thaw . . .all three loaves . . .because I was going to make one cake to take to Sunday School and I was going to make two more to give away to neighbors.  Heck - I even purchased a whole bunch of green, gold and purple glitter sprinkle thing-a-ma-bobs.  Guess what?  I promptly forgot about that bread thawing and I went out to run errands and buy groceries.  When I got back home, there were those loaves . . .they had risen up beautifully (I was supposed to shape and fill the dough before allowing it to rise!) . . .yes, they had risen up beautifully and were all three stuck together and all three WERE STUCK TO THE DADGUM PAPER PLATE!  I had to take my bread knife and saw them away from the paper plate.  I sprayed my brownie pan (9 X 13) with pam and plopped those stuck-together loaves into the pan and preheated the oven.  I had the largest three hump loaf of bread you have ever seen!  Once again, it tasted good, just like those ugly snickerdoodles. Mark loves bread so he has really enjoyed it. He came in on Saturday night from a long weekend at the farm with very little to eat (he took a banana and two packs of peanut butter crackers for his three meals!!) When he came in, the house smelled wonderful (nothing like baking bread!!) and there was a gigantic loaf of bread and one hungry man! There is only one piece left.