speculoos

I finally made them! recipe doriegreenspan.com/2010/08/well-according-to-amazon-aroun... i love gingersnaps and most recipes call for molasses.....I loved this recipe for the straight from the pantry items! spend some time to roll it smoother than i did.....I was rushed by the munchkin, you then chill it 3+hours before cutting and baking I wanted to make them in fish shapes but that cutter has a small tail and they kept breaking......same with the leaf cookie cutter....so I followed Dorie's suggestion and just used a 1 1/4" scalloped cutter I have one with a spring in it to make linzer cookies and that made the transfer to the sheet pan even easier! not sweet, perfect with tea and kid friendly check out this recipe that I am buying potato flakes to make soon too! doriegreenspan.com/2010/09/post-9.html yum too loving these nibbles from dorie greenspan!

apple cake

French Fridays with Dorie Marie Helene's apple cake perfectly fall like and yummy for breakfast with tea! i altered the flour and used graham flour and used 4 different apples, one huge honeycrisp, one medium pippin, two small yellow transparents and two small gravensteins.....superb! another easy to follow recipe with standard pantry ingredients

I love fall

Somehow the sunsets linger longer and the glow casts a purple hue over even the blanded of felled trees.........it is brighter blue skies during the day and longer dark nights and crisp leaves falling and squirrels chasing every last pine cone to harvest the nuts.......I do not enjoy winter but somehow wish fall would last until february, maybe this year? just maybe?

American ingenuity why walk when you can ride? love all the trailers in this tractor train! seen on the 4th of July at the Tahoe Keys Marina

sum sum summertime

We enjoyed a fabulous first day of summer! Have to enjoy it, since winter seems to last 10 months around here!!!!

motivation

a loaded word

I need to improve my health for the benefit of seeing my son grow up, longevity....i am an old mom.......but in reality it is not to gain apathy, more to be "RIGHT" I feel the urge to begin yoga, meditation, before the physical aerobic sweat and feel the burn "FUN" sometimes I think I need to be right too often, so i share thoughts, experiences and intimacies to make a point

just realizing my motivations may not be perfect, but it is important to think before we act or speak sometimes.

friends have names

sooo, I have been neglecting any posts, to be honest I upload photos daily to flickr and tend to get lots of verbiage in there but this is supposed to be my blog about the big noticings.

One such big noticing was that we had our first teacher conference for our 4 year old and it went great, he is bright and cheerful and seems to excel at socializing, what surprised me most was that he is one of the kids that greets all the other kids with "hi" every morning followed by their name, I had no clue he was using their names, since at home he always says he does not know the names of his friends......well this past tuesday morning I had some PROOF....in the parking lot as we walked towards the preschool he asked me if one of his friends would be there today and he said her name, and just as he said her name the window of an suv rolled down and a shout was heard "HI Emerson" to which he replied "HI" followed by her name...he was all smiles, we literally walked 3 steps and another large SUV window rolled down as the vehicle was moving and we heard "HI emerson" from a boy....to which emerson replied "HI" and the boy's name

On this cold tuesday morning, I had witnessed the evolution of our social butterfly, he now has his friendly nature coupled with the permanence of names and friends at school, he had always used the teacher's names correctly, but this was the first I had seen on his naming his friends.....of course he had told his grandparents that he had a girlfriend and her name.....but I just thought that was random luck that he remembered a name!