Wandering and Waffle Cookies

My mom posted this cute cupcake idea on Facebook.



So I went to Sugar And Meringue, and saw the cutest baked goods! I couldn't believe how sweet everything looked.
Look at these button cookies. They may be my favorite cookie ever.



I was just drooling, looking at the posts, knowing I have neither the equipment or talent to make any of them. Then I came across these waffle cookies.



Now, I do have a waffle iron. True, the one time I used it was a disaster. The batter stuck and burnt and I had to scrape the whole thing clean for a ridiculous amount of time and I swore off homemade waffles in frustration. But maybe because I had spent the past 30 minutes looking at pretty cookies I had absolutely no chance of making, I was willing to break out the old waffle iron for one I had a slight chance of making.

The concept was to make up a cookie recipe you like, then instead of baking them, pop them in the waffle iron and have them done in 90 seconds. Easy!

I wanted to try this low-calorie chocolate cookie recipe, mostaccioli. So Suzy and I whipped up a batch as a mother-daughter project. It would be a fairly easy recipe normally, but baking with Suzy is like having an affectionate monkey in the kitchen with you. Flour and cocoa get scattered everywhere. A little blond curly head bobs up and down incessantly at my elbow. That's only in the first 45 seconds. When she gets bored, at about the 50 second mark, she begins hanging from around my neck like one of those stuffed monkeys with velvro paws.

But I knew how sad and empty the house was the week she was gone, so I didn't mind! Still, when I plugged in the waffle iron, I gave her a jar of Nerds candy to go eat so she wouldn't hang around and burn herself. I am only a little bit embarrassed that I throw out candy to distract my child. A little bit more embarrassed that I had a jarof Nerds. Very embarrassed that I know longer have a jar of Nerds, and that my child spent the afternoon weeping from the sugar crash. Learn from my mistakes!

So here's what I did while my child was ruining her teeth:


You just plop a cookie scoop or tablespoon of dough in each section of the iron. Close it up, and in 90 seconds (but I didn't even time it) you have cookies! Like these:


The missing one just stuck a bit to the top iron, but came right off.



Suzy's tasting one. She's thinking about it...



She totally posed for this, the little ham. She didn't like it really! Maybe her taste buds were singed from Nerd overload.



And here they are all on a platter. The recipe calls for a chocolate glaze, but I was out of powdered sugar, so they are bare. They're not very sweet without it. I think they go great with coffee, but they won't be very popular with my family unless I get them iced. Maybe I can convince them to use maple syrup!



I will definitely make these again, when I have all the ingredients to make the chocolate glaze. I want to try other cookie recipes in the waffle iron too. If I get one that's a hit, I'll let you know!

One of Those Nights...

I hate it when I do this! Yes. Sadly, this is not the first time I've destroyed a utensil, but it is the closest I've come to burning down the house.

Baby Hats

I thought I'd show a few little hats I've knitted lately. These pictures would be cuter if I had an actual baby to model the hats! Maybe one day!
This one was supposed to be a bear. I think it looks more like a little pointy-eared fox.



This one will stretch over the baby's head - it won't look like a bulb on top of the baby's head, I promise!



And my favorite, the Sweetie Pie hat.



I took knitting up again this year. I like that it's a portable hobby that I can do easily in the car - when I'm not the driver, of course! Also, I haven't sewed since last fall, because my sewing room is in a state of shameful disarray. Hopefully that will be whipped into shape this week. But I think I'll keep knitting just the same...my sewing machine is just too unwieldy in the car.



And I wish I could post a cute button linking back to this blog, but I couldn't find the code. I don't know if that's an iPad problem or a user problem! So I linked up to Creative Me Monday at The Southern Institute.

Berry Breakfast

Yesterday I gave Suzy berries for breakfast - a lot of berries. These are her absolute favorite food. When I served them to her, she exclaimed, "It's like festivala day!"




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Happy Things in My Day

When Nate gave me an iPad, complete with cover that converts to a stand, extended length power cord, and docking station, he wanted me to use it to blog. He wanted to encourage me to write. But I didn't. So he bought the optional wireless keyboard to make typing easier than using the iPhone-like iPad keyboard. Still didn't blog. So he got me a handy dandy iPad Camera Connection kit, to upload pictures from the camera in a snap. This too sat around lonely and unused. But I feel bad about it. Here I am, with all this techy gear, and I don't even blog. So I set a small goal. A post yesterday, one today, and one coming on Monday.
(The above paragraph is funnier if read in the voice of Larry the Cucumber. Which was the voice in my head as I wrote it.)

So, in honor of my husband's diligent efforts, I took some photos of things that made me happy today.
Vegetables fresh from a neighbor's garden:










Tea in a cheerful lemon-decorated glass makes me feel summery:










Suzy standing by her favorite plant, the "pasta" plant. She also dressed herself today, and except for the sweater (two sizes too small) in June, she did a great job.










And look at that cute face. I could just eat her up!










Then she dressed up. She said she was Little Bo Peep. The umbrella is her shepherd's hook.









This was actually Thursday, but I thought it was so sweet. Suzy said she wanted to lay down, and when I checked on her, I found her and Bibi snuggled up together.









This make me happy probably because of some unsound character traits of mine. For the past week, whenever my family has left items shed all over the kitchen, living room, and my bedroom, I have put it in this laundry basket. The laundry basket is right by the door. No one has noticed either the basket or the missing items. My temptation is to make this a habit, and once a week hurl all of the clutter into the trash! I get this from my mother, who famously once threw out all the towels except for one per family member, because she was tired of washing them.









And Little Bo Peep finishing up her school work:







Homeschool - where your child can wear a tutu and sunbonnet to class. :o)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Drawing Near

We've had some rough times this year. We've also had some amazing blessings. I think in the fullness of time, we'll see that even the rough things were amazing blessings.

Dealing with Nate's cancer isn't as hard as it was the first two weeks after I found out. I think not just because we've been given such a good prognosis, but because he's just so healthy! He's more active than ever.

So my struggle in the last month hasn't been with fits of tears, or thoughts that I'll be in my mid-thirties living with my daughter in my mother's spare room. Instead, my main struggle has been spiritual apathy. It is embarrassingly ridiculous to admit that in the midst of all the good things God is doing for us, that I am in a funk of apathy. Maybe in trying to "keep a grip" on things (and myself) I have neglected going to the One who holds all things in His hands. Instead of filling my mind with Scripture, prayer, and spiritual songs, I have filled it with trivia.
There is a way out of apathetic funks though. There is forgiveness in Christ. "If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself." (2 Timothy 2:13) God is here, whether we pay attention or not.

I cannot say that I am completely, or even mostly, out of the funk. But I am in the process of coming out of it. Here are a few things that have helped me.

1. God gave me growing dissatisfaction with the very things with which I wasted my time. I began to feel vaguely unhappy about spending an evening reading articles about deadly organic bean sprouts in Germany and outbreaks of chlamydia in koalas. (Who knew?)

2. God gave me a sense of alarm about my spiritual state. I didn't focus my mind when praying, I didn't desire to read Scripture more than what I thought I "had to", and I couldn't follow sermons without my mind wandering. All this troubled me, and my spirit was restless.

3. God provided means of grace. There is probably a precise theological meaning to that phrase - and I'm pretty sure I'm not using it in that sense. What I mean by means of grace are things outside of the mental aspects of points #1 and #2 that God has used to draw me back to Him. Things like family Bible time. In the evenings, we all sit on the loveseat, and Nate leads us in a time of worship. It may be a Bible story, memory verses, catechism questions, singing, prayer, reading the children's version of Pilgrim's Progress. Not usually all of those elements at the same time, but three or four. Also, Nate has begun this past few days to wake me up (he is just about always up before me) with a Bible and devotional book ready. He didn't even know I was in a funk, he just wanted to do it! Another huge help had been a free audio Bible app called Bible.is. That has been so useful. I can listen to Scripture as I wash dishes or fold laundry. This continual hearing of Scripture has been a huge boon to my soul. Suzy likes it as well. She has listened to the book of Esther four times this week, Ruth once, and passages from Daniel and Genesis.

I have this verse on the inside cover of my prayer journal: "Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you." I am full of hope that God will continually draw "my mind's attention and heart's affection" back to Him. Here's to the death of spiritual apathy!

The First Grant

I heard an answered prayer today. Our church's adoption ministry, A Child's Soul, gave its first grant. I've been praying specifically for A Child's Soul to give it's first grant in 2011, so I am thrilled to see God working in this area. And only two months into 2011 too! This inaugural grant will be used bringing little boy in Ethiopia home to his forever family in Memphis.
I would love to see A Child's Soul grow and be a blessing to many other families seeking to honor God in adoption. Nick and Jennifer Moore, the couple that started A Child's Soul, have taught us so much about the needs of orphans, the picture of the gospel in adoption, and the beauty of a family made by adoption. After adopting two precious little boys, God laid it on their heart to help other families adopt. They started A Child's Soul, and began fundraising in the worst economic times our generation's ever seen. They sold purses, tshirts, beaded necklaces, baked goods, and gave every family in the congregation a baby bottle to fill with spare change. When the bottles are full, members bring them to church and empty them in a box designated for A Child's Soul Ministry. Jennifer said the bottles had been their biggest source of funds. This was a shock to me, because we're a tiny church, and don't have that much spare change! But God delights to use the humble things of the world to exhalt Jesus.
Nick and Jennifer work hard to advocate for the cause of orphans and adoption. God bless their diligence!

"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this:
 to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, 
and to keep oneself unstained from the world."
James 1:27