Save Me, Please.

I've quit my 3 year long job.  Almost exactly on the day that I started there.  Minus a couple of days.   It's strange to think that it's done.   That I don't have to go to a job that I don't really like almost every day.  I mean, my job was a really good job.  Flexible hours, didn't have to work on the weekends, didn't have to stay past 6 pm at latest, and it wasn't difficult... that is until you had to deal with an angry customer. 

What am I going to do instead?  Start a business for wedding flowers.  While I work part time at (maybe) a flower shop.  It's kind of like my child hood dream... to work at a flower shop or a green house.  Flower shop was the better of the two.  

Starting a business is scary.  Ever since it became a possibility I've been looking on Martha Stewart.com trying to do my homework.  There are so many things about business that I don't even know.  Taxes, how much to charge, what's legal and what's not... like I said, I have a lot to learn.  I have books to buy and a business name to think up.  And customers to get.  That I will have to really pray for.  All my friends are pretty much already married or won't be for a few years.  Great.  Seems impossible.  Scary, scary.  I need to pull out a planner.

Well, that's the update for now.  Maybe more later. 

See ya, 

Merry Christmas,

Marcie

 

COOKIES!!!

I decided that I am pretty much the worst craft/food blogger. I will tell you what I made, but not tell you how. And ONCE, my friends, just once, I provided you with pictures of my crafts and they weren't even very good. (I'm sure you've noticed.) Maybe if my photography skills were a little better than I would maybe post some more pictures. I should practice.

Speaking of things that I've made, I'm starting on some golden yellow mittens and some deep fuschia hand warmers. I have almost a whole mitten done and I have finished one hand warmer unless I want to put a thumb on there. Also I have a fabulous recipe for Molasses Crinkles that I might be able to remember and I took a wack at Baklava. (It was not my best attempt.)

Molasses Crinkles:
3/4 cup softened butter
1 C. packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 C. Molasses

2 1/2 C. Flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. cloves.
Granulated sugar
(I use salted butter so that I don't have to measure salt. But if you use unsalted, I'm pretty sure it's about 1/4 tsp of salt.)

Blend you butter, sugar, egg, and molasses in a bowl until smooth and creamy. Then add the rest of your ingredients. Mix thoroughly. Chill for 1 hour.

After it's chilled, pre heat oven to 350 deg. F. Take dough in teaspoon fulls and roll into balls. Then roll the cooking in a small bowl with granulated sugar until a light layer completely covers the cookie. Place on cookie sheet 1 inch apart. Bake for 10 min. or until they have crinkles on the top.

These are PERFECT coffee cookies. The spices mixed with coffee are AMAZING. I made these two days in a row because they were gone by night. Oh, and the recipe is from Betty Crocker and it makes a little over a dozen.

Hope you like them as much as I do!

Some Kind of Lovely

It's cold and raining.  Comforting and beautiful, according to myself.  It rained the whole month of July and secretly I loved it.  I love the sound as it patters steadily against the roof.  The smell of wet ground.  The dark dampness of the day.  How it actually feels good to cook in front of a hot stove, or bake with a hot oven, in the middle and supposed to be hottest part of the summer. 

And if you're like me, you go to sleep with your window open so that your nose is cold but the rest of your body is warm under the covers.  Constant rain makes me happy.  I need to live in Oregon.  Badly.

I got all of my wedding pictures back last week... or two weeks ago?  I can't remember.  I also can't remember if I told every one that my weekend went according to plan and I got every thing on my list finished.  It all turned out good.  I even did some extra stuff.

And last weekend I made tiramisu.  Which was a scary thing considering that I've tasted the REAL thing before.  It turned out really good, though.  Even compared to Italy's tiramisu... which is a wonderous thing all in itself.  I should go to allrecipes.com where I found the recipe and tell of the good news.  

My brother in-law came in to stay with us this last weekend.  He's a good kid.  Fun to be around if he's not trying to get on your last nerve. (Which happens more than once.)  Secret to him and my sister... I'm trying currently to get them to like each other.  They're a perfect couple.  Alex even thinks that they would be good together.  

Here's hoping, I guess.

Steel Magnolia and Parmesian Noodles.

Last night I came home from work, made my husband some Parmesan noodles with baked cherry tomatoes and basil and garlic bread, and watched the last half of Steel Magnolias. After which, I cleaned my entire kitchen and did a load of laundry. I'm SO industrious. Now I just have to do the hateful job of writing out 50 plus "Thank you," cards for my wedding which happened 2 months ago. So I'm pretty sure that cancels out some of the "Industrious woman" standard.

Just to make sure I lived up to my weekend list, I not only watched one movie, but two and a half. I only slept deeply one of the two nights, but at least I did sleep. (Sunday is not considered a weekend night because you still have to wake up early the next morning for work.)
Friday night I stayed up trying to clean the lower level of my house, but instead my husband talked me in to watching good will hunting and at 11 pm the lady that was doing the flowers for my friends wedding called to see if I could come over for second opinion and to help. I left her house and got home at 2:30. Knowing that I had to be awake by 7 the next morning I didn't get to sleep until 3 am. And that sleep included waking up every hour to make sure I hadn't over slept.
I got all of the decorating stuff done, the wedding was pretty, and I was in bed by 10 pm. (I watched a second movie.)
Then on Sunday we bummed around with friends where I cleaned my kitchen and watched the first half of Steel Magnolias.
Now that you have a full account of my weekend and my first day of the week to come, I shall leave you with 2 things,
1) Parmesan and garlic is a meal that will have your mouth smelling like puke.... even if you thoroughly enjoyed your dinner.
2) 2 1/2 movies is WAY too much for a weekend. Spread it out a little bit.

Peace Out,
Marzipan

Fix Your Eyes and Get Up

You should have been there... yesterday I was just about to start blogging again while I was sucking the chocolate off of the chocolate covered coffee beans. You missed it. Oh well... you snooze, you loose, I guess. So I have made a list of all the things I wish to get done this weekend:

1) Help my friend with her wedding. Which will take all of Friday night and Saturday. Most of weekend GONE.
2) Clean my room and bathrooms and kitchen. (Most of Sunday GONE)
3) Watch a movie and sleep deeply.

Which concludes my weekend. I will feel like I never left work.
I hate weekends like that. The ones where your time off is just as busy as your work schedule.
There's never a 2 hour nap; or even a 20 minute nap, for that matter. You just go, go, go. Which is why I will get as much as possible done for this wedding before hand so that I won't have to do it the day of.
Weddings aren't that bad. You just have to get jazzed for them before they get here. I was excited for this wedding, but then I found some thing shiney (which was getting my house clean and not doing ANYTHING during the weekends) and that completely distracted me. So now I'm having to knock myself back in to it. I think it's just too soon after my own wedding for me to get excited about doing another one. I wish I had some one else to do my wedding so that I didn't have to do anything... but then again, I like it when people say that it was beautiful. That way I can take all the credit.

For Goodness Sake.

Considering the fact that I left you off with an extremely bad day and hopes of rejuvenation through a haircut two weeks ago, I figured it would probably be pretty good to update my current situation.
My hair cut did NOT make things better. It made things quite worse, actually. Infact, I got in the car and started crying. It was a BAD haircut. And because it was a holiday I had to wait almost a week before I could get it fixed. So now my hair is fixed. And it feels so good to wake up and like what you see in the mirror.
I got myself a little pie vent in the shape of a black bird. It's so cute. I'm going to make a strawberry rhubarb pie just so that I can use it. I'll try to take a picture of my pie and the bird vent in it. Yay!
There was something else I wanted to say but I forgot. Goodbye for now!

Slight Possibility.

Today went from good to gradually worse. Maybe it will get better after I get my hair cut. And then even better than that after I go home and bake in my working as of last night oven. And then even better after I go to bed and drown out all of today's stupid faults with dreams that I don't even remember the next morning. There's hope. There's hope.