Monday, January 31

Snickerdoodles

I've been a bad blogger.  Again.  I haven't even been busy, just haven't really had much to post about.  A couple weeks ago I made positively delicious snickerdoodle cookies courtesy of Darla, aka Sugarbear.  I named my mixer Darla, in honor of her delicious and creative desserts.  One reason I love her blog so much is because she loves Harry Potter, much like myself.  Also, she's already been to Harry Potter World at Islands of Adventure (which totally makes me jealous.)  When she got home, she tried to recreate butterbeer, which I plan on trying sometime in the near future.  Basically, she's just awesome.

And her snickerdoodle cookie recipe rocks!

So I gave it a shot.

Flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, salt, butter, shortening, sugar, eggs and cinnamon

Snickerdoodles
Makes 3 dozen
Ingredients


2 3/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter, softened
1/4 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups sugar, plus 3 tablespoons for coating
2 eggs
1 tablespoon cinnamon for coating


Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line baking sheet(s) with parchment or spray with cooking spray.

In a large bowl, combine flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt; set aside.

In a large bowl, or the bowl of a standing mixer, cream together butter and shortening. Beat in 1 1/2 cups of the sugar until well combined. Scrape your bowl bowl and add the eggs, one at a time, mixing each until well combined. Add half of the flour mixture and mix until just combined then add the remaining flour mixture. Continue beating until everything is incorporated.

Combine 3 tablespoons sugar with 1 tablespoon cinnamon for the coating.

With 1 tablespoon of dough at a time, roll into balls and throughly coat with cinnamon-sugar. Place the balls on prepared cookie sheets, leaving plenty of room between each one.

Bake for 9-11 minutes or until edges are just browning and centers are still puffy.

Transfer to a wire cooling rack.




They were so delicious and made 52 cookies (even though she said 3 dozen.  


In other news, my best friend Brandon turned 24 on Friday so we went downtown Saturday night.  It was a lot of fun.

Brandon and I


Besides that and soaking up the semi-warm weather this past weekend, not much has been going on.  I have a job interview tomorrow, so hopefully that will bring good news.

I will share a funny anecdote from this evening.  M hurt his back lifting computer servers at work today, so he placed a to-go order at this Asian place by our house and I was to go pick it up.  Our street is off the main road and the Asian place is in the Target shopping center two street lights away (so at most, 2 minutes.)  The light turned green to turn off my street onto the main road and the car in front of me turned onto the wrong side of the median into on-coming traffic.  I was pretty amazed as I watched them reverse in the middle of the road to turn into the correct lane.  I picked up our take-out and headed home.  I turned at the light back onto the main road and the car in front of me turned onto the wrong side of the median.  I couldn't believe it!  Two cars within a half mile of each other in 10 minutes.  This car didn't reverse it, instead they just drove their sedan right over the concrete median.  It was just ridiculous, but quite amusing to me!


Wednesday, January 26

Wee Bit Wednesdays

{one} how tall are you?
I think you mean "how short are you?" 5'2''

{two} besides bills, what do you spend most of your money on?
Going out to eat and shopping (mostly clothes)

{three} what are your three favorite websites?
Umm, facebook, amazon, and sporcle

{four} what brand of tennis shoes do you prefer?
My running shoes are aisics, but I don't wear tennis shoes regularly...

{five} what food can you absolutely not stand to eat?
oh, lots of things, but high on the list is tomatoes, green beans, and squash

{six} How many pairs of jeans do you own?
Too many to count.  Like 6?

{seven} if you could have any job, what would it be?
One of those people who give tours of historic homes/locations.  Or a writer.  Or a professional roller coaster tester.

{eight} have you ever ridden in an ambulance?
nope.

{nine} how many pillows do you sleep with?
one.

{ten} on a scale of 1-5, how organized are you?
3.  I'm organized in some aspects of me life, but messy in others.

Monday, January 24

Weekend in Review

My not so splendid Thursday night produced icy road conditions, so I opted to take my time getting to work on Friday.  I also decided to leave early in case "the roads refroze..."

When M got home Friday night we went to eat Mexican at our favorite place.  Afterwards we went to see Lovers and Liars (M's friend's band) play a show at the Rutledge.  The show was great and we had a wonderful time.  We saw 3 out of the 4 bands perform.  I loved Oh No Fiasco.  They're from Knoxville and during their set, the lead singer yelled "Go Ice Bears" into the mike.  I LOLed.  
When we got home (around 1:30) I crashed while M made bacon.  We woke up Saturday and made breakfast.  Once we got ready we went shopping.  M got some clothes at Macys and a pair of shoes.  I bought a couple tops and M bought me a dress as a Valentine's present.  

After we picked up his car at the dealership we went to Best Buy to buy a new receiver for our TV.  Our old one didn't have a remote and we were sick of having to get up every time we needed to adjust the volume. 


Isn't it purty?


 M found the one he wanted and we headed home to set it up.  We had initially planned on going to see another band we like, Heypenny, play a concert, but but the time had set up the system it was 9pm and we hadn't had dinner, so we grabbed a bite and then came home to watch Dexter.

We woke up Sunday, ate breakfast, and I got ready.  I had planned on going to the Frist to see The Birth of Impressionism, but I had a breakdown when I dropped a pill down the sink (I don't know why I've had a case of the dropsies lately) and decided I didn't want to go.  
M suggested we go for a walk, which helped, and then after that we went to TJMaxx to look for a stand to put the blue ray player on because it's too deep to sit on our mantle.  We found one we liked, but decided we'd look at Target before we bought one.  We did, however, find a piece of art to hang on the big wall in our living room.  I'll post pictures once M hangs it.  We looked for a stand at target, but didn't find anything we liked/was big enough.  We had to go back toward the hardware to find the right hooks to hang our art and M steered toward the televisions, again.

We had looked right after the new year and he found one he liked, a lot, but decided against buying it.  So this time around he looked at it, but walked away.  On our way back out, we walked by again and he impulsively decided to buy it.  This is wonderful because M never impulsively buys anything. 
We headed home (after finagling the piece of art and tv in my tiny Honda Accord) and set it up.  It looks awesome and works even better with the sound system we bought.  

I had dinner plans Sunday night with my college roommates, so M and I set it up quickly before KJ and her husband came over (KJ was coming to ride with me and Joel was gonna hang with M and have guy time.)  They watched the Steelers v Jets game while we headed to PM.  

I was so excited because it is impossible to get all five of us together (with two nurses with irregular schedules, it gets tricky) and we had finally found a night we could all get together.  Erin texted me about an hour before and said she wasn't feeling well and wouldn't be able to make it.  Sad news!

JBJ, Dan, KJ and I had a great time, though, catching up.  One thing I love about these ladies is that no matter how long it's been since we've seen each other, it seems like no time has passed.  We laughed and carried on for three hours.  I didn't even realize how late it was until KJ mentioned it was 9:30.  We got there at 6:30.  The food was great and reasonably priced.

One of the best outcomes of  the evening was that it not only improved my mood, but we worked out a night that we think we can get together once a month so we don't go as long without seeing each other.  

M and I went to bed once I got home and I was so unhappy when my alarm went off this morning.  I'm equally unhappy that those pesky weather-folk are predicting more snow for the next couple days.

If I wanted snow, I'd move up north.  There's a reason I live in Tennessee!

Here's to hoping this'll be the last snow of the season (I'm praying that Punxsutawney Phil doesn't see his shadow.  I can't take much more of this.

 
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