Lemon Cookies

Hello Friends,

Hi! How are you doing? I am doing well. The weekend has been very relaxing and enjoyable. Yesterday Little Man had his first basketball game. It was so fun and funny watching the kids play basketball. They are fourth and fifth graders and they just go for it. Sometimes they are all over the place and the throws can be kind of crazy. Little Man did really good though and one of his shots was super close. Most importantly he had fun.

Once we got home we had lunch and then it was time to get on the couch for the National Readathon Day that I told you about in the last post. Did any of you participate? Little Man read to me for half an hour and then I read to him for half an hour. Then we made our cookies followed by an hour of reading to ourselves.

The cookies we made are Lemon Sugar Cookies. Mmmm the lemon flavor is wonderful and it is one of Little Man’s favorite. We followed the recipe as written except that we did not roll them in sugar before baking. Also I did not have large lemons so i zested four smaller lemons.

Here are all the ingredients. I didn’t use the lemons pictured here because i started zesting one and it just didn’t smell lemon-y to me. My mom gave them to me and sad they were Meyer lemons, which are supposed to be the best lemons. I have bought them at the store and they smelled better then the ones she gave me. SoIi just used regular lemons.

We poured and mixed the dry ingredients.

Mixed the wet ingredients.

Then mixed the dry and wet together. And made cookie balls. 🙂

Baked them for about 10 minutes and after 2 minutes of cooling put them on the cooling racks.

They came out beautifully and taste so lemon-y and delicious! I tried squishing a bit to many on a cookie sheet so some of them ending up sticking together, which is why some looked like they have a flat edge, I had to do some surgery to separate them 🙂 My husband tried to say that those just counted as one cookie and didn’t need to be cut apart. We will be making these again!

After reading for an hour, I went into the craft room and managed to sew another one of my squares on that I mentioned on Friday. I also sewed the last and first square together to form the main body of the box. I still have to sew on the bottom and then the lid. Maybe I will try to work on it after I am done posting this.

Then we had homemade pizza. I was going to make my own dough but then I got lazy so when we were at the market store, they have fresh pizza dough you can buy. It;s really good so I just picked up some of that. We each had our own mini pizza. I made mine a veggie pizza. It has broccoli, red onion, red pepper, and mild peppers.

Well i have laundry calling me from the dryer so I will end here.Tomorrow we are all back to school and work. I don’t have any special plans for the week. I forgot to take pictures of the books that I told you the library made me get. So I will share those with you in my next post. I am thinking that will be on Tuesday.

So I wish you a wonderful a week!

Slow

Hello Friends! How is everybody doing? Work and School started back up for Little Man and I last week, so we have been getting back into routine and I have been a bit lazy in the evenings. We have had bitter cold and it seemed like everyday there was a little bit of the white stuff falling from the sky.

Last post I talked about getting my sewing table cleaned and i was successful. Less so when it came to pulling out some fabric and cutting it up, maybe this weekend. I have so much fabric and a lot of it i bought because i just like the pattern, so I want to do either strips or squares and make a quilt, something to use my stash up. It’s all fabric that i say “oh but it’s so pretty i have to save it.” This way all my “so pretties” can be in one place and treasured!

I also mentioned Little Man’s new game Forbidden Island. We have played a couple more times and still have not won!! The island beat us every time.

I think Little Man is starting to get a little frustrated. We have been halfway there a couple of times and he gets his hopes up and then an important piece of the island goes under water and the game ends. I have looked online to see if we are doing something wrong and it doesn’t seem like we are but some comments are about how easy the game is or how quick to beat and all i can think is “What are we doing wrong?” I am not giving up yet though! Little Man does enjoy playing it though so i know we will get there eventually.

I have been using my duct tape wallet that I mentioned in the last post and I love it! I don’t normally carry such a small wallet except for work because i don’t like to leave stuff like that in my locker so i just have a small wallet in my pants with the important stuff i need. My duct tape wallet is thin and much more fun than the boring brown one i was using!

I finished my P.D. James book that I was reading for the Bringing up Burns Book Challenge. Now I am on number two: A book that was made into a movie.  I chose Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larrson.

It is the third book in a series, it started with Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I am not sure an English version of the third book was ever made but i know they made a Swedish film. I read the first two books a couple of years ago right after the other and then i needed a break from Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. If you have not read them, they are great books and I feel like they move right along and are suspenseful. They do touch on some topics that some people might not want to read about and can be quite graphic.

In the past week I finished the puzzle that I you can see started in the last photo. It was a fun one and i love these Sheep World Characters!! I have only seen them in Germany.

Today I made some Oatmeal Raisin cookies. Half of them are a gift for a friend because it is their favorite cookie and the other half are for us to enjoy. I forgot how much i love homemade Oatmeal Raisin cookies. It has been years since I made some.  I had already started when i thought, oh I should share with you guys. I soaked my raisins in warm water while I got the dough together.

Here is the butter, sugar and eggs mixed up and i added the vanilla:

Then i put the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a bowl.

I mixed the wet ingredients with the dry and added the oatmeal and the raisins to be mixed in.

That part was a bit tough.The dough is very thick and sticky.

Then i put my dough in the fridge for about a half an hour so the cookies wouldn’t spread quite so much. Rolled them into balls.

And baked them up for 11 minutes and then let them sit on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes before putting them on a cooling rack.

Yummy!!!! I will be enjoying a couple with my bedtime tea!

I hope you all have a wonderful night or day depending on where you are! I will be back soon! No more long absences like this if i can help it.

Christmas and Cookies

Hello Friends! How are you? How was your Holidays? Mine was wonderful! On Christmas Eve we went to my father-in-law’s house to celebrate with him and his fiancée’s family. She made a delicious dinner of pot roast and lobster. She decorated the table beautifully.

When I said something about it, she said ” I just thought Forest and decided that was how I was decorating the table” We even got to take home the cups or pots on the table. In each one she had put a bulb and right now I can’t remember what she said it was. It will be a surprise for me 🙂

After we got home, we put on our Christmas Eve pajamas and sprinkled reindeer food outside, got out cookies and milk for Santa and off to bed we went!

In the morning we woke up to this.

We were all spoiled and received some wonderful things. We spent the rest of the day relaxing and enjoying our presents before it was time to make dinner.  I didn’t even think to take a picture of our dinner. Lane was in charge of the turkey and I made the stuffing, cheesy potatoes, head salad and a peanut butter pie. I did get a picture of the pie!

It didn’t set up as much as I was expecting it to. It was still super yummy to eat though! Everything was perfect!!

Now on to the cookies I mentioned in my post before Christmas. On Tuesday I was on a mission, I got all the butter out I needed and set it out to soften. I cleaned some dishes, got the cookies sheets, cookie cutters, cookie racks and mixing things out and ready. Then I did the most tedious part of making my cookies.

I ground my almonds. It actually wasn’t as bad as I remembered. After I got started on the first cookies, which actually became my second cookie since I didn’t read far enough in my recipe to the part that said the dough went in the freezer for 45 minutes. Oops. But no problem I just made the Vanillekipferl first.

Then back to the freezer for my Chocolate Snowcaps. It’s a chocolate dough that you roll in powdered sugar.

And then after they have baked they come out looking like this.

They have some instant coffee grounds in them and it really brings out the chocolate flavor and makes them so yummy!!

After those I made the ZimtSterne, (Cinnamon Stars, that’s not the recipe I use but it gives you an idea) which are my absolute favorite cookies ever. They have this slight crunch on the outside but are so moist and gooey on the inside. Yum!!!!

I saved the ones that are the most work for last. These are the Spitzbuben, i have also heard them called Linzer cookies. There is lots of cookie cutting and rolling of the dough and in and out of the oven. They are worth it 😉

Then I put Raspberry jelly on the bottom part of the cookie. Put a top on it and dust them with powdered sugar.

Christmas cookies are some of the best!!

Also in my last post I told you about the package i received from my friend Jules. I have opened all her little Advent surprises now.

So much fun stuff!! When she said she still had quite a bit of Diddl stuff she was finding, I never imagined all this! Every bit of it is a new treasure!! I can’t wait to look at the books and postcards more in-depth. The new Diddl friends are already meeting my old Diddl friends! It’s a Diddl party over here! Thank you again so much Julia!!!

I hope everyone enjoys their weekend!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Today was a beautiful day and Little Man even had the day off from school so we made the best of it!

First we went grocery shopping, Little Man would probably say that was the worst part of the day 🙂

After lunch we made pine cones again. Here is one of them:

Then we went to the park to slide

and swing.

Then we came home for a snack and we decided to make a picnic out of it.  Little Man loves picnics and has been wanting to have one for quite some time.

After our snack we washed Little Man’s wagon-it needed it.

While the sun was doing its job and drying the wagon we made the dough for our cookies.

After you wash a wagon you HAVE to go for a ride in it…

(He is in mid-song here)

A ride to another park.

Then we walked back home slowly enjoying the sun on our backs

After taking my mom to her Tango Class we stopped to get invites for Little Man’s b-day and look at yarn at Joann. 

Yep, i got some yarn but it’s not for me-it’s for Steggie. I know i said i was gonna hold of on it but i think it will be a quick knit, he really wants it and Mommy is weak and can’t say no.  It’s Vanna’s Choice, one of the only yarns that had all the colors Little Man wanted.  The colors are a little different then in the pattern but not much.

After we got home it was almost bedtime but i quickly frosted the cookies so we could have one on the day they were meant for. My planning was a bit off with the cookies today but it was all worth it and we had a great day. I hope you all did too.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

The recipes for the cookies is here.  I made a small change, I left out the Almond extract and put in some lemon juice and lemon zest. I also added some lemon juice to the frosting.  Super Yummy-one of the best sugar cookies i have had so far.