Thursday, March 06, 2008

We had this for dinner last night. Fantastic and highly recommended. The one key ingredient change was diced tomatoes for the tomato sauce.

[X-posted from Bead on a Wire Blog]

The spring open house is tomorrow. I’ve still got some things to do to prepare, but I’m basically ready. I’m excited to see the women I met at the open house in November - this time I’ll have my guest book ready to get them on my mailing list.

So here are some tidbits leading into the weekend:

1. My mother, the tea merchant, gave a sample of her Lucky Charms blend tea to my husband and me the other day. I could smell the luscious chocolate and mint through the baggie! We brewed the pot that day and it was wonderful. And we loved the little green clovers!

2. I bought some soap samples from SoapDeli at Etsy.com to give away as promos to customers when they make a purchase. They arrived yesterday and they smell so delicious.

3. I bought new shopping bags from Nashville Wraps. I had been using their white gloss bags with handles, but I was low in inventory and afraid that I’d run out, so I ordered more. This time I bought burgundy kraft bags with handles (I got 25), which match my branding/logo and also white merchandise bags (like you get at card shops) for small purchases.  They only sell them in lots of 1000, so I think I’ll have those bags for years!

4. Tonight I need to finish the repair job for the proprietress of Uncle Sam’s Niece, our open house hostess, so that I can take that to her tomorrow. And if I can manage it in the evening, I’d like to make at least one pearl necklace to have in my display along with the pendant necklaces I already have ready.

One last thing - all of the items in my Etsy shop will be invisible for Friday and Saturday since I’ll be taking everything to the open house. So if you have your eye on something, please buy it today because it may not return to my shop on Sunday!

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Thinkling Jared posts on forgiving oneself. Please go read the whole post. The money quote:

You don’t need to forgive yourself. You need to ask forgiveness or grant it. You need to repent or rebuke. You need to claim the saving grace of Jesus, and I actually think that feeling burdened by your own sin is a great way to walk in awe of that grace.

Yes!

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

I just spent the last hour or so going around and around with Useless One #2 on things that can’t be resolved until Amazing One returns on Monday. I’m telling you, this woman is amazingly slow at getting points.

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Yesterday’s baking masterpiece was homemade hamburger buns since I had thawed ground beef for dinner and it was warm enough to fire up the grill for burgers. So Beau made the dough in the breadmaker and I finished the rising, shaping, and baking of them. They turned out amazing and perfect! The recipe:

1 cup water
2 Tbsp butter or margarine (we use butter flavored Crisco because of Beau’s milk thing)
2 Tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt
3-3.25 cups bread flour
(3 Tbsp nonfat dry milk) - Beau left this out
2 tsp yeast

He set the maker for 1:50 on the dough setting. Remove dough from machine. Punch it down and let rest for 20 minutes. Form 12 balls (we got 10), make bun shapes and flatten. Cover and let rise 1 hour. Bake in preheated 375F oven for 15-20 minutes or until golden.

I did an egg wash, but that’s optional. They only took 15 minutes in my oven. I used parchment paper on the baking sheet, as I always do for baking.

For the burgers I just mixed in some Meat Magic into the beef and then grated some chipoltle seasonings over each side before putting them on the grill. They could have used a wee bit of salt, we thought as we ate them, but they were delicious.

We will never buy hamburger or hot dog buns. And we determined that the only hot dogs our kids (assuming we ever have more than Jesse) will eat will be kosher to avoid the preservatives. Except for the dogs bought at baseball games, of course.

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I love now that scientists are saying we’re now heading into a period of global cooling. I more especially love that Lord Monckton and others are going after Al Gore and his inconvenient movie at the UN conference on climate change. Beautiful. Oh, and the Weather Channel founder is in on this, too. Ha!

I’m going home now.

Monday, March 03, 2008

Shut yer piehole.

That is all. Thank you. Good night.

We started to watch The Black Dahlia, but neither of us like film noir and the first 5 minutes annoyed us, so we stopped watching and deleted it from the DVR (I had recorded it from cable months ago). We moved on to another movie I had recorded, Hollywoodland.

I neither loved nor hated Hollywoodland. I found it very sad.

The complicated life and controversial suicide of George Reeves is investigated by a fictional private detective who finds that there are reasons to suspect that Reeves may not have killed himself after all…

Ben Affleck gets a lot of crap about his general acting skills, but I think he’s a better actor than people give him credit for and I thought he was actually very good in the roll of George Reeves. He must have studied old Superman episodes, because in the scenes where Reeves was shooting the show he did really well at getting the tone of Reeves voice and his line delivery.

Generally, the movie was just kind of dull even with pretty solid acting. The conspiracy theories of Reeves’ possible murder (as opposed to suicide) were interesting ideas, but I found that it didn’t matter ultimately. And the crude language grated on my ears after a while.

My ratings? The Black Dahlia gets 0 out of 5 stars. Hollywoodland gets 2.5 stars out of 5.

Saturday, March 01, 2008

I’m still experimenting with the cake mix cookies. Yesterday’s edition was made from your basic chocolate cake mix. Hands down they are the best of the bunch so far.

Chocolate Oat Cookies
makes 2-4 dozen, depending on the size of the cookies

1 chocolate cake mix
1 cup quick oats
1/2 cup oil
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350F degrees. Line baking sheet with parchment paper. Mix all ingredients together well. Measure out portions of dough using spoon. Roll the dough into round balls. Place on baking sheet. Press flat with greased glass bottom. Bake for 10 minutes. Let cool for 1 minute before removing to a cooling rack.

Easy. Delicious. Perfection.

The printer, that is.

I was printing my jewelry hang tags when the printer stopped and the ink light came on. So I called Beau, who was out running errands, to ask him to buy ink, too. He did, I installed it, and the printer still won’t work. We replaced both of the ink cartridges.

I think I killed it because I use Avery business cards to make my hang tags. And I print them double-sided. But the extra perferation that Avery uses now, means that when they rolls through the printer the second time, they get hung up by the overhanging cover. So I was propping up the door a teeny bit to ease the paper through. It was working fine until the third page.

It’s an older HP hand-me-down from my parents, but it worked great. Actually, we had a bit of trouble with it a few weeks ago when I was working on my accounting/taxes stuff.

We really can’t afford a new printer. Of course, we can write it off our taxes next year as a business expense since I use it almost exclusively for the business at this point. So I’m on the hunt. Any recommendations for a good color printer that’s under $100?

The Painted Veil is one of the quietest movies I’ve seen in a long time. It was quiet on many levels - the lack of noise, a soothing soundtrack, not a lot of dialogue. The scenery is gorgeous. The acting is solid. The story is compelling. It works on all levels.

A British medical doctor fights a cholera outbreak in a small Chinese village, while also being trapped at home in a loveless marriage to an unfaithful wife.

Based on the novel by W Somerset Maugham, I don’t know how well it was adapted, but I liked the story enough to want to get the book to read.

TPV gets 4.5 stars out of 5.