The Perfect Christmas Gift

My daughter has told me that a child only needs three Christmas gifts, something they want, something they need and something to read.  I rolled them all into one and went Christmas shopping for a present for me.

Textured with Kim Klassen's kk_minus43 and sharing with Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday.

A busy week

It's been a busy week here.  We don't often go to the big city, but this week we went twice to pick up insulation for the garage and a little Christmas shopping. It's very cold here, but the highway was clear after last week's storm.

Still on the highway, but in the city there are massive power lines.  As ugly as they are, but cool in a certain way, we'd be a little lost without power.

Shooting out the window of the truck I happened to get a little burst of light while trying to get a shot of the snow mountain in the parking lot.

Back at home and back in the warm kitchen, we decided on roasted winter vegetables for dinner.  A little salt and pepper then topped with chopped garlic and scallions and baked in the oven.  Oh my, they were delicious.

My son and daughter-in-law gave me a new cookbook, The Complete Book of Bread & Bread Machines so I tried a new recipe, French Dimpled Rolls.  I lost the dimple during the proofing and baking, but they were so good.  The recipe can be found all over the internet if you google French Dimpled Rolls.

I hope you all had a good week and thank you for such a warm welcome back.

Sharing with

I don't really know where to begin this post.  I took a look back and I made four posts this year, not very consistant.  I must admit, I have had a couple of rough years with the appearance of Alzheimer's in both of my parents, their move to a nursing home and ultimately both of their deaths in the past year.

This year I also lost my job, a job I thought I would be at until retirement, but that's another story for another time.  So many changes in two years, sometimes it's been a little hard to wrap my head around it all.

Good things have also come out of the past two years.  I now have three little grandson's, one four year old and two one year old's.  I am also employed part time, so I'm not sure if I'm semi-retired or semi-employed.

Time has started to heal and it's time to move forward.  I couldn't think of a better place to come back to, but with Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday.  She has been such an inspiration in my photography life.

Here's what I came up with for this week's Texture Tuesday.

I have a vase with bamboo sitting on the table and the sun was streaming through.  The first thing I thought of was using the lens baby with a star filter.  Not being close enough, I added a 4x macro filter.  The photo came out as I wanted with the unfocused light appearing as stars, but the backgound was a little boring, so I added a layer of Kim's autumnburst.  All was going well, but a little blank spot was calling out for an aligator from our trip to Louisanna.

If you've made it this far in the post, thank you for visiting me today.

Texture Tuesday

It's been such a long time since I've used my camera and posted to this blog.  Hopefully, it will start to be a regular occurrence.  Here's my photo for Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday.  Peonies are now in full bloom in the yard.  I simply added a layer of Kim's texture letgo.

A very good week

It has been a very good week.  Work has gone well, I'm finished year end accounting, month end reports and all accounts have been analyized, ready for the audit.  Seven working days to complete it all, not bad at all. The healthy eating has been going well, drinking lots of water and on Friday I got back on the scale and lost a whole pound.  Whoo hoo, but at least I didn't gain a pound.  I'll continue on and I'm sure some day I'm sure I see positive results.

Last week did bring some good news.  I joined a group on Flickr, 52 in 2014 where each week has a theme and voting for your favorites  Week one's theme was Abstract and my Bubbles placed in the #3 spot.

Week # 2 ending, today, here's my entry for Bokeh.  This was taken with a lens baby composer and 4x macro filter.  The shaped bokeh is done with the lensbaby bokeh kit and a tin foil background.

It's been nice getting back into photography.  The past few years I've done a 365 with it slipping during the past year.  With family, work and life getting in the way I hoping this 52 group will get me shooting again. I hope you all had a good week and next week is even better.  Thanks for stopping in.

Time for a healthy change

We have a little white box on the bathroom floor, which to be very honest, I have avoided the past few months.  I stepped on it today and oh my, no more puddings for me.  I did join Weightwatchers 5 months ago and paid for a 6 month membership.  The six months ends a week before we leave for a vacation in Maui and I thought at the time since I paid for it, I would use it.  Wrong.

Signing into Weightwatchers and entering my weight, I find I've gained a few since my last visit to the page in August.  So time to get serious.  There's no way to lose what I want before vacation, but time to get serious.

A recipe for baked oatmeal on Pinterest from greenlitebites caught my eye a couple of days ago.  I love oatmeal.  Doesn't really matter if it's cooked for breakfast, baked in a cookie or on top of a crisp and I love muffins, so the recipe was the best of two worlds.  After the scale episode this morning, time to bake oatmeal.  I basically followed the recipe posted but made a few tweaks, so I'll post mine.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Mix together in a large bowl and let sit 5 minutes.

2 mashed bananas
1 cup skim milk
1/4 cup Splenda
2 beaten eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tablespoon Baking Powder
3 cups Oats (I used large flakes)

Stir in 2 cups frozen berries, still frozen.

Divide batter into 18 muffin cups.  I lined mine with paper liners and high recommend this.

Bake 20 - 30 minutes or just the edges just start to turn brown.

Ready for the oven

Fresh from the oven

Best eaten with a spoon if eating while still hot

Oh my, these were so good.  Will I make these again?  You bet.  Best of all only 2 ww points.  I think they're going to be a perfect part of a breakfast-to-go or a mid morning snack.  Now that I've made my "healthy eating" declaration, I figure I'll be accountable.

A New Year

It's 2014 and a new year.  Last year my "word" was "create".  I'm afraid I didn't do so well with the word, so this year I've decided not to have a word.  It will be a free year for me, trying to find my creative side again.  No words, no rules.

Lately on Facebook and the cooking channel I've been seeing a lot of puddings.  I did not grow up with Bread Pudding and I don't remember ever having it before.  Deciding to create something new for the new year I did some searching and came across this website mountainmamacooks with a recipe for Brown Sugar Bread Pudding with Caramel Sauce.  Looked to be easy enough so I gave it a try.

I thought if raisins were good, then apple might be as well.  I had a few slices of Granny Smith apples in cinnamon left over from Christmas Eve, chopped them up and added them with the raisins. Bread, milk, eggs, raisins, apples and yogurt = a well balanced meal.

Oh my, it is delicious.  Not sure how I've survived all these years without eating bread pudding.

Instead of the Caramel Sauce, I had it with frozen Vanilla Yogurt.  Yum.

I hope that you all have a  very happy, creative and prosperous 2014 and may you find a way to make your dreams come true.