Some questions, some soup and some donuts

I have a question for all my blogging buddies. How do you respond to comments? I get a lot of comments that might leave a question or may make a statement that I would like to comment back on. But I don't know the proper protocol. Do you you email anyone who leaves a comment and provide them with their answer or make your additional comment. Or do you just comment on your blog so everyone can see the answer and read your comment? Somebody please tell me the proper way to respond since I love comments and want to be able to answer all questions properly.

Yesterday was cold and rainy all day. I thought it would be a good day to make some soup. So I did. It turned out really good. It is Cabbage Vegetable soup. It hit the spot last night.

It is a very easy and inexpensive recipe. It can feed a large family or is perfect for freezing. Here is the recipe. 

After I finished the soup, I was in the mood for some cinnamon donuts. I must tell you that it is not as easy as you think. There are so many different steps and I remember why I don't like to make anything that involves rolling out dough. I'm just not that "neat" at it. But it was fun and they are delicious. Here is a link to the recipe I used with two exceptions. I made cinnamon sugar, not chocolate glazed. And the recipe says to deep fry 5 minutes per side. I started that way and they just about burned. I think my donuts were smaller than they called for. Just watch them till they are golden brown and then flip them over.

Cake Donuts Recipe

I gathered all my ingredients together. (I was in Pyrex heaven getting to use some of my Pyrex like the little grecian bowl with butter and the flamingo pink ramekin.)

I sifted my flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda and cinnamon into my primary yellow Pyrex bowl. 

I beat the eggs until they were foamy. 

I added the sugar to the eggs like instructed. 

I beat those until it was thick and yellow. 

Then I melted the butter and added the milk and vanilla to that.

I poured that into the egg and sugar mixture until it was well blended. I would be lost without my Kitchen Aid mixer. I love that thing. 

Then I poured the liquid into the dry ingredients. 

I stirred until everything was well incorporated as per the recipe. 

I didn't take a picture of the dough chilling or me rolling it out and cutting them out because your hands do tend to get a little messy in the process and I wasn't about to touch my camera with those hands. The end product was not as gorgeous as I had hoped they would be, and I think I deep fried just a little too dark, but I rolled them in cinnamon sugar and had some with a cup of milk in my Hazel Atlas cup. They were really good. 

Change is good

Happy New Year! At the beginning of the New Year, I always like to change things and get more organized. It seems like I am always trying to get more organized. So it probably isn't going to happen, but I will continue to try. I did spend some time on my office so I can start the New Year off with a clean desk at least. I changed my curtains too. I took the pink and white flowered ones down and put up these green sheers. I like the look. 

I still have some boxes of craft stuff to go through and put in tubs or drawers in my little plastic chests. I'm going to work on that today. 

My craft table doubles as my Thirty-One work area. I just move the calendar pad and planner when I want to craft. Plus I have a card table that I get out if I need extra room. Most of my crafts are things I can do while setting on the couch, like my plastic canvas. But sometimes I need a table. 

These little baskets are going to get cleaned out today. They have assorted scrapbook papers, printing papers, etc. But they need to be organized since I was digging through them last week in a hurry and I left them a little jumbled. 

I rearranged the bookshelves that holds my knick knacks and pictures. I am going to use two of the shelves to hold my file trays so my desk is not always cluttered. 

I am really excited about the new turquoise rectangle basket by Thirty-One. I may have to get some more of those. 

Last October, our amenity for one of our meetings was the new spring Room for Two tote. I have decided to use mine to store my yarn. No matter where I store yarn, I have to dig through it to find what I want so I thought this would be a good way to store it. 

It set right in the floor of the craft closet so I can get to it real easily when I need yarn to start a new project. 

I am very happy with all I accomplished yesterday and I will probably spend most of the day today finishing organizing the files and papers and then cleaning the closet in the kids room. It had a lot shoved in it during Christmas and now it is a wreck. I hope everybody has a wonderful and prosperous New Year. 

Weekend Wrap Up

Time to close out 2012 today and tell you about my weekend. I spent all day Saturday de-Christmas-ing the house. It was a process because I kept getting side tracked. Funny how your house is one way for 11 months out of the year. Then you decorate for Christmas and one month later you can't remember where anything went. Can I blame it on old age?



Sunday I went to Sunday School and church. After church, I was talking to one of my dear friends and she had me a little gift. It was a Yankee Candle (one of my favorites). As I'm snapping pictures of my blog, I am upset because I left the candle in my bedroom and hubby is still sleeping. I'll insert the pic later. After that, I was leaving church and one of our teens came over to me and handed me something. I about freaked out. It was her first CD. She is just 15 years old and can sing like you wouldn't believe. I played this through about 3 or 4 times yesterday. It is really awesome. I really got a blessing when I heard her do Amazing Grace-My Chains are Gone. She is extremely talented and will go far.

After church, my daughter took me to a neighboring city to an antique store. She is the one who has found two of the three of my hard to find Cinderella bowls, so I thought maybe she could be my good luck charm.  We walked in the antique mall store and on the third booth she walked in, she said Mom there is a lot of Pyrex in here. Weren't you looking for one of these? I walked over to see what she found and it is the elusive green bowl to my primary bowl set. I have been looking for this ever since I started collecting in November 2011. 

I now have the entire set just like my Mom had when we were little. I was beyond thrilled. The fact that she found the green in a booth that was 50% off everything made it even better. 

She knows I want a flamingo pink casserole bowl and we saw a little small one in the 1/2 off booth so I snatched it up for just $3.50. Then she walks a couple a booths down and finds me the one I have been looking for and it was just $5.00. I couldn't believe I got the mommy bowl and the baby bowl both for under $10 total. I'll be applying some oven cleaner to the big one today to clean it up. But it is a beauty for sure. Now just need to find me a lid. 

I was very excited because you will recall that I received the pink flamingo pie plate on Christmas Eve from a Pyrex trade with another collector. 

So now I have three pieces in my flamingo pink collection. I need to see what else came in this color and I need to get some turquoise pieces to compliment it. 

So I went all summer and found only a couple of pieces of Pyrex and she has helped me find 5 of the 7 pieces that I have collected in December. It has been a good month for me and Pyrex. I told her she is going to be dragged pulled volunteering to go with me from now on. She said she it turned out it was kind of fun...sorta like going on a treasure hunt. So glad to have a daughter that "gets" me. 

But my Pyrex fun was not through. My first piece of luck in December was finding the small bowl that was the start of my Colonial Mist set that I wanted so bad. I didn't have any of the pieces and it was my dream set. Now here we are at the end of December and in one month, I have gotten three of the four. Well, I logged into my Facebook last night and Ms. Christa that traded me for my little bowl had posted to me "I have your Cinderella 444 if you want to trade." For those of you not familiar with the Pyrex numbers, that is the biggest bowl on the Cinderella set....the one I am missing. Do I want to trade? You betcha. So I have that on the way and I will have my Cinderella set completed. Am I excited? Oh yeah!!

After all the Pyrex excitement, we went to Walmart and I picked up this cute little dishtowel. 

And some new yarn. I wanted something really pink and this is really pink for a little box I am going to make. 

It was a long full day, but I was hungry for something good to eat. So I threw some potatoes in to bake then hulled them out and mixed butter and bacon and covered them with cheese and baked them again in a casserole dish. I kept some of the bacon and made me some scrambled eggs to go with it. It turns out that apparently I can cook when I want to. I just don't usually want to. But with hubby working some nights at dinner time, if I want something good to eat, I guess I will have to cook it. 

I have a lot of things I want to get done today and tomorrow to get ready for the New Year. So I am going to close for now. Please stay safe tonight. Hubby and I will stay in and have assorted cheeses and crackers along with fruits and other snacks as we play our annual Monopoly game.

Sunday Songs

I love gospel music and I love country music. So when I find country singers doing gospel music, I just really love it. Here are a few of my favorites.

Wrapping it up

I don't know about you, but I am wrapping it up for Christmas. Everything is coming down today. All the boxes are going back into storage and my house is getting back to normal.

It's been a quiet week. I missed Chatting on the Porch with Patrice and the Wednesday Hodge Podge. I'm hoping they will both be back next week. I did enjoy Five Question Friday and it made me want to buy a pair of Tom's. I went to their site and saw several pairs I liked.

I went nuts over this pair. If I was going to splurge on shoes, this is the pair I would probably buy. They would look adorable with jeans.

I don't particularly like this next pattern, but I love the fur lining. 

These would be cute for spring. Especially since I own a lot of nautical outfits. I may have to get these. 

Well, I spent some time last night narrowing down my Pyrex list so I can be more specific about what I'm looking for. Topping my list are two pieces I need to complete two sets. First is the 444 Cinderella Bowl in Colonial Mist. That is the one I want the most right now.

And second will be the green bowl for the primary colors set. I understand that is the hardest one to find in that set. 

Then I want to start on some new collections, but not necessarily whole sets...just a piece of two. I want a bowl of any kind in the Lucky in Love set. I want it to display for Valentine's and St. Patrick's day.

I want something in the rainbow strips to use to decorate for Easter. I would fill it with Easter grass and some cute wooden eggs.

If I couldn't find the rainbow stripes, I would go with Gooseberry or Butterprint.

For spring, I would like to do a display with the daisy print. 

Then for Mother's Day, I would like to decorate with a pretty friendship bowl because my Mom is one of my best friends. 

For summer, I think I would like the Eyes pattern. 

Then when fall rolls around, I would want to have some of the wheat bowls. 

Then for Thanksgiving I would like to have something in the Woodland Pattern.

And for Christmas, any of the Christmas patterns would be awesome to find.

And I already have the snowflake bowl for January decor.

That might seem like a lot of new Pyrex, but it is only 11 new pieces that I'm looking for. Considering most of my finds are under $10 (a lot of them just $2 or $3), it's not much of an investment at all. 

Finally Friday

I am so glad it is Friday. Okay, I know, I didn't work but 2 days this week. I can't help it. This week of the year is such a hard week to get back in the swing of things. Since I have gotten 4 new pieces of Pyrex by gifts and by trade in December, it has really given me Pyrex fever. I just can't decide what pattern I want to collect next. I went through the internet to find a few I liked. Well, let's just say that narrowing down the list is going to take awhile. I narrowed it down to these patterns that I like. Now I have to narrow it down even further to decide what I would actually collect. 

I also spent some time looking at the new Thirty-One spring catalog trying to decide what I want to order when we can start ordering from it. I know I want the Inside Out Bag, which I am hoping to earn for free in January. 

I also love the Easy Breezy Tote. This will be a great piece to have for summer fun when you pack to go to the pool or beach or even on a picnic. 

And I am loving the Coupon Clutch. The new patterns and products for spring are awesome. I can't wait till we can start shopping from the spring catalog.

I have started looking for ideas for Sunday School crafts. Our kids love glitter so I thought it would be cute to make a refrigerator magnets for notes. They would be so easy and the kids would love them. We could even glue a little red heart on them for Valentine's Day.

I would also like to see us make the old fashioned shoe box mailbox for collecting Valentine's. These bring back so many memories of doing this in elementary school.

I am going to cut out a new box pattern to get started on in my plastic canvas. I finished my nieces coasters and my sisters box. Time to make something for myself. I really fell in love with this box.I don't know that I will do this exact pattern. I just love the size of the box and the way the lid extends down longer than most on the sides. All though these colors do look good together. 

I like to do patterns using variegated yarn sometimes because you never know how it will look and it is always neat. Plus you don't have to change yarns so much. I'll have to decide later what I will use. But I do have a lot of variegated yarns.

As I was looking for yarn, I remembered some I had in a Donna Sharp Utility Tote. When I got it out of the closet I had to laugh. It is the same pattern as the purse and make up case I am currently carrying. Apparently I like that pattern.

I've been cleaning out 2012 files and boxing them up. Since I moved the wooden file cabinet in my office, I have downsized things and no longer need the tacky metal one. The guy who gave it to me is going to come and pick it up today. I want it out of my way so I can have room for a craft shelf in that corner of the room. Two of the four drawers were just being used to store CD's and miscellaneous stuff that I found other places to put. That's the problem with junk drawers...too much junk accumulates.