Holly’s Happenings

At one of the forums that I frequent, someone recently posted a thread asking us to share our favorite cookie recipes. She posted one for Ginger Snaps that I’m DEFINITELY going to have to try sometime because it sounds AWESOME! So I’m going to share with you two of my all time FAVORITE cookie recipes, both of which I just made the other day…LOL! But be warned, they BOTH are very addicting and could easily make it necessary for you to have to enter a cookie drug rehabilitation center once you start eating them!

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon backing soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter, melted
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup white sugar
2 tablespoons vanilla
2 eggs
1/2 package milk chocolate chips

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Line cookie sheet(s) with parchment paper or grease thoroughly.
2. Mix/sift flour, baking soda and salt and set aside.
3. In a medium sized bowl cream together butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended. Beat in vanilla and eggs until creamy. Mix in the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda and salt) until well blended. Stir in milk chocolate chips by hand with a wooden spoon.
4. Drop cookie dough onto prepared cookie sheet(s) by tablespoon, making sure they are about 3 inches apart.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes or until the edges get a golden color. Remove from oven, allowing them to cool on cookie sheet(s) for a few minutes before moving them to wire racks or table to cool completely.

This batch makes approximately 4 dozen cookies if you make them on the smaller side, less if you make them larger, so if you want to make a large batch I would suggest mixing up a double batch of the ingredients. I’ve never really cared for Chocolate Chip Cookies, but I LOVE these ones! They remind me quite a bit of the soft version of Chips Ahoy cookies that you can buy in the stores!

Ingredients
3 cups sugar
2 cups Crisco oil
4 eggs
2 teaspoons baking soda (dissolve in liquid ingredients)
6 teaspoons baking powder
2 cups buttermilk (I’ve used both the fresh and the powdered, both work fine!)
6 cups flour
3 teaspoons vanilla
Colored sprinkle sugar

The MOST important things about this recipe are A). It makes a HUGE amount of batter, so you may want to cut it in half and B). dissolving the baking soda into the liquid ingredients HAS to be done or the cookies don’t turn out correctly! I’ve also found that it’s best to have at least 2 cookie sheets when baking these, but more than 2 is even better! Also, if you don’t have a stand mixer, it’s VERY helpful if you havea
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (232 Degrees C) and line cookie sheet(s), or grease thoroughly.
2. In a LARGE mixing bowl sift together the flour, sugar and baking powder and set aside.
3. In another large mixing bowl mix oil, eggs, vanilla, buttermilk and baking soda.
4. Slowly pour sifted dry ingredients into liquid ingredients mixing continuously until thoroughly mixed. It is a very “runny” mixture, with almost a paste consistency.
Baking Directions
This is where things get REALLY REALLY busy, I have made these many, many times and the one thing that I’ve learned is that when you start baking these, you absolutely cannot walk away!
Drop dough by tablespoon onto lined or greased cookie sheets, sprinkle with colored sugar if desired and bake in the oven for 6 minutes.

That six minutes they are baking gives you just enough time to get the next sheet ready to put into the oven when you take one out. The “method” that I’ve found that works well goes like this. A). Prepare first sheet and put into the oven B). Prepare next sheet to go into oven C). Pull sheet out of oven when the timer goes off, remove from sheet and place on table or counter (I usually cover a small folding table with aluminum foil or waxed paper to put the cookies on when I remove them from the cookie sheet) D). Put next cookie sheet into oven.

These cookies are VERY light and almost fluffy. I have found that I don’t like how they taste when they are frosted, so that’s why I sprinkle the tops of them with colored sugar before baking. I change the color of the sugar according to what season I’m baking them in or for the occasion I am baking them for (i.e. red and green sprinkle sugar for Christmas, pastel colored sprinkle sugar for Easter, etc.) They also freeze VERY VERY well, so I rarely cut the recipe in half, I just freeze part of them after I bake them. It’s probably one of the most time consuming cookies I have ever baked because of the fact that you cannot walk away from them, but I’ve found that they are well worth the time and they’ve become a family favorite! My other family members have come to expect a big plate of these every year for Christmas, almost to the point that I’ve thought about telling them they need to find out if there is a drug rehab program for cookie addicts…LOL!

So, there you have it, my two MUST HAVE cookie recipes! Let me know if you try them out and if you like them! HAPPY BAKING!!!!!

I know it’s been a bit since I’ve posted anything here and I thought I should stop by and let you know what’s going on. My nephew passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on Tuesday. If you want to find out what happened and what’s going on you’ll have to visit me over at Just Simply Holly because I really don’t want to cross post between the blogs. I hope you understand!

I have to tell you, this Olympic thing is really starting to get addicting! I finally wrapped things up and went to bed about 1 AM this morning, and even though I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open, I turned them on in the TV that’s in our room. I wanted to hear everything that was going on, but I was worried the sound would wake up my husband, so I hit the menu button on the remote and turned on the closed captioning so that I wouldn’t have to worry about that…LOL!

I have to admit that I really look forward to watching Michael Phelps swim, it’s just mind blowing to see this young man break record after record! I’m bummed that he won’t be in another final until Friday, but you can bet your toosh I’ll be tuned it when it happens! The kids have been coming out here and watching the Olympics with me too! When their dad goes to bed, they’ll shut down their computers and come out here to sit with me and watch what’s going on! That in itself, is a miracle!

OH, and I’m not sure if you’ve heard yet or not, but one of the girls from the US gymnastics team actually performed last night with a broken ankle. I read on Yahoo News that Chellsie Memmel revealed after the medal ceremony that she had a broken bone in her ankle on August 4th. All I can say is OUCH, but that’s how dedicated to their sport these kids are!

Current Mood: Cool

Yes, I know it’s only mid day, but I have a TON of things that I need to get done before midnight tonight, so I’m posting this now, OK? Allright, well now that we have that over with, I’ll fill you in on my week.

Monday was a pretty decent day, nothing much going on. The kids were off school so we pretty much spent the day just chilling out.

Tuesday was a bit crazy. We got a couple of inches of really wet snow first thing in the morning and the roads were crappy! I had class early Tuesday and my hubby needed to come out to campus to get his classes for this semester wrapped up, so he drove me out. Because of how bad the roads were, I ended up being about 5 minutes late for class, but everything worked out fine. Tuesday afternoon, however, was a completely different story. I found out that I was right and my son did skip school one day the previous week. So I had to follow through with what I told him would happen if I found out he had lied to me about skipping school so that he would know how serious I was! I took his computer completely apart so that he would not even be tempted to sit down at it and grounded him from it for at least a month! His skipping school caused him to fail 2 exams which meant he also failed the 2 classes for the semester. That’s simply NOT cool! He’ll get it back when I get reports from his teachers stating he has nothing below a C!

Wednesday was spent doing homework and housework. My hubby ended up working 15 hours, so it was just the kids and I after they got home from school and I had a fairly major project that I wanted them to help me do for their father.

His desk sat right next to the wood burner, and he doesn’t deal well with heat at all. So I wanted to move a chair out of this room and move his desk over here next to mine. That would put him across the room from the wood burner. But to do so meant that I would have to go into the crawl space and move his DSL line. In the almost 4 months that we have lived here as well as the 3 years that we lived in the other house, I never once ventured into the crawl space. I have a hard enough time with basements, but YUCK on crawl spaces….LOL!

So, the kids and I did some cleaning, then we moved the chair that was out here into the front living room. Then my son and I ventured outside to get to opening for the crawl space. OH, I was scared, I just knew that I’d come across a mouse or a spider or something. But I was determined! This was something that I REALLY wanted to do for my husband. My daughter stayed upstairs so that she could pull the DSL cord through for me. Amazingly, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be and we were done in about 15 minutes! Then I just had to come back up here and move his desk and hook up the computer.

Thursday was pretty much a blur! I woke up at 5:00 AM with a full blown migraine that included sound, smell and light sensitivity. I took my migraine meds and went back to bed in the hopes that when I woke up, it would be gone. When I woke up 4 hours later, it was worse than it was at 5:00 AM, so I took another dose of my migraine meds and also took a shower. To make a long story short my migraine held a grip on me for a total of 15 hours before it finally gave way! I lost a whole day thanks to a stupid migraine! But it was easily the worst one I’ve ever had in the 12+ years I’ve dealt with them! I sure hope I don’t have another one like it for a VERY long time!

The rest of the week was boring, with not much news to report, as has been the story for the weekend. The super cold weather we’ve had for nearly two weeks has finally given way and we’re actually above freezing today with a high temp in the 40’s for Monday and Tuesday! For the first time in more than 2 weeks we don’t even have a fire going in the wood burner. Poor thing, it needed a break BADLY!

Yes, I know that “technically” it’s still early. But considering that I originally went to bed over 2 hours ago and I’m still not asleep, it’s now a sleepless night! I was content with flipping channels and watching TV until I heard the commercial for the Mesothelioma Lawyers for the umpteenth time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that there are lawyers out there to help people with things like this. But after hearing any commercial over and over again, it’s time to find something else to occupy my brain when I’m having a sleepless night!

Speaking of tonight, did you see that Hillary won the Democratic primary in New Hampshire tonight? The last I heard/paid attention to, the word was that everyone thought it would go to Edwards (Edwards took 3rd). John McCain took the Republican primary and Huckabee was a distant 3rd. I know the Presidential election is important, but I personally will be glad when November is here and all this campaigning and slamming is OVER!

I finally got around to uploading the photos from my camera the other day and thought I’d share some of the photos I snapped of the birds that were eating at our feeders after the snow a week or so ago. I LOVE birds and am really enjoying having my desk by the sliding glass door so that I can watch them! I hope you enjoy the photos! Myfavorites are DEFINITELY the Cardinals! More photos are below “the fold”

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I don’t get up to the area that I grew up in very often, and when I do it’s usually just going from here to my mom’s house and then right back home. When I was out and about Friday I was able to drive through the area that I grew up and see all the changes that have happened over the years. I grew up on a very large farm and my father came from a family who had several generations of farmers, it was just something that was in his blood. What shocked me the most Friday was to see all of the farm land for sale! Fields that had been owned and farmed by families for several generations sat dormant and it was obvious that they hadn’t been farmed for a very long time! I know it’s not just the area that I grew up in that’s going through this, I see it around where I live now as well. Land that was being farmed when we moved down here over 12 years ago now hold large subdivisions or factories instead. It makes me wonder about the future of farming in the US. We need these crops to maintain our country, but if these farmers are selling their land left and right, how are we going to continue to maintain the need for the crops? To put it simply, we aren’t! We’re going to rely more and more on getting our crops from other countries, which, to me, is very sad! It’s not the principles that farmers like my father stood for!

But in some ways I wish there were.  Unfortunately, she did not make the cut, so she’s not going to be playing basketball this year.  Initially, she was crushed, she cried the entire way home and for better than t hours after she got home.  The reason she didn’t make the cut is because, although she has her basics down perfectly, she struggles with making layups and free throws.  I understand that layups and free throws are an important part of basketball, but isn’t it better to have the moves and things down and then work on your shots rather than being able to make shots and have to work on your moves?

I have my suspicions as to why she didn’t make the team, but I’ll keep those to myself for now.  I’ve spent most of the night chilling out with her, and I spent the bulk of the day finally getting her room put together, which she LOVES!  We may have a snuggle night, I think it’s in order!

The only thing that I’ve seen about our new house is how it looks from the end of the driveway and the photo that was on the county auditors website.  There is a chain across the end of the driveway so I had never crossed it to get a closer look.  From what I had seen I was a little worried because it looked awful small!

My hubby and I were out and about earlier and as we were driving home I made mention that it’s too bad we couldn’t walk around the outside of the house to get an idea about the size.  He said there wasn’t a reason we couldn’t and I mentioned the chain across the driveway, to which he said the landlord wouldn’t mind if we went and looked.  I’m SOOOOOOO glad we did because what isn’t visible from the road and the picture online makes me feel so much better about moving into this house!

From what I had seen it looked like a small ranch style house, but what I couldn’t see is that there has been an addition put into the back of it that basically doubled how it looked size wise.  There is a large living room AND a family room, as well as a decent sized kitchen with a small dining room off it.  I was able to see into the window of one of the bedrooms and what I was originally thinking was right, that one was about the size of the room that my husband and I have currently.  But I now have no doubt that the house will work out for us!  The yard is HUGE, but needs a ton of work!  There is also a small deck off the back of the house.  Overall I am very excited now!  I’ll post more tonight if I can after we go over there!

Live Via satellite, or at least a wireless connection, I’m blogging from school!  I have2 classes today that are “normally” only 2 hours apart, and since school is a 45+ minute drive from home, it makes no sense to drive all the way home then turn around and come all the way back out here.  So before I left this morning I snatched the hubby’s laptop and wireless card to see if I could get it to work out here and WALA, it did!

This is awesome because now on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, when I have a 2-3 hour break in between classes, I have something that I can do!  And I must admit, after hearing not so great stories from many people about WiFi connections, I am qite impressed with the one they have at school!  It’s easily as fast if not faster than my DSL at home!

Anyway, I just wanted to say hello between classes.  This morning was my Art class, which I was totally terrified about.  I haven’t drawn anything other than stick figures in over 30 years.  But the instructor is awesome and explained that wouldn’t be an issue because it’s a bare bones art class that teaches you what you need to know about the fundamentals of drawing.  At 2:00 I have my Algebra class…..can you say YUCK?

I’m always on the look out for new and neat things on the net! But when I find something on the net that is not only neat, but also allows me to do fun stuff with my cell phone, that’s something I need to tell people about! Not only can you and I get Free Ringtones from this site, we can also upload our own photos and content and share them on the web and even upload this content to our cell phones.

You, in turn, can click on the little cell phone icon in the lower right hand corner of this picture and upload this photo to your cell phone and use it as a wallpaper.Now, I love my cell phone, but I don’t like the fact that I’m limited as to what I can upload or use from my service provider for wallpapers on my phone. Cellfish.com’s digital locker will allow me to upload virtually any photo that I have on my computer and in turn upload that image to my cell phone. I like this option because I have tons of neat graphics on my computer so now I can have a virtually unlimited amount of wallpapers for my cell phone! You can also upload images from your cell phone as well as images from other websites, so your options are wide open with this amazing service!

Besides images cellfish.com also offers ringtones and all kinds of videos for use as well. You can search for what you are looking for in many different ways including by name, by tags or even by just entering the first couple of letters if you’re not sure how something is spelled. The website is very easy to use and the content available seems to be endless. So be sure to check it out the next time you’re searching for something new and neat on the net!

There are very few foods that I can say I LOVE, but fried potatoes is definitely one of them!  I remember as a kid going out to the garden and pulling up fresh potatoes and taking them into mom for dinner.  As fondly as I remember the potatoes, I don’t particularly like the memories of the potato bugs….LOL!  But we sure earned alot of pennies gathering and smashing them!  Mom would give us an empty coffee can and out to the garden we’d go, in search of the bugs that were destroying her potato plants.  We’d grab them and toss them into the coffee can and when we were done mom would come outside with us and count them while we were smashing them.  It was REALLY gross!  But we didn’t mind it once we got our handful of pennies (one for each bug that we caught and smashed)!  That night, when dad would come in from the fields, he’d take us up the road to the gas station where we’d spend our pennies on candy and pop…LOL!  Mr. Allen, the man that owned the gas station, would make a big to do about the huge amount of pennies we had, but he always knew that we were proud of earning those pennies and he always threw in an extra piece of candy with a wink!

Sometimes I wish life was still as easy as it was when I was collecting potato bugs and protecting moms garden!   But I remember those days with fondness every time I cook up a batch of fried potatoes for dinner!

After problems for over a year, I finally got a new modem today!  Yesterday morning it kept shutting itself down for no reason at all and while I was on the phone with tech support it went out again, so they said they’d send someone out today.  The guy came in and asked me a few questions and then said “We’ve had problems with these modems for quite some time now, I can’t believe they haven’t replaced yours already”.  UH, HELLO, I’ve complained about this modem for over a year now, they should have listened….LOL!  He said it “should” be the end of our problems, which I’m really hoping it is.  Having your modem go out AND having your coffee pot decide not to brew is NOT a good way to start the day…LOL!

Amazingly, although it’s from this week, I have what I think is an AWESOME rare photo. On Tuesday, for the first time in more than 7 years, we spent some time with my step daughter. She’s a great “kid” and her father and I are very proud of the young woman she has become. So my photo is rare because it’s a picture of hubby with all 3 of his kids, the first that’s been taken since 1997. It’s also something that’s very precious to us!

~~~RARE~~~

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Well, not literally here as in the blog, but here as in my hands…LOL! The item that I have drooled over and wanted for well over a month now finally arrived today, albeit a day late (no thanks to UPS). This is another first in my life because it is the very first BRAND new one of these I’ve ever had! So without further adieu, I’d like to present “PINK”

Yes ladies and gentlemen, I’m talking about a cell phone…LMAO! You need to know something about me and cell phones. Up until last fall, I had had the same cell phone for 5 years. But last fall my husband talked me into getting cell phone service from Boost Mobile because I could then use the two way feature and “beep” him on his Nextel that was provided by his employer. This was a neat thing, but I must admit that the “beep, beep” drove me up a WALL!

WELLLLLLLLL, since hubby lost his job last week, he also lost his work provided cell phone, making it necessary for us to figure out what to do for a phone for him. I had searched for quite some time for a new cell phone for myself, so when I found out that I could get that pretty phone for only $29.95 I decided that was the one that I wanted. So I showed it to hubby, who obviously didn’t want a pink phone, and told him they also offered it in a bright sapphire blue and showed it to him, he was sold! We also ended up being able to get a 3rd phone to share on the plan, so we picked up just a simple basic phone for the kids to share.

There is a small amount of bad news though, but it only applies to the hubby. While unlocking the phones today to start service it was discovered that someone in the factory messed up and didn’t put the correct number in so that we could unlock hubbys phone. Between myself and the service tech we tried OODLES of number combinations, to no avail, and finally ended up permanently locking the phone. So they have to send us a replacement phone, which will be here no later than Monday. This stinks because of all of the phones, his was the one that was a MUST HAVE! So for now he’ll use the kids’ phone and drool over mine…LOL!

I need to get some homework done, so I’d better get going. I have class tonight, then I’m off until Monday….WHOOHOO!!

Today’s Photo Hunt Theme is clean. My entry is a tad bit humbling, but one I felt fit the theme perfectly. We live in a fairly old house and in the dining room is a built in hutch. Since I don’t have special china or things that ordinarily go into a hutch, I use it for storage of many different types of items. Unfortunately, the top of the hutch seems to be the “catch all” area for everything that people don’t want to put away or don’t know where they go. After my entry for clean, which are the after pictures of the hutch, I will post the before pictures so that you can see what it normally looks like..LOL!

And here are the before pictures

This is a picture of the whole top of the hutch, here are pictures of each side to give you a closer look as to how stuff gets piled up there

I will admit that the purses are mine, as are the candles that have been there since our last major storm warning in case the power went out. Other than that the only things that are mine are things that actually belong up there like the lava lamp, photos and Bengals Teddy Bear. The clutter that accumulates up there is probably my biggest pet peeve in this house…LOL!~~~
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Good morning everyone!  I figured it was time I popped in here and said hello for a change.  It wasn’t until I posted my Photo Hunt entry on Saturday that I realized I hadn’t posted in a week.  To say the least, last week was busy!

I’m thrilled to report that the only thing left to do before I start my college classes is to go to Orientation on Thursday morning.  I went last week and picked up my books and parking permit.  It’s so hard to believe that one week from today I will be sitting in class!  I’m so very excited about this and the opportunity it is going to allow for my family once I get these next 2 years out of the way!

My daughter is on spring break this week and my hubby chose this week, of all weeks, to use up a week of his vacation time.  I was really hoping to have some me time this week before starting school next week, but I think it will be a busy week instead.  But that’s ok, with him being home maybe I can get a few things finished up as well.  My son is on spring break next week, so he’ll be home alone, which I can guarantee you he will enjoy!

The weather this weekend was nice, we were able to open up some windows and get some fresh air in the house as well as spend some time outside with the dogs, which they enjoyed.  Today and tomorrow are supposed to be nice weather wise also, but Wednesday the temps are going down into the 40’s with over night temps below freezing.  Hopefully this will be our last cold weather blast, I sure am tired of the cold!

Not much going on today, I’m attempting to sort and fold the mountain of socks that have accumulated.  In case I haven’t told you, sorting and folding socks is my least favorite part of doing laundry!  I always end up with socks that don’t match, so I’ve decided to make sure that every possible sock is washed today and when I get them sorted and folded any that don’t have matches are going to that sock pile in the sky (a.k.a. my burn barrel…..LOL).

Have a great day!

I was fortunate enough to have some time the beginning of this week to be able to just spend a few hours out taking pictures and playing with my new camera! I went to many places all around town, and even though I took several pictures down by the Maumee River that would have worked for water, I actually decided to use this one that was taken at a local park. We’ve had a lot of rain lately and parts of the park have water standing. This was taken while I was walking down one of the paved paths, it shows standing water that is actually coming out onto the pathway.

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Today’s Photo Hunt theme is empty and I think this is a perfect entry for it. In December, my daughter and I were making Christmas cookies and I managed to snap this picture:

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As parents, life is full of never ending changes and discoveries, whether they are our own, or our childrens. Today, just a few moments ago, I made a discovery about my eldest child that has me still crying as I write this. No, it’s not a bad discovery, it’s one of those discoveries that touches you in a way that nothing else can.

My eldest child is a very powerful figure. He can light up a room simply by walking in it, if he allows himself to. But most of the time he prefers to stay in other peoples shadows, so as to not draw attention to himself.

Until recently, I honestly had no idea my child had a good singing voice. A few weeks ago he decided he’d like to enter into his schools talent contest and try to sing. I was a bit worried that it wouldn’t go well, but figured he was old enough to make the decision for himself. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend the show, but I was told afterwards by many people that my son had a wonderful singing voice that was filled with natural talent and passion. I’ve listened to him hum along to songs on the radio in the car, but we don’t like the same kind of music, so I don’t get the chance to truly listen to his voice.

That was, until a few minutes ago. My “office” shares a wall with the bathroom, and unbeknownst to my son, I came up here to sneak in some computer time while he was showering. What brought me to tears was hearing this TOTALLY amazing voice coming from the other side of the wall. I was so awestruck that I went downstairs and got my husband so that he could hear what I was hearing, and sure enough, he did hear the same thing.

Now I just have to figure out what I can do to bolster this childs self esteem and help him improve on something that is naturally amazing! I’m not just saying this as his mom, I used to sing, we watch American Idol as a family, music has always been a huge part of my life. If my child couldn’t sing, well, I probably wouldn’t tell them they couldn’t, but I’m telling you, this kid CAN sing! I’m still crying…LOL! But I really just wanted to share that.
**huggles**