Here’s a Kitty, and a Kitty …

There’s only one song that makes for a worse Brain Worm than The Llama Song  and I’ll spare you. OK, I won’t: the opening song from season 2 of Sargent Frog is even worse than the Llama Song! It's called - really - National Irresponsible Era by Gagaga SP.  Glutton? OK, follow the bouncing link and be sorry. Be sure to read the dubbed lyrics!
Anyhow.  Halloween treats tend to be pretty predictable – lots of Rice Krispies and pretzels. It's hard to find something in between my-kid-could-make-that and omigosh-she-must've-gone-to-baking-school.  In my search for something different to make for a party Monday night I bumped into this image. Ack! Unbearably adorable!

I found no evidence that the artist ever shared her recipe or instructions, but I did find this homeschooler’s post on attempting to recreate the recipe. OK, it’s Good to Have a Plan!  I went to work.  Here you see the eyes painted on, and my “paint:” confectioner’s sugar, milk and vanilla glaze, with a bit of brown paste food coloring added. I used a toothpick and a needle (I know) to do the decorating. The spouse and girlchild helped with the decorating or I would have been up all night!

I dislike the making of such fiddly stuff, but I do like the results.

Look, itty-bitty-cat butt!

The recipe is good overall; next time I’d use all vanilla instead of both vanilla and almond extract, but that’s because Almond extract always makes me think of love-smitten death. Go grab your copy of “Love in the Time of Cholera,” it’s right at the beginning, I’ll wait. See? Almonds have just never been the same since I first read that. Besides, I have my killer kick-butt homemade Vanilla to work with.

If you make these, keep them small; they won’t cook through if you get ham-handed about it. They must be tiny to work. You could easily make them into owls and pandas too, and even dogs – some of ours seemed to want to cross over into other families.

On another note:

I'm extremely, profoundly grateful to have electricity and heat in my home; many homes nearby do not.  We do not have a fireplace and its's below freezing out there; we'd be in deep trouble if we were to be without power for any extended period.  "Excuse me, can you take us in?  We've got four humans, a dog and cat who do not yet get along, and six rats?!?"  We did OK post-Irene and have pretty good resources for a summer outage but winter is a whole nuther thing.

Have a happy Halloween, with all of the right kinds of scares and none of the wrong kind!

Wintry Week

That's NOT water on the driveway. The kids, who are finally back in school after yet more snow days, had to trudge through the snowdrifts to get to the bus stop - there wasn't a chance of making it down the actual drive without breaking something important. January is apparently the highest divorce-rate month. With people trapped indoors and forced to spend hours trying to either entertain their offspring or allow them to play willy-nilly on the XBox and the Internet, it's little wonder.


On the plus side, this week I made an almost-respectable pinwheel block out of 2.5-inch squares/HSTs:



I learned a bunch working on these, such as: it IS possible to sew too narrow a seam margin! Made a mess of HSTs, chain style, then when I cut them I had no allowance so they fell apart. dang. I do wish there was a quilt store nearby - there isn't one for 35 miles and that's a trudge in the winter with hubby's night-work schedule and my other commitments. Maybe in a few months; I'd feel a lot more confident if I took a class.



I made bread yesterday - with the slush falling at an ugly rate, I figured it just wasn't worth it to go out to the store. At lunchtime I made the dough, then hubby baked it a couple of hours later. Looks OK to me!




I thought it was pretty good for a basic whitebread recipe. It got mixed reviews. One kid raved and the other kid made a crack about making it "even more bumpy." At least there were no comments about using the loaves as doorstops.