Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Music Monday (Tuesday): Coldplay's Scientist

A few days late for a white Christmas




I woke up this morning to a "light dusting of snow", according to the weathergirl, which was actually about an inch of accumulation. A little slick getting from the farm to the first town, but pretty smooth driving to work otherwise. I was the first person out of our county road this morning, so I didn't have any tracks to follow in!

Friday, December 23, 2011

The Master's Call

You know how they say that sheep follow their shepherd's voice? Cows are smart like that too.
Sunday I helped Dad separate out the calves that needed to be weaned from the cows.

I stood at the barnlot gate calling "sook sook" and the cows just looked at me and stood still. Dad did the same call and was answered by a chorus of moos, and our cows meandering toward the barn.

That was the first time we brought all the cows and calves into the barnlot. Then a calf escaped back into the field and the cows got stubborn. Dad had to entice them with a round bale and a promise of greener pastures. See below for enticement photos...




Monday, December 19, 2011

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Cookie baking

For the last couple weeks I've been wanting to bake Christmas cookies. I'm not a grinch about cookies like I am about Christmas music.

Grandma and I finally got my cousin to come out and help bake cookies. We baked:
- a "store-bought" package of peanut butter cookies
- a batch of Grandma Ettling's oatmeal cookies, which we split in half and made half oatmeal raisin and half oatmeal chocolate chip pecan
- a batch of Aunt Patty's sugar cookies
- and a batch of Molasses cookies, that Grandma Fluegge has been talking about making for the last month.


Instead of typing out the recipe I took a picture of it because I thought the method of its presentation was interesting. It's on the back of a "Vote for this guy" card from who knows how long ago. Grandma said if more of them would put recipes on their ad material, maybe they'd get more votes. Ha!

I will tell you this batter is not stiff like it claims to be. If you follow the recipe above, it will need extra flour otherwise you'll end up with cookies that are all spread out, like we had.

Notice I'm not even showing a photo of these cookies because I was embarrassed of their looks. But they taste mighty good. We substituted pecans for the walnuts. Excellent choice.

And I crumbled them up and put them on top of my Cream of Wheat this morning instead of adding brown sugar. Probably would be good on oatmeal as well.



I love living with Grandma and being on the farm and home again, but a few things I know: I'm ready for my upright Kitchenaid mixer, my mini-ice cream scoop cookie scoop, my cookie sheets, my cooling racks, my oven, and my husband's loving complaints, "You made all these cookies and force fed them to me."


Of course I did, and I forced him to drink a gallon of milk, too.


Number of times my office has moved since I started my job: once, and I'm moving again on Tuesday
Number of days until I see the Hubs: Four
Number of weeks I've been at my new job: tomorrow starts 8 weeks


Friday, December 16, 2011

Why I love my new job


1. Jeans Fridays.
2. I can wear my boots everyday and no one says a peep. Most people here wear boots anyway.

That's my fancy schmancy new architect stamp!

3. I'm respected. Something about the credential "Architect" makes people more respectful.


4. The view outside my window is 1) The rose garden behind City Hall, 2) the "new" Emerson Bridge that crosses the Mississippi River to Illinois. Even now in the dead of winter, the bridge is still beautiful.

5. I got a box of Christmas chocolates and mixed nuts. For the first time ever, they weren't sent to my boss or to my office in general, but hand delivered to me! (I shared with coworkers of course...)

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Hauling Haybales

It was a dry summer. Which means we didn't get as many haybales as usual. Which means we had to buy some.
 At some point in the last couple years, we changed from being a Chevy family to a Dodge family. I missed the memo and bought a Mazda (which is made by Ford). Above, my brother's truck is on the left and my Dad's is on the right.
 My cousin Troylee helped out, too.
In each trip, we were able to get 12 bales.
 Talking to the farmer.
P.S. Frost in the early morning at 27 degrees, quickly turns into a muddy barnlot. And 50 haybales crowds the barnlot pretty well.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Music Monday: Foxworthy's 12 Days of Christmas

I'm a pretty big grinch when it comes to Christmas music. I can only hear the same song sung by two different artists before I go crazy. However, the Redneck 12 Days of Christmas makes me laugh everytime. Maybe because I can see family members asking for these items. Like 5 flannel shirts or 4 muddin tires.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Blocking Out

This week I started blocking out the doilies I made.
Half a can of spray starch later, all the doilies that are finished are starched.
 For some scale on these last two, I put a highlighter in the photo. They are huge after being blocked!
I have one in the works right now that is almost done, and then I think I'll do one more.

Monday, December 5, 2011

Music Monday - Adele "Set Fire to the Rain"

From her new album "21". Can't wait for the next one.

This is a great driving song. Crank it up and sing along.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Running Update

Wow. It's been 6 weeks since I last ran. Last night I went to the Shawnee Rec Center here in town. It is not nearly as busy as the other gym, Osage. There are a lot of after school programs for elementary kids at Shawnee, but I was the only person in the weight/cardio room, except for the guy who works in there.

I wasn't sure how well I would do because it was a different treadmill than I'm used to, and because it had been so long. But I did really well:
Walk at 3.3 mph for 3 minutes
Walk at 3.5 mph for 2 minutes
Ran at 4.6 mph for 10 minutes
Walk at 3.5 mph for 5 minutes

I probably could have ran for a couple more minutes.

Definitely will be going back to Shawnee in the future. But I think I might change into my workout clothes here at the office. For some reason, the Shawnee Center doesn't have locker rooms, so I changed in one of the handicapped accessible stalls. But there also wasn't a shelf to put my clothes on or a bench to sit on while putting on my tennis shoes. Strange. (and bad design!)
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