31 Days of Little Things - Cookie Baking Tips

Some people are cooks and some people are bakers.  I feel I am a baker.  I like to bake.  Blame it all on my Mom, she made us bake growing up.  Thanks Mom! I have found a couple of tools that make baking cookies easier.  I use a Silpat mat, silicone mat.  This mat is worth every penny I paid for it. Even when you forget your timer and over bake your cookies, you still can get those puppies off the mat.  In fact, they were moist and chewy. Yes, I had a whole sheet I over baked this week because I forgot the timer. The picture doesn't do it justice but these cookies were Burnt with a capital B.

burnt cookies

 I also use a cookie scoop also know as an ice cream scoop.  This turns the cookies out in a uniform size and shape. 

cookie scoop

This is my go to cookie recipe.  I got it off a blog that no longer exists.  I call these cookies "The World's Best Cookie"

World's Best Cookie

World's Best Cookie

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup Shortening
1 cup White Sugar
2 Cups Brown Sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp Vanilla

4 1/2 Cups Flour
2 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt
1 Cup of Chocolate Chips
1 Cup of Butterscotch Chips (very important, just not the same without them)

Nuts optional

Mix the first 6 ingredients together, then slowly incorporate the dry ingredients and fold in the chips and bake @ 375 degree for 8-11 minutes depending on whether you like a soft chewy cookie or a crisp one.

This makes a large amount of cookies.  I often freeze half the dough and bake the other half later.  Life as Mom at Good Cheap Eats had some examples on how to do that.

 This is a little thing I do to make baking cookies easier. The Nester is once again doing 31 days of blogging. Check out what others are writing about for 31 days. I joining Nester with my own 31 days of Little Things. Little things that inspire, motivate, and help me get through my busy life.

31 Little Things - Booking It October

 

The Nester is once again doing 31 days of blogging. Check out what others are writing about for 31 days. I am also linking up to Life As Mom and her Booking It Linky Party.

I am a reader.  It is my guilty pleasure.  I have been in a total book glut lately.  I have too many good books to read.  I read to keep inspired and creative.  It is the food of my soul.  It is also a little thing I do to feed my brain.

What I read this month

Kisses for Katie which was a selection last month at Life As Mom.  It took a while to get this title through the library.  This book in part inspired my 31 Little Things Series.  If you haven't heard Katie's inspiring story.  Here is a little snippet from Amazon:

Katie Davis left over Christmas break of her senior year for a short mission trip to Uganda and her life was turned completely inside out. She found herself so moved by the people of Uganda and the needs she saw that she knew her calling was to return and care for them. Katie, a charismatic and articulate young woman, is in the process of adopting thirteen children in Uganda and has established a ministry, Amazima, that feeds and sends hundreds more to school while teaching them the Word of Jesus Christ.

What I took away from Katie story is how she felt called to do this ministry and it isn't easy.  Katie is just trying to make a difference to 1 person.  Katie is amazing but also very human. 

I also read, "The Quarter Acre Farm - How I kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed my Family for a Year", by Spring Warren. In some ways this reminded a little of Barnheart by Jenna Woginrich. It is a book about how Spring pledged that 75% of food she ate by weight would come from their garden for 1 year.  I thought it was well written and loved the recipes and tips she included.  The book was encouraging and made me want to have a better garden and eat from it.

Braces

Today was Chuckles lucky day.  He got braces.  He chose blue brackets.  My baby got a new grill.

31 days of Little Things - Front Door Decorating

Source: deliacreates.blogspot.com via Kimberly on Pinterest

I saw this pin on pinterest with magnetic spiders for your front door.  I have a metal door.  So I got a $1 packet of misc plastic Halloween what nots and my glue gun.  I glued magnets that I had to the back of the spiders. Is it just me but the glue gun makes me feel POWERFUL?  This is what I ended up with. 

The wreath was Martha inspired.  I made it last year.  It was pretty cheap to make too. Post with more information here.

The Nester is once again doing 31 days of blogging. Check out what others are writing about for 31 days. I joining Nester with my own 31 days of Little Things. Little things that inspire, motivate, and help me get through my busy life.

31 Days of Little Things - Library

The Nester is once again doing 31 days of blogging. Check out what others are writing about for 31 days.

I love books.  I really love my local library.  Reading is my guilty pleasure. If you haven't checked out this free resource,  you really need to. Here is a whole list of things that many libraries offer for free. 

There are so many events that my family has been involved in through the library such as The Summer Reading Program, Lego Robotics Class, and various performances.

I have borrowed books, magazines, cds, dvd's, rented e-books. 

The library is a little thing I use to save my entertainment budget.

Bad Geo Luck

It was another gorgeous fall day on Saturday.  We were running some errands in Bellingham so we decided to do some geocaching.  We paid a visit to Whatcom Falls.  We haven't done this as a family for a long time.

Whatcom Falls

The boys standing by the little falls
 

Small Falls

The falls were beautiful but our geocaching luck was off.  The satellites were conspiring against us. We couldn't get out GPS to agree on anything. It was bouncing this way and that.  Leading us through the brush and just making us miserable. I managed to think my wallet was missing. Luckily it was at home and sit in some pitch from a pine tree. It just a bad no good geocaching day.  We ended up with 2 geocaches and they were hard won.  It wasn't a satisfying day.

31 days of little things- Read This

The Nester is once again doing 31 days of blogging. Check out what others are writing about for 31 days.

I had no intention of talking/posting about it.  But I was inspired by a dear friends' post called, Ignorance.  I think her post can be summed up in her own words, " The poor have faces. They have stories. I have a face. I have a story. I am not a deadbeat."

Do me a favor or one little thing.  Read my friend's post.  Please! She said things more eloquently than I ever could.

Our definition of poor needs to expand. The one little thing we can do is realize that the poor aren't poor because they chose that.  The people I  know that are struggling are very hard working.  They didn't make bad choices.  Bad things happened to them that were way beyond their control. They have jobs, sometimes, more than one. They aren't parasites! They are people making hard choices in an economy that is not rebounding fast enough.