Sunday, June 5, 2011

Slacking Off

 I have not been a good blogger, again! This seems to be quite the norm for me now. Life has just been too busy for me!! Two weekends ago, one of my cousins graduated from high school and made me feel really old! My parents came over from Mississippi and stayed with us for the weekend. Mom brought Tucker with them, so he and Wrigley had a great time together again. My cousin and her family came up from Florida and it was wonderful to see them for the first time in a few years. My aunt also came down from Chicago and my aunt hosted a delicious graduation lunch honoring my cousin and I got to see many of my extended family whom I've not seen in years. Unfortunately, Pat's soccer team was in their final tournament that weekend, so he wasn't able to partake in too much of the earlier day's festivities but he was able to help us cook dinner on Saturday night. He cooked some fantastic okra to go along with our hamburgers and vegetables. Mmm, so good!
Cousins from Florida

Me with my parents

They did it!

The Graduate!

Tucker and Wrigley


  I made some cookies for the graduate with lots of help from Mom and Dad. Dad helped decorate a few of the cookies while Mom did the rest of the decorating. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of them, but I'm going to paste the recipe for y'all here. My friend Jenny made these cookies with her Mom for her wedding favors and she was sweet enough to send the recipe over to me. 

I used the Simple Cookie Glaze from King Arthur Flour recipes and added a drop of almond extract to the glaze for a little flavor (thanks to your suggestion, Jenny!!):


Ingredients

  • 2 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
  • 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
  • 1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon milk
  • Food coloring (optional)

Directions

1. In a small bowl, whisk together the confectioners' sugar, corn syrup, and 1 1/2 tablespoons of the milk until smooth.
2. Add food coloring, if desired.
3. Spread one cookie with glaze, using a table knife or offset spatula. If it doesn't smooth out after 1 minute, dribble in additional milk, 1/2 teaspoon at a time, until the glaze reaches the right consistency.




I think we ended up adding more confectioners' sugar to make it a little thicker, but you kind of have to just play with it until it gets to a good consistency.
Below is the recipe for the cookies from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion cookbook.


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Once we got home late on Saturday night, the boys needed to run a little while as they had been cooped up for several hours. We threw the indoor Chuckit! for them and they absolutely loved it! We finally had to just put the toy away because the crazy nuts both would have kept going. Normally, Wrigley will get tired of fetching and will play keep away with the ball, but since Tucker was there, he tried to keep away from him if he got the ball, but he wouldn't stop fetching. In the pictures below, Tucker is wearing the black harness.





  I would recommend the indoor Chuckit! especially for the too hot or too cold days, but I have to watch Wrigley since he likes to be the destructor and can easily rip the ball up since it is very soft. However, I would much rather have Patrick throwing this soft ball around the house than a regular tennis ball. I found it in my Petsmart early this spring, yet I haven't seen it there again. Has anybody else tried it?
http://www.caninehardware.com/#/product/indoorfetch

2 comments:

  1. Glad to hear from you!

    Holy crap, there's an indoor chuck-it?! Too cool :) What makes it different than using a normal chuck-it indoors?

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  2. Yes! Can you believe it? I couldn't get the picture to copy from their website, but you should check it out! It's much bigger and softer than a regular chuckit. It doesn't really knock things around as much as a regular chuckit. Though I don't think Wrigley understands that he isn't supposed to tear it up because it does rip up easier.

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