Chocolate Chip Cookies

I found this recipe a few years back on allrecipes and I've made it for parties, to bring to work and just when I want something sweet to eat. I love this recipe and thought I'd share it with you guys.

I'm actually on the hook to bring some to work this week. See, I'm a bit of a prankster at work and there are a few people in particular I like to pick on. Usually they don't fight back, but in this case my victim did. How did it start? Well in September I hid this co-workers keyboard and mouse and of course, was promptly accused of it. I denied it, they found the mouse and keyboard so all should have been well. Then, a month later I discovered that my Marvin the Martian doll had been stolen because I received an email with pictures of it bound and gagged and a ransom note. I ignored it and figured they'd give me my doll back, but they didn't so I have to bake cookies in order to get him back.

Not that any of you will need this recipe for that particular situation.....

Recipe makes 4 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, softened 1 cup white sugar 1 cup packed brown sugar 2 eggs 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda 2 teaspoons hot water 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2) Cream together the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Dissolve baking soda in hot water. Add to batter along with salt. Stir in flour and chocolate chips. Drop by large spoonfuls onto ungreased pans.
3) Bake for about 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are nicely browned.

If you're wondering about the ornaments and Christmas-y penguin napkins, I took these pictures right after Christmas.

Guest Room

This isn't a huge update, but I thought I would take some nicer (that's subjective, isn't it?) pictures of the guest room, which isn't really a guest room anymore because I have a roommate now. I still thought it would be nice to post these better-looking photos. The last post about this room had really dark pictures cause it had rained the day I took them.

Natural light works wonders, eh?

Random

Hello my bloggy friends. I have been MIA for almost a year! My goodness, I didn't think it would be that long before I would blog again. There wasn't any crazy reason for me stopping, I just got busy with work and church and my improv troupe that I'm a part of. It seemed like I had something going on every night of the week and when I'd get home at 10 or later, I would just go straight to bed.

I always thought, well.... next week I will blog and catch up, but obviously weeks turned into months and here we are. I sure do miss all my blogging friends though! I feel so out of the loop and I feel sad for not sharing what's been going on in my world too. I have a lot of fun house changes to share with you guys and I hope I'll be able to get some posts up next week about them.

For now though I am going to be catching up on your blogs and seeing what you all have been doing!! :)

P.S. - This is totally random, but I accidentally ran over my porch light on the way to work this morning. Now, you might be asking yourself how that is possible and I will tell you. A month ago when I changed my porch light bulbs I dropped the screw that holds that cover on for one of them. So I searched for about 5 minutes, couldn't find the screw and what did I do? Did I go to the store and by another one? Nope, I put the cover on the ground and left it thinking I would just search on another day. Well, it's been there ever since and this morning was crushed under the tire of my car.

What am I going to do about it? I have no idea yet. Maybe in another month I'll figure it out.

Nooo!!

We had really bad thunderstorms here last night and when I headed to work this morning, it was still rainy and windy outside. When I left work and headed home, I discovered a sad sight.

The patio furniture I bought last July had blown over into the flower beds and the cushions/pllows were gone :(

I parked the car and went walking/running down the street looking for the cushions and found 1 beside a neighbors house, but couldn't find the other one! I wasn't willing to give up though so I kept looking (in the rain) and once I got to the end of the street, I found the other cushion on my neighbor's front porch. I was glad I found it, but another neighbor gave me a really strange look and I felt I had to explain that I did indeed live in this neighborhood.... I'm not a creeper, just want my cushion back!!

I never found those pretty, blue pillows though. I am so sad because they were a birthday gift from my mom. :(

At least I got the cushions back though and I learned a lesson. From now on if a storm is imminent, I will be sure to put my patio furniture in the garage! I did that earlier in the winter, but thought that it would be ok now that it's February. WRONG!

I'm not really sure if this is blog-worthy, but I wanted to complain. Haha.

Dining Room Light

I've been wanting a new dining room light pretty much since the moment I bought this house, but since you can't get them for free and I didn't know exactly what I wanted I just waited. Well, for Christmas I put one on my wish list just to remind myself to come back to it later once I had saved up, but someone bought it for me for Christmas!

I was so excited to get it! It came in the mail a few days later and my mom helped me to put it together and get it up. That was difficult (we're certainly not electricians), but worth the hours put in.

Here's the fixture that came with the house:

And here's the new fixture up!

The light is from Destination Lighting. I have the brushed nickel version and it has a cream-colored linen shade.

I love it! This light is so beautiful. :)

Happy New Year!

So what have I done since November? Well, not much really and it's been pretty nice. I've been spending a lot of time with my family and friends. I did manage to get together a few friends for a New Year's Eve get-together and I gotta say, there were some pretty special people there. Check it out!

Don't be jealous

We had some potato soup for dinner. I put out some toppings so we could make the soup "loaded" - sour cream, cheese...

I also made tomato basil pizza

We had lots of cookies too. I have a great chocolate chip cookie recipe that I'll share next week. I brought some of the leftovers to work and they were gone before I could blink.

My friend Sharon made us two kinds of punch. I sure do love punch. :)

It was a really fun night and no one's yard caught on fire this year.

Happy new year to all of my friends in blog land! :) Hope you all had a great time bringing in the new year!

Still Here

Well, I am still around though it doesn't seem like it. I have been taking lots of time to hang out with my family and friends and enjoy the holiday season. :) I have had a really wonderful last few weeks and hope that all of you are getting to spend a lot of time with your loved ones too!

I'll be back in blog land soon!