Random Junk

Today I woke up in a fog. Hubby is home, so he did the early morning run to school for zero hour. And just a little side note here: if your kid doesn't have a driver's license, don't let her take zero hour, because guess who's gonna pay for that one? Yeah, remember, sleep is a beautiful thing. So back to the fog issue. Imitrex fixed that. But then I had that "I've just been run over by a truck" feeling, which isn't really so bad compared to a migraine, when you think about it. In addition, Brian isn't feeling so great, so he slept in until 10. One of the beauties of homeschooling (besides going to school in your p.j.'s) is that you can still go to school even if you're sick. Well, the kids don't think it's a good thing, but if you're trying to hit a certain goal, it means you're not going to lose time just because you have mucus exploding from every cranial orifice. But, I must be getting soft in my old age, because I let him have the day off. He totally crashed on the couch all day watching cartoons. I'm blaming it on the fog. But it was nice for Teacher to have a day off too.

So, I got my advent ornament for tomorrow done while it was still daylight. Hooray! Which means, I was able to photograph it outside on some live greenery instead of on my fake-o Christmas tree. Don't get me wrong. I love my giant fake-o Costco tree. It doesn't dry out in two days, it doesn't suck water by the gallons, it doesn't fall over, and it doesn't drop needles all over everywhere. (Let's just disregard the fact that it doesn't smell evergreeny either; candles can fix that.) But after 11 days of taking close up pictures of ornaments, I've realized that a fake tree just looks, well, super fake in a picture. And I don't like it. Tomorrow you will see a little ornament nestled in the rosemary bush. Maybe I can stay ahead of the game here!

I also spent the morning cruising the web and found so many cute ideas my head is spinning. Really, this is probably not a good thing. On second thought, I don't think I'm ever going to buy a cooking or craft magazine ever again. There's no need to! The amount of creativity out there is astounding. I ran across a post for totally cute melted snowman cupcakes. I'll probably never bother to frost a cupcake like this (we have food coloring issues at our house; they aggrevate somebody's ADD) but the recipe looked intriguing, so I tried it.

Oh my goodness, these were super delish! I'm throwing my old cranberry bread/muffin recipe out and replacing it with this one--it was that good!

Here's my American translation of the original.

Cream together:

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar

Add:

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

Stir in:

1/2 cup Craisins

zest of one orange

Bake 18-20 minutes at 350.

Yum.

I iced mine with a powdered sugar/orange juice glaze. Double yum.