My little turkeys................

Me on Ambien.......

I take Ambien for my sleeping troubles. I usually only take 1/2 of the lowest dose. It just hasn't done the trick as of late so last week I took a whole one. You really are supposed to go to bed right after you take them which I always do. Well one thing led to another and it had been about an hour. I needed to send one more email out to my friend April and then I was going to bed. This is the last paragraph I sent to her:

"I've actually been happy all day except when addressing those four things! I would love your thoughts and council on my behavior of the day...............well , maybe not. You are pretty honest.............So share if it's honestly on my side of this!

Hey in jan/feb I want to throw a dinner party for my quilter friends to talk about next years performances and committment..............man my ambien is kicking in. I can' really see the scee very well............eyelids going to close............I'll finish sthissthought.tomorow..............Feel.ing really weird...........thiank pual will haveto get em to bed. wow! I cn't thh]e nos...owow'nighgh.........z"

I'm thinking I had better go to bed straight away after taking my Ambien...........

Mouse-capades!

So it's colder than cold here today. I think we may have hit 15 degrees. So I'm thinking about my poor old horses and how cold they probably would get tonight. So I pulled out their blankets - three of them - to decide which two I wanted to use. I pulled one out into the pasture and tried it on Rio first and decided I didn't think that was the right one for her. So I dragged it back out of the corral and brought in another one. I put it up on her back and was getting it straightened out. I lifted up the back to re-adjust it and their was SO a mouse on her back wiggling around! I about passed out. Now how Rio didn't freak out I'll never know. I jumped away (I'm such a baby) and waited for it to drop out. Sure enough, it wiggled it's way out and jumped to the ground. What is that for a human - about 20 stories. Then it had the audacity to just sit their by Rio's hind feet and look at me - like "How dare you kick me out of my home" It finally skittered away and I got the nest it had been building in Rio's blanket out and got her strapped up. So the little mouse has no warm home anymore! Oh wait, it has the haystack, the underside of the ATV (I hear this can cause fires.....) the trailer, the shed, and a million other places. Rio and Moose are all snug in their blankies for the cold winter night. Have I mentioned I love mountain living?

Thanksgiving blessings.............

You're looking at them.................

Chocolate peppermint patty cookies!

I haven't tried these but found the recipe and more importantly, the picture of these beauties! I can't find a picture of them to post but trust me, they are beautiful. They look like chocolate whoopie pies with crushed candy cane sides. BE.A.UTIFUL!
10 oz. bittersweet chocolate such as Guittard, chopped
2 oz. unsweetened chocolate chopped
1/4 cup unsalted butter, cut into chuncks
3 large eggs at room temperature
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup flour
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp kosher salt

Put chocolates and butter in a medium metal bowl and set over a pan filled with 1" simmering water. Cook, stirrring occasionally until melted. Remove from heat and let cool slightly. whicsk in eggs and sugar, mixing until combined. Whisk in flour, baking poder, and salt. Chill dough, covered, until firm, about 2 hours.
Let dough sit at room temperature 15 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 and line baking sheets with parchment paper. Scoop 1 Tbsp. portions of dough, rolling each into a ball, and put onto sheets 1 " apart. Press into 1/4" rounds.
Bake until they no longer look wet on top, about 8 minutes. Let cool on baking sheets.
Filling:
3 cups powedered sugar
4 TB. milk
3/4 tsp peppermint extract
Spread 1 heaping tsp. peppermint icing onto flat side of 1 cookie. Top with flat side of a scond cookie to form a sandwich. Press together to squeeze filling to the edge. Roll edge of cookie in crushed candy canes!

Makes about 20.

Now I'm thinking that you could probably find any chocolate cookie recipe and have this work. You could probably make regular frosting and just add in some candy cane and still roll the edges. You could probably use cool whip mixed with crushed candy canes as well and then just keep them refrigerated..........

Let me know if you try any of this!

Merry Christmas!

Onesie........

Summer, my daughter, has been adorning baby onesies. She puts lots of things on the fronts. She sent me a link to adorne the back/bottom of onesies. This is my first try at it. Super cute I think. I decided to put pockets on and thought that would be cutie patootie for a boy but alas, no boy material......... The girlie pockets are pretty cute. I just bonded them on and then sewed around them. Be watching for boy bottoms............

Now I just need a baby bottom to put in these! Any takers?

FIRE!

So I've been at Basin Choral Festival tonight and Paul was SUPPOSED to be having a quiet night at home. Uh, that didn't really go as planned.

Dad fired up the four wheeler to move some horse feed from the garage to the shed. He had to fill it up with gas. He did his chore and parked the four wheeler back by the shed. About 30 minutes later he heard/felt a big boom. He of course, thought I had come home early and ran over something. He said it was a different enough of a sound (it rattled the windows) that he got up and went to the front door. He could see the glow of fire on the front rock pile. He ran around to the side of the house and the ATV was on fire to the tune of about a 12 foot flame. He ran to the hose and then realized it had burned up under the ATV. Then he remembered that we were not getting much water thru that hose anyways and had scheduled that to be fixed a few days ago. It had not gotten fixed. UGH! So he ran to the front of the house and pulled on that hose. It was frozen. NO WATER! He grabbed some work gloves and ran back to the ATV and pulled it away from the shed. The thing is still shooting flames. Why he thought that was a good idea is beyond me. Then he ran into the garage and grabbed a small bucket and ran to the pool. He filled it and ran to the ATV and started to try to put out the fire. He's thinking the house is going to start on fire or the entire mountain. He ran back to the pool and the water that had spilled on the deck had frozen so he slipped and fell and just about went into the pool. The bucket flew into the pool but he was able to grab it back out. He must have made dozens of trips to the pool. He enhaled so much smoke - burning tires, plastic, etc - so he kept throwing up on top of all of that. He's still coughing really hard. This is what is left of our ATV, atv wheelbarrow, and the side of our shed melted too. Dad has a few minor burns on his arm and a boatload of junk in his lungs but he's fine. He came in and called All State. It's all covered thank goodness. More importantly, dad's okay and nothing else started on fire. How that was possible is amazing.

Note to self: Call the fire department when things start on fire. Paul did not.......silly man...............such a man thing to NOT do!

Enjoy the pics!