Yo Santa!

My friend Amy introduced me to these new toys. Well, I should say I saw her son playing with them and became insanely jealous that Jack does not have a set...or more along the lines of Jack does not have a set that he and LJ can play with. The wooden train set we picked up at Ikea is great but LJ has been complaining to me for about a month that "the track can not be completed until we find the last curve piece". Jack is perfectly content with pushing his little trains around his uncompleted track and then godzillaing the whole thing. So Santa, if you are listening, these would make AWESOME toys for the younger kids.
A hay lift, bales of hay, fencing, garden tools and feed sacks? Yes please! Plan Toys Farmhouse, $80

Don't forget the animals! Plan Toy Farm Animals, $25
Big Ol' Tractor! Plan Toys Tractor and Trailer Set, $54

Not into animals...how about this awesome parking garage set?

Plan City Parking Garage, $70

See all these toys and more at Amazon.com!

Enjoy it While It Lasts...

...it's supposed to snow this weekend!

My Kinda' Poster

How can I resist this adorable poster that lists a dachshund as D?

ABC poster by Enna, $15

Plus, when everyone else in his class is struggling to think of a word that starts with "Y", our kid will coolly raise his hand and reply, "Yeti."

Look At My Pretties...

Rainbow Brite Flashback! Groovy!!

Happy Halloween...Oh Wait...

Ok really. It is not my fault this time! I was on it...had the Halloween stuff downloaded and ready to go but my flickr account was busting my chops! For the last two days I have been trying to figure out how to post more than one photo from my account to my blog. I finally broke down and had LJ show me. Hope these all come through!

Happy Belated Halloween!

Jack was a dalmatian and Inchie (our dog) was supposed to be a fireman. Jack's buddy Otis was a frog. I realized after I got home that I didn't take a pic of Jack in his costume so you will all have to make do with these action shots.

October Daring Baker's Challenge: Macarons!

Ohhh what could ever motivate me to get back on the computer and share my life with all of you? Darling pictures of toddlers, dogs and chickens? My new baking pans? A volleyball season done with? The answer...none of the above. It was these little, adorable morsels of meringue and buttercream. When I saw the October DB Challenge I could hardly contain myself! These have been on my list of things to perfect for awhile and they are so much fun to make.

Without futher ado, I present to you the french macaron. I added the innards (is that correct terminology??) of a vanilla bean to the cookie part and whipped up a blackberry buttercream filling from the jam that my mom sends me. My friend Amy said it tastes like ice cream. Cool.

Macarons!, originally uploaded by jmojo2009.

Macarons, from Claudia Flemming' The Last Course: The Desserts Of Gramercy Tavern.
The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

Confectioners’ (Icing) sugar: 2 ¼ cups (225 g, 8 oz.)
Almond flour: 2 cups (190 g, 6.7 oz.)
Granulated sugar: 2 tablespoons (25 g , .88 oz.)
Egg whites: 5 (Have at room temperature)

Preheat the oven to 200°F (93°C). Combine the confectioners’ sugar and almond flour in a medium bowl. If grinding your own nuts, combine nuts and a cup of confectioners’ sugar in the bowl of a food processor and grind until nuts are very fine and powdery. (Adding the powdered sugar to the nuts allows you to grind the almonds up without making almond butter. The almond flour is easy to make with blanched almonds and the powdered sugar. There were other recipes that recommended drying the flour after you grind it but I skipped all that.)
Beat the egg whites in the clean dry bowl of a stand mixer until they hold soft peaks. Slowly add the granulated sugar and beat until the mixture holds stiff peaks. (Don't over beat your eggs or the cookies will not rise...I think I was really walking the line on mine.)
Sift a third of the almond flour mixture into the meringue and fold gently to combine. If you are planning on adding zest or other flavorings to the batter, now is the time. (This is where I added my vanilla bean insides...or essence? Black gunky speckly stuff? What is the official name for this?)
Sift in the remaining almond flour in two batches. Be gentle! Don’t overfold, but fully incorporate your ingredients.
Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag fitted with a plain half-inch tip (Ateco #806). You can also use a Ziploc bag with a corner cut off. It’s easiest to fill your bag if you stand it up in a tall glass and fold the top down before spooning in the batter. (Right...fill it quick because the batter is going to come running back out the tip!)
Pipe one-inch-sized (2.5 cm) mounds of batter onto baking sheets lined with nonstick liners (or parchment paper).
Bake the macaroon for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and raise the temperature to 375°F (190°C). Once the oven is up to temperature, put the pans back in the oven and bake for an additional 7 to 8 minutes, or lightly colored. (This final heat is where the feet form so don't worry until after you pull them out of the oven. Really not much you can do at that point though...)
Cool on a rack before filling.

Blackberry Buttercream Filling

1 cup butter (2 sticks)
1 8 ounce package cream cheese
5 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup seedless blackberry preserves
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Place the butter and cream cheese in a mixer bowl and whip together until creamy. Add the powdered sugar one cup at a time. When combined, add the blackberry preserves and the vanilla and mix well. Can be held in the refrigerator overnight and re-whipped prior to frosting the cupcakes.

Say What?!

I know, I know! It has been awhile since I posted last but things have been crazy around here. Volleyball (that's right, I am coaching VOLLEYBALL) started on the 27th of August and time has just been flying by. This coupled with Jack and I trying to enjoy the last few months of beautiful weather has let no time for our poor little blog.

So I am going to make this official and take a vacation from blogging for a bit. It will actually be more of a vacation for you because I will still be logging posts and getting together some really good stuff for the winter months...you just won't see it until hmmm..let's say the middle of October. That gives me plenty of time to deal with Halloween..fabulous!