Black Spaghetti and .....

The boys had a friend spend the night a little while back, so to freak them out, I served black spaghetti. Yep--when it cooks it looks like worms. Their friend was so amused by it, he had to take pictures of his plate (with his cell phone camera...) to show HIS friends since nobody was going to believe there is such a thing as black spaghetti....I found it at SuperTarget (in their grocery section). It is colored with squid or octopus ink, but that also give it a faint fishy smell, so we may not be serving it again--but it was fun for one time. I could see serving this with Alfredo sauce and shrimp though--unfortunately my kids won't eat that...picky eaters....
I looked in my Better Homes and Gardens pink cookbook and found the absolute best recipe for both pizza crust and cinnamon rolls. The cinnamon rolls were REALLY good! Since I used my dough hook on my KitchenAide mixer, it all went together quickly. YUM! I was in a baking mood this week....
I had to post this one! I came upstairs and there was Charlie cat lovin' up on Cute Man. It looked like bedtime story time --except cute man was reading some engineering text about compressible fluid flow...yep--that would put me to sleep too. However, I had to grab my camera and as soon as Charlie cat saw THAT THING, I got THIS face.....
So of course I HAD to take the picture. If the cat had any pride left, it's shredded.....At the other end of the bed was Socks and Smokey. Socks is getting faster at getting the heck out of Dodge when he sees me with a camera--But he's not fast enough!! HaH!

Other than baking and harassing my animals, it has been a reasonably slow week. I'll post knitting pictures and some pictures of a painting I'm working on tomorrow. I'm trying to "make art" every day--one way or another. Some people make art on paper, some people make art through cooking ... it's all good!

One good spot: We got a call from an elderly couple about half a mile away --Cute man's flight bag had been stuffed in their bushes. The headsets were gone, but all the flight manuals and important papers were all there. I guess they didn't know what to do with them--so I am thankful they didn't just scatter them to the wind or throw them away. Those are pretty hard to replace. We did file a police report and were told there were 6 other people on our street that had reported something missing. Car doors stay locked....and outside lights stay on all night....

Good friends and great coffee to you and yours!

Rough beginning to the week

It has been a rough beginning to the week at Casa Davis.

On Sunday, our 17 year old dog, Kaysha died. One of the the boys is taking it pretty hard. They are 14 and have never known life when Kaysha wasn't there, so it will be hard. Hubby and I have had Kaysha since she was 6 weeks old....Jeremy was actually "sick" this morning. I figured he was still upset over Kaysha, plus he was running a slight fever, so I called him out sick from school this morning. It didn't help that he got up this morning and went to get Kaysha to carry her outside for her morning "duties". And there is really nothing I can say to make it hurt less, which is not a good feeling...

On Monday night, apparently someone decided to help themselves to our cars and took my husband's flight headsets. Two pairs. That'll be $200+ (luckily they were the pairs needing replacement, but still...). Crap! We had been pretty naive since we have never had anything stolen the entire time we have lived in this town. I guess it's the sign of the times. I hope whoever decided to steal them has nothing but misfortune from here on out. They are now cursed. Whatever happened to the rule of "If it's not yours, don't touch it?!"

Lesson learned on that one.

Damn it has been a bad week already. Please tell me it only goes up from here.....

Afterthought Saturday....

My friend Cindy and I decided to take advantage of the sock of the month class at the Newton Beadery on Saturday. As you can see, my the flash on my camera decided to put out more than it's fair share of effort--I'm sure the girls are still seeing spots! I REALLY need to remember to turn off the flash when there are light walls to bounce off of. Did I mention that it is usually painful driving past me at night for the same reason---gotta love them bright lights.....
I found some really addictive Lorna's Lace to knit with--I really like the colorway. I'm not really feeling the love for the afterthought heel, but I am not completely jumping ship on the idea yet. I actually will make this sock with a standard heel and a pretty easy pattern then go back and get some worsted weight yarn to make the first pair of afterthought --and in a light color so I can actually see what I am doing. Why did I pick a dark color when I knew I would be picking up stitches (which I am not too experienced with..) and doing a provisional stitch with waste yarn? I have no defense--I think I partied with the STUPID monster the night before--because I was feeling pretty dense as I was trying to figure out if this was a "live" stitch or not...

Here is but a small selection of the yarn Julie has at the shop. If I had turned around, there was a whole other wall of yarn--but as you can see--even my camera was having focus issues after I played with the waste yarn and tried to pick up stitches. I did discover that I am a compassionate knitter--I tried to bring every dead stitch within a mile radius of my needle to life and I stuggled to only pick up the "live stitches"....

Julie is having all kinds of really neat classes in the coming months, so it is definitely worth checking out the shop blog and signing up. She will be at the Wichita Women's fair, as will Shelly from Twist, so check them both out.

After Cindy and I took the class, we headed to Enid, Oklahoma to take my van to a friend's brother's shop...(try saying that three times)..Remember the van that seems to want to just shuck off parts at the drop of the hat? Well, I had taken it to the mechanic here in town and they were going to do the sway bar, front left axil, and the water pump (when this car decides it wants to go to the shop, it REALLY makes it worth it...) to the tune of $900. That crunch you just heard was our budget going off the cliff...Thursday the mechanic calls me to tell me he can't replace the water pump without replacing the timing cover it is attached to. Go figure, it has a crack in it...and you have to lift the engine to do the replacement...Did someone take my van out to a party without me knowing?!!

Wanna know how much the grand total was going to be? Go ahead--ASK. You know you want to.....

$1900.00 +

Are you breathing yet...that was my same response...So I freaked and called my friend Lisa in Enid. Her brother (he is a mechanic) said he'd do it for quite a bit less so Cindy and I took it to him Saturday. And yes, when I count blessing, I include my friend Lisa and her family. They have been our car angels for more times then they probably want to remember...I did let the garage here in town do the sway bar and axil, since that seemed important to have those cooperate when I'm barreling down the road at 70 m.p.h. but the rest is getting done in Enid.

It was really nice to visit Enid--even if we did get there late. Next time I am hoping to go up earlier in the day so I can show Cindy around. I don't think they have any yarn shops in Enid. Darn.

Alls well that ends well. and excuse any mispelled words, spell check is not working on blogger today... again.

What a difference a day makes....

The sweet face you see above is what I woke up to yesterday after the kids and cute man went off to school/work. Yep, that's hubby's pillow she has her head on. She was sooooo darn cute. I think she knew that though.....
It was 65 degrees yesterday! It was unbelievable. However, instead of playing outside, I felt the strong urge to make homemade bread. Since I have a 525 watt Kitchen aide (thanks to my wonderful mom in law who spoils me) it was a really easy task. I really like the recipe I found in the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook for white bread. I used local honey from a guy down the street instead of sugar and really thought that highlighted the taste. It was fabulous! I am going to have to do this more often. The bread was firm and very tasty with an excellent crust. I put real butter on the top to keep the crust soft as it was cooling down........
And since I was still in the baking mood--I made chocolate chip cookies from the recipe off the Gold Medal Organic flour bag. Holy smokes they were GOOD. It wasn't all baking yesterday. I did get in some knitting. I have been working slowly on this Noro Kuyreon scarf for quite some time and thought it was high time to make some progress. I am not feeling the love for the yarn yet, but everyone tells me it softens up after handwashing, so I'm taking the leap of faith.

What a difference a day makes....Yesterday it was 65* and sunny. This morning at 4:30, I awoke to the sounds of our roof getting pelted with this........

HAIL! This picture was taken at 7:30 so a lot of it had gone away, but there was quite a hail storm last night. Being in Kansas, I associate hail with TORNADOES, so I didn't get to go back to sleep for the rest of the morning. Thankfully this is as big as the hail got and no tornado....something tells me this is going to be a rough spring as far as weather goes. It is 35*F right now--that's quite a drop from yesterday....

At any rate, I am hoping to get to my pottery class this afternoon. I have decided I have been away from pottery long enough. I used to do hand building and worked on the wheel a long time ago, so I am looking forward to getting back on the wheel. Once you get centering the ball of clay on the wheel mastered, it becomes quite calming.

Well. I hope the weather is cooperating in your corner of the world.

Good coffee and great friends to you and yours!