Three Beautiful Things This Week and Happy Valentine's Day!

Three Beautiful Things This Week was inspired by a wonderful blog that Three Beautiful Things. Everyday, Clare writes about 3 Beautiful Things that happen each day in her life. It's a wonderful blog! I can only hope to imitate her in a very small way.

1) Valentine's Day again, and I am so blessed, so very, very blessed!

2) Breakfast with the retired teachers was fun, as usual.  Everyone seems to enjoy this monthly get together.

3) Pixie is glad to be home.  The kitties boss her around so much!  She's happy to have her own couch again!  Kitties can't tell her what to do here, except when they are here, but they aren't here now!

Happy Valentine's Day!!!!!

And so we shall!!!!

Remember,

tomorrow the chocolate goes on sale!!!!

Happy Valentinte's Day! and Pixie Treats

Happy Valentine's Day!

As you know, I dearly love Pixie Marie!

She's spoiled and loving.

She is my Valentine this year,

so, in response to the new revelations about the FDA's concerns about pet treats and food processed in China,

I decided that I would begin to make Pixie her treats unless the packaging showed me they were made in the US.

Her food is made in the USA.

So, I began my research.

I found most recipes that I found online contained about 2 cups of flour, whether it be wheat flour, whole wheat flour, rice flour or oat flour.

Like cookies, they needed a fat.

I used peanut butter.

Then you need a wetting agent.

You can use broth, juice, apple sauce, baby food.

Well, you get the picutre.

I also added some flavor enhancer which is a concentrated broth.

So, here's what I did.

I used 1 cup of rice flour and 1 cup of oat flour.

I added 1 cup of peanut butter to the flour mixture.

Then I added 2 small containers of peas, 2 large containers of chicken and rice baby food, 1 package of flavor enhancer, and, as a special treat, some well cooked and drained bacon.

I mixed everything together using a wooden spoon.  This is what it looked like.

I lined a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

While the oven was preheating to 350 degrees, I formed the dough into grape sized balls and smashed them into cookie discs.

I baked the "cookies" at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

I cooled the "cookies" for about 5 minutes.

I ended up with two cookie sheets full of these cookies so the first batch cooled longer than the second batch.

After the second batch had cooled, I combined both batches on to one cookie sheet and put the cookie sheet back into the cooling oven for about a half an hour. 

This step helped to crisp them up.

I have the equivalent of two boxes of treats now for Pixie.

I plan to freeze them into four batches, then when Pixie wants a treat, she has one that I know is safe for her to eat.

I hate to admit this, but I tasted them, and, well, I didn't like them, but Pixie sure does!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day and the Challenge

Happy Valentine's Day!

I wish you and your soul mate a very precious day of love!!!!

To my children, I love you both!

To all of our family and friends,
we love you, too!




The Challenge

As you know, Deb Batten, aka FireBird Flame Work and I, challenge ourselves each month to extend our creative souls and try a new skill or work to enhance those we already have.

Last month, the challenge was Bead %$#%%^****(())) Kumihimo. Certainly not a good one for me. However, we continue, although a bit late this month, to pursue a further development of our creative souls. This month, and this was Deb's idea, especially since it's my fault we are running late, we are challenging ourselves to work on copper, but wait, it's not just that. The name of our challenge this month is:
Color Me Copper.

So, what will be doing? Deb and I will be challenging ourselves to work with different ways to patina copper. I'm sure looking forward to this one! We will do the reveal at the end of the month, so stay tuned. You can also check out Deb's blog for her side of the story!