Pioneer Woman book signing.

I'm sure you've heard me mention Pioneerwoman.com at some point. I love her blog. She has great photography tips and delicious recipes.

Well, I found out she was coming to Seattle(aka, Lake Forest Park) for her cook book. Excited!

Now, I unfortunately fell asleep on my couch for a couple hours and woke up after the signing had already started. I was bummed. But, we decided to head over to Third Place Books anyways to see how long it was going to go on.

Apparently, they were giving out "tickets" to each person and you waited until the letter on your ticket got called to get your book signed. When we got there, they were on letter C and we ended up getting letter J. Ryan and I had a long wait ahead of us.

To make a boring long story short, we went back to the bookstore at 9:15pm and didn't get my book signed until around 10pm. I was tired. We were pretty much the last group to go. We met some nice people in line and chatted for a bit, which made the wait go a little faster.

Finally, I met Ree, she signed my book and I got a quick photo. She gets a lot of points in my book for sitting there for 5 hours so EVERYONE could get their book signed. You rock Ree!

We promptly returned home and fell asleep on the couch.

My first portrait session!

Our friends Sandra and Aaron asked if I would take some photos for them. I was thrilled! And a little nervous because I'd only taken pictures of Ryan and myself up to that point.

Well, for my first time, I think it went great and I got a ton of great pics. They were awesome to work with and my nervousness went out the window. I love how happy they look in all the photos. What a great couple. Thanks again for giving me the opportunity. Here are some of my favorites.

I love this one. I found a great little spot in a big patch of bamboo where you could go inside the bamboo!

I love how the sun is lighting up her hair in this one.

LOVE this old building. The wood has so much character.

Once again, love the color of the wood.

Cherry Cheesecake Cookies

These were so delicious and pretty easy to make. This recipe made a TON though.

Ingredients:

3-½ cups All-purpose Flour
2 teaspoons Baking Powder
1 teaspoon Salt
2 packages Cream Cheese (8 Oz Packages) (I used low fat)
2-½ sticks Butter, Softened
1-½ cup Sugar
2 whole Large Eggs
2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
2 cups Graham Cracker Crumbs (See Note Below)
3 cans (21 Oz. Can) Cherry Pie Filling, Drained (I used the less sugar type)

Preparation instructions:

Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat cream cheese, butter, and sugar until smooth and creamy, about 2 minutes. Add eggs and vanilla and mix until incorporated. Reduce speed to low, add flour mixture, and mix until just combined. Refrigerate dough until firm, at least 30 minutes.

Adjust oven racks to upper-middle and lower-middle positions and heat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Place graham cracker crumbs in a shallow dish.
Roll dough into 1 ½ inch balls, then roll in crumbs. Place balls 2 inches apart on prepared baking sheets. Using a tablespoon measure, make indentation in the center of each ball. Place 3 cherries in each dimple. Bake until golden around the edges, about 12 to 14 minutes, switching and rotating sheets halfway through baking. Cool for 5 minutes on the sheets, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

(Cookies can be stored in an airtight container for 2 days.)

Note: to make graham cracker crumbs, process 8 whole graham crackers in a food processor until finely ground.

Makes 4 dozen cookies.

Can there be more than 24 hours in a day please?

I feel like I never have enough time... I have a bunch of things to blog about. Hopefully I can get somewhat caught up this week.



In the meantime, these are so totally cute and I really want them. From Williams-Sonoma. Farm animal pancake molds... These may just end up in my kitchen at some point. They're so fun!

Deception Pass and Fort Casey with NWAWD.com

On Saturday April 10th, we woke up early to meet up with our car friends and take a nice drive for the day.

The plan was to head up to Krispy Kreme(yum!) in Burlington and from there we were heading to Deception Pass. Most of us met up in Bothell at 9:00am and we met up with two more people at Krispy Kreme. After some quick repairs on a friends brake light switch(he didn't have brake lights, not good) we started out on HWY 20 towards Deception Pass and Whidbey Island.

It was a wonderful day and we couldn't have asked for better weather.
After a quick stop at Deception Pass we had a lunch break in Oak Harbor and then onto Fort Casey.
We had a total of 10 cars with us. It was great!
We took the ferry home to Mukilteo and all went our seperate ways.

Photos by Ryan and Katie.

Our friend Denis on I-5

Brent, Denis and another Subie

Tim, Brent and more friends.

Meeting up at Krispy Kreme

Deception Pass

Lunch at Applebees. The food was blah.

All our cars lined up at Fort Casey

Bunkers

Nature is trying to take over

This reminds me of a certain artist who's name I can't recall.

Grammy, if you read this, you should know (you love his work)!

Old switchboard which was super creepy inside.

Ryan and our friend Art and his puppy.

Semi birds eye view of our cars

The lighthouse

I love how the water looks! It was almost inviting were it not for the freezing wind.

Driving back from Fort Casey

Great shot of a seagull by Ryan

Hello Spring.

Falling behind again...

OK. Blog, I hate you.
I just spend 15 min writing up this post. One wrong move, and everything disappeared. The stupid "auto save" is evil. It saved my post right AFTER the whole thing got deleted. How helpful.
It's really discouraging to have to re write the whole thing. I'm trying to find the resolve to write it again.

*sigh*

Well, I didn't know it had been so long since my last post. I was sick for almost a full week, which is a lame excuse.
I have some stuff to post about but I haven't loaded the photos on my computer yet. I will try to do that this weekend.

In other news, I had to have a mole removed last week. TMI? Sorry.
I went to the dermatologist for a check up that I was super late on doing for a mole I'd had removed July of 2008. So when she said "Are you going to miss this?" I was shocked and not very thrilled. She didn't like the look of a mole on my behind, so she decided to cut it off. Wonderful. I try to take good care of my skin and use sunscreen so it's a little frustrating.
The whole situation isn't very fun. They let me know it could be up to two weeks to get results back from the lab on it. So of course I start worrying(I'm good at that) about what could happen. It could come back abnormal(like my last one) and then they would have to go in and cut deeper and I would need stitches. Or it could come back even worse and be cancerous. My imagination goes crazy sometimes, but both of those were real possibilities.
Well, I got a letter in the mail yesterday and good news, it's totally normal! Yay yay yay! I'm so happy and thrilled! Nothing needs to be done and I don't have skin cancer! It's such a relief.

Moral of the story: Tanning beds can be very dangerous and not enough people know this. Skin cancer is way more common than people know.

Anyways, to hold you over here are some recent photos. Of my car. Not surprised are you?

New headlights

Penguino(not mine, a friends)

Quote Of The Day

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.
That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business.
What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy if anything can.
-Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968)

Honey Oatmeal Bread

I've never made bread before. I've never even touched yeast before. But I found this recipe which claimed to be easy and sounded really yummy....
So I say to myself "Self, let's try making some bread".
Ryan of course helped because he is amazing like that. We had one mishap with the yeast, we killed it actually, but after figuring out how we killed it, we avoided doing so the second try. It turned out perfect and amazing. Not too hard either, just a little time consuming.

Ingredients

• 4-½ teaspoons Active Dry Yeast
• ½ cups Honey
• 4 Tablespoons Butter
• 2-¼ cups Water
• 1 Tablespoon Salt
• 2-¾ cups All-purpose Flour
• 4 cups Whole Wheat Flour
• 1 cup Quick Cooking Oats
• 1 whole Egg

Preparation Instructions

In a medium bowl (or in a saucepan), heat the butter and honey until the butter is melted. Add the water; the mixture should be warm (Around 100 degrees). Stir in the yeast and let sit until bubbly, about 10 minutes (this is called making a sponge).

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, combine salt, yeast mixture, 2 cups whole wheat flour and 1 cup all-purpose flour. With mixer on low, gradually blend liquid into dry ingredients until just blended. Increase the speed to medium, beat for two minutes, occasionally scraping bowl. Gradually beat in the egg and one cup of whole wheat flour to make a thick batter. Continue beating for two minutes. Stir in oats, 1 cup whole wheat flour and 1 cup all purpose flour. Knead till smooth and elastic. Use more flour if dough is too sticky (I usually add about 2/3 cup more).

Place in a greased bowl and cover. Let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour.

Punch the dough down. Turn onto a floured surface; cover with the bowl and let rise for 15 minutes. Shape into loaves and let rise for 1 hour in greased 9 x 5 loaf pans.

Bake at 350 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes.

(You can make the dough in a bread machine, using bread flour instead of all-purpose flour. Use the dough mode setting for the largest size loaf. Follow the recipe’s directions for the second rise and baking.)

Rising

More rising

Finished product

Golden Gardens 2/20/10

It was a good day... So we went to Golden Gardens after a yummy dinner at our fave pasta place in Seattle.