Sublime

I've been a bad blogger lately. Things have been fairly chaotic, and I'm conciously trying to reduce the amount of time I spend in front of my computer. Today, for example, I didn't even turn it on until 10:30. And I got so much accomplished! I have 3 sick kids, and so they were all home from school today (well, not Luci, but you know what I mean). We spent the morning cuddled up on the sofa watching cartoons, and then we all pitched in cleaning up. I made lunch with the help of my assistant chef, Lili. After lunch we poured through my cookbooks, deciding what we would like to bake today. Saturday we made Halloween cupcakes, which were a moderate success - I used a cream-cheese frosting rather than my usual, and everyone preferred my usual. So we'll be trying cupcakes again later this week!

Today we decided on double-chocolate cookies - 1/2 batch with chocolate chips and 1/2 batch with peanut butter chips. We had a great time. I love baking with my kids, and I hope that they will have tons of memories of time spent with mom in the kitchen. My little assistant needs to work on her ability to remain focussed and not become so distracted - Saturday she accidentally dropped the measuring cup IN the mixing bowl (and of course, she was pouring in icing sugar, so you can imagine the explosion of sweet sugar that followed). Today, she was just about to pour in the brown sugar, when she became distracted by Cohen and turned just as she was pouring - resulting in brown sugar on my floor rather than in the bowl!

Cookies turned out fabulous. I love this recipe, as it's so easy to choose your flavour - it can be made with any kind of chip. I've done it with butterscotch, peanut butter, chocolate chip, mint chips. My next step is to try experimenting with crushed up chocolate bars (with my handy-dandy Pampered Chef Food Chopper... LOVE it). Starting with Whoppers... then Skor, I think.

Anyways. my next baking project this week is going to be cheesecake. Although, I'm the only one here who likes cheesecake. Well, maybe I'll have to pack some up for friends!

After baking, I had to meet a perspective student, and then teach for an hour. Ian left for work halfway through my lesson... I am SO grateful that Luci is so amazing during lessons. She can be super-cranky all day, crying and screaming, but when I start to teach, she quiets right down. I almost always forget she is there. I know once she starts moving around, things will be different!

I made dinner afterwards - in my newly yellow kitchen! Pictures to follow. The kids had a bath, we practiced music together, practiced reading, and then off to bed. Poor Luci has been waking up every hour or so to nurse - typical when she's not feeling well. Which means I have a long night ahead!

Anyway. The point is - it's so easy for me to lose several hours each day on my laptop. But my kids are at this amazing age, and I'm home, for a change. It's my favourite time of year to be home - Oct, Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb - as there are some great holidays to celebrate! I can finally do all of the fun things I always wanted to do for the kids - pumpkin flavoured pancakes on halloween, oodles of halloween crafts (we've been at it for a month already!), Christmas crafts galore... and even Valentines projects are floating through my head.

And so, my blogging will have to be an evening thing. I promise to try and be more regular about it... but we'll have to see!

Oh yes - I've been having my house redecorated by my sister-in-law, who is starting her own business in staging. She's done an AMAZING job, I love it... even if I can't find anything right now and most of my "junk" is in boxes in the basement (must go through them this week!). Here is her site - check out the gallery for before/after pictures of all of the upstairs rooms here! Her before photos are hilarious - she really caught me on a stupid-messy day. Oh well.