Footsteps

peppermint bark

lemon bars

After baking for the family get-together tomorrow which has changed venues from our house to my mom's house due to the fact that our septic system is kaput ("i'm not thinking about it, i'm not thinking about it."  Sometimes ignorance brings a little bit of bliss.  Briefly.),  i got outside for a few minutes of . . . the outdoors.

Even though I am following in the footsteps of others, sometimes I like to think I am the first person to notice that berry.

Theresa's applesauce Cake

Friendship can be dynamic.  When I was a child, I thought my best friend and I would be best friends forever.  We aren't.  Nothing dramatic happened.  My family just happened to move when I was in Grade 8 and well, distance sometimes means we move on, not for the better or the worse.  Change happens.  As an adult ( wow, I just called myself an adult.), I have come to realize that people come into our lives for different reasons.  Sometimes the friendship is a lasting one.  Sometimes it's a short-lived one, a couple of years or so.  You find you need each other mutually, then life changes and life moves on.  I am, of course, grateful for those long-lasting friendships but those short-lived ones are also often pretty special.  Although they may have come to a quiet end, they still leave something behind.

About 12 years ago while I was going to school in Toronto, I worked at a popular diner serving tables.  ( Don't underestimate my age from that statement.  I was more or less a professional student for quite awhile.  Just ask my parents and husband.)  I worked with Theresa, a woman about ten years older than me but so much wiser really.   She was funny.  She introduced me to Leonard Cohen and yoga.  She showed me areas of the city that I may not have had the nerve to see by myself.  She made my experience of living "in the big city" so much easier than I thought it would be.  When I graduated, I stopped working at the diner and eventually moved out of Toronto.  And that was kind of it.  I sometimes wish the friendship had continued but things can't be changed.

  At some point during our friendship, Theresa gave me a recipe for applesauce cake.  It's a simple, yummy, moist, all-in-one-bowl kind of cake.  I still have the piece of paper she wrote it on.  I want to share it because I think it should be shared.  Let me know how you like it.

Theresa's Applesauce Cake

1/2 cup sunflower oil
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups unsweetened applesauce
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Oil and flour an 8 inch cake pan.

Mix oil and sugar well.  Add applesauce and mix.  Add dry ingredients and beat until smooth.  Pour into prepared cake pan.  bake for 45-50 minutes.

That's it.  Pretty simple but let me know if something isn't clear.

I'm going to end this post with a picture of two little owls.

Acorn owls, that is, in a little felted wool nest.  More wonky than wise but we love them anyways.

Our Day's Little Things

Today's post is a mish mash of the little things that make up our day.

Keegan recently inherited Mike's old wallet.  The last couple of days, he has been occupied with making his own money and credit cards.  But they are counterfeit.  He wants that made perfectly clear.  As Quinnie replied to Mike when he joked that Keegan could buy us supper the other night:  "Dad, didn't you hear the 'counter' and 'fit'?"

We have also started decorating for Halloween.  Meet the ghosts --  a juggling ghost . . .

and a silly ghost.

I was reading Ginny's blog small things a couple of days ago and she had taken a picture of her current knitting  project with her current book.  What a great idea!  Ginny graciously allowed me to share in this tradition of hers.

The knitting :  The beautiful aqua yarn will eventually be a pair of felted clogs and are so much fun to knit.  The books:  I have two books going at the moment.  The first is a collection of short stories by a favourite author Neil Gaiman.  The man is just so creative.  The second book, I'm afraid, may have been a mistake.  It's the book that inspired the TV series True Blood.  I don't watch the show.  Not really interested in at all, to be honest so I don't know why I suddenly decided to read the book.  I'm not enjoying it.  I don't like the writing style and I don't like any of the characters.  I've put it aside at the moment.  I may come back to it; I may not.  Any thoughts on the book?

Quinn can't seem to stop playing with playdough lately.  It's everywhere, especially on the bottoms of my socks.

And good days are always better with chocolate chip cookies, right?

May the little things be making your day a good day.

The Colours of Our Fall Day

We spent part of our day outside  . . .

part of our day in the kitchen . . .

molasses cookies

applesauce

and a very small part of the day on the couch . . .

It was a day full of browns and oranges.  Quite beautiful and yummy as Q and I had a lunch of apples, applesauce and molasses cookies.  The iron in the molasses and the wheat germ in the cookies makes it a balanced lunch, right?  Doesn't matter.  That's what I'm telling myself.

Blueberries and Beads

On this dreary, wet and muggy day, Quinn and I decided we would like to make blueberry muffins.  Yogurt instead of milk with a healthy sprinkling of sugar before they go in the oven.  Quinn was in charge of sprinkling the sugar.  He did a great job as any four year old would who is allowed to sprinkle sugar.  Keegan also appreciated the muffin after a long day at school.

While the muffins were in the oven, Quinn and I then decided to make a bead buddy from the new wooden beads we bought this morning.  Here he is . . .

Introducing Long Hair Man.  I think he gets his naming skills from me.  I remember being quite proud of myself for naming one of my stuffies Ted Edward Bear.  Get it?  yeah, I thought you might.