"Fall" cut-out cookies

With the air getting cooler, the leaves changing colors and the rain starting (stupid rain) I'm in a spectacular baking mood. This had led to numerous consecutive days of baking. Sunday night Tim helped me and we made cut-out sugar cookies. I tried a new recipe (the one from Crisco) and have to say I was mightily disappointed. The dough was too sticky and the cookies didn't keep their shape as they baked. So now we've got these oddly shaped things. To top things off, we were out of powdered sugar (which has since been remedied by my fiance) so these are naked (read no frosting) cookies. Not sure what kind of frosting I want to make for them though - if any. I'm considering leaving them as they are and making a better batch (read recipe from Williams Sonoma) this weekend.

On the topic of this weekend it just so happens to be a certain someone's birthday! I've got a cake planned for Friday/Saturday. I'm still waiting on the materials to make the birthday present. And I'm not sure what we plan to do this weekend... I'm hoping the weather might stay a bit decent so we could hit up a pumpkin/apple farm on Sunday. I just bought a new pie plate and I'm itching to be able to use it. Which reminds me, I need to check with Katy to see if she's still got that amazing pie crust recipe (why yes, I make them from scratch).

Anyhoo, back to the grind. I can't believe it's only 9:30am, feels like it should be 4 or 5pm. Darn long days!

Fall baking

So I found the elusive canned pumpkin in the grocery store yesterday so I had to take advantage and bake something delicious with it. I've wanted to try pumpkin cookies for over a year now, and I had a few recipes to play with. I went with one I found on Allrecipes.com that had great reviews. I didn't change anything in the recipe and I'm glad I didn't. I just wish I would have had powdered sugar so I could have made homemade glaze and/or cream cheese frosting. As my friend The Pink Spatula always says: homemade frosting is worth the extra effort!

Updates

I know there are some people, namely my parents, who don't use facebook (and this is by no means a call for those people to start using it). In that regard I decided it would be worth while to post pictures of our new living room on the blog as well.

The other great update besides the couch I am currently sitting on? Tim will be here in a matter of days! That's right ladies and gentlemen: no longer am I counting down the weeks, I am currently counting down the days and prematurely counting down the hours, minutes and seconds. I am so excited for him to finally get here and LIVE here! It's been a rough 2 months and we've had our extreme highs and lows (more lows than highs...) but we're finally at the end. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Tim defends his thesis tomorrow at 1pm Central Time. So everyone keep him in your thoughts. I know he'll do an amazing job. I'll be waiting for Master Carlson to call me with the good news! Then he'll get on the road to Eau Claire to pick up Josie's better half and finally embark on the Oregon Trail (you knew it was coming eventually). He and Dan should be here sometime on Friday. I can hardly wait.

I'm pretty sure this is shaping up to be the longest week of my life.

On the plus side: I get Thursday and Friday off this week. While that sounds amazing, it came at a price: I offered up my services on Saturday to go into the office and help finish the finalist presentation for a major RFP we've been working on. Since I've had some experience in the business, I was an obvious choice to help out. Unfortunately what was supposed to be a 2-3 hour gig turned into a 12+ hour ordeal. I got into work at 2pm on Saturday and didn't get home until 2:30am Sunday. Despite the long hours and insane amount of work I did have a lot of fun! By 11pm I was rolling around on the floor laughing because I was so overtired. Jeff, the tech manager, and I spent a good hour comparing the pronunciation of various cities from our home states. We also worked on Jeff's pronunciation of Wis-con-sin (instead of Wis-cawn-sin). He made quite a bit of progress. Although he did scoff at Rib "Mountain"... All in all it wasn't the worst way to spend a Saturday evening. And the presentation went very well, so let's hope we get this one so all of our work was not in vain.

So now that I'm a shoe-in for resident of the year, it's time to crack out one more class review (YAY TKIs) and figure out where the heck we stand on Plavix as I head into Prior Authorization land. Good times, good times.

This little lady is gonna hit the hay and get some shut eye because 6am comes way too early these days.

G'night!