First Time!

So since going gluten free in June, I have baked very little....for obvious reasons. I have made a few loaves of bread and corn muffins from mixes but the sheer amount of ingredients in gluten free baking scared me. Marie to the rescue! Marie is my very baking talented friend who was sweet enough to make me a pre-mixed gf flour! So tonight....I went out on a limb!


I decided to make gingersnaps from this wonderful website.


I was supposed to make 1" balls which I thought I was doing but they all "melted" together and I realized maybe my cookie baller is bigger....oh well, it didn't affect the taste. They are fabulous!

She says on her site that she likes a little less spice and I would have to say I like more so next time I will probably double the ginger and cloves, but the texture of these things is amazing! They are chewy in the middle, crispy on the edges.....just like regular cookies!


Oh! and another secret I learned. All my life I have used cooling racks for cookies, which usually results in half the cookies falling apart or coming out with little cris-crosses on the bottom. Solution?.....Newspaper! Yep, put your cookies on newspaper to cool. Not only does it leave you with flat bottoms, it sucks some of the extra grease (ie: calories:) out of the cookies! I can't wait to make her chocolate chip cookies.....oh and I am determined to make my own gf Somoas....or Carmel DeLites....depending on what part of the Girl Scout country you live in.

Christmas Crazies!

So, are you done with Christmas shopping? We pretty much are, mostly due to my wonderful shopper of a husband. Weird right? Heres the gist of it....

He doesn't like to shop the rest of the year but will go with me.....just if you ask any questions about how things look you always get the same answer so you might as well not ask.

He adores, no, loves....no, pretty much worships Black Friday. Its totally weird to me. Before we were together I hardly shopped that day at all. Our big day was the day after Christmas.

Two years ago he went with his aunts to an Outlet center 1 1/2 hours from here for their midnight madness Black Friday sale.....I stayed at home and slept like a normal human.

But honestly, most years he is out by 4 or 5am and I meet him around 9.

This year, with Old Navy doing their craziness, he was there at 2:30am. I still didnt' meet him till 10:00 am but we were out till around 3 or 4pm. That means he literally shopped for about 12 hours!

Are you jealous? I would be.....I mean, its the weekend before Christmas and I think we only have 2 more gifts to buy. Its a very nice situation.

Now, unfortunately, wrapping is still my job!

I Heart Faces Photo Challenge

This week's challenge is Pets only and since I took this of my Somoa just over a week ago, I had to enter it! She's a great model and loves the camera but I absolutely loved how the colors and glow came out in this picture in front of our tree!

Dog Sleepovers

Its been a couple of weeks now, but we had a Bassett Hound named Daisy stay with us for a few days. It was fun and interesting. Many of you know that Somoa thinks she rules the roost so we knew that we needed to watch her. She snarled a couple of times and showed her ugly side but all in all, it was a fun adventure.

While they were not fond of it, here all three of them are in our front doorway. It was a lot of sit and stay commands and notice they aren't all in focus. It was a good try anyways.



This is definitely Daisy's favorite spot......other than my couch! :) I usually came home to her waggin her tail standing on the sofa very excited to see me! She was way more excited when Jeremy came home though. Definitely liked him!


Oh and see, Somoa is lying peacefully next to Daisy!


I couldn't resist capturing a few classic Bassett Hound pictures. The ears, the feet, the sad sad eyes!



These feet are strong but unfortunately not long enough to keep poor Daisy's ears out of everything. She has a special water bowl for that but the week she stayed with us it rained a bunch and the grass would get her ears wet every time! I felt bad for her but I guess she is used to it! We had fun with her visit! She's a real sweetheart!

Changing times

Okay not really I am just changing the look of my blog to a fall theme! Bear with me as I don't have the time to sit down and do it all at once so inbetween its going to look a little ugly and disjointed!

Blue Skies, Yellow Jackets and Changing Leaves

In only 11 days I will be having surgery on my ACL so I have been doing a bunch of stuff I won't be able to do for a while. Unfortunately, fall is my favorite time of year and I have a feeling I won't be able to do a bunch for a month or so during the nicest part

Last weekend we tailgated for the Bengals game and then watched them beat Pittsburg at home for the first time in 8 years. Since it's fall, there were yellow jackets everywhere and I was lucky enough to tick one off! This is the remains, a week later. I forgot to take a picture a couple of days ago when it was purple! Apparently I am a little allergic! I looked like some kind of crazy between my knee brace and the bee sting on my other leg!

I have also been trying to do as many photo shoots this weekend and next before surgery. I am not sure how long I will be unable to do them. This weekend was just beautiful for them. Check out a couple of the shoots http://www.erinjacksonphoto.com/

I have also been thinking about getting another tattoo for a while. I had designed one that is inspired by my favorite Bible verse and my fascination with flying. The word soar comes from the verse which says "those who trust in the Lord will soar on wings like eagles" I wanted it to remind me that even though I might be able to get through my day to day life on what I think is my own, if I trust in my Savior, I can really fly.

So, I went in to check on sheduling and prices and stuff and well, long story short.....

here it is! Its not completely healed which is why it looks a little scaley. (Eww, scaley? why did I describe it like that?) Oh well! Its on my wrist if you can't tell from the picture. It hurt but I really like it!

So, I met with my doctor this week and he said I was looking really good for surgery so I guess we will be ready to go on the 15th! I can at least be glad to catch up on books and movies over my break!

MRI'S, ACL'S and Adventures!

So, I know, I like to do stuff that some people consider "extreme". (ie: skydiving, wakeboarding, snowboarding, etc). I just consider them fun and there are plenty of people who do stuff waaaayyy more extreme than I do. But, I guess it caught up with me this time.

Saturday I went to use my gift card from my sister for Wake Nation, a really cool wakeboarding park. Google it, its pretty cool. Anyways, I had been there for an hour already and Wendy and Caleb showed up. I went back to get out on the water, got off the dock went about 30 feet and heard something pop! I went down and screamed! I dont' consider myself to be wimpy but this hurt! It swelled, we went to the ER, got a brace, crutches and went home. Stupid holiday weekend meant I couldn't get an MRI till Tuesday which turned to Wednesday. Then I went to the orthopaedic doctor yesterday.

He came in, moved my leg around and said, "Well dear, I'm afraid you don't have much of an ACL left, in fact its pretty much non-existant." What! Oh jeeze, I thought I read enough on WebMD to diagnose that it was only my MCL. Guess I need to go to medical school after all! Then he showed me the MRI stuff. I will explain it below.

These are all from the side of my leg. The large black things are my femur and tibia. The black band that is circled in this first shot is the Posterior Cruciate Ligament, or PCL, meant to keep your tibia from going too far backwards. My PCL is fine.

This slide shows a large white area that is where there should be another solid black line for my ACL. All the white stuff is swelling. Notice, no sign of any ligament! Nice!

This last one is what he said is textbook bone bruising from a ACL tear. The two white areas on the bone are where they banged together when the twist and ACL tear happened.

Hope none of that was too graphic for anyone. I think this stuff is cool so I thought maybe some of you would too! (I was given the CD of my MRI scans and have had fun playing with them on my computer!) I might have to make some crazy artwork out of them or something!

So, I have 3 weeks of Physical Therapy to reduce swelling and get mobility back in my knee before they do surgery. Another adventure!