Pretzels

My senior year in high school, I worked at Auntie Anne's Pretzels, and ever since then, I have loved soft pretzels. Jim and Drew are also pretzel fans, and Drew wants a pretzel every time we shop at Sam's. I found this recipe for homemade soft pretzels and decided to try them. They really do taste similar to the pretzels from Auntie Anne's, and I think that a big part of that is because they are dipped in a baking soda/hot water mixture before baking. I was encouraged to see that I could still form the pretzels with a flip of the wrist, just like I did many years ago at Auntie Anne's. We liked these a lot, and I am planning to make them again soon.

Scrapping Some Childhood Pictures

I've decided to scrap some childhood photos of Jim and me. I usually scrap Drew's pages as 12"x12" pages, and for a change, I've decided to do Jim's pages and my pages as 8 1/2" x11" pages. It has been fun to scrap this different size. I scanned and made copies of several childhood pictures, and this week I was able to scrap these two pages of my sister, Nora, and me. For both of these pages, I used sketches from Page Maps.

I am looking forward to preserving our childhood memories and will plan to share my layouts here on my blog.

Jim's New Favorite Cookie

I tried a new cookie recipe this week, and we loved it! Jim told me that besides our old standby, the chocolate chip cookie, this is his new favorite cookie. We found the recipe here. I used the mini Reece's eggs that I got on clearance after Easter, but those involved a lot of unwrapping. Next time, I would probably get the mini peanut butter cups that are just in the little paper cups. If you like chocolate and peanut butter, you should give these a try!

Easter Golf and Egg Hunt

We had a great Easter, and I realized that I have already scrapbooked it, but I haven't shared the photos here on my blog yet. I made this layout this past week using last week's sketch from Let's Scrap. We went to church on Easter morning, and then we went to Jim's sister and brother-in-law's house for lunch and for the afternoon. Drew brought his little golf clubs, and he had a great time golfing in the yard with his cousins. Drew absolutely loves golfing!

After lunch, we attempted to get a picture of all the cousins while they were still dressed up. This was the best one I got on my camera.

The children changed into play clothes and then had an Easter egg hunt.

Drew had to find the light blue eggs.

He found them all, but he had to take a few golf breaks in-between looking for eggs.

Drew had a great time, and he came home with a big Easter basket full of candy, a new Thomas book, and three new Thomas movies. He was exhausted after all the fun of the afternoon, and he slept the whole way home.

Easter Preparations

Drew and I dyed Easter eggs today. Drew was very interested and very impatient to eat an egg.

He decided to try a blue one.

He was ready to take a bite, and I stopped him just in time.

After I peeled it, Drew took a bite. I think he was expecting something sweet. He and Jim have been enjoying chocolate-covered marshmallow eggs for the past few weeks. He was not a fan of hard-boiled eggs!

His first bite was his only bite, and he told me that his egg was "cheesy" inside.

Another project today was dipping Oreos in white chocolate. I melted the chocolate, divided it into four different bowls, and added a drop of food coloring to each bowl. I dipped the tops of the Oreos in the colored chocolate and then sprinkled them with sanding sugar to make them sparkle a little bit. This container is for Easter dinner at Jim's sister's house tomorrow.

I also bagged up a few for Drew's Sunday School teacher and his church-time teacher.

I hope you all have a very nice Easter!