brownies, and chips, and cookies, oh my!

Before turning this into a random food oriented blog (garden, prepared, and then today), I have had other things going on (sadly... still no knitting).

Garage sales have been a focus of recent weekends, and I've been partially successful on my hunt, along with a few unplanned treasures. This weekend was a good one!

First up - pair of lamps. These were a bargain for $5/pr and will be perfect in the guest bedroom after a good cleaning. Of course I have a different project-in-progress for lamps for that room, but I couldn't pass these up and the other ones might not actually come to fruition.

A fun game board... the top glass has checkers to cover the backgammon board, and the drawer includes dominoes and cribbage. I'll need to get more little bits to use for checkers pieces, but already have a good idea. I may paint and distress the wood box as it's certainly seen better days, but this is a good addition to the game cupboard!

And a $10 bread machine. My bread machine didn't survive the move-storage-move process, so I'll have fun with this one.

The major purchase of the weekend will appear in a make-over post one of these days...

But instead of installing shelves or working on the headboard, I make Pillow Cookies. Not an intuitive name in my opinion, but essentially a brownie surrounded by chocolate chip cookie. YUM!

If I were to make these again, I'd go for a thicker cookie dough. This was REALLY moist and soft, so chilling the dough was critical, but made for a flat cookie with a bulge where the brownie bite was. And as Bakerella says, you will need to cover the cookies for further cooking when the tops start to get brown.

And they are HUGE! This plate is 7 3/4" across!

For the full recipe and much more enticing pictures, click here.

Temptation on so many levels...

Happy, Happy -

JavaNut

Blah-day, blah-day

Still no knitting or other fun pursuits to share... not for lack of desire, but with allergies hitting me hard I've had little energy and way too much to do for work. I did score some great vintage (aka thrift store) linens over the weekend though... ever since reading about Artsy-Crafty Babe's penchant for linens from thrift stores, I keep my eyes open. And when there was a quilt backed with a 'vintage' sheet on Old Red Barn Co, it was an ah-ha of brillance.


Soon after I found all these: The Laura Ashley Roses set, yep - the whole set, will be GREAT for a quilt back (I'm thinking to go with a denim front made from old, worn jeans)... and also the green duvet cover (great yardage!). The neutral swirls will probably be bag linings, as will the others (the pink & white is a valance and the turquoise is a pillow sham).



I have had a "secret" knitting project - something I'm test knitting so nothing to share. What I can share is that I was a total idiot... I was determined to finish it over the weekend so I could get on to my own projects (and this is a small little thing to test). So I'm knitting away (it is on small needles), row after row (and thin yarn). I finally get to the last section and my stitches are WAY off. At first I think 'wow, glad I found this mistake' - which of course means that the mistake is in the pattern... right? can you guess where this is headed??? No, the pattern was fine... I had just completely skipped a small, but oh-so-important section. sigh... frogged back to that point and will resume my testing next weekend. Kinda made me feel like the Yarn Harlot! and incredibly grateful that my screw up was on a much smaller item...

Happy Everything!
- JavaNut

Bailey says: Momma, wouldn't you rather go play frisbee than play on the computer?

It's so nice to be adored, but it really does interfere with my typing...