Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real: Feasting & Fasting

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~
I have been anxiously awaiting the upcoming Feast Days.  For a cookie baker, every holiday and feast day turns into many preparatory work days.  This week has been a double whammy!  I told Daddy that I hate having deadlines hanging over my head.  It makes me feel stubborn and that I don't really want to do the work.  But when I get to this stage of the game....

A new recipe....chocolate/coffee butter cookies!  The kids think there should be more chocolate
and less coffee.  I think it's because we grind our own beans so the larger coffee bits make the coffee
taste a bit overpowering.  I wouldn't know!;)

I get very excited!!!!

Pretty

For St. Patrick's Day I decided to go a couple different routes.  Shamrocks....

and Celtic crosses....

Next, I had to come up with something for the Feast of St. Joseph.  I decided to make lilies...

The kids helped with getting the coloring right.  I wish I had more time to tell you all the little details about these cookies.  I'll just have to wait for another tutorial opportunity.:(  If you are looking for ideas for celebrating the Feast of St. Joseph, you can click on my Virtual St. Joseph Altar button in my sidebar. That will lead you to the site that Evann hosts every year.   You can also find coloring pages over at Charlotte's site...Waltzing Matilda.  And here are my past posts showing our family's St. Joseph altars.

Link 1
Link 2

Happy

I have been wanting to make large batches of yogurt in our oven.  We set up the milk, heated and cooled it, stirred in a cup of our existing Costco yogurt, and voila!

This is just way too cool for me!!  I also have 50 lbs. of steel cut oats coming sometime via UPS. 

Funny

 The kids are wondering what freaky Granola-y things are happening to their mother!

Real

I finally finished the Easter table runner and am now starting to quilt the larger Merry-Go-Round blanket.

Maria took this picture.

And this one!

And this one!

It is really hard to wrangle a large-ish blanket with a standard sewing machine for quilting.  I had to move my work station to the dining room to lay the quilt out flat without too much bunching.  I know it can be done, but boy is there a learning curve.  I'm so glad I'm a lifelong learner!  I can hardly wait for my free-motion quilting class tomorrow.  If you are in the Cities, Just Sew Studio is a very cool place.

You can see more P, H, F, R moments by clicking on the button above.:)