cookies & coffee & tall ships, oh my!

for the tall ships festival, clay & i are going to be working the badger & dodo stall for the next four days. i thought it would be nice to make some sugar cookies to sell along with the coffee, & also a good opportunity to make a little extra money. phew! what did i get myself into? for the last eight hours i've been shoveling out over 500 of these little devils! but if i might say so myself, they are pretty dang good.

beyond that, we are working this festival for the next few days, from 9 am to 10 pm. its going to be crazy! they are expecting 500,000 people for this event & with waterford being a population of 50,000 thats alot! so lets just hope & pray the God has his hand over this city for the weekend.
speaking of hopes & prayers, could any of you send a few this way for my husband? let me just start off saying, it takes a lot to get this guy down.  but for the last few days he's been fighting off a chest infection & as of now it has just gotten the better of him. thanks,

we've just got to get through the weekend in one piece! looking forward to our sweet sweet monday already!

see you in four days!

tall ships

get readyyyyyy!

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http://www.waterfordtallshipsrace.ie/

date day

for those of you who don't know, every monday clay & i try to take the day off, spend some quality time together, our "date day" as we call it. its a hit & miss some weeks, but for those mondays that are a success, our lives & health are the better for it! we find it to be a necessary ritual because the busy-ness of life & the weight of ministry has a tendency to take a toll on our personal life. its a learning process but we know that our marriage is of upmost important to God. 

so i decided to share with you the adventure we call date day. now, i cant guarantee that it will always be exciting because some mondays we are too wrecked for fundays, & a good snuggle in bed & a few movie rentals might be just the medicine. but for those days we do something with enough details to share, look forward to a weekly post! starting now. 

today started out slow & without a plan. we had a friend from the church stop by who just got back from holiday in thailand, with a very crazy story to tell. then a few errands to run. after that we hopped in the car & drove north. we ended up in a town called clonmel. did some walking around, peeked our heads in some antique stores, got some sweets from a shop called "scrumdiddlyumptious", after...

had lunch at eddie rockets. 

went for a nice drive in the countryside

found this place! seemed to be a private residence, 

with a little girl playing jumprope outside...

pulled over for a nice nature walk, found a creek!

 

did some more driving with the windows down. 

twas a beautiful sunny day!

yep, we like each other.

newphew!

in san diego, yesterday morning, my sister went into labor. perfect timing, since that made it the afternoon over here.
i was on the other end of the phone in the delivery room the whole time.
i heard the "push, push!", the "its a boy!!" chorus (they kept the sex a surprise) from the nurses and doctor, followed by the first cries from his little air breathing lungs!
yes yes, i cried.

welcome to the world micah haddon dobbs!

big sister eden & big brother asher.

aaand, my sister, the champion! (did she seriously just give birth? gorgeous!)

cant wait to meet him. 

making & baking

so i've been taking a few pictures of some things i've been baking over the past week. not much to be impressed by, but i thought id share.
i get most my recipes for baked yummies off allrecipes.com, mostly because of the handy dandy app for the iphone. by the way, whose idea was it to use an electronic device as a recipe book? the amount of flour, milk, sugar, butter, water, etc. that can be found in the nooks and crannies of my phone is incredulous!
i digress.

first off,
peanut butter chocolate cookies
recipe
i decided to make these cause we just got some jars of skippy from my parents when they came to visit, and also because my husband just about ate all his resees cups that my parents also brought. and boy, does he love his peanut butter chocolate combinations!
i left the peanut butter chips, chocolate chips, and peanut butter cups OUT of the recipe. (is all of that necessary, really? i mean, there is already chocolate powder and peanut butter) so hopefully that cut down the 230 calorie intake PER cookie by some. yes, you read correct! 230 calories PER cookie!

second, 

red velvet cupcakes

recipe

i wanted to make some kind of celebratory cake/cupcake for bible study on thursday night, because there was a birthday and a first wedding anniversary. so i though id try these out because i have never made them before but they were always so tasty! as you will see, they didn't exactly come out red, more maroon/brown because of the chocolate powder, BUT were so so yummy especially with the cream cheese frosting! raise your hand if you hate sugary, grainy, sweet sweet frosting! (me, me!) put the frosting into a ziploc and cut the corner. forgot to take a picture after the frosting was put on, they were gobbled up so fast! success!

thirdly,

rice pudding

recipe

we have had so so much milk in the house lately (dont ask!) so i wanted to do something with it other than eat five bowls of cereal a day! dont get me wrong i love my cereal, but enough is enough! so since this recipe calls for 2 QUARTS of milk, it sounded good! i read a lot of the reviews, most of them were praising the recipe, but there were a few saying the amount of milk was way too much. i followed the recipe anyway, and it turned out fine (still haven't eaten some. keeping it for dessert tonight, ill let you know how it tastes!). i might stick it in the oven to warm it up for dessert, we will see. also, i used brown sugar instead of white. 

so, thats that. more and more baking and cooking to come throughout the life of this blog, guaranteed. i am a housewife, after all.  

ding ding ding!

lately i feel like my husband & i are one of those shiny metal balls that keeps getting zinged around a pinball machine.
flashing lights
loud noises
high score
!

sun tea

(where you find sun, you also find penelope.)

one of my favorite things about this time of year is making a nice big jar of sun tea.
sure, i use lyons tea and there isn't always sun involved, but if you add enough ice, sugar and/or milk, it is so deliciously refreshing!
the thing about making sun tea in ireland is, you have to get the timing just right.
you see, in this country, if the sun is out, you aren't wandering around the insides of your house looking for a jar to make tea in, you are probably already outside soaking as much vitamin d in as possible!
...
wait a second, strike that! in this country, NO ONE would be wandering around their house looking to make tea in a jar. "tea warmed by the sun? as in, no kettle involved? tea that you put ice in? silly americans, tea isn't made with ice and it certainly isn't made in a jar!"
...
oh yes, back to the timing of things. as i said, it all comes down to timing.
so if you are not outside when the sun is out, and you are wandering around the inside, find yourself a jar, some tea bags, and water.  because certainly when you woke up this morning, you didn't think, "this would be a lovely day to make sun tea!" because the sun probably wasn't out. but if it was, and you did, by the time you got around to getting that jar and tea bags, the sun is most certainly gone, hidden behind some dark clouds.
you see, timing.

solution? have your jar and tea bags at the ready, at all times!

am i making sense? probably not.
ireland has a way of confusing things.
especially when it comes to the hide and seek game the sun likes to play with the clouds.