My daughter bought me a Keurig a number of years ago for a birthday present, I love it. However I have one of those little cups you can put in ground coffee, instead of Keurig cups and never had luck with that thing, I like strong coffee, because I use alot of creamor, sooo when I fill it, oh my gosh, what a mess. When I put less, it's not strong enough. Forget that, I'll only use Kcups.

The other day I wanted to grind up some of my coffee beans. I pulled out my coffee maker, saw my old popcorn hot air machine and thought, "Why don't I ever use that?". I haven't used it in forever and they're so neat. How many gadgets do we have that we just stop using or whatever, because we get things easier? Microwave popcorn is so easy, just throw it in, yet that butter on it is not butter. So I pulled out the popcorn machine with my coffee maker.

It's so easy to just pop in a Kcup and so fast, I didn't think my coffee in the Mr Coffee was ever gonna get done. LOL It was good though and so I tried the popcorn maker, it was fun watching it. It also tasted good with real butter instead of, well, I don't know what that fake butter stuff is on the microwave popcorn and the maker was surprisingly fast.Just for your FYI, my daughter got the red striped popcorn cup in the dollar section in Target. Don't bother, it's cute, but when the outside paint starts coming off on your hands and it's "Made in China", that can't be good. @@

Target had the Pop Secret popcorn, it popped up pretty good, it's where the microwave popcorn is sold. I'd try 1/4 cup at first to gauge how much you'll need and the machine can get pretty warm, so kids shouldn't be using it. You don't put the butter in the machine, just microwave some, but we all know that. :D I'm just saying it in case some young person reading this decides to pull out Mom's old popcorn maker to use it.

I thought of this, because this evening my teen was heating up some cinnamon sticks and icing pack in the microwave. I watched her pull off the foil top of the icing and throw it away. I remember her first experience of putting foil in the microwave, sparks and spits of fire were popping, freaked her out. She doesn't need to be told now. LOL I did the same thing years ago when I put in a butter stick with foil paper on it. I'd never had a microwave before, and I learned real fast what not to put in one. :D Now I think I'm going to pull out that bread machine and check it out. 

 It was a really nice day today and very peaceful. I felt like cooking and working on my afghan. I made a Sour Cream Banana Cake with cream cheese frosting, hadn't made it in awhile and felt nostalgic today. :) I have tons of recipe books, but it seems my favorite ones are in an old folder I've had for years. You can tell by the recipe page it's been very much used. LOL
 

So when my husband came home from work, he could smell barbecue chicken and banana cake. Was he ever happy, then we watched Lincoln on demand, was very slow, more like a documentary. They did a good job with Lincoln, one of my fav actors, Daniel Day Lewis.

My DIL and son brought me my first spring flower to plant outside today.

I finished the little knitted blanket for my daughter. It's a small blanket that's from one of her favorite shows.

I also started another one, using Lion Brand Pound of Love and it's the antique white,the pink is Deborah Norville's Baby Pink. I'm excited, my first changing colors and it's no big deal, but for me it's another stepping stone. :D

My daughter sent a photo of a ball of yarn in an old teapot and I thought it was adorable. What a great way to keep the yarn in one place and not having it roll over the floor. :D Yeah, my favorite old teapot I pretty much killed the finish off by leaving it on the stove too long years ago. ~sigh~ I still love it though.

The Christmas afghan again...

Okay, now I'm back to making my Christmas afghan that I didn't finish before Christmas. I've decided...again... that this year I'm going to finish all these Christmas patterns I've collected online before Christmas. No... really... ;D

If I crocheted as much as I spent gathering patterns, oh my goodness, I'd have piles of things. LOL I love looking at what people do and reading what they say, so interesting. But I'm on a mission to do these patterns, so we'll see how that goes. Everytime I come on I make the mistake, ahem, of seeing what others are up to and I'm amazed at the talent so many have. There's such creative people out there, it's awesome and I think, "Why didn't I think of that?". I love it.
 

Packing away Christmas...

Here's some of the things I'm putting away and it just looked so pretty sitting there I took some pics. Took the tree down, keeping the Christmas village out and starting to put things away, it all goes so fast. It's my time of year, but everyone always says my house reminds them of Christmas, I love red and green and always have my twinkle lights going. :D

Christmas Pretzel Mix

Every year we make Chocolate Covered Peanut and M&M bags for our stockings. It was awesome the first year we found red and green M&Ms, perfect. We use honey roasted peanuts, they're sweeter, but still salty enough for the mix. The other bag we make up is full of the different Christmas candies, we start buying bags in October at Target. I just put the Pretzel mix in cellophane bags you can get at Michaels and the candies are put in ziploc bags with names on each bag. I also bake chocolate chip cookies the day before and put them in cellophane bags for each one to take home. 

After I get up, first I light the Christmas candles and plug in the tree, village and other twinkle lights in the house. I make sausage and french toast with orange flavoring, instead of vanilla flavoring. We cook a turkey the day before so we can have turkey sandwiches and chips after opening presents.I just put out the buns, turkey, chips and drinks, because all the plates, napkins and bowls are already set up that morning.I have snowman coffee/hot cocoa cups with lids and hot cocoa packets on the table, or for anyone who wants coffee. I use red and green plastic cups for Cranberry Gingerale. I love Christmas traditions, when kids grow up it gives them memories of what they did every year.

Christmas tree 2012

Christmas has started...

Well Hello, Is everyone ready for Christmas? Alright then, I'm not either, lol, so I'm looking forward to it. I feel more like decorating this year than last and really want to celebrate life.

We have Thanksgiving here and Christmas, we've set traditions that are so important for people when things are not so good, traditions are stability in a sense. It's something to look forward to, how you decorate, what you set out year after year, all those things are psychologically important, esp for kids growing up. Everyone knows when they walk in there's twinkle lights, (that's all year for me,lol), Christmas music, movies and food. I send things back to their home when I can. If you go to someone else's house for the holidays you can take something as tradition, something you bring, bake or make, others will come to look forward to it every year. 

It's hard enough for people working, they don't always have time to bake goodies. I watch the kids, everyone knows how much daycare is and if you can find a good one. I'm home, my grandkids are happy, fed and it bonds us even more. If it's not grandkids, then other relatives need the help. It's actually one of the most important things you can do if both parents have to work. It's crazy, parents can pay so much of their paycheck for daycare, hardly worth working and they need to, but you can provide a good place and take away that stress of  daycare. 

Anyway, going to start doing more Christmas decorating this week coming up, very excited. Didn't I just put up Fall decorations? Yep, sure did and Bam!, it's Christmas time. I love it, Christmas candy, oh I love those candy cane kisses and those butter cookies in a tin. Christmas colors are absolutely my colors. I'm crocheting Christmas items, knitted some more Christmas yarn dishcloths and such. I can not wait to see the tree up, and it's going to be interesting, another walking baby to keep off it. LOL One's three, so we just got past that last year and now a 14 month old, ~shaking head~, it will be fun, it will be fun. :D Here...we...go..~shaking head with a happy grin~.