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Our family loves fantasy and science fiction.  After seeing The Lord of the Rings trilogy too many times to count, we were very excited to learn that Peter Jackson was working on some movies for The Hobbit too. 

That’s how we spent our Christmas Eve last year, in the movie theater with some popcorn and slushies for dinner, surrounded by hobbits and dwarves for company!  And we had a great time watching it!

Photo Credit: Starck Ting

All three of us in our family need corrective lenses, and quite honestly we’re all blind as bats.  Both my husband and I have been wearing glasses since we were young kids, so when our daughter needed glasses when she was eight years old it wasn’t a surprise to us at all.

We go to the ‘eye doctor’ every year for eye care check-ups…and yes until recently I always just called him the ‘eye doctor’ because I never knew which of those similar yet different words of ophthalmologist, optometrist or optician, he actually was.

This Easter I wanted to make some cookies that weren’t too sweet but that looked and tasted like ‘spring.’

I was paging through some magazines and found a Christmas shortbread cookie recipe in one of them that I thought I could adapt to fit my needs.

Growing up I had a difficult time explaining certain things when asked.  Like my mother’s maiden for instance.  My mom’s maiden name is the same as her married name.  I learned early on that people would look at me strangely and say…”you have a Grandma and Grandpa Mueller, and a Grandma and Grandpa…?”  To which I would reply “Mueller.”  Sigh… if only that were the only confusion I was faced with.

When we were asked what kind of jobs our parents had, I had to explain my mother worked at a funeral home.  You wouldn’t believe how many teachers thought I was being a smart alek with that one.

photo credit: Bala

Air conditioning.  It’s been on my mind a lot lately.  Not because we need it here in South Dakota right now (far from it!), but because we have our home for sale, and we have a spring date every year with our ‘air conditioning guy.’ 

We have a leak somewhere in our line, they’ve checked the last two years and it’s not outside where it could be fixed, but rather our garage ceiling would have to be ripped apart so they could find it.  No thank you.  So instead, each spring we have them come out and top off the Freon each year.

A couple of weeks ago, I received some GOYA products and a collection of recipes to try out some healthy, tasty and affordable Latin cooking.  The Best of la Cocina GOYA cookbook is a resource for building a better plate, that plate specifically being the MyPlate nutrition guide by the USDA.  Printed in both English and Spanish, this little cookbook is packed full of balanced meal ideas from around Latin America – including Mexico, Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Spain and beyond!

When we sold our last home seven years ago we ditched the ‘single family home’ lifestyle and bought a condominium unit.  With that came the disposing of all our landscaping items.  We donated our snow blower, sold our lawn mower and all those other things you need to take care of a yard and outside maintenance.  FREEDOM from yard care.  BUT…

now that we’re moving from South Dakota to Texas, we’re looking at going back to a house, with a ….yard.  Oy vey!  Which also means that we need to re-purchase all of those items again (well not the snow blower at least!).

One of the things about getting ready to move is you start trying to clean out your pantry.  I have a big jar of Nutella and A. LOT. of Hershey Kisses in there.  So I decided to make some of those classic Kiss Blossom cookies, but instead of using peanut butter, I used Nutella.

And you thought they were delicious when they had peanut butter in them.