Sugar Cookies

Happy August! Yesterday I was planning to go watch some movies with friends, and I suddenly had the urge to bake cookies for them. These sugar cookies are what I chose, and they ended up tasting a lot like snickerdoodles without the cinnamon. They were good, and I received compliments. Also, they stay chewy/soft after they cool, which is nice.

I used this recipe with very minor adjustments.

Ingredients

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar, plus some for coating the cookies
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth.
3. Beat in egg and vanilla.
4. Stir in the rest of the ingredients.
5. Roll rounded teaspoonfuls of dough into balls, roll in sugar to coat, and place onto ungreased cookie sheets.
6. Bake 8 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven, or until golden. Let stand on cookie sheet two minutes before removing to cool on wire racks.

Photo Contest

Happy Friday!

I'm entering the state fair photo contest again, and my prints just arrived in the mail. If they get chosen to be displayed (I think at least 30% do), I'll show you which ones they are (though you have already seen them here). (Could I use more parentheses?) I'm too unsure of myself to show you now and then find out they were rejected. Although, last year I discovered that I don't necessarily agree with the judges, as many of the winning photos seemed just okay to me. Mine was chosen to display, which was thrilling since it was my first entry into that contest. Then I saw the others that were chosen and the compliment didn't feel quite as complimentary anymore. Especially since I had received the minimum score to make it to the show.

But I'm entering again, just for the fun of it. It's nice, because they send you the scores you received from the judges. This time I chose two photos. I wanted to have larger prints made (last year mine looked so tiny compared to the others!), but it gets expensive, and I wasn't in the mood to spend so much. Especially since the ones I am submitting aren't necessarily the kind I'll hang on my wall later.


Now, for funzies (as my sister and brother-in-law would say), this is the one I submitted last year. It's kind of a cliche subject, but I liked how it turned out.





Here it is hanging up at the fair. It's hard to tell that it looked small, but it really did. Yeah, I see the sign. I obviously took this on the sly with my cell phone, and maybe I should be locked up in jail, but I think it should be allowed for the actual photographer to take a quick photo of their own picture! I wanted a record of it hanging up.

Butterflies (Pt. 6) - The Dramatic Conclusion

So here's what happened.

(First, if you're new here, you may want to click on my "butterfly garden" link in the topics column to start from the beginning.)


Monday morning I awoke to find that the chrysalises had changed. The instructions said that when they get dark, that means the butterflies will be coming out soon. I didn't know what "soon" meant, but I figured it would happen while I was at work. Since I don't think our personal leave includes butterfly births (though it should!), I was bummed.

Later I realized I should've just brought the whole butterfly cage to work with me, but I'M DUMB. Sure enough, when I got home they were all out, hanging around the cage. They took their first buttery breaths (in the words of my friend J) with no one around to witness it.


Hello butterfly indeed. I should warn you that the cage does not look all that pleasant, and I'm about to post some close-up images. The red stuff is not blood, it's some other nastiness that they have inside of them that they release as they are hatching and ironing out their wings. They didn't hold back, and somehow it got all over. I had put down paper towel knowing there was going to be a bit of a mess, but I really didn't expect it to be quite so....red...in there.

And a photography disclaimer: I really struggled to get decent photos (pretty much throughout this butterfly experiment). Often the light wasn't right or the angle was limited, and then after they hatched they were quite fluttery. So this is the best I could do. If I do this type of experiment again, I will be very tempted to rent a macro lens (unless someone wants to buy me one first).


All five, happy and healthy! Well, healthy, at least. Something tells me butterflies aren't crazy about being cooped up in a small cage immediately after getting brand new wings.




I was instructed to put flowers or crumpled paper towel in the bottom of their cage and sprinkle some sugar water on them. They weren't very interested, but this one enjoyed a bit of my concoction, at least


This is their pose most of the time, unless you move the cage a bit and get them to go crazy.


Here you can see his body a little better.




He sees you when you're sleeping.

You can just keep the butterflies for their entire life (2-3 weeks), but I wanted to let them see the world and maybe have some kids. I let them go the day after they were reborn.


The lovely P agreed to be my assistant and Butterfly Release Princess.


I didn't really have any expectations about how their release would look. Good thing, because it definitely wasn't a dreamy scene of fluttering butterflies drifting gracefully away (possibly in a J formation, to honor me). In fact, many were reluctant to go without P urging them along, and would finally escape so quickly that this is the best I could do in capturing that.


I love P's expression here! She agreed to let me post this photo even though she says she looks dorky. I said she looks cute and realistic with her expression of wonder. ;) I had to point out the butterfly since he's just a tiny blur.

Okay, that's it! This entry has taken forever to put together, so please love it so much.

Importantness

Oooooookay. I'm behind on blogging. Tonight I have side-job work to catch up on, so I can't do any complicated, pictury posts, but I will tell you what's ahead and some other nonsense:

1. Last night I took some family portraits. I was a bit nervous but all went well. It helps to photograph a super nice and cooperative family. Pictures to come!

2. While I was at work, my butterflies all hatched and I missed it. :( I will post more about that soon.

3. My friend posted this hilarious video in her blog, so now I have to share it. "...revealing my tattoo, so you know I have a past."

4. Every day, a friend and I exchange "SQ" scores. That's the daily Set and Quiddler puzzles that are available. I think my Set record is 23 seconds, but most of the time it takes me somewhere in the one- to two-minute range, if I don't give up first. I'm impatient.

5. I've never made my own lemonade, but today I was reminded that it's possible, so now I will. Life is too short to put off stirring up some lemon juice, water and Truvia.

6. I've also never made a pie, so it's one of my lesser-known 2010 goals (and is now more important than ever, since I ditched my goal of reading 50 books). I came across this Amish Egg Nog Pie recipe months ago and decided I should start with that. Maybe closer to fall. I know probably half of you are gagging, since eggnog isn't a fav for lots of people, but something about it sounded intriguing. I'm not huge on eggnog myself--I'll have a glass or two around the holidays--but I like the flavoring in other sorts of desserts.

7. If the fall and winter didn't mean super short days and driving home from work in the dark, I'd not dread it as much. But I'd still dread it some, because the rain tires me. How convenient that I live here. Not that I've been giving those seasons much thought yet.. we're still in July. Don't be crazy!

8. One day soon, I will update my blog design, and the world will be a better place.

9. I've been on a long search for the perfect pillow, and sometimes it feels like this journey will never end.

10. It feels wrong to end at nine items.

Portfolio

No news on the butterflies. The chrysalises look the same as they did last time I posted about them! I am actually a tiny bit worried that they are just dead now, but I tend to translate no change to mean bad, when often everything is fine. There's no reason they should be unhealthy--I have left them alone and the temps have been fine.

So that isn't why I'm posting. I'm really just here to say that I finally put my photo portfolio up. The web design is nothing to be proud of, but I don't have the right software to do everything I'd like (and I'm definitely not the world's best at html, etc.). I used Simple Viewer, and got some help from a computery friend to customize it a bit. Mostly, I just wanted to get something up there to point people to if they are interested in having some portraits done. That came up last week, which is what prompted me to just get it done today (that and the fact that it's all hot outside). So there you go, peruse if you wish.

I'm still deciding on a new name, and once I do (when I'm old and gray) I'll switch out of the Hello Butterfly theme. It's too easy to find reasons to put things off, so I decided not to let the old name get in the way.

Aren't you glad to know all of that info?

I wanted to post a photo, since entries are funner with photos (don't you think?), but I haven't taken any lately, besides a couple for work. So then I thought I'd find a photo from one year ago today, and the funny thing is that I took pictures on July 23 and July 25, but not the 24th! So...nevermind. I'm going shopping.