— 1 —

Isn’t this the most beautiful thing? Read how Amber Rousse made this. I’ve never tried quilling, it seems easy but time consuming. I love the green and brown contrast. I must resist another hobby.

— 2 —

So, I got a Kitchenaid mixer for Christmas. Yeah! Bright red. I made peanut butter cookies Thursday night. I can’t get over how much less labor intensive it is over the hand whisk or a hand-held mixer. I love my husband! I tried to make bread…everyone loved it but me, not so much. I didn’t like the consistency of the bread when I used the bread hook. I think I prefer kneading by hand. So, my goal this weekend is to make cinnamon bread.

Here’s the Food Network recipe for peanut butter cookies:

1 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup additional to roll cookies
1 stick butter, at room temperature
1 egg
1 cup smooth peanut butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1-1/2 cups flour

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a baking sheet. In a large bowl, cream together sugar and butter. Beat in egg to mixture. Mix in peanut butter and vanilla until smooth and creamy. Stir in salt, baking soda, and flour until well combined. Roll dough into 1 inch balls and then roll in sugar. Place on baking sheet and flatten with fork. Bake for 12-15 minutes.

So I didn’t roll them in sugar, and I didn’t flatten them with a fork, and I used my cookie scoop to make them the same size. Oh, and I used parchment paper instead of greasing the baking sheet..but other than that I followed the recipe exactly!

— 3 —

So here are the two best cookie making tools in the world:

The Wilton Jumbo Cookie Spatula here

and a cookie dough scoop,small here

— 4 —

I love Neil Young, especially his “Unplugged” album. He uses a pump organ that I think is just beautiful. Anyway, his Carnegie Hall performance has been crowd sourced and uploaded to YouTube and can be found here:

— 5 —

I don’t sleep well. So I found this list of the top ten most relaxing tunes here:

1. Marconi Union—Weightless
2. Airstream—Electra
3. DJ Shah—Mellmaniac (Chill out Mix)
4. Enya—Watermark
5. Coldplay—Strawberry Swing
6. Barcelona—Please Don’t Go
7. All Saints—Pure Shores
8. Adele—Someone Like You
9. Mozart—Canzonetta Sull”aria
10. Café Del Mar—We Can Fly

Here’s what Lyz Cooper, founder of the British Academy of Sound Therapy says about Weightless:

“While listening, your heart rate gradually comes to match that beat. It is important that the song is eight minutes long because it takes about five minutes for this process, known as entrainment, to occur. The fall in heart rate also leads to a fall in blood pressure.
The harmonic intervals – or gaps between notes – have been chosen to create a feeling of euphoria and comfort. And there is no repeating melody, which allows your brain to completely switch off because you are no longer trying to predict what is coming next.
Instead, there are random chimes, which helps to induce a deeper sense of relaxation. The final element is the low, whooshing sounds and hums that are like buddhist chants. High tones stimulate but these low tones put you in a trance-like state.”

I think I may make this playlist and try it this week. I’ll let you know how it works.

— 6 —

Thursday morning on NPR’s Morning Edition they sampled Gem Club’s new album In Roses. Haunting and beautiful, a combination of cello, voice, and piano I can’t quit listening to the tracks available. I think I’ll have to get this on the 28th when it drops. This seems like something that would make work go by easy. And sometimes, it’s nice when work goes by easy.

— 7 —

And finally, I’ve been hooked on LOL My Thesis. I’ve submitted mine, but it hasn’t come up yet (they get 500 submissions a day). If it shows up, trust me you’ll hear about it. Graduate students take their thesis, which represents months to years of work and reduce it to a single, snarky sentence.

For example, the scholarly thesis entitled: “Creating a Romantic Landscape Costume Design and the Modern Romanticization of Pride & Prejudice” by a Theatre major at the University of Florida is reduced to “I Read/Watched a Lot of Pride & Prejudice and Wrote Extensively About Colin Firth’s Tight-Fitting Pants”.

In that vein, here is the Film School Thesis Statement Generator. Enter the name of your film and, surprisingly, it generates your thesis statement.

So Finding Nemo generates: “Through the use of impliled depth-of-field, Finding Nemo reminds the spectator of the plight of the migrant worker in post-war America”.

Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought.

Thanks, again to Jen for hosting and hop over to Conversion Diary to see what better bloggers than I have to say!

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