Month: July 2010 (page 2 of 2)

Red, White & Blue

The Fourth of July is on the horizon and I have my whole menu planned for the weekend festivities, except for the most important part: dessert! That, for me, is the hardest thing to plan, there are just too many choices.  I could make my Strawberry Shortcake Cake, or good old fashioned ice cream sandwiches made from fresh chocolate chip, oatmeal or sugar cookies and filled with vanilla or strawberry ice-cream.

I spotted these goodies on the Martha Stewart site. I love the cookie spoons, although I would probably break them on purpose so I could munch away on my edible utensil and then get another one.

I also loved these jam stars. However, I would feel wasteful to not use all of my dough when I have smeared it so lovingly with jam, I would probably use my scraps up by cutting out some little circles or mini stars to go alongside the bigger ones.

It would also be tempting to make a mile high Pollyanna Cake, like the ones they baked for the Church bazaar. That is an old Disney favorite of mine. It is one of those movies that you better make sure you have something sweet in the house to eat when you watch it, although, unless you have one of Tillie’s (the Harrington’s cook in the movie) cakes you will be sadly disappointed with whatever exists behind the doors of your cupboards.

That does it! I think I will make my Nana’s marble cake with chocolate frosting! I just might have to make two, one for me and one for everyone else…

*Click on the Martha Stewart Images to be taken to the recipes for those mouth-watering cookies!

(Images: Sugar Cookie Spoons & Jam Stars: copyright Martha Stewart; Pollyanna: images found on Flickr; Pink Flags & Circle Labels: a Pugly Pixel Freebie)

The Sweet Things

To some she was only a Pioneer girl, to others she was simply a TV character, but for many she was a writer who held in her books the secrets of their own heart’s desires; to run barefoot in a field with sun-kissed cheeks, as bonnets, hung from their necks, bounced along their backs, as they made their way home to Ma & Pa.

This quote by Laura Ingalls Wilder, to me, says all I need to know about her. She was a woman who realized the secret of life: that it is important to draw pleasure from the simple things, the little things, the everyday blessings, that we just might be too busy to stop and see and we miss out.

(Image by Mary Engelbreit)