Life Gave Me Lemons

I had great plans for this week, but life decided to intervene. However, I thought I would give you my lemonade moments.

First up, the cat lover picture.

Every time we open the frig, Natalie jumps in. If we don't notice, the door gets shut and she moves to the shelf on the door. So when we reopen it (5 seconds later, we tend to realize right away), this is what we see. However, we have to lift her out, because she is intent on staying.

When I looked at the picture, I realized that the man who labelled the shelf JAM so he can find his marmalade in the morning, has stuck a can of  Guinness on that shelf. It puts a whole new dimension to breakfast!

My grandson, and his parents came to put up my Christmas tree. I guess I shouldn't have expected much from new parents.

The tree is up. It has two strings of lights and two ornaments.

And, of course, it had a cat in it before it was all the way up.

Nothing much gets in the way of knitting, even lemons. Actually, I think it helps with life's lemons.

 A hat, a requested Christmas present from a grownup boy, who no longer thinks hats are a terrible Christmas present. Pattern is Invisicrown.

The Flip Flop socks are nearly finished. See, there are 2. I just need to reverse the toe, from the first one. Luckily, I wrote down what I had done.

Yesterday, I started a new tradition. My grandson and I made Christmas cookies, to send to far away relatives. These are Fruit Cake Hermit cookies, my own recipe, created a couple of years ago, to use up the leftover fruit cake ingredients.  Here is the recipe.

Fruit Cake Hermits

1 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. rum extract

2 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp. baking powder, cinnamon, and mace

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup chopped pecans

1 cup raisins

1 cup of leftover fruitcake fruit (peel, citron, glace cherries, it doesn't matter)

Cream the butter and the two sugars. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, along with the rum extract.

Combine the dry ingredients. Stir into the butter. Fold in the fruit and nuts.

Drop by tablespoons on a parchment covered sheet pan. 

Bake @ 350F for 15 minutes. 

Try not to eat them all before they get send away!