what's up?

As I've mentioned before, this is such a busy month for us here at the 4 Pear's household. Lots of fun visitors and two trips to Disneyland have made it hard for me to post as often as I' d like.

tea cups...

yay!

On top of visitors and trips a few other things have been taking up my free time.  I'm working on this cute "lapghan".

I've actually never crocheted an afghan  before, and I've never changed colors within my work before either. I think this is a great pattern if you are a newbie to crocheting like I am and want a project to give you lots of practice on stitching evenly and changing colors of yarn.  The stitches are all basic and repetitive but add up to pretty looking "waves".  You can find the pattern here.

I've also discovered a new author that I really like.  I first read The Passage by Justin Cronin and while on the library e-waiting list for the sequel, I read his other novel Mary and O' Neil.  Two very different books (vampire apocalypse vs a novel about two normal people) but I just love Cronin's writing style. Really great reading.  I'm onto that sequel now (The Twelve) so that makes me less productive in other areas, sorry!

As far as cooking, I've made two soups from this month's Food Network magazine (well actually my MIL made one of them) and both were great.  The Tortilla-Chipolte soup is quick and yummy but a bit spicy!  I stirred in a half cup of cream at the end to mellow the spice a bit.  The Chicken and Quinoa soup was really tasty too and it has a surprisingly huge amount of flavor for a chicken and vegetable soup.

image from FoodNetwork.com

And, lastly, instead of eating breakfast or lunch like I should, most days I've been chowing down on these oatmeal cookies.  No need to refrigerate these or flatten them, just scoop them onto sheets and bake at 350 F for about 10 minutes.  Delicious.  My second batch I tossed in some Reese's Pieces...whoa yum.