Labor Day Goal - Check!

Ok there was one thing I wanted to get accomplished this Labor Day and that was reading the second installment of the Hunger Games. I read HG last Fall and thought it was pretty good for a young adult book. Lots of violence and a story that I got invested in. Well book 2, Catching Fire, came out last Tuesday and I was dying to go buy it. So Jared and I went to Barnes & Noble and it was not there. I thought it might have sold out because there were 275 holds on it at the library before it even officially came out. So we went home and decided to get on the bikes and go head to Target. It wasn't there either. I was actually ok with this because I was still engrossed in my other book at the time. Jared suggested we give WalMart a try before we headed home. And wouldn't you know, it was there. Wahoo!!

Catching Fire was even better than the first. I read 150 pages my first night. I could not put the stupid thing down. Love the storyline, love the characters . . . this was a great book to start off my fall reading season with. If you are a book reader and not afraid of a little futuristic theme . . . pick these up now. Start with book 1, you won't be sorry.

Door Ding and Ditch

So I thought I would post a pic of the ding on my car door that I found last week. I actually thought it was funny because whoever dinged my door tried to rub off the red paint that they left with their finger. My car is black and so it's always dirty. I could see their finger swipes. What's even better is it looks like they then licked their finger in hopes of the paint coming off. You can't see that the paint is red from the picture. LOSER! Thanks a lot red car . . . 'preciate ya.

PS . . . it's really not as big as it looks. Don't let the reflection of the car fool you. That was a grey Accord I was parked next to that you can see reflected in my door.

And the winner is . . . (at least for now)

The flat gooey snickerdoodles won out. I found a recipe for the puffy cookies and it looks like one of the secrets is shortening v. butter. So Jared and I tried out the puffy cookies and we decided that we both loved the flat gooey ones a lot more. I apologized to Jared that I had to make more of the same dough all over again and not something different. We'll just say he wasn't very sad. So I'll share that recipe.

3 1/2 cups flour

1 Tbs baking powder

2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1 cup butter, softened

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 Tbs light corn syrup

2 1/2 tsp vanilla

To set aside:

3 Tbs sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

In small bowl combine flour, baking powder and soda, salt and cinnamon. Cream butter until nice and fluffy. Add sugar and beat until combined. Add eggs, corn syrup and vanilla. Beat until creamy. Gradually beat in dry ingredients until combined. Let chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour. I actually like it when it's chilled for a few hours, even over night.

Roll table spoon size dough balls in the sugar and cinnamon that was set aside. Bake in preheated oven at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes. These cookies taste super good nice and warm and good the next day after begin stored. Here's pics of the puffy cookies v. the flat gooey ones. Look at the gooey-ness in the picture of the flat pic that I loaded.