My Sweetest Things

All my bags are packed and I am ready to go. Today I leave for 10 days to Germany and Austria! I am beyond thrilled! It has been a dream that’s about to come true!

Planes, trains, and automobiles. I will be keeping a journal of my adventures and will have lots to blog about when I return.

Of course this baby is coming with me! I bought a new 32gb card to go along with the 4gb I already have.

See ya later USA!   It’s all good. ~Donna

I learned a new trick this past weekend! I have been interested in learning how to add textures to photographs. I have photoshop and lightroom and I know the very basics of each. I spend time searching the internet and reading blogs to learn new skills.  There are so many wonderful talented people who are so creative and gracious!

I have been a fan of the  Coffee Shop blog and have been following it for months. Rita is a Texas gal who loves photography and shares many wonderful photo editing tips.  She has a great site full of information for folks interested in photography.  She had a blog post featuring ShadowHouse Creations. Now Jerry Jones is all about creating beautiful textures and art images. You need to stop by his site and take a look. So inspiring and just what I am interested in.

After trial and error I figured out how to add textures to my images!

Before

After!

The change is very subtle but I really love it and I am glad I tried.

How did I do it? Well, I downloaded the Elemental Grunge Texture Pack and created a file for it.

Once in photoshop I went into the file I created for the textures and I chose a texture I wanted to work with.

I opened up the texture in photoshop then went to my photos and selected one I wanted to try a texture with.

I opened that photo into photoshop so I could see both the photo and the texture. I used the rectangle tool and

copied the texture. I then pasted the texture over my photo. At that point I could see the texture over the

the photo.  I then had to right click on the photo with the texture and then I  had the option to free transform to pull the texture to cover the entire photo.

After the entire photo was covered in the texture I double clicked the photo to set the texture. I went over to layers  and and chose overlay and adjusted

the opacity until I was happy with the result. Whew! I did it! So can you!

I am having fun with textures and thanks again to Rita and Jerry for sharing their beautiful designs with us!

It’s all good. ~Donna

We have seen some record low temperatures here in Atlanta the last week. Waking up to wind chills of 0 degrees. What? The slightest hint of snowfall and the grocery stores are packed and milk and bread are emptied off the shelves. Throw some eggs in there and make French Toast I suppose. Thursday night the sleet and snow flurries started to fall. So pretty and I enjoyed every minute of it since we don’t see that very often. Friday morning I was up early to check on school closings and lucky for my son they were closed. I called my office and sure enough we also had a stay home day. I enjoyed hot coffee from the comfort of my sofa and watched the news and listened to stories of cars sliding on the ice and a 27 car pile up.

When the sun started to rise I geared up in my winter wear and headed out to take a peek.

This is what snow day looked like at my house. Snow dusting. Ice was the problem on our neighborhood streets.

On any other snow day I might have had photos of the family playing in the snow. My Andrew slept all morning

and Justin and the cats and dog were all warm inside the house.

This was Snow Day January 2008! Now that was some snow fun!

Anyhoo, thank you for Snow Day 2010. We all were safe and warm

and well rested!

It’s all good. ~ Donna

Jo-Ann’s fabrics and crafts is one of my favorites places to browse around on the weekends. Crafting has always been one of my hobbies and this store is to me what a candy store use to be. My eyes grow wide and I get just a little excited. So many colorful fabrics and craft ideas to choose from! On one of my Jo-Ann’s trips I came across a brownie pop mold at a super price so I picked it up and decided to give brownie pops a try. I used a brownie recipe that I found from My Baking Addiction’s Blog. Jamie has a wonderful site full of pretty photos and yummy desserts. Hop on over there and take a peek!

The brownies were so moist and delicious! I did have a mishap with the mold. This was my first time using a silicone mold and I thought they were just magical so I did not spray the mold with non stick spray. Well,  I had to fight the brownies to get them out! It wasn’t a total loss since brownie crumbs are so tasty so they did not go to waste but ended up as an ice-cream topping. The second batch I used my favorite Baker’s Joy spray and out they popped with no trouble at all. I am a huge fan of Ghirardelli Chocolate and I had picked up the candy making and dipping bar at Sam’s Club so I used that to dip the brownie  pops in. Oh so good! But wait! Even better…I had Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups on hand so I chopped those up in the food processor and used that for the topping. Double Whammy of Goodness!

Double Chocolate Brownies from My Baking Addiction

Ingredients

1/2 cup white sugar
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons water
1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup mini chocolate chips – These you fold into the batter before baking.

Combine butter, sugar and water and cook over medium heat until boiling. Remove from heat and add chocolate chips, stir

until melted and chocolate is smooth. Mix in the eggs and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt into the chocolate mixture

and toss in those extra chocolate chips.

Spoon the brownie mixture into the mold just below the second rim line.

I baked these at 350 degrees and checked them at 15 minutes and they were perfectly done.

Well, perfectly done and then this happened!  They would not come out!

Baker’s Joy to the rescue!

Perfect Pops!

For the chocolate dip, I started with 4 squares of chocolate which I heated in a small glass bowl in the microwave for 30 second intervals until melted.

I chopped up those Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups into small crumbles.

I used lollipop sticks (which you can find find at Jo-Ann’s or Michael’s) and I put a lollipop stick right in the

middle of the brownie pop and dipped it into the chocolate goodness.

Then the above happened. It fell right off the stick! What to do?! Eat it? That would be instant gratification and it was delish,

but these were meant to be shared so I tried again. I started by dipping the stick in the chocolate first then inserted it into the brownie then placed

it in the fridge for a few minutes to set. When I took them out of the fridge I dipped them in the chocolate and then sprinkled the

Reese’s Crumbs on top and I was good to go!

All done! I used a styrofoam ball that I  cut in half and stuck the brownie pops in the foam to hold them for serving.

Whew! Loved them! It’s all good. ~Donna

Two very special ladies in my life, my Mom and Grandma celebrated their birthday’s and I wanted to give them something special. Molly Monkey is the cutest and I thought she would make both of them smile.  Larissa is an Atlanta peep with a wonderful blog mmmcrafts. I made my first Molly in August 2009. You can take a peek here to see how I made her. She received many oohhhs, and ahhhs from family members and I have many more Molly’s in my future. Thanks Larissa for sharing her as she has brought many smiles to our family.

My Molly in the Middle. Grandma’s on left, Mom’s on right. All sitting pretty!

Molly in Grandma’s arms.

Happy 80th Birthday Grandma! You are so wonderful and I am blessed to have you in my life.

I have to mention that the red beaded necklace she is wearing belonged to her mom.  She shared a story of how her mom

would get dressed to go to the city and she would wear that necklace. Love, love.

It’s all good. ~Donna

My husband and I had a different start to our normal Christmas Eve.  We went to Georgia Frontiers in Canton, Georgia for horseback riding! It was so nice to drive the hour up there. The Holidays are always so hectic so this was a relaxing change of pace. Roger the owner welcomed us and introduced our Horses, Chey and Montego. They were the sweetest! I have been horseback riding a few times and was so looking forward to hitting the trail. It was a cool morning and the Georgia Mountain views were a real treat! We enjoyed talking to Roger along the trail and he had great things to share with us. I learned that Horses have a small stomach for their size, which limits the amount of feed that can be taken in at one time. It is better for them to have smaller meals several times a day instead of one or two large meals since they empty their stomachs when it is two-thirds full, whether the food in the stomach is processed or not. This is why people say “He eats like a Horse” when someone is hungry and eats all day. This is also why Horses have so many bathroom breaks!

 Our ride was a little over an hour and Roger took us off onto a new trail he is clearing. I attempted to “run” the horse which lasted a whole 10 seconds at most. I had my heels pointed up, leaned back and held onto the reins just like I was supposed to but it felt like I was going to bounce right off! Roger asked me to not yell like a girl if I needed to stop and for me to say Whoa if I needed to stop. Um. WHOA! My heart was racing but it felt good. I tried to run the Horse a second time for another whole 10 seconds then another WHOA! Great fun but perhaps velcro is in order next time to keep my behind from bouncing off! I highly recommend visiting Georgia Frontiers ! It was a wonderful experience and I am looking forward to our next ride!

This sweet kitty greeted us and was very friendly. Cat lover I am had to take a photo!

Justin up on Montego.

Photo taken by me on Chey.

This is what a photo looks like when you are taking it with one hand, holding on the reins, and bouncing up the trail.

View of the Georgia Mountains up from top of the trail.

This is Roger I processed using the Seventies Action from the Pioneer Womans Action Set  for Photoshop.

Seventies Action again. Thanks PW!

Point your heels up in these and yell WHOA to stop!

Why hello there my pretty!

Excuse Me? That’s not very lady like.

Oh, now you think that is funny? Silly Horse.

I learned how to make this cool collage in Picasa! I use Picasa to store my photos and make my web albums.

It has free photo editing software and as I just learned you can make collages!

See ya later! It’s all good. ~Donna

Our family had a very wonderful and blessed Holiday 2009! We have always celebrated Christmas with the boys and when I met my husband we started celebrating Hanukkah as well. I have enjoyed learning Hanukkah traditions including eating my Father in law’s latkes! In our house you will see a Menorah, the Star of David, dreidels, a Christmas tree, stockings, a Nativity scene and bright colored Christmas lights. Terrific! Here are a few photos of our family Holiday 2009!

Our Family. Yes, I am the only girl. Cheers to 2010! It’s all good! ~Donna

Atlanta. The ATL. Hot-lanta, which is so not hot here lately. It’s currently 34 degrees! Here are a few photos of this beautiful town  I live in. I took these from the balcony of my very BFF’s condo.  (He happens to be my Ex-Husband and my baby’s daddy) When we moved here 15 years ago we were driving through the city and he looked up and said “One day we will have a condo in the city.” He was right! He fulfilled his dream of living the city life and I stayed out in what we joke as the country. Not really country but suburbs….close to the country. Anyhoo, it’s great to have the best of both worlds and my boys are loving that! I am loving that too. It’s all good! ~ Donna