The Beginning of a New Year

Well, here we are into the second week of the new year and it still feels fresh and new.  I'm counting down the days until the lemons (nasty criminal neighbors) are out the door, gone for good.  I'm sure once they are out, they will not be back.  My brother said to seize the day, when life gives you lemons.  I clicked like of course and said there will be lemons rolling on out at the end of the month.  Something like that.  And I sure hope it is true that it's the end of the month.  I don't want to deal with them for another moment, but they are there.

I'm going to make an effort to not be there as much during the day.  I like to wake up in the mornings, have my coffee and watch a movie and knit one of my invented patterns before starting off writing at least for now.  I should mix it up though.  I have been enjoying going to the library or MacDonalds for my internet time.  I don't want to spring for internet until sometime after they are gone.

I am working on finishing a yummy soup I made for my Soup, Pasta, and crackers book.  However, I think I will need to change an ingredient in this recipe.

I was making a homemade pasta to use in my pasta machine, however, the seminola pasta dough was too crumbly to go through the machine and I'm going to have to find a pasta recipe for this more to my liking that will work in it and then I can add my spices etc... later.  It's got to be able to go through the machine so that I can cut it.

I know the machine works fine, as many people use them all the time.  It's got to be the dough.  I'm going to try one with regular flour next time.  Needless to say, those bits of pasta are not getting eaten and thank god they sunk to the bottom when I took my pictures!  ha ha.

Yes, seize the day is so important.  Don't ever let life get you down.  Yes, there are constantly problems in everyone's life.  I recently sent a text to my sister that she should consider herself lucky that she hasn't been dealt a hard life like me.  Of course, I know she has problems too.  We all have problems in our lives.  And even I should be thankful that my life hasn't been as bad as someone else's as there is always someone in the world worse off than us.

I also told my family that when these people are gone, I am going to want to just put it all in the past and not even remotely talk about it.  I am going to want to get back to a normal life, without having criminal neighbors harassing and stalking me.

And someone in my life wants me in it, so it's worth the effort to go with the flow and see what happens.

That's all a person can really do in this life is to practicing going with what comes your way.  You can always pray for a dream, a miracle, hope, wish, etc., but what it all boils down to is what you make of it and what enters your life.  You can't ask to live on Pluto and get it.  You know, the impossible dream.

But, I think that any dream can potentially come true if we try for it, shoot for the moon, lasso it and ask.  If we rest on our laurels and don't try because someone tells us it cannot be done or we don't believe in ourselves that we have the power to do it.

If you try your best to do things, it can be done.  And if it can't at least you can honestly say that you tried, right?

I've pumped up The Glorious Money Tree to 159 pages and hopefully it will be more by the end of the week of course.  It's coming closer to the 200-300 pages I am shooting for.  I think after this month is out, I just want to diligently work at it full speed.  And then get started on the second books.

I am thinking for part of my cover, I want to do a drawing partially from that wonderful close up of Emily Parker.  The eyes, nose and lips and the rest will be invented.  I'm going to have to do a few different covers to see which one I want to choose.

Jennifer Jo Fay

Copyrighted January 11, 2013

Luna

the ruffle scarf I am making right now from my own pattern.  This one is tricky.  The yarn likes to slip off my needles.  I've got to find my knitting stoppers.  And one of the rows I am doing that bobble stitch which takes longer to do.  I've set this pattern down for today, it's about half way done.  I'm making a quicker and easier pattern from a raspberry type stitch that's cool.

This week's soup!  The spinach meatball patties are in it too!  They sunk just like the pasta that I'm going to not use in the recipe.  Opt out for different pasta.  Or another soup recipe may even have dumplings in it.  That may have to be in next week's soup as now I'm craving it.

These were fun to make in a muffin pan.  I saw the idea from Pinterest.

A friend told me that I should put a cheesecake recipe in the book that I made for a Thanksgiving dinner.  However, that one I had done wasn't my original recipe.

I think everything in my books have to be original.  I can begin with someone's recipe, but I would of course deviate from it every single time and make my own recipes.  I think in most recipes though, you have to follow something in order for it to come out the right consistency and then once you know it works you can add other things you want.

Like for certain recipes have to have the right amount of flour, eggs or other ingredients that are going to hold it's shape, etc....