toffee bars. and artistic endeavors. :)

Now...if anyone wants a workout of any kind, all y'all need to do is make a batch of this^

Toffee bars
1 cup butter or margarine softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg yolk
2 cups Gold Medal® all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
Mix together, pat down in a 9x13 greased pan, and bake @ 350 until golden...:)
2/3 cup milk chocolate chips
½ cup chopped nuts, if desired
Then, turn off the oven, pour some chocolate chips of some wonderful kind over the top, wait a few minutes, and spread around with spatula of your choice. You can stick the pan in the turned-off oven to melt the chocolate faster if you're in a hurry. ;)

And then let it chill in the fridge, and then try to cut it with various cutting things. . . like metal spatulas, knives both serrated and non-serrated, and weird could-cut-you spatulas that look like they spread frosting or something . . . Yeah. I used it for both purposes: smoothing the chocolate chips and cutting. I'm amusingly snazzy genius like that, ya know.

;)

And, it just happened to be so thin on the edges, this utensil, that I got little scrapes/cuts on the hands from trying to cut this darn hard dessert.

Yup.

I was . . . ahem . . . kind of breathing hard when I finished cutting up both 9x13 pans, both chilled and everything with the same treatment . . . argh.

Kitchen=hard work. 

I tell ya.

This I made on Sunday before watching Eliyah for a few minutes while Sarah and Anna ran on an errand.

We had bunches of fun, she tried to take a bite of my shoulder through my shirt, and now I call her Sharp Tooth. Yes, as in Land Before Time . . . haha.
That's the cake Sarah and Justin gave us; the last of it from Eliyah's birthday party on Saturday. Gosh, that was some good cake.
I randomly turned on my webcam and took a video of us, and she even waved bye-bye to her image. Cute. :)
Oh, yes. Here's the lunch we had on Sunday, when Sarah and Justin stopped by with napping Eliyah--it's the chicken rice stuff I told y'all about the other day...

It was a gorgeous day, can you tell? And that's one of the few pots of coffee I brewed that day. Harhar.
And that, my friends, is the beauteous lunch. Ahhh. That stuff is addicting. Justin agreed.

And this was before Sarah and Justin came over; that first pot of Trader Joe's Bolivian Blend...white-purple violets growing by the side of our house. Tulips, too.
And those are the pearls that Eliyah loves so much. She touches, she starts to pull, and you say no, those a pretties. Be gentle. Then she's usually less of a puller. Heh heh. :)
Yep, that's Lyddie's cup. Her favorite color's yellow. I find that coffee looks very good in that cup. ;) Not that it doesn't in other mugs, but oh well...color schemes are interesting to me. Can I just say I love that shirt? $4 blinkin' dollars from Wally-world, peoples. Only $4!
Anyhow, let's get off the subject of bargains. :)

I'm off to do more artistic stuff. Artistic, as in painting. I'll be sure to post pictures. Promise.
This is one I made before....the original that inspired, and one I did for Mom, custom. :)

The one on the right is one from Tarjay....the one on the left is the one I made for Mom:]

How is that possible? Well, Lyd used to own a camera exactly like mine...and she sold it to Caleb. So, he's being so kind as to let me borrow his until we find mine. Because I'm attached to my camera. And my camera look-alikes. :) And Rachel's Canon has dead batteries. So there...
Have a lovely day. :)