The famous wonderful husband chocolate chip cookie recipe:

WH Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup softened salted butter
1 cup sugar
10 Tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups plain flour
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
8 oz. milk chocolate morsels
8 oz. chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Place the butter, and both sugars in a mixer bowl, and cream until well mixed. Add the vanilla extract and eggs. Mix well. Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add small amounts of the flour mixture to the butter mixture, and mix well. Fold in the chocolate pieces and nuts. Refrigerate dough for 1/2 hour. Spoon out tablespoon portions on a parchment or Silpat lined baking sheet, 1 1/2 inches apart. Bake the cookies for 12-15 minutes, or until golden brown. Allow to cool.

If you make them, I’d love to hear your reviews. 

xo xo xo

It has been nearly a year since I started the Charm & Grace website.  And while my blog has seen quite a bit of traffic over the months, the main website has not been profitable.  It tends to have a good bit of traffic, but it hasn’t been as financially successful as I need for it to be.  I put Google ads there hoping to generate enough revenue to pay for the hosting and justify my time in writing and design on the site.  I am now in the process of reevaluating that concept.  I lean toward revamping and refining the site, so that in the future it won’t take quite so much time to update the articles.  There are so many things going on right now, I just haven’t had the time (and believe me it takes gobs of time) to do a winter 2008 issue of Charm & Grace.  I hope to have a spring issue, albeit pared down and reconfigured, out sometime in March.

Having said that, today was a day to experiment with my new paint brushes and watercolors.  After a fun day of playing with paint, I am glad to sit down to the computer and share with you what I’ve been up to.  (No I have not made any progress on the comment spamming, although I have spent quite a bit of time trying.  I will let you know when I get a solution.  Special thanks to Karla and Bebe for your great suggestions.) Anyway, since I am now back to doing fine art, I will also be looking for a way to coordinate my creative pursuits with my web design.  This is all such a wonderful opportunity to learn new things and new ways of incorporating all my artistic endeavors, and I really am excited about what the future holds. 

Color is an amazing thing, and for me, being able to play and experiment is just such a blessing.  And it’s something I haven’t afforded myself the luxury of doing in quite some time.

On a side note… a few days ago I was looking for a container to hold and sort my brushes, when I had a wonderful inspiration.  I had purchased this lovely tulip vase last summer and haven’t used it very often as a vase.  When I saw it I knew that it would be the perfect (and very aesthetically pleasing) brush holder.  I love the way the brushes look held so gracefully by the creamy white vase.  Blessings and hugs…

OK… I have been inundated with spam comments on my blog.  Have any of you experienced this with your blogs, and if so, how did you deal with it?  I don’t know if it’s specific to WordPress or if it can happen with any blog.  Anyway, I have had over 100 spam comments in the past three or four days, and this has got to end.

I’m all ears…     Thanks in advance.

 I admit it… this picture is a teaser so that you’ll read to the end.  (Shameless, aren’t I?)

OK, I have to confess that these past few weeks have been hard… I woke up about four weeks ago to excruciating knee pain.  Ask me how I did it… I’ve been asked a hundred times… but I just can’t tell you.  I just woke up that way.  And from what I have read on this great internet-medical-information-highway, there is no cure except rest, ice, and wrapping with an ace bandage.  Try telling that to a busy mom of 3 with as many activities as you can cram into a week.  And of course it’s my right leg… you know… the one I drive with.  So, I have had to stoop to being driven around by my 16 year old… not that I mind, mind you.  In fact, I could really get used to being chauffeured.

And on top of the knee injury, my laptop screen has died.  My laptop… the one which contains half my life… the websites I design, the calendar, the list of my favorite blogs, all my photos, the scans of my artwork, etc.  The screen just died one day… and you can’t do much without a screen.  I am now using it with a very large external monitor, which works just fine, as long as you’re sitting in the same spot all the time.  I am too accustomed to being able to take my life (I mean computer) with me. 

But there are certain benefits to being temporarily immobile, the foremost at the moment has been that wonderful husband has taken nicely to kitchen detail.  He has not only cooked (brilliantly, I might add) and cleaned, but has discovered he has quite a penchant for baking… homemade breads, rolls, cookies, etc.  We have been the beneficiaries of this newfound love over these past weeks. 

So, while knee injuries and computer failures can be vastly inconvenient, there are some benefits… namely, fresh out of the oven, piping hot, crusty, yummy, homemade bread.

And not just bread, but THE BEST chocolate chip cookies I have ever tasted.  I may post the recipe one of these days… if you beg me.  Really these are too good not to share.  They are perfection in your mouth.

Yes, that is wonderful husband’s actual hand dipping the cookies onto the parchment. 

Are they as good as they look, you ask?  Nope… much, much better!  I think it may be a really long time before my knee recovers.