One of the best presents ever

Sometimes the smallest present can become one of the best presents ever.  Such as, the dough scraper.  Yes the handy and might dough scraper was given to me as a gift from my cousin Sandy.  She was working at Ace Hardware when they got them in and she immediately bought me one and one for herself. 

On Saturday I made one roll out recipe that I have from an Aunt of Annette's.  It's a good cookie, but sometimes it can be challenging to roll out.  This is where the dough scraper comes in handy.  From scooping up the cookie to putting it on the tray to cleaning off the board when dough gets stuck-- it is a super gadget.

In the picture you see both my grandmother's rolling pin and her bread board, as she called it, which I roll out my dough on.  It's funny, when I was small I thought both objects where huge. Time has made them smaller.

Making cookies is a long family tradition.  One that my cousin Sandy and I kept going.  I remember the one time, she brought tons of cookie sheets and we rolled and stacked and roll and stacked and then baked, we practically looked professional. Ah the good times.  This year we almost lost her, and as I rolled out the cookies and scraped the dough I thought constantly of her.  It is funny how something so small can hold so many memories.

Here is wishing you many merry memories this holiday season. 

and that's another day in Catasauqua.

The Stare Down in Catty

I started telling this story to Parke and he said "Why don't you blog this story, you haven't been blogging?"  What a good idea, that's why I keep him around.

Anyway, the story starts this morning early AM.  I was  going to breakfast with a bunch of bff's from church and I wanted to quickly walk the dog.  We were doing good until Petey started a staring match with a certain large gentleman across the street.

I have learned a lot about dog behavior from Petey's Obedience Classes at Chaar.  Dogs will stare especially at each other.  The first dog that moves determines the type of behavior.  Example, the dog on the one side of where I live came forward with a low growl, she was showing aggression and they started a barking match.  On the other hand last weekend a new dog was visiting on the other side of where I live.  His name was Harley and he was a large 7 month old.  They did the stare down, but Harley went bouncing up the yard which showed playful behavior.  Harley really tired out Petey last week, he ended up napping all night.

But this morning's stare down wasn't friendly, the man didn't move, he just keep staring, and Petey started with a low growl, warning the man to look away, but the man didn't, so Petey started barking, which started me laughing, because you see, the man was blow up Santa.  Yes, Petey was barking at blow up Santa and I couldn't get him to stop.  I had to tell him "leave it"  which is the command to walk away but he was sure that this man meant trouble.  I had my hand over it mouth the one time, but he kept trying to bark. It was muffled by my glove and he cheeks would puff out in effort to make a sound.  I had to pull him for about a half a block until we were away from the Jolly Elf.

Oh poor Santa, I better make sure I have Petey is in his cage Christmas Eve.  I shudder to think what might happen if Santa bent over him to say Merry Christmas.

Oh my, and that's another day in Catasauqua.