Today has been Great!

Today was really an amazing day in many small ways.  Throughout the course of the day there were various little joys that made me smile and my heart happy.  Nothing big or spectacular (okay one thing was pretty spectacular) just small things that made me happy.

Like uncovering two couches because I folded all of our laundry. (After taking the picture I put everything most of it away - I had actually put a bit away before I took the picture because there was so much it was toppling over and all.) The laundry had been hanging out on two different couches, finishing it has opened up so much sitting room I hardly know what to do with myself.

Then there was breakfast.  Once again it's not that it was elaborate - just really joyful.  It's a homemade roll (thanks Tamara) warmed and cut in half spread with raspberry jam and topped with cheddar cheese (medium sharp I think). Delicious! Since the picture has both I'm going to go ahead and tell you that grated cheese is much better for this than sliced.  Which brings me to the second part of why this was wonderful and that is I used my new food processor to grate the cheese.  It was positively joyous.  Not only was it unbelievably fast and the grate incredible (look how cute and curly it is!) but it didn't scrape my fingers up and was so much easier to clean than my crazy grater.  My cheese grater is of such a design that it limits my grated cheddar intake simply by being a huge pain in the butt.  I've been wanting to make this little treat for a while but keep putting it off because I didn't want to grate the cheese and it's difficult to slice the cheese thin enough to make it really good.  I'm not even positive it will ever be as good with sliced cheese - something about the grated makes it much yummier on this dish.  But I digress; in short I hadn't made this dish yet because I couldn't face using and washing my cheese grater.  So I thought 'What have I got to lose? There's no way it can be harder to clean than the cheese grater...I'm gonna do it!' and I did and I loved it!  It honestly made this little snack taste even better.

After enjoying my snack I read about a quiz that a lot of Americans aren't doing too well on.  It is ten questions on basic Revolutionary War knowledge.  Of course I had to head over and take it (you can take the quiz here) and ended up doing quite well. (I got nine out of ten and almost went back to change the answer on the one I missed but thought about all the times I second guessed myself and regretted it so didn't...isn't that just the way it goes?) Of the ten questions I think that most Americans should know at least four, three should be know but it wouldn't surprise me if they aren't and three were a little harder.  Anyhow it made my day that I did know as much as I thought I did about our country.

The next item of joy came in the form of a little thing I had picked up at the grocery store on Saturday. While there I stopped by the deli to see if they had any baby Swiss (it's hard for me to describe baby Swiss cheese other than to say it's got a great flavor just a little less sharp than regular Swiss. It's really yummy.) (side note: apparently being a mom is doing some damage to my adjectives - in our world there are two types of food: yummy and yucky) They didn't but they did have a little package called bits and pieces which is exactly what it sounds like it would be - a package that has a bunch of the ends of meat and cheese.  It looked promising and for a dollar didn't seem too extravagant.  I broke into it yesterday and really enjoyed snacking on the different flavors of meat and cheese I don't normally try. It was a lot of fun and really tasty (yay! I thought of another food adjective!)

Then there was the moment when I realized that my children were pink squared.  They had both of their own accord chosen two items of pink clothing each. (And to top it off Liberty was packing the pink scissors...) Apparently Liberty has decided that pink is plenty okay as she is choosing it more frequently lately. This reminds me of something else I completely enjoyed about the day and that was reading a new Fancy Nancy book with Emmuska.  I love Fancy Nancy.  If you've never read it I would ask you to go to the library and check it out. After reading it let me know who Nancy reminds you of.  The one we read was about Nancy's first book report. To complete her book report she has to go to the art supply store to get the necessary supplies and proceeds to make the most dazzling cover (her words).  I won't give more of the plot away but I can just imagine this is exactly how Emmuska would approach a book report.  (I tried to get a picture to put with this but was experiencing difficulties - go here to check one out.) Seriously anybody who knows my girl needs to read Fancy Nancy. 

Perhaps it was because so much was going well so my brain shifted into 'sensible functioning mode' who knows but for some reason while Samuel was taking his nap and the girls were playing on Nick Jr. I decided to do something well sensible.  I grabbed my pillow and blanket and lay down on the couch to take a nap.  And that's what I did.  I don't remember what woke me but it wasn't something dramatic and it could have even been *gasp* me just waking up on my own.  Shortly after my extraordinarily refreshing nap I got a text message from my sister Bonnie telling me that her name was on Jimmy's board for a free rose.  Now I can't adequately express how exciting this was for me.  Having my name on this board has been a dream of mine for years. Seriously.  Ever since I was aware of this store and their give-away I've hoped to see my name up there.  I introduced Bonnie to this board and she became my cohort in this dream.  She and I talked often about how fun it would be to see our names up there and get our free roses.  Having her name up there was about as thrilling for me as having mine up there would be. It was really exciting. Get her story here.

January 6th is Shortbread Day according to one of my favorite websites so I had decided that I was going to celebrate by making shortbread (naturally what else would I make?) I've made shortbread before so I thought I'd try a little something different in honor of the day and made two kinds of shortbread. Traditional and Parmesan-Pepper.  I got the recipes from the insert of my Food Network magazine. (Yes I get Food Networks magazine and I absolutely love it!) But if you are interested you can grab the recipes here.  Making shortbread is great because it generally has about five ingredients, maybe a few more for something fancier.  It's easy and fairly rewarding.  The basic shortbread turned out pretty nice - though I think I might have over cooked it a little bit (and according to the recipe I pulled it out early) but that's okay if I'm dipping it in hot chocolate.  It takes on a slightly caramelized flavor.  Better than biscotti for sure.  The Parmesan-Pepper shortbread has a fun and subtle flavor. Liberty categorized it as yucky but I don't agree.  I'd say it's definitely more of a savory shortbread best matched to a soup but I've still enjoyed snacking on them (they are the smaller ones in the picture).  The best thing was making the celebrated food item on its day.

Yes it's been a great day.