Quick French Onion Biscuits

We made these biscuits to go with a ham the other night, and they were amazing! They're quick, easy, and tasty -- what more could you ask for? We found the recipe here at BettyCrocker.com.

Quick French Onion Biscuits

Ingredients:

2 cups Original Bisquick mix
1/4 cup milk
8 oz French onion dip

Directions:

Preheat oven to 450F. Stir all ingredients until soft dough forms. Drop dough into 6 mounds on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 10-12 minutes or until light golden brown. Serve warm. Yum!

Withdrawl

I know I spend a lot of time on the computer, but I didn't realize just how much until our modem died on Tuesday morning. Suddenly, I couldn't check my email, I couldn't do anything with my Etsy shop, I couldn't blog, I couldn't check my Facebook... and what was worse, Daniel couldn't talk to his grandparents on Skype or watch an occasional Veggie Tales silly song on YouTube.

By the time we finally got a new modem hooked up and were back online Wednesday night, I felt like I'd been trying to quit caffeine or something. My husband and I had to take turns catching up on our internet lives after Daniel went to bed, and our own bedtime was rather later than usual.

But while I was without internet access for two days, I got an astounding number of other things done. I finished crocheting little flowers for a scarf I'm making for a custom order. I crocheted almost a dozen new scrunchies. I picked all the dead blossoms and leaves off the flowers we have hanging on our balcony. I did laundry. I fixed a toy for Daniel. I wrote up some episode reviews of my favorite TV show, Combat!, to be posted soon on the Fruit Salad fansite a friend and I have created. I worked on a story I've been revising lately. In short, I was very productive when deprived of my internet.

So I'm thinking I need to scale back on some of what I do online. Do I need to belong to quite so many Etsy teams? Maybe not. Do I need to spend quite so much time online promoting my shop when I could be making new items for it instead? Maybe not. Do I need to take quite so many fun quizzes on Facebook? Maybe not. I'm definitely going to be giving this a lot of thought. But I'm really glad I'm back online anyway :-D

Square Hip

Square Hip is one of my favorite Etsy shops. It's full of cute hair bows, bibs, burp cloths, and... recycled crayons.

I'm all about these recycled crayons! I bought a couple sets a few months ago because Daniel is all into Winnie the Pooh and also into coloring, so how could I resist these super-cute crayons? Plus, they're recycled, which is always good. PLUS, half of the proceeds from all the different crayons get donated either to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation or the Autism Society.

And these are amazing crayons! Daniel has yet to break a single one, and he's really good at breaking crayons. It does help that they're not long and thin like normal crayons, but he has tossed them on the floor, dropped them, and even run over them with his ride-on bulldozer, and they do not break. To me, that is way worth $1 a crayon. Especially when they're so cute!

Square Hip has lots of shapes available, not just the Pooh, Lego, and Halloween shapes I've got posted here. And they'll do a custom orders for you, so you can get whatever assortment in whatever colors you want. I just ordered a whole bunch to give as gifts to some of the little people in my life (specifically some of the ones who are about to become big brothers and sisters).

I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas....

It's 98 degrees here today. Yesterday was almost as bad, and tomorrow promises to be the same... if not worse.

So what better time to think about Christmas, right?

Last year, I crocheted a tree skirt for the little table-top Christmas tree we have to use because this apartment is too small for a full-size tree. And I made one for my shop too. Now, I've transcribed my somewhat illegible scribblings for the pattern, put it in pdf format, and am offering it for sale in my shop. Sure, it's only August, but I figure if you want to make your own tabletop tree skirt, you might want to get started on it before, oh, December 24th. So this gives you lots of time :-)

Featured on 5erg's blog!

Click here to read a really fun interview I did for 5Erg's blog recently! I think it's the most fun I've had doing an interview for a long time -- she asks a great mix of questions. 5erg has an Etsy shop too, and is from Estonia! Her blog is always lots of fun, and I highly recommend following her.

"The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" by Alexander McCall Smith

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is an engaging book, full of earthy wisdom and charming observations on life. Told mostly from the point of view of Mma Ramotswe, the only lady detective in all of Botswana, this book is a collection of several small mysteries and one larger one that runs through the others now and again. I found this to be a quick read, though not a particularly absorbing one.

My favorite aspect of this book was the look it gave me at life in modern Botswana, as well as other parts of Africa. Mma Ramotswe had a likeable voice, and the writing was never dull. But as a mystery book, it wasn't terribly exciting. So if you're looking for a thrilling mystery, this might not be for you. But if you want some lighter mysteries, this would probably please you. I thought it was a good summer read.

Wondering Where I Am?

If you've been wondering why I haven't been posting much lately, well, it's because I'm pregnant. Yup! Eleven weeks along, so due at the end of February. This is our second, and we're pretty excited, as you can imagine. And I'm pretty tired. Running around after Daniel is tiring enough, and this just adds another level of weariness to the mix. So I've been napping several times a week when he naps, which would ordinarily be my time to blog and work on stuff for my shop.

The other thing is, I'm not feeling very creative right now. I remember this happening the first time around too -- it's like when my body is creating new life, the rest of me loses the drive to create much of anything else. I haven't been writing much, I haven't been crafting much, and I just mostly want to sit around and watch old eps of Lost and munch on dried apricots. Plus, my mom is here visiting this week, so we've been doing some fun stuff like take Daniel to the train museum and go shopping at the mall, which is lots of fun but also tiring. But I'm not abandoning this blog, or my shop, honest! I'm just taking it easy right now.

So now you know :-)

"Brisingr" by Christopher Paolini

On a whole, I found Brisingr to be a much smoother, richer, more thoughtful book than the first two in the series, Eragon and Eldest. Paolini's writing becomes more subtle with each book, and you can definitely see him growing from a talented adolescent into a gifted adult writer.

In fact, the only thing I didn't particularly like about Brisingr is something it can't help: it's a middle book. As such, it doesn't have a definite conclusion, but keeps leading up to things that will happen in the final book.

For those who found out about Eragon's parentage Eldest and thought it was too much of a Star Wars rip-off, I say this: new information comes to light in this book. Read it.