Snapshot Saturday: Sweet Blessings (with a smile!)

Good morning, friends. We had a week that was a mixture of sad and sweet. My sister-in-law’s mother passed away and she was so special to our family. Everyone called her Momma Gay, and she was like an aunt to my siblings and me and like a grandmother to all our children. I’ll share more about her in another post because she deserves more than a mention, but today I’m going to share some simple blessings of the week. Why? Because all week we’ve remembered that Momma Gay believed in looking at the bright side and always recommended, “Just put a smile on your face and you’ll feel better!” So that’s what we’re going to do!

I was blessed with some baking time this week. I’ve been working on my bread loaves, and it seems that after I have 2 or 3 good loaves, I then have a flop. I really don’t mind because I learn from those mistakes, and it just makes a better bread in the long run.

I love when my husband asks me to help with something for his work. Earlier this week he asked me to bake some cookies for a meeting. I made orange Scotchies and chocolate espresso cookies. And of course, I held out a few to keep at home!

Anytime I bake cookies, I usually go ahead and double the recipe so I can have more in the freezer. I started doing this when I was pregnant with my second daughter because she was to be born shortly before the holidays, and I wanted to have an easy way to still bake Christmas cookies with my older daughter while taking care of a newborn. So, a month before my due date I made cookie dough and went ahead and rolled the balls and froze them so all we had to do was heat the oven and pop them in! I’ve been doing this way ever since.

I roll all the dough balls and freeze them on a pan (above). Once they’re frozen hard, I put them in a container for the freezer and then I can just pull them back out and bake however many I want when the need (or craving) arises. Yesterday my son and I went to visit with my brother and sister-in-law, and I was glad I had some dough balls ready to bake off and package in a cute box to offer them for a little afternoon snack.

The chocolate espresso cookie recipe doesn’t make as many, even when doubled, but I still had plenty to freeze.

My son says he’s loving his “hot breakfast”! His favorite this week was ham and cheese sourdough toast with fried eggs.

On Wednesday he had a dental appointment for a cleaning to get ready for braces on Thursday. This is my third and last child to get braces and I told the orthodontist I don’t have any more for him after this one, haha!

My younger daughter and I put together a September care box for my Texas daughter. She likes to call it her subscription box and says she looks forward to it every month. I love doing this for her because obviously I miss her and it’s still fun to pamper my girl a little! Her box included a small wreath, a couple of tiny pumpkins, some simmering spices for fall, a kitty towel, and a doggie hair clip from her sister. It was also my son-in-law’s birthday this week, so we sent him some gifts in the mail but not as cute as the subscription box so no pictures.

We’ve enjoyed some gorgeous days this week! Last weekend we took the dogs over to the pond to swim and my daughter ended up jumping in to swim with them!

While there I noticed some bright red fall leaves just starting to burst among the green!

And this was the river Burch tree in our yard this week! I’m not so sure it was truly a fall thing but maybe more because it’s been dry around here, but we still enjoyed seeing it out our front window and pretending it’s fall.

We’re also seeing a lot of deer out our windows and this week we started seeing some babies too!

Another sign of fall coming is the mornings getting darker. My walks begin in the dark, as you’ll see in the next two photos below, but by the time I get back it’s full daylight.

This was my favorite sunrise this week…..

And we had another rainbow! I’ve never seen one early in the morning while looking west. They’re usually in the afternoon while facing east. Interesting.

I hope you’ve had a week of simple blessings, and if not, take Momma Gay’s advice and just put a smile on your face and you’ll feel better!