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Sweets for My Sweet

This afternoon, shortly after I had just finished working on a new vegetarian dish, my daughter gave the cookie card to her ABA therapist*.  When I told her we didn’t have any, she went back through her book and found the card for animal crackers.  I didn’t really feel like cooking more, but couldn’t leave the house to buy cookies, and it is important to reinforce her proper use of the cards, so I decided to whip up a batch of cookies on the fly.  As I was mixing the ingredients, I was thinking about the struggle my daughter has each day, trying to communicate her basic needs, so I went with pink heart cookies, for my little sweetheart.

*Due to M’s autism a good portion of her communication is relayed through the use of picture cards.

Pink Heart Cookies
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Recipe type: Cookies
Author: Robin Gagnon
Prep time: 15 mins
Cook time: 10 mins
Total time: 25 mins
Serves: approx. 3 dozen
Quick pink heart cookies.
Ingredients
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 2 oz. cream cheese
  • 2/3 cup sugar
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 4 drops red food coloring
  • 1/4 tsp kosher salt
  • 1 egg
  • 2 cups flour
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Cream together butter, cream cheese, and sugar.
  3. Add remaining ingredients, and mix thoroughly.
  4. Form dough into ball, then roll out on floured or sugared surface.
  5. Cut out hearts with cookie cutter.
  6. Place on parchment lined baking sheet, and bake for 10 minutes.
  7. Serve.
Google Recipe View Microformatting by Easy Recipe

Success with Goals: The Importance of Viewpoint

success with goalsAs we start winding down the first month of the year, I thought it a good time to take a look at goals, and the difference between the ones we achieve versus those that escape us.  One perennial goal of mine has been to lose weight, eat healthy and stick to an exercise routine.  Now if you were to look at me you would think…poor thing, she failed on that front… but,  not so.

In a lot of ways, goals are what you make of them.  Your viewpoint has almost as much to do with it as actual results.  Did I trim down to a svelte micro-size last year, never eat junk food and passionately workout all the time.  Hell, no.  But on January 1st of this year, I weighed less than I did the year before and felt healthier overall.  I could have made the choice to feel unsuccessful, since I had not attained an ideal goal, or I could celebrate the success I had achieved and restart, building upon the progress I’d already made.

It seems to me that people are far better at being hard on themselves, than treating themselves with a bit of kindness and feeling pride in their achievements.  No matter what your focus may be, whether you have health and weight loss goals, basketball goals, blogging goals, organizational or financial goals… pretty much anything.  Celebrating what you have done right, puts you in the right mindset to stay on a path to progress, rather than allowing negativity to pull you down.

Give yourself a little reward for partial successes, and look at them as stepping stones, instead of failed attempts.  Life in general is seldom an all or nothing experience.  90% of life exists in gray areas, rather than black and white.  It is your choice where you land on that spectrum.

What do you do to keep yourself positive and on track, while striving for your goal of choice?  Do you celebrate with little rewards?

Pancetta Egg Cups : Italian Breakfast Recipe

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This Pancetta Egg Cups recipe is a quick and easy breakfast, that seems decadent, but in actuality is quite diet friendly.  If you don’t know what Pancetta is, it is an Italian form of bacon, which can be bought as slabs, or right from the deli.  It packs all the awesome flavor of bacon, but

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Vintage Roosters in the Kitchen

vintage rooster wall plaques

I thought I would share my collection of vintage roosters with you today… While I don’t like to decorate with all of anything in particular, since I am not a fan of “matchy-matchy” decorating. Over the years, my kitchen has become a haven for old roosters. As they are spread throughout the kitchen and pantry,

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Spicy Chicken, Black Bean and Sweet Onion Soup

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I have been working on eating healthier this year, by eating less junk food & refined carbohydrates.  This recipe for Spicy Chicken, Black Bean and Sweet Onion Soup is a result of this endeavor.  It is high in protein and fiber, has a wonderfully flavorful broth and is quite satisfying.  You will be surprised how

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Hallway Makeover

corroded tin ceiling

  My posts have been a bit sparse over the past week because I took on another renovation project.  My upstairs hallway was really bothering me, since I have recently redone my bedroom and my daughter’s playroom (which as of today, is serving as her bedroom, since the room she has been in is next

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