Baked Doughnuts

I found this recipe on a new blog that I have fallen in love with.

A Day in the Country

I tried it out and loved it, so I thought I would share with you all!

Baked Doughnuts

Cream together 1/4 cup soft butter with 6 TBSP sugar

Add one egg and 1/2 tsp vanilla to the mix

Mix dry ingredients in separate bowl:

1 1/4 cup flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp salt

Alternate between 1/3 cup of milk & dry ingredients - adding them to egg and butter batter

You need a mini muffin tin (I didn't have one so I used a regular one)

Drop in a TBSP of batter

Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes

While they are baking...

Mix 1/4 c sugar and 1 TBSP cinnamon

Melt 1/4 cup of butterin a bowl

When they come out, roll in butter then suagr mixture

They are the best warm, but I'll eat them cold too!

Enjoy!

doing what I love

As January drags on, and the dreary weather sets in, I find comfort in doing the little things that I don't always get to do the rest of the year.

I have always loved fabric. The texture, the colours, the patterns, and all the creative things you can do with it. Before Christmas, my mom and I were in a lovely fabric store in Fort Langley. We were oooh and ahhhing over all of the amazing quilts and all of the beautiful fabrics, trying to imagine what we could possibly do with them. The lady at the store kindly showed us this gorgeous quilt on display and said it was a perfect one for beginners. It was called a "disappearing nines" quilt. All it involved was 9 fat quarters, some backing, binding and batting. I thought I could handle it. So I went home and went online to my favourite little fabric store, and ordered a 9 fat quarters.

The fat quarters arrived. I was blissful. I took them and mom to to the local fabric store to choose a backing. While were there trying to match things up, we realized that my online store had sent me a larger piece of fabric that didn't really go with the fat quarters. I thought perhaps i should try something with that first. So I ended up with backing, binding, and batting...as well as a new sewing machine..yay!

I had so much fun making this little quilt! I love having the time to putz around and be creative. This isn't the finished product, but I will post another picture of it in it's complete state.

Confession time

Okay, seriously I have this weird little addiction. I am in love with cookbooks. If you know me, you know I do not cook. Well, I cook, but not big fancy meals that are presented in cookbooks. I would love to cook, like the big fancy meals in the cookbooks, but for some reason, I just never make the time.

Every year I write on my "resolution" list that I am going to learn to cook, and every year I don't. So this year, I didn't set it as a resolution in hopes that perhaps maybe I will cook!

I took this cookbook out of the library yesterday, just to see if I liked it. I had been to friends house last week and noticed she had it in her kitchen all on display. She is an amazing cook, so I knew it had to be good if she used it! It's called The Barefoot Contessa at Home. I love it. The pictures, the writing, and the recipes look sooooo yummy! I was then at Costco today, low and behold, they have 3 more of her books there! Ohhh, I was tempted. I stood there poring over each one wondering which one would be the cookbook that will change my life and make me a fabulous cook. I realized it wasn't the actual cookbook that would make me wonderful, so I put them down. And walked away. Without one. I still have the one from the library that El and I spent nearly an hour this evening going through.

One day. I will cook you a fabulous meal.

Okay, maybe just a dessert, or fancy sandwich.

Much love
larajane

Motivation

In 44 days I will be running my first half marathon. 44 DAYS! Part of me wishes I could run it tomorrow, but realistically I know I still need to put in a bit more time training.

For the last couple of months I've been training 3 days a week with the Running Room, as well as squeezing in another 1-2 runs a week on my own. I have learned so much, but still feel I need to be more conditioned.

Every Thursday evening before we head out for our run, we have a half hour clinic. A professional comes in a talks with us about a different aspect of running. We've learned about the importance of proper nutrition while training, about stretching, how to run hills, and how to avoid injury to name a few. So tonight was another great night, with an incredible speaker. We listened to a sports psychologist who has run three Ironmans, numerous marathons (she just finished the New York Marathon) and oodles of Halfs. She was talking about motivation and what motivates us to run.

Interesting. I suppose I never really thought about why I want to run a half marathon, just that I do. She listed off a few reasons for what shouldn't motivate us to run, such as losing weight (you may lose weight at first, and then plateau, and if you don't keep up running the weight will creep up rather quickly, and you will feel like a failure)
She also said that running for someone else's approval, or trying to impress your spouse, family, friends etc. will only lead to failure and frustration, because really, they don't care! Her point being, is you have to run for YOU!

So, why do I run?

I run to:
* clear my head
* be out in nature (I cannot stand the treadmill!)
* push the limits of my body
* think through problems
* I enjoy the social aspect of running, but I also really enjoy being alone

She also asked how we would like to feel when we finished our race. This was a tough one for me.

I really just want to prove to myself that I can do it... and feel good.

Running is 95% mental. As our speaker said tonight, it's really not that hard, you're just putting one foot in front of the other :-)

I liked that. It's all about keeping a positive attitude and being okay with any possible outcome of the race.

Thanks for reading!

Much love,

larajane

Resolutions

I am sooo not a resolution girl. Only because I believe people say all these things on New Years Eve and feel all sentimental at the time and everyone knows your supposed to break them anyway...right? With that being said, I've made some goals for 2011, yes goals, not resolutions! I am feeling somewhat inclined to post then tonight only because I want to look back a year from now and see if I reached them. Okay here we go...

1. To run at least one half marathon. I would love to do one in 2:20 but we shall see.
2. To give only handmade creations as gifts. Obviously my kid's wouldn't be super thrilled if this was all they got as birthday presents, so they will be my exception :-)
3. To grow my business. I am so excited to be heading off to Chicago this spring to attend a workshop with one of my very favourite portrait photographers.

I was looking back at my goals last year and thought it would be fun to paste them into this post for comparison sake. It looks like my goals are fairly similar.

2010 Goals

I started running exactly one year ago. I hadn't run since Elissa was a baby, so I pretty much was starting from scratch. My first night out running I did 6 laps around our little park. I'm not sure how far that is, but I would venture to say it may be around 1 km. I did my first race, a 5km one in May. This year I plan on doing a 10 km race and maaaaybe a half marathon in the fall, but I may save that goal for 2011.

I also really want to cook. I want to try new recipes and really embrace good food. Although I got a juicer for Christmas, which I am loving, and it seems all to easy to throw in all my fresh fruit and veggies into this thing and just live on fresh juice.

Okay, another goal is my garden. I want a fabulous garden this year. Lots of fruit and veggies, beautiful flowers and just a really well maintained yard.

And my final goal is expanding my business. I did an all day websummit earlier this week where I learned soooo much about marketing. I am feeling very inspired to take my business up a notch.

I have a feeling 2010 will be a challenging but good year.