I can make a mess like nobodies business!

My status on Facebook for most of the day has been:

Kirsten "thinks everyone would be happy if they only had a cookie!"

Well, that sparked a conversation between me and and my cousin, Megan, as you can see below...


So she ended up making cookies. I wish I could say I came straight home, strapped on an apron, and dove into the flour. But I didn't. I did, however, take pictures the last time I made them a couple of weeks ago.

Boy, did I make one huge mess!

Here are the ingredients...


And here's where the mess happened! I "accidentally" put in too much flour at once and *poof!* it went!


And this is the recipe I used.


We've used it for years and it's awesome because you use butter flavored Crisco and only brown sugar. If you don't have the Crisco, you use 1-1 ratio of shortening and salted butter.

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the cookies themselves. Once they came out of the oven I was in a cookie coma! They're just that good. Here's the recipe. Enjoy!

Great Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 1/2 C. Butter Crisco
2 1/2 C. brown sugar
2 eggs
2 t. salt
4 T. milk
2 T vanilla (not imitation!)
3 1/2 C Flour
1 1/2 t. baking soda
2 C chocolate chips (I prefer Guitard, but had Toll House on hand)
1 C chopped nuts (optional - I never put them in unless I'm making them for Dad)

Cream the sugar into the shortening/Crisco. Add milk and vanilla ad beat until fluffy. Blend in eggs. Put all dry ingredients (flour, salt, soda) into bowl and mix together with spoon. With mixer running, add dry ingredients about a 1/2 cup at a time taking care not to over mix the dough. Once you've put the last of the dry mix into the mixer, turn it off and mix the last bit by hand. Stir in chips (and nuts).

Bake at 350 degrees on a parchment lined cookie sheet
8-10 minutes for chewy
10-13 minutes for crispy
This should make between 18-24 cookies depending how big you scoop them!

August is Birthday-licious!

A lot has happened over the past month in regards to birthdays. Both Dad and Ryan have birthdays eight days apart, so that always makes for some fun family times during August. And this year my dearest friend, Rachel, turned 30! There was no way we were not going to celebrate this milestone!

*Rachel's Birthday*

I had so much fun planning for and attending Rachel's Birthday Bonanza Fiesta! It was held in the Cultural Hall at one of the Church buildings so there was plenty of room to move around. There were tables for board games set up at one end and a treasure chest pinata tied to a basketball backboard on the other end of the Hall.

Since it was Fiesta themed, it was only appropriate that Rachel should have a Birthday Sombrero!

After we sang to Rachel and watched her blow out the candles on the awesome huge cupcake birthday cake our buddy, Melissa, made for her we did the Hokey Pokey. Because, you know, that's what it's all about!

I think this was the funnest birthday party I have been to in a long time. Yeah, okay, I helped plan and execute it, but it was still one rockin' party!

*Dad's Birthday*

For Dad's Birthday we ended up in Cambria for the day. Our original plan was to go to a park and BBQ/Picnic and that quickly snowballed into driving 3 hours south to get some of the best BBQ on the Central Coast and hang out at the beach for the day.

So we drove...

We ate...

We Scrabbled...

We even got a decent family picture out of the trip!


Before we started our trek home we stopped in at McPhee's Grill in Templeton where the food is always heavenly. High praise, I know, but they do not disappoint. This is the only place I know of that has a caramel lime sauce to drizzle over their flourless chocolate cake and trust me, it's roll-your-eyes-in-the-back-of-your-head good. And their garlic mashed potatoes with goat cheese totally rivals the Potatoes Romanov from the Strip House in Houston (aka The Best Funeral Potatoes EVER!)


*Ry's Birthday*

For Ryan's birthday a week later we made reservations for a sitting at Petroglyph Ceramic Lounge in Willow Glen. It's such a cool place to go for an activity! You pay a flat fee for studio time, paint and supplies, and kiln firing afterward. Other than that you pay for the piece you want to paint. We've got a great set of non-matching dinner plates we painted during a Family Home Evening activity a while ago and they're actually the best plates we've ever had!

Beforehand we ate dinner at Willow Street Pizza.


Not the most spectacular of places, but the food is decent and it's a great place to people watch. This little boy walked in with his dad, who was picking up a to-go order, and he just walked right on over to the table next to ours, sat down, and proceeded to chat with the waitress. So adorable! And he was seriously dressed up as Batman!

We actually ended up not going to Petroglyph because they didn't have the pieces we wanted to paint on (the aforementioned dinner plates), so we opted for coming back home and going swimming. It was so much fun! We had our very own Cannonball/Handstand/Silent Marco Polo Olympics. Yep, Silent Marco Polo. I think they should add that to the list of Summer Olympic Sporting Events. They have Ping Pong (excuse me, Table Tennis) so why not Silent Marco Polo?

Anyway, that's it for the Birthday Round-Up as I leave you with a music video of my all-time favorite Birthday song!