My Five Mid-October Blessings

This past week held many moments of blessings. Here are five of them. If you’d like to share one (some) of your blessings, leave a comment. Or write a post and link up at Living to Tell the Story.

1. Kitchen time. I am not sure what got into me last week but I made a special effort to get creative with food. I read a Hamburger soup recipe on Ellen’s blog (The Happy Wonderer) and that got me thinking. It sounded good, but meatball soup sounded better, meatballs with rice in them sounded better. Rice-infused-meatball soup with dumplings sounded best. So I combined several  recipes to get to my best idea. And it was a tasty idea.

Then I made 2 desserts. First it was Rolo Pretzel Turtles. It only took about 7 minutes to make these delicious beauties.

Then I took the time to make the Double Chocolate Pumpkin Cake that Picky Palate featured. It’s not hard as it uses a box of cake mix and instant pudding.

I don’t like cinnamon and chocolate together. So for the frosting, I took out the offending spice and replaced it with cocoa powder. I guess you would call my version Triple Chocolate Pumpkin Cake. This recipe made 2 loaves. It was soooo delicious it has been requested by a niece with a February birthday as her cake. “And Aunty, bring a bowl of the frosting too.“

2. Niece’s birthday. The birthday dinner of homemade lasagna and an assortment of cheesecake made the birthday girl giddily happy. It was fun for us all to celebrate this awesome girl and to spend time together.

3. Amazon.com. I don’t usually shop soon enough for birthday presents to be able to shop Amazon. But when I do, I get GREAT deals. In fact the movie and the game I bought for the above birthday girl were both at least 50% off. So I was able to stay within my budget AND buy two items! It felt great to be able to spoil the birthday girl.

4. Monk. Do you know about this 8 season series? I started watching it because a friend loaned me DVD’s. Then someone else told me you can watch it on Netflix on their instant streaming. The show is clean, funny, and heart-warming. The female lead is a strong, but tender woman. I never figure out whodunnit before Monk tells us, but that is my goal.

5. Decluttering. How can you watch hours of Monk and not want to clean?! This week I have sorted 6 boxes from the garage – while watching Monk of course. Now I NEED to go to the thrift store before I do any more sorting or watch any more Monk. The hardest things for me to declutter are papers, books, and sentimental items.