Cookie Exchange ~~blog style

Hi Everyone,

It's been a loooong day. Started out with more sleet and ice. I'm tired of this stuff already! Friday we have a huge snow storm headed our way, then a break on Saturday and we supposed to get pounded again on Sunday. It's been so busy at work. In addition to managing the facilities and tenants I also write grants and today was the deadline for one that we are applying for with PTFP for a backup generator. With all the ice storms lately, I sure hope we get it!! It's a lot of work to put one of these together and make seven copies. Since it's due tomorrow (nothing like wating till the 11th hour) I had to over night it. I pulled in to Kinkos at exactly 6pm which is the deadline for Fed Ex pickup. I saw the Fed Ex truck as I was pulling in the parking lot and pulled right up to the door right behind him as he was loading the packages and stopped him just in the nick of time. After all that work I would have been really upset to have missed him. Tomorrow I have to do the close out reports for another grant that we just finished. Then.........I can relax a little and get ready for some down time. Taking Christmas Eve off through New Years Day. I can't wait! Then it can snow and snow and snow. :-)

This weekend I'm going to start some baking (I'm a little behind). I want to make several kinds of cookies and have only come up with two so far - peanut butter blossoms and kalachkis. At work, we have a tradition of a cookie exchange. We each make a batch of cookies and then bring them in and get to sample them all, then we exchange recipes. It is always so much fun so I thought it would be fun to do that here. So if you have a good recipe, please leave me a message and post it to your blog so we can exchange cookie recipes.

Here's my first recipe:

Peanut Butter Blossoms
48 Hershey Kisses
1/2 cup shortening or margarine
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/3 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda

Heat oven to 375 degree......... Remove wrappers from kisses.Beat shortening, peanut butter in a large bowl until well blended. Add brown sugar,sugar, egg and vanilla, beat til well blended. Stir together flour and soda, gradually add to peanut butter mixture.Shape dough into one inch ball. Roll into granulated sugar; place on ungreased cookie sheet.Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until set. Immediately press kiss into the center of each cookie, cookie will crack around edges, remove from cookie sheet, let cool. Makes about 4 dozen.

Variation; use only 1 cup of flour and add 1/3 cup baking cocoa for chocolate peanut butter blossom cookies.

Have a great evening!

Continue Reading...

Snow and Ice Storm

The weather outside is nasty. Yuck. I went to work early this morning so I could leave early and beat the snow and ice. I made it!! We are supposed to get an inch of ice and 10 inches of snow. I just hate this stuff when I have to drive in it. I wanted to take some pics, but was too lazy to go outside so I took a few through the sliding glass door and window. LOL

It doesn't look like much now, but there's a layer of ice on everything. But, we have the generator ready to go and it's nice and warm and cozy in here.

Teken from the "inside" of the sliding glass door. The pool looks so sad and lonely out there, doesn't it? Makes me dream of long hot summer days.

Of course, this is not snow, but I thought this was so cute. Coco seems to think that the tree skirt is his new bed. He's totally taken it over. LOL

Well, I was just taking a break from the work I brought home to do so I better get back to it.

Warm Winter Wishes,
Nancy

Continue Reading...

Our Primitive Christmas Home

Don't you just love this time of year! I've been decorating the house all week long. I can't seem to leave it alone so I've changed it a dozen times. LOL I thought I would post some pics of everything so far. Subject to change of course. :-)

An old barrel filled with fresh greens and a primitive grungy candy cane peeking out.

Prim tree in and old crock with lights. Just love it!

I decided not to put our "big" tree up this year and just use this little old tree that sits in an old barrel. This one is usually in the dining room. When I brought this home two years ago, Scott says "what are you doing with that thing" and I said "well, dear its for the dining room. He just had a fit and said "oh no". So when he left the house, I brought it in and decorated it, and he just laughed when he got home said "I knew that would be in the house when I got back". LOL

I haven't got the decorations up yet. When we got it down from the top of the Garage it hit the floor and some of the lights broke so I was Walmart bound last night to get some more.

Looking in to the living room from the dining room. Ooops! forgot to move my Mt. Dew bottle.

This is an old hope chest that my fiancee's mother picked up for me. I put a homespun cloth on it and it sits in between the couch and the love seat.

This is not really decorated for Christmas, but I just love our coal stove. Scott built the new tile base over the summer for it.

Look up, see the buttery, isn't it so prim. I have two double windows in the living room and one above each one. I bought them from Shelley of Winterberry Prims. See my earler post for a link to her picture trail.

Cute little tree sitting on an antique table

This is another one my treasures from Shelley. I bought it to put in the bathroom for storage next the the mirror and it just never made its way there. I thought I would use it for some decorating until after Christmas.

Old man Santa in the corner. He's made from an old tree then handpainted. This is the first year I let him stay indoors, most of the time he's out on the porch.

Hanging cupboard all decked out for the holidays.

My centerpiece on the table is an old crock filled with fresh greens and berries.

Thanks for taking the time to gander at our prim home during Christmas thyme. My favorite time of the year.

~Warmest Winter Wishes~

Nancy

Continue Reading...

Site Re-Design - what do you think?

Happy Thanksgiving Eve!

I've been multi-tasking like crazy these last few days. Primitive Thymes Gift Shoppe has a whole new look thanks to Jeanne from Jean the Bean. She customized a new layout and graphics and it looks awesome. I've been tweaking it for the last few hours and wanted to know what you thought. Here's a screen shot of the new look. So what do you think. Now I have to get busy and upload some new items that I got for Christmas in between baking and cooking for Thanksgiving Dinner.

I just have to tell you about a cooking blog I ran across a couple of days ago called The Pioneer Woman Cooks. She has the best Thanksgiving recipes I've seen yet. I'm going to try several of her recipes this year including the one for stuffing. Here's the link to go and check it out.

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2007/11/stuffing_dressing_my_favorite_thanksgiving_food/

Sounds so yummy! The neatest thing (especially for someone who somewhat challenged in the cooking department) are the step by step instructions complete with pictures. So cool!!

Well time to get off this computer and call it a night.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!

Continue Reading...

It's beginning to feel like Winter

Hi everyone!

I'm finally back after numerous mishaps. My computer took a power hit and fried my hard drive, got that fixed but lost all my information and links. :((

My fiancee had shoulder replacement surgery three weeks ago and then a few days after the surgery his back went out, but he's mending nicely now. And our little Bailey got hit by a car and broke her pelvic bone. She was at Cornell Animal Hospital for a few days and we have to keep her confined for 8 weeks. Imagine a one year old chocolate lab being crated for eight weeks, that's not much fun, but she's on the way to a full recovery. We just have to put a sling under her belly to support that leg for a few more weeks. It's been crazy around here for the past few weeks, but things are getting back to normal. I sure have missed being on line and visiting every one.

There is so much going on with all the blog giveaways. You can just click for hours. LOL

Hope everybody is having a great Fall. Old man winter came to town today! Temps have been in the 50's for the past few weeks. It's freezing here now. Guess it's time to settle in and keep warm. Calling for snow all week. I've got so much to do to update things, it will keep me busy until January.

Stay warm!!

Continue Reading...

Lots to catch up on

It seems like I have been gone forever. I had computer issues and just got everything straightend out. What a fiasco! Thanks to everyone who left comments and I am going to try and catch up here. Can't do it in one night though. :)

It's finally feeling like Fall here in New York. The leaves are beautiful shades of orange and red. The air is clean and crisp. And I still haven't got all of my Fall decorations up! We have been so busy latley. We put down our new hardwood flooring in the kitchen and dining room this weekend. It is gorgeous! I'm so glad to see the carpet ripped up (that we just installed two years ago) in the dining room. Boy was that a mistake. It didn't fare well at all against the contstant traffic. The flooring is teak and it's the wider boards and made in a mill in Va. They call it hand scraped. It has dents and dings so it looks like it just came out of an old colonial home. I will put some pics up later this week. We, I say we, but I really mean my significant other and his helpers, built a new base in the living room for the coal stove we bought last year. We had a pellet stove and sold it for this and it's the best decision we ever made! I love that constant heat and we are sure lucky since the cost of fuel is outrageous.

I know the economy is really shaky these days so I've been trying everything to promote my store. I donated four gift certificates to our local PBS station, where I work, for the on line auction and I'm not sure if that is the reason, but I got two sales this week! They featured Primitive Thymes of the main page so I thought that was really cool. Among many of my jobs at the station, I used to manage the Auction department there.

Well this is a long enough post for tonight. Just wanted to let everyone know that I didn't drop off the face of the earth.

Can't wait to share some pictures later this week.

Hope everyone is having a super week!
Nancy

Continue Reading...

Winterberry Prims Handmade Country Furniture

You have to check this out. Shelley is the owner of Winterberry Prims and has been selling primitive cabinets, shelves, buttery, benches, tables, peg racks and much more on eBay for the last few years. I found her about a year ago and have been buying ever since! Her and her husband make everyhing out of their home and they are so talented and wonderful to do business with. She has just started a picture trail site and is going to be transitioning away from eBay over the next few months. I have been extremely happy with every purchase. Heres the link to her new site:
http://www.picturetrail.com/winterberryprims


Good luck Shelly with your new venture and I wish you much success. I'm also including a few pics of some of the great prim pieces she has made.

Continue Reading...

New Candle Line

They finally arrived. My new line of soy candles. I'm just so excited!! Just unpacked to make sure nothing was broken. I have been buying these candles from a local primitive gift shoppe for years and they beat any other that I've ever tried hands-down. I will never go back to Yankee and those were my favorite. My favorite thing is they are double wicked which makes a big difference and they burn down even all the way to the bottom. I'm offering free shipping with them too.

Continue Reading...

Free Promotion for your site!!

I just joined a great community called BigCrumbs. For those of you who haven't heard of it, it is a a great tool to earn cash while you shop. Here's how it works: become a member, put a link on your site or blog. You can make money while you shop, all you have to do is go to bigcrumbs.com and click to where you would normally shop and start earning money. And when someone shops your site, you earn money too! Not to mention the extra traffic that can be created to your site by promoting your store or blog at bigcrumbs.com. And it's free to join. We all know how costly it can get to promote our stores so this is a win-win. This is also a great idea for ebay sellers. Click on the link below and sign up through me please. :)

Continue Reading...

Eye Candy

I found this new site tonight as I was browsing and wanted to post it here for you to see. Go and check it out. There are many talented and amazing artisans listed. They offer Americana, Extreme Primitives, Whimsical Folk Art , Fine Stitcheries, Framed Art Work, Old World Style and much much more.

Continue Reading...

I won an Award!

I am just so flattered and excited to have won my first award. Thank you so much to Sherrie from Symple Tymes for nominating Primitive Thymes. This is so cool since I just started this blog and I've already met such wonderful people. Now I know I have to nominate 7 of my favorite blogs and pass it on and I will this weekend, I promise! There's so many to choose from I'm going to have a hard time narrowing down to seven. LOL

Continue Reading...

Thanks to Amy and Carrie!

Kudos to Amy from Amybug's Primitive Attic. She designed the new graphics and customized the layout for my blog. She did a fantastic job and if you haven't visited her site, I highly recommend doing so----you won't be disappointed. The new layout and customized graphics for Primitive Thymes Gift Shoppe are online today. Carrie from Create A Shoppe Plus did an awesome job. I absolutely love the work she did. Thanks again to you both!

Even work went well today. After being on vacation for a week it was good to get back to the normal routine. Now that September is here, time to buckle down and button down the hatches for winter. Pretty soon we'll be cranking up the coal stove and snuggling in to stay warm, which will give me more time to concentrate on my new business. Here's another peak at some of the newest prim offerings.

Continue Reading...

Making Changes

Well, I'm really liking this "blogging" thing. I love playing around with the computer and making changes. So......I've changed this template 4 or 5 times already. LOL I'm waiting on my graphic artist to finish up my new layout and graphics for my new store so I have to have something to do. Once that's up and I have my new banner, I will start marketing my new store to the many, many resources I've found on the web. Patience has never been a virtue of mine so I'm really getting impatient. I have browsed so many prim blogs today and there are a lot of talented ladies out there. I hope I measure up. I thought I would show a couple of things I have for sale here. So take a look and if you see something that catches your eye, swing over to Primitive Thymes to see more.

Continue Reading...

My First Posting

Well I finally decided to jump on the bandwagon and create a blog. I will post updates and news regarding my online store Primitive Thymes Gift Shoppe. This is also a new venture for me and I'm adding new prim offerings daily. Thanks for taking a peek and I hope to share more soon.

Continue Reading...