I'm Blogging again!

I am personal blogging again! I can be found at my new home Sheepless in the City. I've imported the blog posts from here as well as the ones from my other attempt at personal blogging....plus there is new content as well. I hope that you'll drop by and say hi.

Jamie

Frozen Lace

Looking at the ice along the creek bank, you can almost see what looks like frothy lace on the bottom of a fancy dress. Really pretty.

Black Earth Creek

This is a pic of the Black Earth Creek near Black Earth, Wisconsin. One of the best trout streams in the state. Still enough snow to make the trek along the creek bank a little bit of work. But worth it! The two weather stations I listened to this morning have really widely different forcasts for the next few days. Interesting how 2 well educated professionals with the same data can't decide if it's a dusting of snow or 6 inches.

Winter Looks Pretty

I've been out with the camera. This is Hyde Mill near Ridgeway, Wisconsin. The weather guru is thinking that we should get to above 30 degrees today. Whahoo! That means I only need two layers when I'm outside. And I won't be visiting with Mr. Shovel today!

Look What You Can See When The Leaves Are Gone

One nice thing about winter… no leaves on the trees. You can see the folks who usually are hidden from view. I spotted this owl along the road on my way home from work. He did not seem the least bit bothered by all the cars whizzing by.

Ok...Back To Winter

I don’t know if you can see how amazingly huge this ice wall is, but it’s HUGE. We went to Governor Dodge State Park, near Dodgeville, Wisconsin to do a little hiking. This is Stephan Falls. In all the visits I’ve made to the park I had never been to the falls. I hate to admit I really hadn’t paid a lot of attention to the fact they were even there. Boy did I make a mistake! We hiked over to the falls, which was a really easy hike on the packed snow. And then wandered along the valley trail until we reached another cross trail. If your close by swing by the park and take a look. Even though the temperature was only +5 we were not really cold, because we were down in the valley so there was no wind to contend with.

For a little perspective, you can see my Mom standing in front of a wall of ice facing Stephen Falls. She’s 5 foot 8 inches tall.

A Break From Snow

I thought it might be a nice time to look at summer!

Christmas Went To The Dogs

Both Lacy and Gus must have been really good dogs this past year! Santa brought 2 really big bones for the girls.

Nothing funnier than a 8 pound dog dragging and protecting a bone nearly as big as her!

Lacy is sampling the sauce the bone is basted in. Sort of a Juila/Martha special treat.

The Longest Night

For the longest night of the year we attended the service at Middlebury Chapel near Barneveld, Wisconsin. Wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but it was awesome. I don’t think any cathedral service had music as moving as this simple service.

PW's Dinner Rolls

I am sooo making these to go along with the other tasty goodness that I am making for dinner courtesy of PW.

Dinner Rolls

Prep Time 4 Hours

Cook Time 20 Minutes

Ingredients:
* 4 cups Milk
* 1 cup Sugar
* 1 cup Vegetable Oil
* 9 cups Flour
* 2 packages (4 1/2 Tsp.) Active Dry Yeast
* 1 teaspoon (heaping) Baking Powder
* 1 teaspoon (scant) Baking Soda
* 2 Tablespoons Salt

Directions:

Pour 4 cups of milk into a stock pot or Dutch oven. Add one cup of sugar and 1 cup of vegetable oil. Stir to combine. Now, turn the burner on medium to medium-low and “scald” the mixture/lukewarm (between 90 and 110 degrees).

When the mixture is the right temperature add in 4 cups of flour and 2 packages of (4-1/2 teaspoons) of active dry yeast. After the yeast and flour are nicely incorporated, add another 4 cups of flour. Stir together and allow to sit, covered with a tea towel or lid, for an hour. After about an hour it should have almost doubled in size. If it hasn’t changed much, put it in a warm (but turned off ) oven for 45 minutes or so. When it had risen sufficiently add 1 more cup of flour, 1 heaping teaspoon of baking powder, 1 scant teaspoon of baking soda and about 2 tablespoons of salt. Stir (or knead just a bit) until combined.

Butter 1 or 2 muffin pans. Form the rolls by pinching off a walnut sized piece of dough and rolling it into a little ball. Repeat and tuck three balls of dough into each buttered muffin cup. Continue until pan is full. Cover and allow to rise for about 1 to 2 hours.

Bake in a 400-degree oven until golden brown, about 17 to 20 minutes.

The Blind Side

I can hardly WAIT to see this movie, totally based on a true story. It seems like it will be a good one...from the trailer's at least. I'm off to pick up the book, The Blind Side in a little bit.

In desperate need of CHOCOLATE!

I AM IN DESPERATE NEED OF CHOCOLATE! With the week at work I just had a truckload ought to do it.

I'm back!

How have y'all been?! Been a crappy week here....It rained all week up until yesterday afternoon so I haven't been out walking as much as I'd like and my scale is a liar...I'm actually up 2 pounds. Not much more to say on the subject.

Bloggest Loser part 4

So this week has not been the greatest of weeks for me. I haven't been Wii Fitting like I would like but I have been getting out walking the girls more....Our Cocker is getting a little bit on the "round" side so we're (the three of us) are in the process of loseing some weight. I've basically taken some time off from good behavior and in the process still managed to lose 1 1/2 pounds. Don't know how I managed that one but I'll take it.

So I am without a computer the rest of this week. I just wanted to let you all know. I'll be a week behind on my blogging but I will be back around to visit.

Shiver

This will soooo be on my bookshelf within the next couple of days! I am super excited...I've heard about it all over the place in "book blog" land and now I'm getting my own copy! Oh, if you'd like to learn more about the book just click on the image or if your looking for something to read hop on over to my new book blog (sorry about the shameless plug) Confessions of a Book Junkie.

Bloggest Loser part 3

So this week on Bloggest Loser......

I cracked and had my first soda in almost 2 weeks....The upside is that it didn't taste "right" so I didn't even finish it. My back hasn't been bothering me near as bad as was last week so I was able to get in more workouts this week than I did last week. I've been kind of slacking on the getting out and walking with the girls...It's been cold and dreary here in WI. According to the powers that be I'm supposed to be closer to 132 pounds...which is fine but I'll be even happier to be somewhere between 140 and 132.

According to my Wii Fit I'm down 5.25 pounds! My scale is waging war on me....so I think I'll just stick with having myself weighed on my Wii Fit.

Awards!

Over the past couple of days I've received a couple of awards, plus the one from last week also. So without further ado my awards:

This one is from Angela at Angela's Soliloquy

And this one is from Heather over at Red Apron

Now each of these awards comes with it's own set of rules...I am bad with rules so I've decided that I am going to give these awards to EVERYONE. Enjoy!

According to the powers that be....

Instead of being around 140 pounds according to the powers that be I should be at or close to 132 pounds. Still a very acheiveable goal. Just need to get my mind right about the whole process....Apparently, it's not completely ok with my plan. GET RIGHT WITH THE PLAN BRAIN!

Apparently, my scale is also plotting against me. Since I do most of my work outs on my Wii Fit now I'll be using the body test function to figure my weight. It seems to be much more accurate than my regular scale....which has been known to give me 3 or 4 completely different weights in the span of maybe 2 minutes (testing it's accuracy.)

Water Under The Bridge

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