Cooking with Becca
To make these cookies just double your cookie batter or divide it in half. To one half add 1/3 c. cocoa and dark chocolate chips or something else fun like m&m's or Reese's chunks. To the other half add mini chocolate chips or something different. I took spoonfuls of one batter and swirled it into the other to make the cookies above. I got thinking though that you could fridge the batters, roll them out, stack, roll up and cut to make fancy pinwheels!

Made my own vinaigrette for dinner Monday night. Took this recipe and tweaked it:
Becca's Honey Mustard Vinaigrette (Makes 1 cup, serves 4)
10 T oil (any type you have will work)
4T. Balsamic vinegar
2-3 t. dark brown sugar
1 T pesto (I have Classico Traditional Basil Pesto, but hope to make my own someday!)
1-2 t. honey Dijon mustard (the grittier the better)

I just shook it up and served it and it turned out great! A lot of the vinaigrette recipes I've tried lately have just not been sweet enough for my taste and my hubby suggested last time we add the brown sugar and that helped a lot. The pesto was my idea to replace all the herbs and garlic that get added separately. Oh, and I only had honey mustard on hand, but all the recipes I've seen call for regular mustard.

Salad Toppings

Just in case you need some dinner inspiration. In the summer we try to keep a bag of spinach in the fridge. We cut it up and throw on:

• Raisins (our favorite topping)
  
• Walnuts
• Chopped Apples
  
• Croutons/crackers
  
• Strawberries
• Shredded sharp cheddar or crumbled Feta
• Sliced grapes
• Chopped Carrots
• Sliced grilled chicken
  
• Raw chopped veggies like peppers, cucumbers or zucchini
  
• Grilled veggies like asparagus

Movie Review! On a Clear Day: A Scottish movie about a man who was made redundant and found the ambition to swim the English Channel. It was a good movie, with just a little language. At times the subtitles came in handy for their thick accents, but the same was part of what made it so endearing. We found this at our local library and glad we made time to watch.

WEB WORLD
Check out PlumPudding's neat post on "repurposing"
And this craft idea on RootsandWingsCo where they'll tell you step by step how to make it!
Update
I have all new pictures for the slide show. We had Z's 3rd birthday over the weekend, he's such a big boy now!!! Here he is with his garage sale present from mom and dad: a plasma ball! He loves it!

Juju is 9 months now and loves to pull herself up to stand. Saturday I caught her standing alone, unassisted! It was short lived, but it startled me nonetheless. Here she's showing off her curls from the baby lotion I put on her head after her baths.
Looks like our closing date for our current house has been postponed about 10 days so our buyer can get all their ducks in a row. Please pray that goes smoothly. Thanks!

Putting on Love
I learned something great in Sunday School a week ago. I was the teacher, but I'm pretty sure I learned the most. The lesson was on God's gift to everyone: Love and Forgiveness. As we tossed around a tupperware container full of slips of paper with different frustrating scenarios on them like, "Your brother just broke your favorite toy", when the container landed on you "L-O-V-E!", you had to come up with a way to show love and forgiveness in that situation.

I realized that by teaching our children to show love and forgiveness, we inadvertently teach them to follow rules. For instance, no need to say, "No hitting or fighting" when you could talk about God's great love and forgiveness for us and how we need to extend it to others. It's still in the theoretical stage, not sure how to practically apply it to lots of circumstances, but it's such a refreshing take on parenting, I am looking for ways to implement this concept in my own parenting. Doubtless, there are situations they just have to obey the rules like when it comes to safety, but to move my focus from teaching my kids rules to teaching them to be loving and forgiving is a good move in my opinion.

It reminds me of a wonderful resource my mom gave me a few years ago that lists all sorts of common behavior problems and identifies the heart issue (or sin) underlying the behavior, ideas of what to say to your child to put off the old attitude, put on the new and a Scripture reference to back you up. It's a great handy resource in a calendar like format and it's only $4 on Amazon.