Thanksgiving Rolls

Per request, I'm posting the most yummy roll recipe ever...give it a practice this weekend before Thanksgiving. I first tried it 2 years ago and made 3 batches before I realized my yeast was faulty...arggh! I make them 2-3 times a month. If you're afraid of yeast - DON'T be! Just give it a few tries! I would love to hear if any of you try it - we think they're delicious!

Lion House Rolls
2 C warm water (110 - 115 degrees)
2/3 C dry milk (instant or non-instant)
2 T dry yeast
1/4 C sugar
2 tsp salt
1/3 C butter (melted)*
1 egg
5 - 5 1/2 C flour

In a large mixing bowl, combine warm water and dry milk. Add yeast. Add sugar, salt, melted butter and the egg. Mix well. Add 2 C flour and mix on low till combined then mix on medium for 2 minutes. Add 2 more C of flour and mix on medium for 2 minutes (This process helps the gluten in the flour start working!) Add up to a cup and a half of flour till the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl and when you touch it, it's a little sticky. Let rise in a warm place for 45 min in bowl. (I often put it in a warm oven for 30 min to speed up the process.) Pull dough out of the bowl and place on a heavily floured surface. Kneed for 1 minute. Roll out into a rectangle 18" long x 8" wide and 1/4" thick. Brush with melted butter. Cut (I use my pizza cutter) in half to make two strips 4" wide. Cut in 2" strips - 18 strips total. (I often end up with 24 because I roll it out a little thinner for preference - even then, my rolls are still really big!) Roll up each strip and place on a sprayed cookie sheet a finger-width apart. Cover to rise 1-1 1/2 hours. (Again, I put them in the warm oven till the rolls are all touching each other - usually about 40 min. Don't forget to pull them out of the oven to preheat!) Bake at 375 for 12-18 minutes. Brush tops of rolls with butter. ENJOY!!!

*I use a whole cube each time I make them - 1/3 C for the dough, then I melt the rest to brush the dough with and there should be enough to brush the rolls with after they're all done.

Again - don't be afraid - they are WELL WORTH the work and everyone will love you for it!

Thanks Mom - Dinner was...zzzzzzzz

Shake it!

Emery loves the song "Shake It" - I don't know if that's really the title, but you all know what song I mean. Every time we get in the car she asks if she can here it - good thing we have it on CD so I can put it on for her!

Fun Fall Festivities

First, our fallen leaves - not sure they're a"fun" fall activity, but there aren't many things I love more than crispy fallen leaves under my feet on a cool fall afternoon. These are our 13 bags of leaves we picked up just in time for the big snow storm. This picture was taken 2 hours after we filled the 13 bags...we now have 20 bags that we are slowly puting in our garbage can when it has room. I absolutely love our shadey trees, I just didn't realize how much work they would require in the fall (Thanks Kev for doing the most of it!:).Here are my cute girls in their costumes - a frog and a jack-o-lantern. Emery had to wear her Ariel princess shoes for the picture - she is obsessed with them! I just love my sweet Jane - she is always smiling at me and is very mild-mannered - who can resist those dimples!?

It has been fun to watch Emery get into the holidays - she's already really excited about our neighbor's display of Christmas decorations and lights. On Halloween, Kevin and I both took turns taking her around to a few houses. She really had a good time, but when we ran into some of her friends, she just wanted to go play with them. So she only made it to a few houses for candy and unfortunately the kids she played with after raided her bucket and she was only left with a few pieces...great friends, eh? Oh well, but this is probably the last year she won't notice:). One of our favorite things was hearing her say "spooky" - her version - "sperky". Pretty cute!

Here Emery's ready to hop and Jane is doing her crunches - she's going to have a 6 pack soon!

Typical Lundgreen pumpkin - the "Y"

Our neighbors helped us serve doughnuts and hot chocolate out of our garage to trick-or-treaters on halloween. I think we had about 50 kids and parents come by. It was really fun to get to know a few of our neighbors a little better and a couple young teenagers came by a couple of times - I could tell they really liked it:) You can also see Kevin is wearing shorts and a t-shirt - Halloween was unseasonably warm - I think the high was 76 that day!

Here's our pumpkin-man...his head started to rot on Halloween and leaked pumpkin juice all over his body - pretty grose, but it added a nice touch for the evening - it made him look more scary!

This is the invitation I made for a halloween party we invited neighbors to - it's a severed finger...hee hee hee.
These are some of our new neighbors who came to our party. My friend Janna was an oven 'cause she had a "bun in the oven" - her husband was the baker:) We had a great time playing the candybar game and halloween scatagories. We had guessing jars and watched a sperky Alfred Hitchcock episode. ooohh... (yes, I was a wench again...I need to work on my creativity)
Happy Fall everyone! It won't last much longer - so let's enjoy every minute!

Fun Pictures

Here are a bunch of cute pictures that I wanted to share -

We found Emery had fallen asleep just outside her bedroom on the floor - we didn't even know till we went up to bed later that night!


This was not Halloween, but 5 minutes before leaving for church...she went to church with brown eyeliner in the corners of her eyes...

I think Emery was trying to make her feel better - not sure it worked.

Glamour Girl - I never thought I'd have one!:)

Just a cute picture of our cute girls together

Migraine Anyone?

Unfortunately, I think I've entered the world of Migraines. For the past few weeks I have noticed getting a terrible headache on the days I exercised, obviously discouraging me from working out as often as I should. Yesterday I did a 45 minute "Body Sculpt with Gilad" (Recorded from "FitTV") that I love. Gilad is my new best friend - except when his workouts give me headaches! After my workout, Emery was begging to watch "Ariel", so I decided I'd give us both a break and let her watch it if she helped me straighten up the house. While we were cleaning the Library, I started feeling a little nauseous and my vision was blurred and I could see some sparkly lights in my left eye. I didn't feel terrible, but I knew enough about migraines, that what I was feeling might be the beginning of one. I denied the fact that I might actually be getting one and continued cleaning. I took some Tylenol and showered and still felt terrible so I lied down. Long story short, Kevin had to come home with some Excedrin and I lied in bed for 3 hours before I felt better. I have very rarely had a headache that Tylenol didn't cure. I've done a little research on Exercise induced Headaches and know hardly anything about Migraines...oh, and I'm still nursing. Anybody have any good ideas or advice?

Pumpkin Cookies

WARNING: You may want to eat the whole batch. If you don't want that, then plan on giving some away!

1/2 C shortening (I used butter flavored Crisco 'cause that's what I had)
1 1/8 C sugar
1 small can pumpkin puree
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 C flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 C butterscotch chips
1 C chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease cookie sheets
2. In a medium bowl, cream shortening and sugar. Stir in the pumpkin and vanilla. Sift together the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg; stir into the creamed mixture. Then mix in the butterscotch and chocolate chips. Drop dough by teaspoonfuls onto the prepared cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 8-10 minutes in preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool for a minute on cookie sheet before transferring to wire cooling racks.
4. They are best eaten cool or even from the fridge!

(The above recipe is exactly how I do it. The basic recipe can be found at http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pumpkin-Cookies-I/Detail.aspx - I wanted to use a whole can of pumpkin, so I added more sugar and flour and included nutmeg and chocolate chips for preference)