Monster Cookie Bars

This is a recipe I've been asked to share over and over, and after being asked for it again today (by my friend Kassie --- so I hope I'll see her soon so I can eat one...hint hint!) I thought it might be time to post it on my blog! At least this way I can direct people here in the future AND I can't ever lose the recipe card, heaven forbid! I got the recipe from my friend Kate in our small group a few years ago, but I have no idea where the original came from. If you know the source please share so I can give credit where credit is due!

WARNING --- These bars are HIGHLY addictive, so be prepared to eat as much of the pan as you can hold (like my friend Lisa), begin making them to eat the dough (like my friend Shawn), or just call them breakfast due to the peanut butter, eggs, and oatmeal (like my friend Jill). I guess in this post I'm mentioning a lot of friends, too!

Monster Cookie Bars

1/2 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp baking soda
4 1/2 cups oatmeal
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips
1 cup plain MMs

Cream butter, brown sugar, & sugar together. Add eggs & peanut butter; mix well. Add vanilla, baking soda, & oatmeal; mix well. Stir in chocolate chips & MMs. Pat mixture into a jelly roll pan. Bake @ 350 for 16 minutes. Don't over bake!

Yum-may!!!

I'll have to make them soon so I can add a picture to the post, especially since now I am totally craving them...thanks Kassie!!!

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Good - Josiah and I are LOVING total flexibility in our schedule. We got to go out of town for 10 days, we don't have to stress over naps and bedtimes, and twice this weekend we walked along with Jim on the back 9. I am also getting to do some activities of my choosing (although mostly Josiah's choosing).

The Bad - Parking in the garage is not an option due to a plethora of sporting equipment (3 bikes, 3 bags of golf clubs, boxes of golf & birdie balls, & scattered gardening tools. My house hasn't been cleaned since our last cleaning lady tour at the beginning of May. Who wants to be inside when it's finally so nice outside?! Please still come and visit now that I've confessed, but please don't look or judge the dirt and disorganization!

The Ugly - Hmmm...I may be a Mary Kay lady, but on days when I don't have appointments you can expect to see me sans makeup, hair in a pony, athletic shorts & a T, and probably with dirt on my feet, knees, and hands since I've either been biking, playing in the yard or at the park, or working in the yard. Also a little ugly, the piles of paperwork that have accumulated in the office and are haunting me...time to go get a shredder, I think!

The end!

Lovin the Rain!

I have such fond memories of running around outside in the rain catching as much as I could to water my mom's plants. Guess Josiah has a little of me in him, somewhere! And I got to sit on the front step with my morning cup of coffee watching him. Precious time!!!

I should be cleaning...

...so I'm blogging instead! We have had a whirlwind spring and first few weeks of summer, and unfortunately I've missed sharing some wonderful, hilarious, sweet, and monumental events. I'll do my best to remember and document them over the next few weeks!

So here's a snapshot of the Clarey's currently:

Jim - 's business is going WELL (www.nahfloors.com)! He is booking jobs into September right now, has hired 2 employees (one full-time and one part-time) and is looking for a third (full-time). When he is not working he is either hanging with us at home or golfing (which also happens daily at home).

Josiah - is totally living it up this summer. He's sleeping until 9:30 some mornings (shocking, considering he typically sleeps no later than 7:30, even if he goes to bed super late), riding his bike every day and just figured out how to turn around in driveways so he can go up and down our sidewalk, playing independently in the back yard, snuggling in his new big bed with a big pile of books, and exploring the great outdoors. One of his new favorite things to do is hit balls in the backyard and either try to get them stuck in the pine tree or hit them over the fence into the neighbors (and then ride bike around and throw them all back over the fence). Good thing they like us! His new favorite word is "definitely," and he's definitely full of words. Suddenly he's adding in all these great descriptions. Of course the only one I can remember is, "Why couldn't you hear me, Mom?! I was talking louder than a lion can roar!"

Laura - is actually feeling relaxed and enjoying summer! I am planning to not work in my classroom until August 1st. I have never done that...ever...I did bring a few books home to read (ok, like 8 or 10, so probably more a shelf than a stack), but they are not at the top of my list just yet. After being out of town for the first 10 days of summer and then throwing a garage sale together in 2 days I need to fix our disaster of  a house first. Yikes! Oh, and my Mary Kay business is blossoming as well! I'm currently working on earning my first free car and moving into a leadership position. Woohoo!!!

All the extra tidbits:

Excited for - my chalk paint class and painting a whole bunch of things. Josiah to go to Prairie Preschool at Buffalo River State Park.

Eating - the first box of our CSA from Bluebird Gardens and loving it! Josiah and I devoured and entire cucumber together the first night, and thanks to the farm's personal chef we grilled our head of romaine last night for our salad. Let's just say that I will definitely be grilling lettuce all summer.

Focused on - wrapping up selling the last of the garage sale items and cleaning out clutter so we can clean and organize the rest of the house. When I say ORGANIZE I mean really organize. Summer is the only time when I can really get the entire house updated and restructured to fit our changing needs. Good thing I love doing it!

Outside - biking, finishing up spring yard maintenance (yes I realize I'm behind...), golf - mostly Jim and Josiah, but hopefully me too after I get my clubs out of the basement...

Relaxing - hopefully around a fire beginning today! Jim's got scrap wood coming out of his ears, and what better way to dispose of it than by sitting around a fire in the evening! Better stock up on smore supplies...

Sewing - nothing yet, but lots of projects are in the plans!

The things I'm avoiding - a huge pile of mail, starting laundry, cleaning up the pile of clothes in our bedroom...

My Summer DIY List

Spontaneously selling Josiah's bed and replacing it with a full now has my brain rolling. It's time to revisit Pinterest so I can slowly redesign and redecorate a few things. Think I can figure out and master Jim's power tools? We definitely don't have a shortage of wood downstairs, but the trick will be trying to use mostly what we have along with excess flooring.

Potential projects: Josiah's headboard, coffee table, cubbies for the back door, fabric covered canvas for above our bed, throw pillows for living room and both bedrooms, a new (much larger) top for the kitchen table, and if I get really good a corner desk unit for the office.

Reality? I probably won't get more than one building project done. Sewing, though, no problem! After a good night's sleep my enthusiasm for a full summer is finally appearing!

And just like that it's summer...

Where did this school year go?! At times it seemed like it was flying by faster than I wanted, and at other times the end couldn't come fast enough. And so it goes with teaching, I suppose. But summer is really, truly, finally here, and the reality still hasn't quite sunk in. Could be due to sheer exhaustion, or could also be due to the number of things running through my head. I've been asked what big plans I have for my summer, and to be honest I'm not really sure how to answer. Usually I have grand plans, but I haven't even started to consider what this summer might include. Here are a few things I've randomly mulled over in the last few months. Hopefully jotting them here will both get the ideas flowing and keep me from forgetting!

• School: Read bag full of 10ish teacher books
• House: paint master bedroom and sew some super fun and very loud curtains with fabric from Modern Textiles; spring clean (yes, I realize it's summer, but if you've met a teacher you know that doesn't happen in the last month of school!); catch up on office paperwork; clean out the basement and sell everything on a garage sale!
• Yard: figure out how to make the lawn look like the golf course, plant a few pots, add a few plants to the back, add a little secondary bed by the green fence
• Sew: too many projects to list...
• Catch up on digital scrapbooking and make family yearbooks
• Mary Kay: continue building and encouraging my team and customers on the road to directorship!!! 

And, of course, there are all those FUN non-listy things that I get to just do whenever while Josiah and I take full advantage of getting to be together ALL SUMMER: sit in a lawn chair and read a book A LOT, go to the lake, take advantage of the CSA harvest events and figure out how to freeze veggies, go to the pool, ride bike, take naps, head out to Buffalo River State Park for Prairie Preschool (I might secretly be just as excited to take Josiah as he will be to go), meet friends for coffee, go garage sale-ing (yep, I don't think that's spelled right, but Blogger said my options are sailing or saling, which don't look right either...), visit family, update and revise my cookbook (yep, I "wrote" one!), and relax (what's that again?)!

My goal is to not go into my classroom until August. Should we start a pool and everyone can put their money on how long I make it before I head in?

Oh, and I should probably predetermine bedtime regulations for both Josiah AND me. I could have gone to sleep at about 8:00, and now it's 12:19 and here I am sitting at my computer. Will someone please knock some sense into me and send me to bed?! That might also help accomplish my reading goals for the summer...

Banana-rama!

One of my favorite things to blog hop for is new recipes, and OMG have I found some tasty ones! Here is my first go at posting one of our favorites...Kona Banana Bread from Better Homes and Gardens Bread Cookbook. 

Just looking at this picture makes me wish that either I wasn't trying to lose weight and could eat at 11:36 pm, or that it was morning and time for a big ol' chunk with my morning coffee...yummmmmm!

Step 1: Cream 1/2 cup shortening and 1 cup sugar (I usually cut back to 3/4 - 7/8 of a cup) until light.

Step 2: Add 2 eggs, one at a time, beating well after each. Stir in 3/4 cup mashed ripe banana (I use slightly less). Make sure your bananas are RIPE, aka: black and mushy. Your batter will look like this:

And if your 4 year old likes to sample every ingredient as it goes in, he or she will look like this:

Still cute with flour all over!

Step 3: Sift together 1 1/8 cups flour (I substitute wheat flour for the 1/8 cup), 3/4 teaspoon soda, & 1/2 teaspoon salt. Add to banana mixture. Mix til well-blended. Love my Le Creuset spoonulas...after a few year of newlywed bliss and my first 3 Le Creusets I added a few other brands and none compare (even Cuisinart and Kitchenaid), so I am back to only the best (although my hubby would tell you the others are still in the drawer since I haven't cleaned them out yet...he LOVES an overabundance of kitchen utensils too, NOT)!

Step 4: Pour into a greased 9x9 or 8x8 pan. Bake for 30-35 (I usually do 35) minutes at 350 degrees. The bread will come out golden brown and separated from the sides of the pan. Isn't it gorgeous!

Step 5: Cool. Cut into squares. Eat them as fast as you can before your hubby gets to the pan!

Here's my cookbook, copyright 1963. Thank you to my mom for finding it for me at the Friends of the Bismarck Public Library Used Booksale!

And the original! Haven't tried to make it with cake flour, mainly because I don't usually have it on hand, but also because the recipe I got from my mom calls for all-purpose flour. I didn't realize until tonight when I started writing this post that it was in the recipe. Oops! Sometime I'll pick some up and will update this post to let you know how it compares. Happy baking!!!