Welcome to the land of the ice and snow ...?

Well, what do you know?  It is the last day of Winter, and it's snowing !

Possibly the Best Peanut Butter Cookies Ever

I just made these and they taste excellent, not too sweet.  So, if you love the magic combination of Peanut Butter and Chocolate, then don't waste any more time, get thee to the kitchen and bake!

Preheat the oven to 180 C (or 350 F)

Cookie sheets, lined with baking parchment

Into your food processor place and mix together the following ingredients:

1 Cup Peanut Butter
1/4 Cup Raw Caster Sugar
2 Tablespoons Grated Coconut
1 Egg stirred with a Dash of Vanilla Essence

Garnish:  Choc Bits (or small chunks of Lindt Orange Almond, as seen on mine)

1. Form tablespoonfuls of this mix into walnut sized balls and place at 4cm intervals on your baking sheet, flatten slightly into discs.
2. Place a piece of chocolate atop each disc.
3. Bake for approximately 10 minutes on upper-middle oven rack.  If perfectly done, the colour will remain the same, so don't allow them to burn at all.

Allow to cool before serving.

No photo here - just sage advice...

When you find yourself in the position of having to rescue a parrot (in my case an adolescent Rosella) that has stupidly trapped its own foot in your car boot door, then just pop the boot door open and stand back!  Do not try to handle the panicked wretch in any way, because you will be bitten, and when I say that, I mean your finger will feel like it was slammed in the car door!  When they wrap their little beak around your middle finger, they really mean it!  And, don't ask me how a bird gets its own foot caught in that way, but I am guessing it happened, quite innocently and when no-one was looking earlier in the morning... just saying.

What the best dressed dogs are wearing this season...

Tessa, the dog next door, was in need of a warm jacket.  So, an old Miss Shop sweater got a chance to live again - a snip here and a stitch there - recycled and re-purposed, I give you:  Tessa's New Coat!

Spring has (Almost) Sprung!

So, a gloomy, windy weekend turned into a bright and sunny Monday!  Could be worse, I hear you say...

But to start the new week off we have a new baby.  A bouncing, baby Angus was born late last Friday night, in the dark and the cold.  Sat through at least a half hour of mom's labor in the late afternoon, but realizing there was nothing else to do but wait (and wait and wait) till the little guy was ready, we went indoors.   Don't know how these guys manage living outside in the weather, but they do.  So, here's a couple of shots taken of mother and baby, both of whom are doing well.

Art Nouveau

Been flicking through my latest acquisition for the Vix Jewellery library - a giant tome dedicated to all things stylish, organic and fabulous.  About a week ago, my team and I won the local trivia challenge and naturally, we were honored with a stack of prizes, one of which was a book voucher, pour moi.  After much consideration I settled on this wonderful book, chock full of stuff I like, namely from the period of the late 19th/early 20th Century, the Art Nouveau.  Hopefully, I'm not breaking any copyright rules by sharing a sampling of its (architecture) pages here on the VIX Bloggette.  (Hmmm, yes, I think I can live with that much ornamentation...)