cheesecake chocolate chip cookies

Saturday night I felt the urge to bake a batch of cookies. I didn’t even have dinner on the table, but in my world sometimes baked goods trump real food. And there’s always cereal :)

These cookies were a new recipe for me. I was delighted to find they are the perfect cross between a chocolate chip cookie and cheesecake!

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 sticks butter, softened
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 11.5-ounce package chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix flour and salt together in a medium bowl. In a large bowl (or stand mixer) cream butter and cream cheese with sugar. Add each egg, beating well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Gradually add in flour mixture until well mixed. Stir in chocolate chips.

Drop by teaspoon-fulls onto a baking sheet. (I found that the cookies stay the shape they are, so I started to use a small ice-cream scoop instead of a teaspoon.) Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until they start to turn golden around the edges. (For large cookies, it could be up to 14 minutes.) Cool on a wire rack.

They are so good that Nolan asked for them first thing when he woke up Sunday morning.

Bake and enjoy!

friday favorites

This week has flown by. I’m grateful for writing these posts on Friday so that I can really reflect on the fun and sweet things that have happened in the past seven days :)

1. Lowe’s Build and Grow

This last Saturday was Nolan’s third workshop. He and Daddy have made such cute wooden vehicles, and he is always so proud to show them to me when he comes home. I love that the workshops are free—a definite gem in our small community.

2. Ephraim’s close to crawling

The other day, all of a sudden, he just started getting up on his knees as if he were ready to go! But most of the time, he is only pivoting around in a circle, or moving backwards—as I found him in this picture. :) To  be honest, I’m a little wary of this milestone, because it is going to have its challenges when he can start getting away from me. But obviously, I am thrilled at how well he is growing and developing. :)

And an extra shot of the cutie while he was enjoying some bananas yesterday afternoon. That smile was for his daddy, by the way :)
 

3. Green beans

Our pole beans were the first to shoot up in the garden, so we’ve patiently been waiting for the harvest. I finally saw these tiny, tiny beans on Wednesday. And I think we’re going to have green beans coming out of our ears so long as the weather cooperates (it’s been unseasonably cold the past few days).

Also, if anyone local is looking for some zucchini or cucumbers . . .
 

4. Inexpensive, GOOD ice cream

There’s a place in town that we often forget exists that serves HUGE cones of a delicious brand of ice cream for cheap. Steve and I split a “Death by Chocolate” that I’m still daydreaming about :)

5. Favorite verse

This week, one that has been sticking out to me is Hebrews 10:23-24:

“Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.  And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.”

What an uplifting message, and an excellent guide to bless those around us. :)

And a few more iPhone shots from the week:

He’s happy to have Grandma home from Alaska!

Remember to enter my giveaway for Kelly Minter’s book, “Wherever the River Runs!”

Did you link up for Friday Favorites this week with Andrea, Erika, & Narci?

What are your weekend plans?

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the playroom

Welcome to our playroom!

To start, I want to share that we are renters. Steve is in his sixth year of post-college studies (working hard now on his doctoral dissertation), so we aren’t in our forever-home yet. We moved in last summer, just over a year ago, and we are in the unique position that we’re allowed to make changes and updates to the house while we are here to increase the house’s value :) Oh, and it was built in 1920, so it has a TON of character.

Here are a couple of photos before the last owner moved out. As you can see, the room is set up as a formal dining room, situated between the front door of the house and the kitchen. However, we didn’t come with dining room furniture, so we decided it would work nicely as a playroom—and it has!


For a year, we didn’t paint or do any updates to the room. At the end of July, we decided to give it a couple coats of gray paint. We used Olympic’s “Gray Marble," from Lowe’s. The old paint was dull, marked up, and looked yellowy in the sunlight, so this serene gray was a vast improvement. I swapped the navy curtains for some light blue ones that were elsewhere in the house. Steve and I absolutely love how it turned out!

Take a look! :)

 

The boys’ personalized Thirty-One utility totes make for great toy storage!

   
These white drawers were in my closet, but I realized they would make awesome toy containers. Nolan has TONS of Duplos, and now they all fit in the bottom drawer :)




In recent months, I’ve really begun to see how visual clutter affects my mood. Nolan has acquired many toys in his short three years. At the beginning of the summer, I could see that he was bored even though he had toys scattered throughout the entire house. I moved many of them to the basement and started a rotation schedule. When I pull out a toy he hasn’t seen in a while, he’ll play with it for hours! This has helped me with the visual clutter issue. And it shows how for Nolan—less is more :)

Thank you so much for stopping by! These are my favorite posts each month—I love a good before and after :)

I’m linking up with Andrea for the “Come On In” series. We’ve already done living room, kitchen, outdoor space, and kids’ rooms.

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sunday afternoon

Yesterday, we spent a perfect afternoon with Steve’s mom’s side of the family. Steve’s parents both grew up a couple of hours northwest of here, and we head up there a few times a year for get-togethers. Steve’s cousin Jay and his family are visiting from Austin, Texas—and we were excited to see them again! Their son, Issac, is just a month younger than Nolan, and the boys had fun getting to know each other :) We celebrated a couple of summer birthdays with homemade sheet cake, mint chocolate chip ice cream, and never-ending sparkler candles. Ephraim was passed around to the baby-lovers of the group. And Steve’s 97-year-old grandmother, Olive, happily observed her growing brood.




Steve’s aunt and uncle have an incredible backyard—full of flowers, a vegetable garden, plenty of seating, a swingset, and endless kid toys. I loved these hanging moss balls, with tiny, growing plants!
 
My little adventurer, doing what he does best. :)

I always think, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could live near all of our extended family?!  Xoxo.