One smart city (Seattle) has decided that goats should be thought of as PETS! That's great. This means people in the city limits will be able to have them. For those of you that don't have goats or don't know much about them let me tell you there little poop is a lot smaller then a dogs. It's more like a rabbits which still blows my mind. I hope more places follow this same line of thinking. Click here for the article (yes, I read this because of one of my wonderful yahoo groups again! I love those groups.)

Yes, one cookie is gone. I gotta try one to make sure I cooked it long enough.hee..hee..
I have been cooking away and cleaning.

One of the MANY things I made yesterday was Pumpkin cookies. Oh, listen you gotta try these. They are so light and fluffy. I only make these in the fall time but boy are they good. This is NOT a recipe that I myself came up with. It was giving to me by my aunt for a wedding gift way back when...hey, 10 YEARS AGO today (the school that she worked with made a book called Shared "Secrets from the Caledonia Elementary school" and a Six grade teacher named Crystal Price shared this with the book. Sorry, the book is no longer in print) I have changed the recipe a little to adjust to my taste but it's close enough to hers that I feel I should say where the original recipe came from. I would have never made mine if I didn't read hers first.

This is what you'll need-

1/2 cup of shortening

1 1/2 cups of brown sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups of canned pumpkin

2 1/2 cups flour

4 tsp. of baking powder (yes, that's right 4!)

1/2 tsp. of salt

1/2 tsp. of cinnamon

1/2 tsp. of nutmeg

1 tsp. of vanilla

**Optional to add nuts. I don't only because my husband doesn't like them but they would be really good in them.

Cream together shortening and brown sugar. Add egg; beat thoroughly. Mix in vanilla and pumpkin. Sift together dry ingredients. Blend into creamed mixture. Drop dough by heaping teaspoonfuls on grease baking sheet. Bake at 375 degree until lightly browned, about 15 minutes. Cool on rack. Makes a lot of cookies (around 4-5 dozen.)

Black Walnuts- are falling here and now it's time to play.

We have been picking up all of the black walnuts that have been falling and saving them up to play around with. One of the things we did was making a kind of ink from them (ok, stain but it's still fun to do.)

We took one black walnut and put it in water. After less then 5 minutes you start to see the water change colors some (we also added a tad of vinegar to it. About a tablespoon.)

Here is one hour later.

24 hours is up now. I had Bri write a little with it and so did I. It reminds me of water coloring more then anything else but it does work (the color is stronger then water coloring but the liquid is thin is what I mean.) Sorry, if the pictures don't look all the great (something is going on with my camera and I need to sit down and figure that out.)

Yes, the other project we are doing is using black walnuts to dye some angora wool. I will post about that later.