Anyone for MORE COOKIES...??? :-D

Oh I am loving these Fall temperatures!!!  It's been in the upper 70s all week, and I feel SO happy with the windows open! :-D   Growing up in Massachusetts, I never had air conditioning, except one summer when I was pregnant with my daughter my mom gave us an old window unit for our bedroom so I could sleep (the only times I've ever been HOT all the time was when I was pregnant!).  But other than that, I just had fans to run, and then we just waited.....it never stayed hot for long, and I have always had more tolerance for the heat than the cold!
Flash forward to moving down here, and almost everyone has central air conditioning! (It's all electric, and it still has never cost as much as my oil-heat bills would cost in New England winters!!)   So now, I have to seal my house up tight every summer, and I start to feel choked up on the "fake" air -- when I am finally able to keep my windows open and get real air in the house, I LOVE it!  It rejuvenates me!! :-D

I guess that's a super-long story to explain why I'm so happy about sitting next to my open window every night! LOL 

First, I want to show you how I finished sanding the stencils, because I figured out what I didn't like about them....they were too uniformly sanded -- it didn't look like "wear", you know what I mean?  So when I sanded the rest of them I tried to keep it uneven looking, like this......

See how I sanded more on the edges of some motifs?  I think that looks better than all-over sanding, don't you?  I'm done sanding all of them now, so I have no more excuses about waiting to do the antiquing glaze....!!!  Oh, I'm so unsure of how to do it!  I'm going to have to do it on Monday, so I'll be home and can focus fully on how to get started on it!

That reminds me.....it's THURSDAY today!  My favorite day of the week!! :-D  You know what that means -- tomorrow I'm getting my wood (yay!), and I'm also getting black paint for my island (yay again!), AND, the Apple Festival is the day after tomorrow (double-YAY!!!)!  I intend to have several exciting things happening this weekend, it's going to be GREAT!! :-D

So here is a current picture of my kitchen island, with a little more Lincoln Cottage Black painted on.....

That is the perfect black for it, I think!  Grace asked me a few days ago if I was going to paint the knobs black, and I am, and I want to distress them as well, just like in the picture - I think their knobs are tarnished metal (maybe bronze or brass), they don't spare any expense with their cabinets (*sigh!*), but mine are wood so they will be easy to paint and sand to perfection!  (LOL - well, it's never quite perfection!)
I stopped painting it because I'm going to buy a quart of this color instead of using the sample -- first, this island is pretty big (you'll see when I post a picture of it all painted) so it would take many samples to get two coats of paint on it!  And second, the sample paints are all Satin finish, and the shiniest finish I can stand is eggshell!  I won't get flat paint for this, though, because it needs to be somewhat wipeable....it's had a few spills on it!! :-D 
I feel so good when I get these decisions made! LOL  It's a struggle for me!!

Something else I got to in the past two days was my craft room.....

That's a little better!!! :-D  I know there are still piles of stuff all around, but at least I can walk in here now and I got my fabric and yarn stored in their areas.  I definitely need to work on that table on the left (yes, there's a table under there!) -- that's where I piled alot of my primitive supplies and I want to see what I have under there!  You'll remember how easy it is for me to forget what I own, well, this is why....my stuff stays in piles way too long!! LOL  Now at least I have the floor space to take that stuff off the table and put it away....one of these days...!  Haha!!

Today, I repainted the living room cabinet that I painted blue the other day.....

Better??  I'm not sure, but I changed my mind about the blue because I already painted a cabinet that same color here, and I didn't want to have two......

We made this cabinet a few years ago, for my stereo (that we still barely play!) -- this is an older picture (see the ugly wall on the left?...that's where I wallpapered!).....it was my first attempt to "distress" something, and I think I should have used a little bit more paint!  Oh well, I'm just leaving it!  But you see it's already that same blue, so I changed the other one.  I still have to sand off the edges and dry-brush some brown or black paint over it.  Then we'll see if it looks right!

I've been having some fun these past two days, right?! :-D  I didn't post last night because I was so tired and I fell asleep on the couch! LOL
But I DO have one more thing to share with you that I did today......MORE COOKIES!!!

These are VERY good, and I have a hard time not slivering off bite after bite out of the pan!!  These are called Chocolate Scotcheroos, or I call them peanut butter crispy treats!
They are so easy to make and take only a few ingredients....

Combine 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of light corn syrup, bring it to a boil over medium heat.
Boil it for only a bit (1 minute), then remove it from the heat and add 1 cup of peanut butter.....

 (....and give puppy the empty peanut butter container....)(she's SO cute!!)....

Stir it until the peanut butter is all mixed in and creamy.....

Then add 6 cups of rice crispies.....

And stir those around until they are all coated with the peanut butter sauce.
Then spoon them into a greased (sprayed) 9x13 pan.....

 (Oh my goodness, I wanted to start eating this right here!)
Press them flat into the pan, and then start making the topping......

Melt 1 cup of butterscotch chips and 1 cup of semi-sweet (or milk chocolate) chips together - I always add a little extra of the chocolate chips, like maybe 1/8 cup extra.  And you can use a microwave if you like melting them that way.
Stir them over medium-low heat until they are creamy and combined.....

Oh YUM!!!!
Just so you know, the butterscotch chips don't melt as easily and smoothly as the chocolate, so I use whatever I am stirring with to mush them into the melted chocolate.....DON'T keep the heat up high thinking that will work - that will only make the chocolate crumbly and dry (I speak from, ahem, experience!).....

Perfect!!  Spread it over the rice crispies.....

And now all that's left is to try NOT to eat 1/3 of the pan!!! :-D
These are SO delicious.....let me show you that picture of them cut again.....

WOW!!  I am resisting the urge to get up and eat more right now!!! LOL  You know these will be gone tomorrow too! :-D

That's what I've been doing around here the past two days!  I am going to have some fun things to post about tomorrow I bet, and then the next day is the Apple Festival!!  Then next week my posts will be about making apple sauce, and apple juice, and pear honey, and cranberry-pear relish, and Swedish apple pie, and......!! ^-^