Retrospective

Happy blogiversary to me!  It's amazing what a difference 4 years can make.  I've been having a hard time deciding what I wanted to write about my blogging adventure so far, and it occurred to me that I just had to include this picture from yesterday morning.  One huge thing that has changed is my girls--when I started blogging, Gillian was just over a year old and Brianna was not quite 5.  Now, they're both very capable of assisting me in the kitchen.  Yes, that's ravioli that Brianna is making.  She asked me for advice on how to shape them, but that was it.  Well, I did also let her borrow my pastry wheel, on the condition that it got thoroughly cleaned afterwards.  I couldn't resist her sad face because she couldn't figure out how to make the edges look right with the tools she had. =)

I love the fact that both my girls want to spend time in the kitchen, probably way more than I actually let them (still working on that patience thing, even after 4 years).  They just assume that I can make anything, or can figure it out pretty quickly.  They don't know it yet, but they're both getting baking cookbooks and some kitchen tools of their own for Christmas (color coded--blue for B, purple for G).  I love the fact that they won't think it's odd that I didn't get them measuring cups--they're used to using a scale to measure ingredients.  I've made so many things in the past four years--puff pastry, croissants, bagels, sourdough bread, amazing cakes, scores of scones, caramel, ice cream... I could go on and on.  But the best thing to come out of my kitchen is showing my girls it can be done.  I set out to write a blog about baking, but many of my favorite posts are also about my life and family.  I look forward to filling many more notebook pages with notes and share many more stories (in words and pictures) with all of you.