This week I'm showing off this lovely tea cup and saucer by the Royal Dover China company.
The background is slightly off white with white flowers and a plethora of colored leaves (aqua, gray, brown, gold and blue).
The tea cup is ribbed about three-fourths down toward the bottom. It was very sunshiney when I took these photos! The saucer is ribbed all around its edges.
The backside of the cup.
The cup and saucer are both trimmed in gold trim.
For some reason, the handle only has gold trim on one side.
The cup and saucer are both marked on the bottom: Royal Dover China, Bone China, Made In England.
I love to cook, but I love, love, love to bake! I can easily spend hours in the kitchen either cooking or baking, especially during November and December. The only thing I don't like is the clean-up!
Way back in the 1990s, I made countless chocolate chip cookies in my search for the perfect recipe and never found one I truly liked. So I played around in the kitchen and came up with my own recipe.
I've been sharing this recipe for years with family, friends and co-workers. If you decide to make these, I hope you enjoy them!
Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
3 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla
1 bag of chocolate chips
hot water*
1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Mix together the two sugars.
3. Add butter and mix until smooth.
4. Stir in the flour.
5. Add eggs one at a time, stirring well after each addition.
6. Stir in vanilla
7. Stir in baking soda and salt.
8. Add chocolate chips and mix well.
Round the cookie batter into desired sizes and place on an ungreased cookie/bake sheet.
Bake for 10 minutes.
Let the cookies sit for about 1 minute after removing from oven.
Move cookies from hot sheet to cooling rack.
*If the dough becomes too dry, add 1-2 teaspoons of hot water to the mix.
I get about 4 dozen or so cookies from this recipe. If you enjoy a nutty kind of cookie, then don't be afraid to add walnuts, macademia nuts or pecans to the mix. If you like salty cookies, then increase the amount of salt. Don't go too crazy on the salt, though, as a little goes a long way.
"Fifty Shades of Grey" is the first book in a trilogy by E L James. The other two books are "Fifty Shades Darker" and "Fifty Shades Freed". I read the first one and about half of the second one in this series.
These books read like badly written Harlequin Temptations. This trilogy started out as fan fiction for the Twilight series, entitled "Master of the Universe", with the names of Edward Cullen and Bella Swan as the main characters. Under the 50 shades umbrella, the names were changed to Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey.
Ana is a college student, near graduation, when she meets Christian Grey, a billionaire at the age of 27. Christian has her sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement. After she signs the NDA, Grey gives her a contract to sign. He wants her to be his submissive, which means during their sexual encounters, Ana would be obedient to Grey, her Dom. So if she's disobedient, then she'll be punished as he sees fit. Grey wants to do things to Ana like tie her up, blindfold her, spank her, etc, during their encounters. This is where all the book's hype comes into play. Some people may be offended with these descriptive encounters, but it's hardly anything more than what you may find in a Harlequin romance novel.
In book two, "Fifty Shades Darker", I only made it about half-way through. It's horribly written, worse than the first book. If possible, the heroine, Ana Steele, becomes even more wishy-washy.
Paraphrased examples of sentences from EL James:
Example 1: He takes off his shoe, he takes off his sock. He takes off his other shoe, he takes off his other sock. He takes off her shoe, he takes off her sock. He takes off her other shoe, he takes off her other sock. And these sentences do not occur just once, but almost before every sexual encounter.
Example 2: Ana's inner goddess: I don't know why, but anytime Ana is experiencing an emotion, her inner goddess pops up into the moment, which does nothing but distract the reader from the action (such as it is). Ana's inner goddess sits up on her chaise lounge and takes note. Ana's inner goddess' mouth falls open. Ana's inner goddess starts dancing. Then somewhere along the way, "inner goddess" gives way to "my sub-conscious". Quote from book II: "My sub-consicous stares at me over her half-moon specs."
In addition to the bad writing, there are far too many ridiculous, unbelievable things happening to the characters. I don't want to spoil the story for someone who may want to read this series, so I won't go into detail. I did like the flirty exchange of emails between Ana and Grey. However, in today's age, I believe text messages would've worked better.
I've been glued to my TV all morning watching the reports on New York and New Jersey. My thoughts and prayers are with all those people affected by Hurricane Sandy and the super storm it turned into as it hit land. The wind, here in NKY, really picked up last night around 6pm and it's been raining non-stop today.
Here's one of my favorite tea cups for fall, but the funny thing is the scene on the cup and saucer is summer. However, I like to think it's more like early fall before the leaves start to change. The main reason I like this cup and saucer for fall are the colors.
The tea cup and saucer are both trimmed in gold. The background on the china is cream with a yellowish tint, while only brown is used to depict the scene.
The interior of the cup features a second rim of gold.
The trees are in full bloom on this "Fall" cup and saucer.
Today's tea cup and saucer is bone china and made by Taylor and Kent of England.
Today's theme for Pink Saturday is Autumn Flowers & Foliage.
These daisies grow wild just around the corner from me. They're so gorgeous with their white petals and egg-yolk middles.
I photographed these yellow flowers at the beginning of October. I believe they're evening primrose. Do you see the cross in the center?
Pokeweed grows wild, too. These red-stemmed berries look so delicious. Alas, they're quite poisonous, so you can't eat them. Back in the old days, Pokeweed berries were used for dying textiles, making ink and increasing the color of red wine.
Here's a Pokeweed bush with some of the berry output shown.
How lovely to have roses in October and pink ones, too! I don't think the buds will bloom, though. The temperature today was about 55 degrees with lots and lots of cold rain, hence the wet roses in the pictures. Tomorrow's forecast is more of the same.
Michael Connelly writes this great series about an LAPD detective named Harry Bosch. In this book, The Drop, Harry Bosch is called in to investigate what looks to be an apparent suicide. However, the dead man's father is Irvin Irving, a city councilman and Harry's former boss in the department.
Harry and Irving have disliked each other intensely for many years, so Harry is confused by Irving's request that he work the case. Irving doesn't think his son, who made his living as an attorney, would kill himself. Some internal politics pop up, among them companies who've hired the councilman's son to win contracts from the city of Los Angeles, which Harry investigates because Irving is on the city council.
The second storyline running through The Drop is a rape and murder case from 1989. New DNA evidence emerges, but points to a guy who's only 29, which makes him 8 years old at the time of the crime. Harry re-opens the case and begins to chase down new leads not only for this case, but for the councilman's case as well.
I wish Michael Connelly had given the second storyline more pages in his book. I found it to be, not only the more interesting, but the better of the two stories. As a sidenote, the author doesn't write well for female characters. Some of the things the female characters say sound more like what a guy would say to a woman, instead of the other way around.
I love Michael Connelly's books. They're gritty and they have a sense of realism to them. Of couse, I've never worked in law enforcement or a related environment, so this is just my opinion :) Harry Bosch is most definitely one of my favorite characters in literature.
Maybe one day they'll make a Harry Bosch movie like they did for Mickey Haller, Connelly's other character series.
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