I made super delicious pecan sticky rolls this morning. I use the recipe from the current Cooking Light issue. They take so long to make, I let the dough rise once last night and then for the second rise, I let it sit in the refrigerator last night, then this morning, I rolled the buns and let them rise once more and the baked. I don't see how anyone could make these in one morning. I loving baking, but not enought to wake up at 5AM!

Anyway, the top cooking tip I learned this year is from my friend Beth. It is that when you wash your bowls and spoons that have raw dough on them, use COLD water. Then it will come right off. If you use hot water, it will get all gooey and mess up your scrubbrush.

This weekend we will be building our chicken coop with this plan: Playhouse Chicken Coop.

Surprise!
We have 4 baby egg laying chickens!
They are Barred Plymouth Rocks

Since Jesper and I have been together, we never got around to going on an overnight hike. After talking about it for a long time, we finally planned the weekend and did it. We brought along Michelle, Bill and their dog Milo. The weather was perfect, except 5 degrees too warm and the hike was really beatiful, I think the most scenic hike I remember taking.
Sunday morning, Jesper and I did some technical hiking up the glacier about 600 feet with helmets, ice axes and crampons. We peered into a crevass and went back down. It was a new experience for me, a taste of what all the other climbers at that elevation were doing. We were probably the only ones at that level of the mountain who weren't there to make a summit attempt. Jesper has summited the mountain and probably dreams of me joining him someday. I definitly don't have the summit fever his freinds do. I think after being back on the trail and seeing trees again, I could imagine going on the ice again. Possibly next time to the crater to see the steam from the volcano.

Hike details: Mt. Baker - Railroad grade trail past High Camp, past Sandy Camp to the glacier.

More photos in my Flickr set.

This weekend we took a long 85 mile motorcyle ride through the backroads south of Issaquah with some friends with Triumphs. One of the interesting things we saw along our ride was a pasture full of watermellons and cows eating them. The cows really loved them, but weren't quite smart enought to break them open except for by accident. When one did open up, there was a rush to the sweet juice inside. It was very entertaining and educational!

I've started a new sweater, called Licorice Whip. I found it on Ravelry and am using a stash of black Cotton-ease that I've been saving. I think this will be a good casual sweater. So far the neck hole barely fits over my head, but I remember I made a sweater from this yarn before and it tends to stretch out over time, so I think making it a size small is my approach. If it's really too small, I'll be giving it away as a gift I guess.

Today I finished a baby sweater. Helena from Knitty.

Now we have more time to do what we please after the wedding, we are going to get back into mountain biking! We've been so busy working on the house, we have hardly ridden our bikes, but now it's back in the schedule. Tonight we went to St. Edwards Park with Elle (sister-in-law) and Stefan and had a blast cruising through the forest single-track trails. I did much better than I expected with the turns and hills and am really excited to get out there again. Such fun exercise!

The big plan is to make part of our honeymoon in Thailand a mountain biking adventure! So we've got to get in biking-shape.