Guess what we found in the barn today? 4 beautiful little baby kitties! all our pets are, of course, spayed or neutered, but this IS a farm, and we get feral farm cats that wander in and have litters of kittens. We *especially* worry about them in the fall, becuase even though we have a warm barn and feed them, it IS cold in Iowa, and it's hard for fall kittens to survive. So we're glad we caught these little guys. They're doing well and will be ready for adoption in a few weeks. We have 4, so if anyone is interested in an adorable kitten in a few weeks...let us know!

In other news: Donna isn't well. near-pneumonia! she is hacking and wheezing and generally feeling awful. Maggie is doing her best to keep Donna indoors on bed rest, but it is NOT easy. Please wish her a speedy recovery!

We served these cookies at our "Herb Overload" class a week and a half ago. I love super-easy things that you can make in a hurry - perfect for classes. Beucase I procrastinate. (I know. you're all surprised!)

So these were made with tube sugar cookie dough, the readymade stuff, and some rose petal jelly I had made earlier in the spring. (Follow my recipe for dandelion jelly, but substitute rose petals instead. Delicious and beautiful!) I made teensy balls of dough, then pressed my fingerprint in them to create an indentation. Baked the cookies, then let the cool and put a tiny bit of rose petal jelly in the indentation. Decorate plate and cookies with edible flower bits (in this case I used borage flowers, lavender flowers and rose petals) and listen to the ooh's and aah's as you serve these pretty little cookies!

If you have a bit of extra tiem and want to be even fancier, you can add some chopped rose petals directly to the dough. YUM!