T Stands for My New Mug, Birds, and Some Baking

    Hi everyone. Happy new week to you. And hello to everyone who visits for T Day over at  Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog .

   I've had a fairly quiet week this past week. Over this past weekend we had some light snow on both Saturday and also later on Sunday.

    Besides watching some football playoff games and knitting while I watched, I also spent some time on our snowy Saturday watching the birds. Actually I was "playing" with them a bit because the flock of starlings that last year was only 2 birds big is now up to 31 birds.

   I had just put some fresh bird food out, and although I am not trying to starve the starlings, when they swoop in it is hard for the other birds to eat. (And those starlings eat all the food; in fact they'd eat me out of bird food if I let them. But if you feed birds and deal with starlings you know that.) But the starlings won't swoop in if I stand in the doorway. They sit in the tree and chatter, and then one or two will fly to another tree and chatter. I can tell they are trying to  not only scope out the food situation but to see if I am still standing in the doorway.

 

    The other birds don't mind if I stand in the doorway, so they came in to eat. It's fun to watch them, although when Pete came over to see what I was looking at, he was disappointed it was only birds and no squirrels. 😏

    However later he got to see some squirrels, including this guy in the snow digging up bird seed.

   Birds brings me to my ticket for T this week. I have a new mug.  A few weeks back I went to the bird store to get a new seed tube. They always have fun bird "gifty things" too, especially right around the holidays.  When I went in they had some items including some bird mugs marked down 75%, and since I needed to spend $2  to get a 20% off coupon to work, I bought myself a new mug. (Which came out to be even less costly when the 20% got added to the already 75% off. What a deal-grin. Or maybe an eye roll if you're like my husband. 😉 )

    I even remembered to take a photo of it one afternoon when I was making myself a cup of tea. 

  I chose the nuthatch mug because they are such interesting little birds. It was either that or the cardinal,  and not that I don't like cardinals, but I also like the little less showy birds.  I think they need a little love also. 

   I've also done a bit of baking lately, as you can see in my T day photo. A couple of weeks ago I made some chocolate chip cookies because they're my husband's favorites, and with his back, I thought he'd appreciate something special.  (Of course I had to have a couple too.)

   This past Saturday, while it was snowing and in between feeding/watching the birds, I made a pan of sour-dough discard brownies. I have a sour dough starter that I've been feeding  for almost 10 years now, and every week or so I need to remove some of the starter and feed the rest of it. (I keep it refrigerated. If it's not refrigerated you need to feed it much more frequently.) I've made these brownies before and they are a bit cakie (rather than chewy) so I decided to make some peanut butter frosting to put on them. 

   I added peanuts to the brownies instead of walnuts or pecans, The peanuts tasted good, but I think I added a few too many.  Oh well still, they are yummy.

   That's it for me this week. I hope everyone has a super T day and week ahead.