It’s not too often that the threat of a being snowed in at the ranch for a couple days doesn’t mess with a series of laid out plans to make the 30 miles drive to work, move some cows, see a concert, put on an event or catch a plane out of this arctic tundra.

For Little Sister the freezing rain and blowing snow turned a four and a half hour drive to the Black Hills in South Dakota into something more like ten.

For my parents on a mission to see Bruce Springsteen perform in Minneapolis last night, it meant leaving early and timing their departure so the storm followed them, ensuring they had a chance to miss the snow, but not The Boss.

There was no way they were missing The Boss.

For others it meant a day off work, a day in the ditch, or a night spent sleeping in a hotel room when all you really wanted was to be home with your family snuggled up on the couch with something cooking on the stove.

For us it meant lighting the fireplace, rounding up the power tools and getting some shit done around here.

But ever since the first snow flake fell a few weeks ago I’ve been starving. So in preparation for the storm and the scheduled house construction project I stopped by the grocery store on my way out of town on Thursday to stock up on the essentials I would need to finally make some of those mouth-watering recipes I’ve been scoping out on Pinterest since last December.

Because I had no weekend gambling or concert plans and I was alright with watching the storm settle in nicely over our little cabin in the oaks, as long as I had the necessary ingredients to feed us.

Because I’m starving.

So as the freezing rain coated my world with ice on Friday and dumped a pile of snow on the whole mess on Saturday morning, I pulled on my wool socks and rummaged around in my cupboards for the flour and sugar and other baking type things…because today was the day I was going to attempt these: Homemade cinnamon roll waffles

I’ve had my eye on these little breakfast shaped pieces of heaven since last winter’s recipe pinning marathon. So on Saturday, I was determined that they come to life in my kitchen.

Now, I have to tell you that I am not a cook. Or a baker. Or a domestic diva. But the thought of these waffles sitting on my breakfast table waiting for a hot, buttery cinnamon drizzle followed by a sweet and sugary cream cheese frosting must have provided me with a sort of Betty Crocker out-of-body-experience.

Nothing was going to stop me from serving these babies up hot to me and my Carpenter Cowboy–not an overflowing waffle iron, not a microwave butter explosion, not a kitchen prepped to be torn apart for the impending tile project and certainly not my lack of culinary skills. I was going to make these things.

From scratch.

And I was going to eat as many as I wanted.

Because it was a snow day and this is what you do on snow days.

And I was starving.

So I did. And I’m telling you here because I was so damn proud of myself, the same way I am when I manage to accomplish anything worth eating in the kitchen. And I was wishing someone, besides Husband, was snowed in in this house to help me eat them and tell me how ass-kickingly domestic I’ve become…because there is only so much cooking-compliment-fishing the man can handle, no matter how much he likes the waffles.

Because the man can make his own damn waffles, so he’s not that impressed.

But I was. So to go along with our crock pot roast dinner, I made this.

Hasselback Garlic Cheesy Bread

Yup.

Ok, so it doesn’t look as mouth-watering as the photo attached to the original recipe, but, c’mon, I made this from freakin’ scratch people. Me. I did that.

Home. Made. Bread.

And when I say homemade, I mean it. Yup, the successful homemade waffles gave me the little nudge of confidence necessary to tackle the things you need to make bread from scratch– like yeast and Husband’s Kitchenaid Mixer.

So as my dearly beloved braved the weather to work on shoveling and checking the horses and other man-type things, I was inside trying to figure out how the hell to use the mixer, waiting for the bread to rise, rolling it out, putting it on a pan and waiting for it to rise some more.  I concocted my own garlic butter, used that pastry brush thingy that I shoved in the back of my drawer and brushed the top of the loaves, baking them until they turned a perfect golden brown. And when Husband came in from the cold, there I stood covered in flour with hands on my hips, content and proud at my delicious accomplishment, wishing again, that someone else was there to taste it, because surely they wouldn’t believe me.

Or him.

I mean really, for all of the things my husband is to me, he seems to lacks the enthusiasm gene.

Anyway, the snow fell and the weekend moved from Saturday into Sunday and we worked on transforming this house into the home we dreamed of.

I stained doors and we put up the backsplash in the kitchen.

Husband made sawdust and I swept the floor,  poured us a couple cups of coffee and then a couple glasses of wine. I braved the weather to snap some photos and he laughed when I came in covered in snow with frozen fingers.

We didn’t look at the clock, we just paid attention to the way the light fought its way through the clouds and into the house that smelled like breakfast bacon and cedar.

I didn’t fix my hair or put on makeup and for two days the only other souls we encountered had four legs and fur and were sleeping on our floor.

This is the way I imagined our winters in this house. And it isn’t often that those imagined things play out the way you thought them up. Especially when it comes to cooking and home construction. And I don’t know why it happened to work out this particular weekend. I don’t know why I didn’t have plans to play music, or to catch a party or a concert or gamble down in Vegas, except that I didn’t.

And neither did Husband.

Because more than anything in the world I think the two of us, whether or not we will admit it, really only want to be here, eating each other’s cooking, cleaning up after one another, following our plans and building our life nail by nail, board by board and tile by tile.

From scratch.

Like the waffles, which turned out pretty good, against all odds.