*december 20th*

Well, today was my last day of work for this year - yay!!! I'm so excited to be done. That only means one thing...we're leaving for India soon. I'm excited for the amazing experiences, time with family, and warmer temperatures!

I've been packing since yesterday and I feel like I've packed multiple times (because I was switching around suitcases). I think we have it figured out now and have some room to bring back things we buy over there :)

There was one last Christmas item I had to finish up and Chris delivered it for me today. I decided to make a jar of cookie mix to give to our realtor that we liked so much. (I actually made one of these to put in the white elephant gift exchange too.) You can go here for the recipe. It's really simple and I think it turned out very well...my first try at one of these. I used Christmas M&M's instead of the pink ones.

I bought my jars at Hobby Lobby - they have jars with either the "Ball" logo on or just plain...they didn't have enough in the plain the day I went. And you may also notice that my jar is topped with sugar instead of pecans. That's because I ran out of room for the pecans! I'm not quite sure how the lady on the website was able to fit it all in!

You should give this a try. I have a feeling I'll be making more of the cookie mix in a jar in the future.

Enjoy the anticipation of Christmas getting so close!

*december 14th*

Tonight I made some cookies for my work's Christmas lunch tomorrow.  There's a Pioneer Woman recipe I had found that I really wanted to try so this was a good opportunity.

Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies...doesn't that just sound delicious?  A link to the recipe is below if you'd like to try them yourself.

what my cookie dough looked like (I was worried that it came out too stiff, but it seemed to work out ok in the end)

the finished product...you can really see the sugar sparkling on the outside :)

Find the recipe here.  Enjoy!

*Update* These ended up turning out really well! They were pretty yummy - something different with the gingerbread/chocolate combination. I consider them a success since a co-worker liked them so much that she asked for the recipe :)

I do think that I cooked them a little too long and I probably didn't need the full-flavor molasses. (I could've used the lightly-flavored molasses.)

*december 1st*

For the days leading up to Christmas, I decided I want to try to post something about Christmas (or winter) every day. We'll see how this goes but I think it will be fun! You'll be able to see what we're up to. And it means I will have to take more pictures of the stuff that I normally don't bother taking pictures of. It's always fun to capture every day stuff, special events like parties, and the way that we spend our December!

I'm sure there will be days of me cheating by back-posting the day after, but here we go...

view out the deck this morning...we had some flurries yesterday! great way to bring in december.

We needed to use up some leftover turkey so we made a turkey pot pie tonight. I normally make this recipe for Pillsbury's classic chicken pot pie, but we just switched out the meat and it was delicious! (And with only 2 of us, we eat leftovers of this for a couple days after.)

complete with a feeble attempt at a Christmas tree cut into the top :)

02.26.10

(I decided to share 2 pictures today since I didn't have one for yesterday.)
My hubby started feeling bad last night.  (He's actually been struggling a bit the last couple weeks.)  So he decided to take a sick day today.  He needed it for his physical and mental health.  His body needed a break.  It was nice to have him home too.  Maggie definitely didn't mind having him home.  She got to nap with him on the couch.

Chris kept saying that he wanted chicken noodle soup for dinner when I asked him.  So I made a quick run to the store to get a few ingredients we didn't already have.  I found a quick recipe from Rachel Ray.  I thought I would share it.  It's so easy and was really good for such few ingredients.  It was also thicker than normal chicken noodle soup which is what I really appreciated about it.  This will be a keeper at our house.  Here's a link to the recipe and I've put the ingredients below that I used.

Rachel Ray's Quick Chick and Noodle Soup

Ingredients
2 tbsp. olive oil
3 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
dried bay leaves
salt and pepper
6 cups chicken broth
2 large cans of diced chicken
1/2 pound of wide pasta noodles
Parsley
Dill
(I would've normally added the chopped onion but omitted it per request of the sick one.)

02.09.10

Today I made some BBQ beef for dinner tonight.

It's really very simple to make.

Ingredients
Really any kind of beef roast (today we used a rump roast)
Onion
Seasoning salt
Water
BBQ sauce of your choice

Sprinkle the roast with seasoning salt and put in a crock pot with about half an onion and about 2 cups of water (depending on the size of meat).  Cook on low for 5-6 hours.  Take meat out of the crock pot, remove fat and bone, and shred.  Remove all of the liquid and onion from the crock pot, but reserve a few cups of the juice.  Put shredded meat back in the crock pot.  Mix a small amount of juice with a larger amount of BBQ sauce.  Pour on top of meat and mix together.  Repeat if necessary until the meat is covered with desired amount of sauce.  Cook on low for another 30 minutes to an hour or until warm.  Enjoy!

Picture Update - Fudge, snow, fashions

I've been slacking this week on keeping up on my pictures. Here are the last few days of pictures.

Thursday

I made Paula Deen's Dummy Fudge for small group last night. I wanted to find a simple recipe since it was my first time making fudge and this recipe really is simple. Click here for the recipe. I used almonds instead of pecans and I substituted peanut butter chips for the butterscotch ones. I think it turned out wonderfully for being so easy!