Christmas Pictures

Just a few pictures of opening Christmas presents... I was going to have Tiffani put them in a collage with her new toy - but she's gotta stick around home to do that!!

A. Avy, you've been with us all season! :-)

Before tearing into things.

Adding to her nutcracker collection. This one she gets to personalize.

The ever elusive camera is finally in her hands!

We couldn't resist a 2nd nutcracker when we saw this skiing one. It was a must have for Brianna.

Tiffani got the SU! version of the rubik's cube with the In Colors on it. She's been wanting it since SU! came out with it - she had no idea it was in the house for months!

Tiffani got Les a seahawks ski hat. As soon as he opened it she ran and got his old one and put it on. He's had that brown one for 25+ years. Both the girls love that hat! Les does actually love the new hat, too. It's shorter so it's not folded over under his helmet.

Tiffani got Photoshop! Now, when she has time at home, she can edit my pictures for the blog. :) She had a blast the other night playing with some pictures.

Grandma J found this awesome multi-color whisk for Tiffani. She loves it!

Baking for Christmas

The socks were awesome ;-) but there were more things to be grateful for! I did not get my baking day with the girls, but we got our "baking moments". Brianna has this thing she says often "Fudge Monkeys!". Someone asked her what a fudge monkey was... So we just had to make some. I didn't think it would be that hard to find a monkey shaped cookie cutter. I was wrong! Couldn't even find one online that looked nice. But the idea was planted in her head so we got creative (or is that crazy?) and found a monkey coloring page, shrunk it down to size, and cut out by hand about 10 monkey heads and then "drew" the face on them. Now if we had an actual cutter people might've gotten more then one, but one it was!!!



Then... we decided to make Chocolate Peppermint Pinwheel cookies. Made the sugar cookie recipe and got it in the fridge just like the recipe said. About an hour later I got to thinking about the chocolate layer and the peppermint layer & wondering how the flavors where suppose to get in there. Well, the recipes were kind of 2 different recipes in one. One for sugar cookies and one for the pinwheel cookies from the sugar cookie dough. After dividing the dough in two, you are suppose to mix in the ingredients for the flavors BEFORE you put it in the fridge. So - lesson learned - read the recipe all the way through before making it!!! Well, we pulled the dough out of the fridge, let it sit on the counter for a bit so it wasn't quite so hard and then, very messy job that it was, worked in melted chocolate into one half (my job) and an egg yolk and peppermint extract in the other (Brianna's job). Then we rolled the dough out & together & then into the fridge again... Finally getting them sliced and baked! Turned out pretty good (tasty too) for all our troubles.


And then we had to bring a "Tiffani creation" to Christmas dinner. She chose to make the "string of lights" cupcakes. Once again we had to improvise from the directions given in the book. The cord on the light was suppose to be green (with green shoestring licorice) but we could only find the red pull apart twizzlers at Winco so we had a red strand of lights. Then to make the light bulb shape you are suppose to cut the shape out of a graham cracker! What!? Ok, I gave it a try & got 1 good one out of 6 tries. That wasn't going to happen. So I made another batch of sugar cookies (my own favorite recipe this time), did some more trimming by hand and we had our light bulb shape for the top of the cupcake. (Closest cookie cutter I had to a light bulb was an ice cream cone. We trimmed off the "ice cream" dripping over the side & made the cone not quite so pointed.) Then instead of buying the colored decorating sugars, we colored our own sugar.

Here's the attempted trimming of the graham cracker...

Here's the cake portion of the light bulb completed - with the sugar cookie. Oh we also modified that part a bit... according to the book you put the cracker/cookie right on the cupcake and then mound lots of frosting to make the bulb. Les had the idea to cut the tops off the cupcake to make it level to set the cookie on and then put the top of the cake on the cookie and then just frosted it that way. Awesome idea & worked quite well. :) Although at this point the cupcakes were looking more like duck heads or something!!!

Frosting the cupcakes and then rolling 'em in the colored sugar to get our colored light bulbs.

Lights all done. The "electrical cord" in the background. The pretzels were stuck into the cupcake to hold the cord in place.

The string of lights. Thankfully, Les had a board that fit all the cupcakes because my large platter wasn't big enough. And doubly thankful that it just fit in the back of the trailblazer!!

The plug in... a large gum drop and 2 pieces of eclipse gum. :)

One last thing... We brought out a fudge monkey, pinwheel cookies and a whisk for everyone at Christmas dinner. (Except Grandma J & Grandpa Ron got an individual cake mix in a mug because the store was one whisk short when we went to buy them. So we had to come up with another idea and then pick who got it instead of the whisk. Not sure how the decision was made but I think Grandma J & Grandpa Ron got the better end of the deal - because personally, even though the whisk idea is super cute, that chocolate cake in a mug recipe is super yummy! So moist & no frosting needed.)

Food for Thought

So I tried a new recipe a while ago from the Kraft food and family magizine. And had picked a second one to try also. The strange thing is, both had whole cranberry sauce as an ingredient in it and no one in this house is crazy about cranberries. But I stepped out of my box and made then anyway. :-)

The first one was called Catalina cranberry chicken. You mix a can of whole berry cranberry sauce, catalina dressing and onion soup mix together and pour it over the chicken and bake. Well, this one was ok - wasn't bad, but didn't go over super well. Needless to say there were leftovers. Well, I was making a chicken oriental salad the next day and needed some cooked chicken. I rinsed the sauce off the chicken, diced it up and used it. Good thing was you couldn't taste the cranberry or the dressing on it. Funny thing was, the top edge of the chicken was pink and it kind of looked like salmon in the salad instead of chicken. And the salad dissapeard quick! So that all ended quite well!

The second recipe was called Mom's Best Meatballs. This one was fabulous! Everyone loved it. And even the leftovers, reheated are good. (This coming from Brianna, so you know it's got to be good!) For the meatballs you take 2 lbs of ground beef and mix it with a pkg of Stove Top chicken stuffing (I crushed this up a bit so there weren't big chunks of bread in it), a cup of water, & 2 eggs. Shape into bite size balls. I used the smallest pampered chef scoop & got 67 balls. Then you bake in the oven (400 for 16 min.) Now the directions say to bring the 16 oz kraft original barbcue sauce and the can of whole berry cranberry sauce to a boil over med. heat and then add the meatballs. I put the bbq sauce and cranberry sauce in the slow cooker and let it heat up, added the meatballs, and just let it sit on low all afternoon. Like I said, fabulous! And the girls both liked it so that is a huge plus in my book!

(Sorry - no pictures of the food. Not into the habit of taking pictures of food yet... just Tiffani's baking! :-) Although, the chicken salad would have been a cool picture with the pink chicken.)

The mystery gift... (from the 12/13 post)

OK - so the mysterious gift that we went to a nursery to get... socks! Yep, socks. Ok, ok these are no ordinary socks. And I'm sure they can be found in other places besides the nursery, but that is the first place I saw them and haven't seen them elsewhere. So, what's so special about these socks? Well they are sold in a package of 3 single socks... all different. And if you know Brianna, this would totally drive her crazy. So we decided she just HAD to have a pair (or set, in this case).

So Les and I have had this crazy gift/joke between us for a month or so now and Brianna has made comments about people with mismatched socks. And even their first time out skiing this winter they were listening to a song by Big and Rich. There is a line in there that says "Some people live inside a tiny little box, They're preoccupied about mismatching their socks..." Les said when Brianna heard that she said something like "Ooohhh Noooo" & couldn't believe it was even in a song!

This is the website that we got the socks from. http://www.littlemissmatched.com/ They have lots of cool mismatched things - including snow boots & flip flops! The company all started with the person trying to solve the age-old problem of the missing sock. Fun website to look at!

And here they are... Yep, got Tiffani & I got a set, too.


Brianna seems to be taking it ok...


Tiffani looks a little worried though...


And, yes we all had our mismatched socks on when we went out to Grandma J's for the afternoon. Brianna handled it quite well I must say. :)

Pictures for Christmas Cards

It'll be virtual Christmas cards this year! I tried, I really did, was "this close" to getting them in the mail before Christmas. But, it didn't happen. Let's just say that technology can be a good thing - like being able to e-mail a few pictures to almost everybody I would send a card too - but it can also be a bad thing - like when that wonderful technology that allows you to print pictures/cards in a day is not working & the store is waiting on tech support! So here's to that wonderful technology, in a good way again, in the form of a blog - You can see (almost) all the pictures that were taken! We enjoyed a yummy breakfast at the Library Coffeehouse and then took pictures. Hopefully there's no breakfast burrito or quiche in the teeth! ;)

Tiffani's "school" picture for this year.

Brianna is holding a frog that is holding its mouth closed...

Brianna being, well, Brianna, in the background while Tiffani is trying to keep her eyes open - she kept blinking.

Just having fun. :)

The one that would've gone on an actual printed card!

More fun




"Take 2"

"Take 3"

"Take 5" Can we be done now!?

Had to sneak in a snowman picture here... just loved this snowman display on top of the book shelf.

Birthday and Tiffani's creations

I didn't get a real good picture of Les on his birthday, but can share his present with you. I saw on someone else's website/blog this "Geek Clock" and knew I had to get one for Les. Not only would he love it, but he'd been looking for a clock for his desk at work. He loved it! And it has become quite the conversation piece at work.

Here he is checking the "cheat sheet" that came with it - making sure it all adds up correctly! ;-)

And then we went to 5 Guys Burgers & Fries for his birthday. Super good burger place and you get to watch 'em make the burgers. Especially from where we got to sit. Good eatin'.

More of Tiffani's creations from her Floral Design class at school.

I love the wreath she made! We need to get another over the door wreath hook so we can hang it up on the door instead of on the door knob!

This is a wrist corsage that I put on a water bottle to take a picture of it... It was also taken several days after she brought it home so it had wilted a little. She put it in the fridge in the garage and we kind of forgot about it - not sure what to do with it!

Odd (?) Flowers

The other day Les and I went to a nursery that carries alot more than plants & such. This nursery also has a gift shop in it. We'd seen something there (can't reveal what just yet...) and had decided to go back & get it for Brianna for Christmas. The whole inside of the nursery is turned in a "Winter Wonderland" kind of place. We wondered around, eyes popping out at prices of stuff, and ended up in the back where they had Christmas plants (a beautiful Christmas Cactus - wish I would've taken a picture of it!, and of course Poinsettia's). We were suddenly distracted by a blue poinsettia! Very strange looking. The color is pretty, especially the purple one, but it just didn't look right on a poinsettia.

And then... there was the tie-dye multi colored one!!


And in a few weeks, I'll let you know what gift we went there to get, but ended up coming home and ordering on line from the company itself because we got more choices that way! Stay tuned...

Forgotten Pics...

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving the girls went into Boise for youth group. The youth group then went to the Boise Rescue Mission and help sort and organize tons of food. I got some pictures from facebook that had the girls in it.

Thanksgiving

Tiffani decided she wanted to make her next cupcake creation as a surprise for our Thanksgiving Dinner at Grandma J & Grandpa Ron's. The plan was to have Brianna & Tiffani go out early and help make dinner, but we made dessert at home the night before. Tiffani picked the "Corn on the Cob" cupcakes because Grandma J has this thing about adding corn to stuff. In planning the menu we also mentioned that we'd like beans or corn for a vege and Grandma J told Brianna that since she preferred corn on the cob it would be probably be beans instead. But that "sealed the deal" on Tiffani making her cupcakes for this dinner! Let me tell you, finding yellow jelly beans is not easy! WinCo had jelly beans in bulk & some single colors but not yellow. Tiffani & I ended up at the mall at a candy store to buy several colors of yellow jelly beans. Bought WAY more then we needed (wish I would've known that, because they were expensive! but oh so worth it). And of course the candy store is right next to the pretzel place so we had to get a pretzel, too. :-) We ended up getting 4 shades/flavors of jelly beans - popcorn (white spotted ones), then there was lemon, pineapple, & pina colada. The salt & pepper is sugar & crushed chocolate sprinkles. The butter is a yellow starburst. And of course, corn cob holders to complete the look.

We did have pumpkin pie, too. And most of us ate both....!

Tiffani also made the cupcake batter from scratch. It was really thick & good.

"Another picture? Really!?" Putting on the corn kernels.

The completed cobs. Only made 5. That was time consuming putting on the jelly beans, I mean kernels. ;)

Grandma J loved them. While setting the table for dinner, Tiffani found a corn cob plate, so we had to present one to Grandma J on it.

Tiffani also made the table pretty by folding flower napkins for us all. Thank goodness there was only 6 of us!

After dinner she made a tiny one out of paper.