Christmas Cookies

Sunday I spent the majority of the day baking Christmas Cookies but we didn't get around to frosting them until last night.  I seriously think I could eat sugar cookies all day long...not good for my health but they are so delicious!  I tried out all new recipes this year and I have to say they all turned out pretty good.

So gingerbread cookies aren't my favorite but they are such a staple Christmas cookie that I found a recipe for them here.  Jeremy got a little creative with his gingerbread men.  Instead of my typical sugar cookie recipe I tried a new one from annie's eats and got the frosting here.  So far, I have no complaints about the new sugar cookies :)

Next I tried out some Peanut Butter Blossoms.  I've always really liked these but I've never made them myself.  They turned out really good but since then I've found a couple of other recipes that I'm going to try out next time.  I wasn't really paying attention when I grabbed the Hershey kisses and I got the air delight ones.  They are actually pretty good but it's weird when you bite into them and see all the little air pockets!

The last item on the desert menu was Peanut Butter Balls!  These were way more tedious than I thought they would be and I wish I had thought to use a toothpick to dip them in the chocolate because when I was done my hands were completely full of chocolate!  I think my favorite part about these is the melted peanut butter drizzled on top :)

Hope everyone else made some yummy Christmas Cookies to enjoy over the holidays!  Merry Christmas!!



Happy Birthday Jeremy!

Jeremy turned 27 yesterday so we celebrated all weekend!  That's how it works in my book, you get a whole birthday weekend if it falls on a weekend or a birthday week if it falls during the week :)

Friday night we went out for sushi and it was delicious!!  We hadn't been there since our anniversary so it was long overdue.  I forgot how good it was and I feel like we should go back as soon as possible!  After dinner we watched Pirates of the Caribbean 4.

Saturday morning we got off on a early start, picked up bagels from the bagel shop and headed up to the Albertville Outlet Mall to go shopping!  Our intention was to do our Christmas shopping but we're having a hard time deciding what to buy people this year.  We only got two gifts done while we were up there but we each found a few things for ourselves while we were shopping.  I love that mall and had to restrain myself from buying another Coach purse while I was up there.  If I would have been in love with one it would have been much harder to walk away!

After shopping for about five hours we started to head back home but we stopped at Mystic Lake Casino and Jeremy's parents met us there for dinner.  Now we don't gamble much and when we do, we take $20 a piece.  I lost mine pretty quick but Jeremy on the other hand won $17 within a couple of spins.  He was going to cash out and instead I insisted he kept playing.  Well I should have let him cash out because we both ended up loosing our $20 and we would have almost broke even had a let him cash out!  Oh well, it's cheap entertainment and it will probably be another year before we go again.

We were both pretty tired after the day of shopping and stuffing our faces at the buffet so we both crashed when we got home.  Sunday was Jeremy's actual birthday and we started it off by going to church and grocery shopping.  When we got home from that Jeremy propped himself in front of the TV and proceeded to watch football all day.  I, on the other hand, slaved away in the kitchen to make him this amazing cake - Devil's Food White Cake!  Now this is the first cake I've ever made from scratch.  I even had to buy cake flour.  Let's just say I didn't even know there was such a thing!  I didn't realize it called for a specific flour until I was home and just about to start baking the cake so I had to make another trip to the store.  After two stops I found it and it was back to baking the cake. 

The cake was three layers with frosting filling between the layers and around the cake.  Then, there was a fourth layer of cake that I baked which was crumbled around the whole outer portion of the cake.  It's pretty rich and goes best with some ice cream or a glass a milk, or both like I have with my piece I'm enjoying right now :)  The cake turned out pretty good for my attempt at my first cake from scratch!  I will definetly making more in the future.  I found a recipe for a German Chocolate Cake that I'm going to have to make for Eric's birthday because it's his fav!

The finished product!

The birthday boy with his cake!





Tis the Season!

We did all our Christmas decorating over the weekend and Jeremy spent a good majority of the afternoon on Saturday putting up lights and garland outside while it was snowing!  I must say, the house looks pretty nice with all the lights up :)

This is the first time we put the tree downstairs and I like it down there much better.  We spend a lot of time downstairs so it just made sense to put it down there instead.  It just barely fit, but it did!

Look how pretty Maple can sit when we hold a treat next to the camera!

Here is a sneak peak of our Christmas card I designed.  We should be getting them tomorrow so the next task will be addressing them and getting them out in the mail! 

Oh how I love my KitchenAid mixer!

So as you may have already read in my earlier Thanksgiving post, I bought a KitchenAid mixer on Black Friday.  So far, it's pretty much amazing.  It makes baking easier and more enjoyable!  I just made another batch of Frosted Candy Bar Stuffed Cookie Cups from Kevin & Amanda tonight because they were such a hit at work today.  They were the first thing I made in my mixer on Saturday and I used full size cupcake pans when I made the first batch so I had twelve that I took to work today and boy did those go quickly!  I felt bad that more people couldn't try them since they are so good so I decided to make another batch tonight instead this time I did the minis.  Now I'll be taking two pans full of them to work tomorrow!  Hope all my co-workers are hungry :)

The other cookies I made of the weekend were Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies from Annie's Eats.  I'm not a huge oatmeal fan but Jeremy requested Oatmeal Raisin cookies and we found these instead and let me tell you, they are awesome!  They have toffee bits, oatmeal, butterscotch chips and coconut in them, yum! 

This doesn't really apply to my KitchenAid but it is food related, my mom introduced me to The Crockin' Girls and they have really good crock pot recipes!  We tried their Taco Stew and it was really good.  I love crock pot meals during the winter they are so easy!  Yet another website I recommend you check out!

And lastly, this isn't food related but for all my friends out there that are mom's and haven't heard of Elf on the Shelf, I think you're kids would really enjoy it!  Jeremy and I heard about this three years ago and bought our own elf that we will use someday when we have kids of our own.  Quite a few of my friends have been talking about how their kids love their elf and look forward to finding it every morning!  The stories I've heard related to this elf are priceless! 

Here is a little background about the story if you've never heard of it:

The Elf on the Shelf: A Christmas Tradition is a children’s picture book that comes with your own very elf!  Every day from Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve, each family's elf watches over the children and then at night, once everyone goes to bed, the elf flies back to the North Pole to report back to Santa about what activities, good and bad, took place throughout the day. Before the family wakes up each morning, the elf flies back from the North Pole and hides. By hiding in a new spot each morning around the house, the elf and the family play an on going game of hide and seek. The Elf on the Shelf explains that elves get their magic by being named. In the back of each book, families have an opportunity to write their elf's name and the date that they adopted it. Once the elf is named, the elf receives its special Christmas magic which allows it to fly to and from the North Pole. However, the magic might go if touched, so the rule for The Elf on the Shelf states: "There's only one rule that you have to follow so I will come back and be here tomorrow: Please do not touch me. My magic might go, and Santa won't hear all I've seen or I know." Although families aren't supposed to touch their scout elf, they can talk to it and tell it all their Christmas wishes so it can report back to Santa accurately.

Hope your family can find some fun with The Elf on the Shelf if you aren't already :)  You can buy them pretty much anyway nowadays and I know that Target sells them for sure!

Owatonna Book Club

It amazes me how long it takes me to re-design our blog each time I get the itch to do so. I really like this one and I used a brand new kit from The Shabby Shoppe! I also got inspiration for my header from a page that someone had scrapbooked. It was so cute I just had to make my own version of it!

A group of my girlfriends and I started a book club last month and I've been pretty much hooked on reading since I finished my CPCU. Not that I didn't read before but now I have plenty of time to do leisurely reading instead of insurance reading :) Another thing that we found is this website called Good Reads. For anyone who reads, I suggest checking this website out! You can rate books you've already read, mark books you want to read and list the current books you're reading. The best part about it is you can add friends and then see what they've read, how they've rated the books and what is on there to-read list! If anyone is a reader and finds any interest in this site, please add me as I love seeing what books others have read and enjoyed!

The first book we read for our book club was The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks.  Who doesn't love a good Nicholas Sparks book?  It was a good one to start with and now for the month of December we read the Chelsea Handler book, Are you there Vodka?  We are rotating each month and having a different person host the club that month.  The bonus of being the host is that you get to pick the book for that month!  I'm hosting for the month of January and we're going to be reading The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards.

I seem to be reading on average a book every week to week and a half and right now I've been reading The Hunger Games trilogy and I'm hooked!  For anyone who hasn't read these books or hasn't heard of them, I highly recommend you check them out! In one word they are amazing! I haven't been able to put them down and they are a pretty easy read. If you're not much of a reader, check out the trailer and maybe it will make you want to read them!  The first movie comes out in March of 2012 and I'm already counting down the days.  I just hope the movies are half as good as the books!  I started the third one today and I'm sure I'll have it done in another week :)  I just can't help myself!

Our Thanksgiving

I can't believe we're almost two weeks past Thanksgiving!  I really need to improve upon my blog updating skills. 

Anyway, we had a very nice Thanksgiving.  We started it off in Eau Claire and we stayed with Jess and Tony on Wednesday night.  Tony and I spent Wednesday night strategized for our Black Friday shopping and figuring out where the best deals were!  Thursday morning Jeremy and his dad went hunting in Durand before we headed up to Jeremy's aunt and uncle's house in Birchwood.  It was so nice to see almost everyone on Jeremy's mom's side of the family.  We missed you Mike, Molly, Derek, Janye and Alvin!  The food was fabulous, I just love Thanksgiving food!

Thursday night Jeremy, Tony, Drew and myself got in line at Target at 10:30 pm!  We were on a mission to get our hands on a few things.  Tony wanted to pick up a TV for their basement and I wanted to get a KitchenAid mixer as well as a TV for our bedroom.  Those were the big wants for us!  Tony's mom and sister were basically at the beginning of the line at Shopko and called us after getting in (we weren't even in Target yet) and they were able to grab the TV I wanted for our bedroom so that worked out perfectly (thanks Kari and Paulette)!  Once in Target it didn't seem like there was that many people in there, probably since it's a huge store.  I may have been the first one over by the mixers and I grabbed the first red one I saw.  After that we spent some time checking out the other deals and we got in line with the mixer, a waffle maker, a new microwave (ours kicked the bucket a few weeks ago), some new pyrex bowls and an HDMI cable.  The line took quite a while to get out of there but we were still out by 12:45 am.

After that Tony and Drew dropped us off at Kohl's and they went to Best Buy.  Kohls was a ZOO!  It didn't take use long to grab the few things we wanted which included pillows, sheets, a Christmas present and a couple odds and ends.  The line was ridiculous.  We got in it about in the middle of the store and it wrapped all the way around the store back up to the front.  We waited in line for about fifteen minutes and after barely moving I decided the stuff we had was not worth the wait.  We put the stuff back and headed home.

Friday morning Jeremy went hunting with his dad again and Tony and I headed back out shopping.  We got to Mendards around 9am and I got an under the counter CD/Radio clock for the kitchen, some baking pans, batteries and headphones.  Nothing fancy but they had some good deals!  After that I decided to see if I could get the stuff I wanted at Kohls.  Go figure, I got everything I was holding in line during the middle of the night and more...the sheets I wanted at 1 in the morning they didn't have but they had at 10...note to self, never go to Kohls at midnight for things like sheets and pillows because they obviously have truckloads of them that they keep stocking the shelves with!

I made a couple more stops which include Farm & Fleet were I picked up a pizza pal plus that Jeremy had his eye on.  I hope it cooks our pizzas up well!  After that I headed to the mall which was also a joke.  So many people and by that time I had missed most of the deals.  I for one do not like shopping for clothes or even gifts for that matter when there are a million people around.  So I only walked away with one Christmas gift from all our Black Friday shopping.  Good thing we live so close to the Albertville Outlet Mall because we'll be heading up there this weekend to hopefully finish the majority of our shopping!

After all my shopping I met up with Tanya and Jenny for lunch at TGI Fridays and Evan was our waiter!  It was so good to catch up with my high school girlfriends and to hear how they are doing.  I think we were there for almost three hours!  I hope we can meet up again soon girls, especially since Tanya will be making her way back to the WI area, or IL :)

My weekend then continue with more travel while Jeremy stayed put in Neisville hunting.  I headed over to Merrill to spend the weekend at my cousin Alyssa and her husband Bryson's new house.  It was the first time I'd seen it and it is super cute :)  Friday night we didn't do a ton since I didn't get in until after 6 but we had pizza and surfed baking blogs to decide what we were going to bake on Saturday as she had just gotten a KitchenAid mixer for her birthday the prior week. 

Saturday morning was interesting to say the least.  I was driving Jeremy's truck because we needed the space to get everything home, especially if he got a deer.  Well, I guess it gets a little finicky when it rains and after being rained on all night it didn't want to start.  The biggest bummer to this was that I parked in the driveway and Bryson had to go to work!  After 15 minutes or so of trying to get it to start and attempting to jump it, no such luck.  For whatever reason I didn't pull all the way up in the single stall driveway and Bryson was able to back out of the garage, drive between the garage and a tree, through the yard, around the electric post and into the alleyway so he could get to work!  Alyssa and I did the same thing shortly after that when we went to the store.

My dad came into town to try to to help us with the truck but still no luck.  Dad and I pushed the truck into the garage so it could dry off and hoped that would do the trick!  Of course it wasn't an easy push into the garage because there was a slight lip at the edge of the garage...it rocked and rocked before we finally got enough momentum to push it up over the lip!  That was the most physical exertion I've done since injuring my foot/ankle!

Marsha and Dad hosted a Thanksgiving that afternoon so I headed out to my dad's house after getting the truck in the garage.  Again, the food was delicious!  I thought I did a pretty good job of not stuffing myself too much on Thursday but that was definitely not the cast on Saturday!  I couldn't get enough of the stuffing and potatoes, so good.  The rest of the afternoon we sat around and relaxed before I went back to Alyssa and Bryson's.  And for anyone that was wondering, the garage did the trick!  The truck started right up but we left it in the garage overnight just for safe measure!

Then we did some baking!  Alyssa introduced to me this amazing baking website and I've already found some great recipes on it.  We made these cookies and they were quite good.  :)  Sunday we headed out to our family's hunting shack to visit our grandparents before they headed down to AZ for the winter and then I made the drive back to Eau Claire to pick up Jeremy and his deer that he shot on Saturday! 

The one downfall of the weekend was that I did not take a single picture...how sad!  But even without pictures, we had a nice long weekend and I really wish we got more of them!