Twinkle toes...

Oooooooooooh - it worked (somewhat). Thanks to a Jenn (B)'s helpful hints I got somewhat of a twinkle going! Do you see it???! Not bad for my first attempt :D

How fun!

Ten Thousand Villages...

Lucky me - we have gotten some beautiful Christmas ornaments from Derek's co-workers - whom I would consider fabulous people! Ten Thousand Villages is such a wonderful place - I had no idea that there were three stores in the city.

Candice bought us this angel - it was hand crafted in the Philippines.

And Danielle and Bryan bought us three metal ornaments that were handmade in India.

Aren't they all gorgeous??

Nightmare "snowman poop"...

So this past weekend was my Christmas Baking Weekend. I had boughten all the ingredients weeks prior with many good intentions of a fun filled baking weekend. Unfortunately, things do NOT go my way.

Nightmare #1 - Snowman Poop

There is no recipe out there for this monstrosity of a creation (that's right, my own created recipe). We have "fondly" called these things Snowman Poop.

This is how the nightmare went down:

1. The recipe that I started to follow just wasn't feeling "right" so I decided to just wing it and add all my own yummies. Bad choice on my part. I added double the cream cheese (and didn't let it get to room temp) and went in with my electric beaters. Beaters did not like that at all :(

2. Due to the beaters being stubborn, I had chocolate crap all over the kitchen. Not only was it chocolaty, but GOOEY! I have never seen anything so gooey.

3. I literally throw the goo onto a baking sheet and toss it in the oven. Surprisingly I did not burn anything this time (see below).

4. Tasty cookies? Yeah, not bad at all. They look like hell so I decide to sprinkle some icing sugar to pretty them up. Too bad I left the cookies out overnight in the cookie tin because the sugar melted into the cookie - looked terrible. Nothing a little more sugar can't fix.

With all that said, I give you my Snowman Poop!



Nightmare #2 - Mint Thins

So this recipe is pretty simple. Melt some chocolate in the microwave, dip crackers into it, and sprinkle with crushed candy cane. Nothing could go wrong, right???

1. How many times can one burn mint chocolate chips in the microwave? Twice. There goes that bag of chocolate chips.

2. Let's see if I can find some regular chocolate chips in my cupboard, awwh yes, 3/4 bag of left overs. How about I just do half of it, just to see how it goes. Excellent!!! Chocolate chips come out perfectly melted.

3. Dip crackers into melted chocolate - ok, that does about 15 crackers. Awwh - don't they look pretty! Let's put the rest of the chocolate chips into the microwave!!!! Whoops, burnt those too :(

4. So for about 1 1/2 hours work - I have 15 bloody Mint Thins to show for it.

May I present my Mint Thins - I have no idea how they taste - I thought it would look pretty sad to present 3 on a plate for Christmas.



Mini Butter Tarts

Yeah! Finally, no incidents!! I seriously would have thrown the whole thing out the window at this point if anything else had gone wrong.

And here are my Mini Butter Tarts - without raisons - yum!


So this was my Saturday, wait until I tell you about Sunday's Baking Day - I had more nightmares, tears, and said I was never going to bake for stupid Christmas again!!! Now those are Christmas memories LOL!! More to come...

Our house...

Just a photo of all the Christmas goodness. Overkill? Perhaps, but I am OK with that :)