The countdown begins!

The final week before Christmas. This is when the *real* countdown begins! Christmas is in less than 5 days! Are you ready??!

I have a short list of things I need to finish this weekend. Finish up Christmas treats to be given away/mailed on Monday. Finish the last of the Christmas gifts. Double check my gift list, make sure nothing has been left off. Make gingerbread house & train. Get caught up on my December Daily album. Enjoy the holidays!

Yesterday we went to see the big man in red.


Surprisingly, my daughter (who is nearly 7) was a bit shy and didn't want to go up to Santa right away. My son on the other hand (who is nearly 5) said "I'm not scared!" and walked right up. He was sure to ask Santa for Indiana Jones stuff. Olivia asked for the Littlest Pet Shop Diary, "the dog one".

Then last night we went to see the Anheiser Busch Clydesdales. Boy are they beautiful horses.

Tonight we're going to check out a local house that has a huge lights display. I can't wait. I've been wanting to take the kids ever since we moved here. Each year we manage to miss it, but not this year!

Oh, and I made some yummy treats today

They're called Blizzard Bites. My friend Tami made some. You can check out the recipe here. I'm planning on giving this to friends and neighbors. Just need to figure out how I'm going to package them up. I like what Tami did with the bags but that takes pre-planning and, since it's Dec 20th, the pre-planning is out the window!

Updated ~ I ended up putting the Blizzard Bites in the same gift boxes that I used in this post. They worked out great since they have a clear window in the front. This is definitely the kind of treat that you want your gift recipients to see!

Oh, and my photos show a half batch of the blizzard bites. Be warned ~ the recipe makes a LOT!

more gifts...

Tomorrow is the last day of school. Yippee!! Both have Polar Express day which means p.j.'s. But my son's been sick since Monday night so I'm not sure if he's going yet. I'm thinking probably not.

I've finished up the last of the teacher gifts and the out-of-town grandparents gifts. Still a few things left to do but the bulk of it is done. I'm hoping to get caught up on my December Daily album as I'm a week behind on that! But, the great thing about that project is that if you get behind it doesn't really matter. Just catch up when you can!

Here's a few more gifts I worked on this week.

This is what I made for the grandparents. It's a "year in review" photo collage. I bought several 8x8 acrylic page frames last year and had planned on making a project with them and it just didn't happen. So I decided to pull them out this year.

Now, if I had Photoshop I could have easily pulled this together. But since I don't (hello, my computer is 7 years old!) I printed a bunch of 2x2 photos and cut them all out. Added some patterned paper, ribbon and number stickers and Voila! I kept it very simple so that it would fit nicely in the frame. If it were going in a shadow box type frame I would've had more wiggle room to add extras.

Here's what my daughter's teachers are getting

The hot chocolate was a pack of 3 I bought at Target for $8. I originally had planned on decorating the outside to match the card holder. But the more I looked at it the more I didn't want to cover up the cute snowmen! So I ended up just adding some ribbon and a snowflake. The card holder has 4 personalized notecards with envelopes.

Some of the other teachers (art, music, etc), school nurse & principal are getting these

Aren't these little boxes so cute?!! I found them at Hobby Lobby, 8 for $3. They're very small so they don't hold a lot. But I still managed to fit 1/2 dozen cookies in each one...wrapped in green saran wrap of course! All you need is a little ribbon to finish it off!

I'm planning on making some Oreo truffles to put inside for additional gifts.

And lastly, I made this Disney album for my friend Kris

She wanted this to give as a gift to a co-worker who's leaving for Disneyworld on Friday (lucky duck!)

Here's a few more pics of the inside

I have a few more projects I'm working on this week. Then next week we can sit back and eat lots and lots of Christmas cookies!

cookie swap

One of my favorite things to do this time of year is a cookie swap. You can never have enough cookies, right?! There were just a few of us which was just fine with me. We had fun even though Carol had to leave :( Tell your husband he's on the naughty list, now. He'd better get you something extra special for Christmas!

I made 2 cookies ~ Crispy Cake Cookes & Chocolate Marshmallow Meltaways. I always love to share recipes, so here they are:

Crispy Cake Cookies

1-18.25 ounce package Betty Crocker cherry chip cake mix

1 cup Rice Krispies

1/2 cup butter, melted

1 egg

1 cup powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350⁰F. In a large bowl, combine the cake mix and Rice Krispies. Stir in the egg and melted butter until everything comes together. Roll into firm 1 inch balls, then roll in powdered sugar. Place them 2” apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Cool for 1 minute on the baking sheet before removing to cool completely on wire racks.

Chocolate marshmallow meltaways

1/2 cup butter-flavored shortening Frosting:

3/4 cup sugar 3 tablespoons butter, softened

1 egg 3 cups confectioners’ sugar

1/4 cup milk 3 tablespoons baking cocoa

1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/8 teaspoon salt

1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour 4-6 tablespoons milk

1/2 baking cocoa

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

18 large marshmallows, halved

In a large bowl, cream shortening and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, milk and vanilla. Combine the four, cocoa, salt and baking soda; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well.

Drop by tablespoonfuls 2 inches apart onto ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 350⁰ for 8 minutes. Press a marshmallow half, cut side down, onto each cookie; bake 2 minutes longer. Remove to wire racks to cool.

In a small bowl, beat the butter, confectioners’ sugar, cocoa and salt until smooth. Add enough milk to achieve a spreading consistency. Frost cookies. Yield: 3 dozen.

I also made some other cookies today to mail out to the grandparents. I found these cute holiday green & red with white striped chocolate chips. The recipe is basically the same as the Nestle chocolate chip cookies, except you add 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips and 1 cup of the holiday chips (the recipe is on the back of the package). They were really good!

Ok, I seriously need to get to bed. I'm so gonna regret staying up til 1:30am tomorrow!

gift giving

I've been working feverishly to finish up all of our Christmas gifts for teachers, friends, family, etc. And I've been doing lots of baking the last couple days so I can mail out some treats to family. Living out of town makes the holidays a little more challenging because everything has to be mailed out...which also means Christmas gifts have to be done early if they're going to reach their recipients in time for Christmas. I had planned on being ahead of everything this holiday. But with Ben's leg and other things going on it just hasn't happened.

Like most years, I've made a lot of gifts. It saves money but more importantly I feel it makes the gift so much more personal. I like people to know that I took the time to think about them and make something for them. Most appreciate it. Some don't. But it doesn't matter. I still like the giving and that's what this season is about.

So here's a few things I've worked on. I made these candy jars from some canning jars I had stored in my cabinets. Not only do they make cute gifts but they emptied out some room in my kitchen! And, I found a *huge* bucket of the peppermint candies for $5.88 at Walmart. I'm giving these to the teachers along with a card holder.


Little chipboard pieces are perfect for these kind of things cause they make the cutest accent!

I also made some snowman soup for my daughter's class friends. I didn't have time to get super fancy with the packaging but I still think they turned out cute!

I also made gift bags for my son's preschool friends but didn't get a picture of those. I put a little 4 pack of crayons and candy cane in their bags.

If you want some more ideas my friend Tami made the most *adorable* gifts on her blog. You can check it out here. I had already bought the stuff for Reindeer food but now I'm gonna go get jars like hers!!

Bob won!!!!

Ok, if you don't watch Survivor then you have no idea what I'm talking about! I don't think I've ever thought the winner of Survivor was more deserving than Bob. It's nice to see good guys win!

Woohoo!!

Christmas parade, holiday fun & yummies

Yep, that about summed up our day yesterday!

In the morning we had the local parade. Ben was in it for the hockey team. Of course, he's not playing hockey (obviously) but we went anyway. It was SO cold but he had a lot of fun waving to everyone and wishing them Merry Christmas. Oh, and yelling "He shoots! He scores!"

Then we came home and had some holiday fun. Playing around the tree, torturing the dogs with Christmas hats, playing with the Thomas train that's around the tree...you know, the usual holiday merriment!

And check out these yummy yummy yummies!!!

I made these for my cookie swap on Tuesday. This batch was the "trial run". Since I hadn't made them before I had to make sure they were easy to make...and good! Yeah, these won't last long! I'll share the recipe after my swap on Tuesday. I also have a batch of these chilling in the fridge right now. The first batch had issues so I'm on batch #2. So we'll see how they turn out.

I'm off to finish some more holiday gifts...

Letters to Santa

Today the kids wrote their letters to Santa. We still have yet to go visit the big man with the white beard. I think we may do that next Monday or Tuesday. I don't step foot in a store let alone the mall on a weekend this close to Christmas! Anyway, they were so cute writing their letters. I think this is the first year that they both wrote letters. Amazing how much they change each year.

Ben was very serious about his letter

Olivia thought of a bunch of questions for the man in red like "Did you have a nice summer? How is your wife?" Yeah, we watch "A Charlie Brown Christmas" a lot! lol You gotta love Sally :)

This is going to be a busy weekend. Can you believe Christmas is in less than 2 weeks??!! I sure can't. I have tons of baking to do, handmade Christmas presents to make, teacher gifts, class gifts, the list goes on and on. I need to get it all done this weekend because gifts have to be mailed out and the last week of school is next week. I'm tired just thinking about it! And Ben's in a Christmas parade tomorrow. The hockey team has a float. Oh, and I have a cookie swap on Tuesday. Mmmmmm....cookies!!!

Oh, and one final thing, check out the new decoration in our yard
Isn't it cute?!! It's not that big (only 3 ft tall) and I'm sure no one can tell what it is from the street since we're like 200 ft from the road. But for $10 I couldn't resist!!

Ok, I'm off to get some sleep. Happy dreams of sugar plums everyone :)

Scrapper's Christmas poem

My friend Carol had this on her blog. I think this poem was written for me...at least my husband would think so!!

Twas the night before Christmas, I'm glued to the tree.
I'm wondering what Santa brought just for me.

Could it be cardstock or chipboard or lace?
Or a Cricut, I said, with a smile on my face.

And that's when I heard him, "Hi Santa, " I said
"You know....good little girls should be in their beds."

"I know I should Santa, and now I've been caught.
But I was just so excited to see what you brought."

"Well, let's take a look in this room where you work.
He shook his head quickly, and left with a jerk.

I heard him exclaim as he put it in gear.
"You've got enough crap, I'll see you next year!"

when it rains, it pours

Literally.

It rained all day yesterday, all night, and this morning. And it was WINDY. Like the kind of windy that makes you feel like you're gonna take flight when holding an umbrella.

I dropped the kids off at school. The power was out. My son cried cause he wanted me to stay with him. Not because of the power outage, but because he's been very clingy and emotional since he broke his leg.

Then I came home, just to grab my cell phone I forgot on the charger, and saw this:

Yep, that's a big 'ol tree branch through my window. Greeeaaat. There was broken glass everywhere. Some of my Christmas lights are broken. Told ya it was windy!

But the good news is that this tree could have chosen to knock out one of the other windows at the front of the house ~ my dining room or my scrap room. Either one would have been BAD. So, I guess if a window has to be broken, the garage one is a better choice!

I had just been thinking last week (when a huge branch fell of this same tree) that I need to get my husband to chop down some of the dead limbs. I never really worried too much about the branches that fell...cause they always fell down. Not 10-20 ft across my yard...and into my house! Actually, now that I look at the tree, the whole thing really needs to come down. Cause the top half (which is taller than my house) is practically all dead. Soooo, either he'll be chopping wood this weekend or we'll be paying someone to come chop it down for us. Poor birdies, that's the tree that holds their bird feeders!

December Daily ~ Week 1

I just finished up week one of my December Daily album. Thankfully, most of the work is done so it's just a matter of choosing and printing pictures and adding embellishments for the most part. I'm *so* glad I finished this book ahead of time!

Plus, it's been raining all day ~ perfect for catching up on some scrappin' (and making Christmas cookies but I'll save that for another post!)

I added some new Stampin' Up! striped ribbon and jingle bells. It makes me happy every time I pick up the album when the bells jingle!

So here's what I've finished so far:

I redid this page because, well, I just didn't like the first one I did. Too plain. Honestly, I think I just wasn't in a creative mood when I started. I kept looking at the page and it bugged me so I just did it over. I added a little Jenni Bowlin Christmas bingo tag and put the journaling on the backside. Still haven't figured out what I'm going to do with the left side. I think I may add our Christmas card in that spot (once I finish them that is!)

Day 2 is pretty simple. I added a cute ribbon bow to the "2" tag.


Day 3 is all about our Christmas lights outside. I cut a trading card page down to size and it fits 2 mini photos perfectly.

Day 4 I added a tag for journaling

Day 5 has another Jenni Bowlin bingo card, this time a bigger one. Photos are on the backside of the card along with an additional page for photos & journaling.



Day 6 is one of my favorites ~ Making Memories snowflake vellum. *Love* it!! I kept the page simple so I didn't hide the snowflakes in the vellum.


Added another cropped trading card page for additional photos. Photos are 2 1/2" x 3 1/2".


And that's it! I'm working on Days 8,9 & 10 so I'll have that to share soon :)