Christmas Cookies

When I was a kid, we always spent the afternoon of Christmas eve making Christmas cookies and decorating them for Santa to eat that night.  It's one of my favorite memories and I wanted to recreate it for my daughter.  She's a little young to really get into the cooking, but I figured she'd have fun decorating some cookies.  

Several of my friends had complained about their cookies not holding their shape very well in the oven, so I when I came across these chocolate cookies on Pinterest that said that they held their shape very well, I decided to try them out.  I also tried the regular sugar cookies from the same website.  

The cookies took ALL DAY.  Instead of doing one whole batch of each, I just did half of a batch, but it took such a long time because you have to make the dough, then refrigerate.  Then roll the dough, then refrigerate.  Then cut the dough and then freeze.  And, unfortunately I could only only clear out shelf out of my freezer and fridge so I could really only do 1 tray at a time which really slowed things down.  Besides the time that the project consumed, the cookies turned out great.  The chocolate ones are really rich and tasty and the sugar cookies were very yummy, although they reminded me more of a light shortbread than the sugar cookies I've had before.

My daughter didn't quite get the concept of leaving them for Santa so at the point this picture was taken, she'd already eaten 2 of the 3 that she had decorated herself.  Santa enjoyed the rest, and left her plenty of presents, so I guess he didn't mind that she'd eaten some of his cookies. 

Toddler Christmas Tree

Since my daughter is old enough to be told not to play with our Christmas tree, we decided to forgo the baby gate surrounding it this year.  It's prettier without it.

But, I did want to give her a Christmas tree that she could play with, so I cut one out of some felt that I bought at Joann.  Probably about a yard or a yard and a half.  I hung the tree on the wall with some of those little 3M stickers that you can pull cleanly off the wall.  Then I cut some ornaments out for her and a star for the top of the tree.   Since felt sticks to felt it's a super easy project.  We were super busy so I didn't get very creative with the ornaments.  Perhaps next year I'll spice it up a little bit.  She loved to play with it, especially the star, and we never had a problem with her touching our tree. 

Christmas Popcorn

I was at a Christmas party the other day where someone brought a bag of popcorn that had some drizzled chocolate and peppermint on it.  It was sooooo addictive so I thought I would try my own version of it at home.  It was a comedy of errors, but turned out so tasty that I ate so much I feel a wee bit ill.  

First I popped some popcorn.  I put 1/4 cup of popcorn kernals into a paper lunch bag and microwave about a minute and a half.  I did it a second time, just to give myself a nice big batch.

Next, I covered a pan with parchment paper and spread the popcorn out pulling out any unpopped kernals and burned pieces.  Yes, I do have a lot of both.  I blame my microwave.  More on that later...

Next was the melting of the chocolate.  I melted about a cup of chocolate chips with 1 Tbsp of crisco and 2 Tbsp of butter (you know, so it's a really lowfat snack).  I have always found that mixing it with crisco made the chocolate easier to drizzle, however, I only had 1 Tbsp in my unopened package and didn't want to open a new one.  

Here's the bad part.  I went to do it in the microwave but about 10 seconds in it started making this terrible noise and there were flames inside the microwave.  Lovely.  So bye bye microwave.  Perhaps my next one will pop popcorn better.  

Then, I attempted to make a double boiler since I don't have one.  But, somehow my chocolate got too hot and got all clumpy so I had to start over and just melted some in a little saucepan over VERY low heat with some butter and it worked just fine.  I would definitely suggest checking out the about.com article on melting chocolate if you don't do it very often. 

I Drizzled the chocolate over my pan of popcorn, then sprinkled with the tiny red and green crunchy balls to make it a little Christmasy.  Then of course I remembered that my husband doesn't really like those, so perhaps that means I won't have to share ;)

To finish it off I sprinkled on some salt because I LOVE salty things with chocolate.  I pretty much live for the dark chocolate covered pretzels from the Wythe candy store in Williamsburg, VA and the dark chocolate covered almonds with turbinado sugar and sea salt from Trader Joe's.  I have to say that this popcorn turned out almost as tasty.  I didn't bother with trying to do any peppermint, but maybe next time I'll give that a try. 

Masquerade

Some friends of ours are having a formal "Phantom of the Opera" masquerade holiday party this weekend.  I'm typically not a fan of most masks because they're very ornate and I'm usually more of a fan of simple things, so I figured I'd give making a mask a try.  

The first thing I had to do was to find a dress.  I'm a terrible shopper.  I usually get frustrated really quickly (especially when it comes to dresses) and leave before I've found something.  I went to a dress shop that was entirely too young for me.  Almost all of the dresses were too short with long chiffon type pieces hanging from the back.   I did kind of like one dress, but they didn't have one my size and the sales girl kept trying to convince me that I fit into the size smaller even though I couldn't get it zipped up.  So I took myself to Macy's in my last 30 minutes before naptime and found a gorgeous Betsy & Adam black lace dress in my size, and it was 20% off.  Sweet.  It's pretty much this dress, but it has straps on both shoulders.

Next was my trip to Joann.  Really not my favorite place to go around Christmas time - they seem to be swarmed with people trying to get good deals on Christmas stuff that is poorly organized because it's constantly being rifled through.  At least the mask stuff was way in the back away from the crowds.  

I was disappointed in their mask selection, but just as I was about to give up, I spotted a nice blank one in the shape I wanted, thrown in the feather bin.  

Here's the list of the supplies that I used:
Mask
Paint
1/2 yard of black lace
spray adhesive
feathers
black ribbon flower thing 
A spool of black ribbon
paint brush
glue gun & glue

First I painted the mask - I needed 3 coats to cover it nicely, letting it dry for at least an hour between coats. 

Then I took the spray adhesive outside and sprayed the black lace and covered the mask.  I let it sit in the garage for several hours to let it set.

 

I started with the eyes, cutting one slit across and a tiny slit up and then used my glue gun to secure the lace on the underside of the mask.  

I did pretty much the same thing around the outside edges, using my glue gun to put glue around the edges of the back, then folding the lace over and securing it, cutting small slits if I needed to.  I was a little intimidated by the cross at the top, but it worked just fine. 

Then I cut 2 pieces of ribbon that would be long enough to reach around the back of my head and tie in a bow.  I used my glue gun to secure them to the inside of the mask.  



Then to dress it up, I added a bunch of feathers on one side with my glue gun.

And finished it off with my black flower to cover up all of the messy gluey feather ends.  

It was actually quite an easy project and fit perfectly with my busy schedule - a coat of paint here, a coat of paint there, spray adhesive then a trip to the park with the little girl, and finish during a naptime.  Nothing too time intensive, you just need to start it early enough that you can fit the drying times in.  Probably not something I would have ever thought of making if I didn't have this party, but it was definitely a fun project. 

ICE Necklace

We did a bunch of traveling this fall.  Since we were going to be hanging out in airports, I decided to make my 1 year old an ICE necklace.  In case you don't know what ICE is - it stands for In Case of Emergency and it has my cell number on it just in case she somehow escapes and gets lost.  Not that I expected her to attempt a prison break, but you just never know what a toddler will do.

I went to JoAnn and found a great little bead kit with lots of letters and numbers, but I wasn't really a fan of the colored beads in the kit so I picked some turquoise beads that were about the same size as the letter beads.

I first tried to use the elastic string that came with the kit and made her a bracelet.  First - her wrist was so tiny that I could barely fit my phone number.  Second - she wore it for about 2 minutes before she broke it and the beads went flying everywhere.  Fail.

Soooo, I went back to my high school bead jewelry days and broke out my fishing line, twist clasps, and lighter which I had packed away in one of my arts and crafts bins.   

I strung the beads that I wanted on to the fishing wire and tied several knots on each end onto the twisty clasp.  Then I used my lighter for like half a second to melt the knots so that they couldn't untie.  You do have to be careful not to heat it for too long or it will make it weak and break easily. 

The necklace was big enough to actually put ICE call and my phone number.  Much better.  I figured that if she was lost, someone might actually look at her necklace thinking her name would be on it and find my phone number instead.  Luckily it wasn't needed, but it did give me some peace of mind when we left her with relatives and stuff.  And it was quite cute :)

It's Been a While - Have a Muffin :)

It's been a busy fall and we've been spending most of our free time at playgroups and My Gym and with family.  I can't believe that December is just a few days away - I'm super behind on Holiday presents!  

I'll be making a little tree for little girl to play with (so hopefully she'll leave ours alone), and I'm also going to a formal masquerade party in a couple of weeks so I'd like to try to make my own mask, although I do have a backup in case I can't put one together quickly.  At least I found a great dress yesterday!  I was also planning on knitting a few caps, so hopefully I'll have some time for that as well.  Oh, and my husband as worn a few more holes in some socks.  It's going to be a busy December.  

Anyhoo, since we've been busy, I've been looking for super easy recipes on Pinterest.   I found this super easy muffin recipe.  It was so easy and tasty that I'll definitely be doing it again during this busy holiday season. 
Grab a can of pumpkin and a box of spice cake mix.  Mix together and add a splash of milk.  Scoop into a greased 12-muffin pan and bake.  I followed the temp and did a little less time than the box said.  Super easy, and pretty tasty.  No oil or eggs, so at least a little healthier too.   You don't really taste the pumpkin either.  (Not that that would have been a bad thing).  Try it out with other flavors of cake too :)

Jersey Knit Bracelets

I came across a link to this site on Pinterest and thought the bracelets were soooo cute and they have a great tutorial, so I decided to give it a try.  

I had a bright pink T-shirt that I had put in my arts and crafts bin so I cut a piece that was about 1 inch by 4 ft around the bottom.  (Actually, I cut 3 because that's what the directions said to do.) 

I couldn't really understand what their directions were telling me to do when they started talking about cutting the holes and tying the knot, so I experimented and I think I figured out what they were talking about.  The goal is to connect two of the pieces of fabric together, so you cut the 2 holes (one in one piece of string, and one in another), line them up, and then put the end of one through the others so that they are attached to each other.  Pretty much what they say to do, but not understanding what the end goal was, I got a bit confused.  Mine didn't form a knot, so I'm still not positive that I did what they wanted...

 

I attempted to do a 3 finger one and it was WAY to thick so I immediately took it out and did a 2 finger bracelet.  After completing that, I decided that it was still too thick on my wrist, so I attempted to figure out a single finger bracelet.  It worked really well, and isn't too thick for me.  And bonus - I only need one 4 foot strip to make one that fits around my wrist, so no need to connect them together.   

Here's how I did the 1 finger bracelet:

I wrapped the piece of T-shirt around my index finger 3 times (the bottom one was just to hold with my thumb for the first couple of stitches).  

Then I took the middle one and looped it over my finger.

Then I wrapped the loose end around my finger again, and repeated looping the middle loop over my finger.

Once I had done this a few times, I could let go of that bottom stitch with my thumb so there were only 2 loops on my finger.  I repeated the process taking the bottom loop over the top loop and my finger, then wrapping the loose end around my finger until the bracelet was big enough to go around my wrist.

Then I took the bracelet off of my index finger, and put the end of the other side of the bracelet through and pulled it tight.

To finish it, tie a knot with the two ends together and cut the extra length off.  

The whole bracelet takes about 5 minutes to make once you have the fabric cut.  It's super easy to do and makes great (and cheap) little presents for friends or little girls.