Christmas Baking...

Leading up to Christmas I had been eating healthy, so the week of Christmas I started researching all of the yummy treats I wanted to make for Christmas! I was going to make sure to enjoy the weekend, not only with our families, but with FOOD!! Here are a few of the "treats" I made.

Christmas morning we had thought about doing cinnamon rolls, since they are quick and easy, but then Andy came up with the idea to make Monkey Bread. I'd never made it, so I searched the internet and found a great recipe. It was fun, because the whole family was able to help. After openning stockings we started making it. I would cut up the biscuits and Drew and Knox were able to shake them in a plastic bag with cinnamon and sugar to coat them. It was great to have an easy recipe, that we could all work on together. I think it may be our new Christmas breakfast tradition.

I thought a fun appetizer for the day would be baked Brie. It was SOOOO good! There are many different ways to make it. I chose to make mine with raisins and nectarine preserves. You basically take the puff pastries, brush on butter, put preserves on the top of the Brie and put it face down, throw some raisins on, and close the pastry. We served it with baguettes and crackers.

Here's the Brie after eating half of it. I forgot to take a picture before we started eating! It was hard to wait!



For dessert on Christmas day I wanted to try something new. I found a recipe for chocolate ganache. It looked so pretty as a cake topping I decided to incorporate it into my dessert. I made a chocolate cake. I frosted it with chocolate, and filled the center with strawberries, homemade whipped cream, and ganache. I also coated the top with ganache and made a few chocolate covered strawberries to go on top. It was very rich, to say the least, but I enjoyed every bite. :)

Santa Claus

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree....

I LOVE decorating for Christmas! It is one of my favorite times of the year. We were married in November, so Christmas decorations were one of the first things we bought as a married couple. I remember having SOOO much fun going different places together and choosing ornaments and decorations. Every year when we pull our decorations down, it brings back such wonderful memories.

This year we were able to decorate the weekend of Thanksgiving. Since my parents were in town they watched the boys while we got down our Christmas decorations and began to assemble our tree. Yes, our tree is artificial. I never lived in a house where we had an artificial tree, and I never thought I would, but I must say I have enjoyed it! It's nice not having pine needles to sweep up and a tree to slither under to water. We will have a time where real trees will be welcomed into our home. I know the boys will love helping to pick one out.

This first picture is our advent wreath. Andy's mom gifted it to us our first Christmas. There are daily or weekly readings that you can do as a family, that help to prepare your hearts for the upcoming celebration. It tells the story of Jesus' birth. We enjoy lighting our candles as a family each Sunday night. Andy will read the scriptures and then we have a time of singing a few Christmas carols. It's a treasured time for sure.

This is a picture of Knox seeing the tree for the first time. Although the quality of the picture isn't the greatest, hopefully you can see the excitement on his face.

Drew and mommy taking a picture break!

Here are the boys figuring out how to turn the Christmas lights on and off. Both Drew and Knox are able to do this task for me when we leave the house or arrive home.

Drew decorating

We try to buy an ornament each year for the boys that best represents their interests. One day I will pack them up and send them to their own homes. (sniff, sniff) Unless they plan on living with us forever, which Drew says, and is fine with me!

Drew received a Transformer ornament. He saw a transformer book at Barnes and Noble one day and ever since has been very into them.

Knox received a dog for his ornament. He loves animals, particularly dogs, which our dog isn't thrilled with. Wherever we are if he sees a dog, he laughs and gets excited!

Here are their ornaments on the tree.

Decorating

Here is our finished tree and mantle. We used to have a lighted garland on the mantle, but it didn't work this year, and neither Andy or I have been motivated enough to figure out the problem.

We hope all of you are enjoying this Christmas season!

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood....

This year I really felt led to reach out to our neighbors at Christmas. The first reason is because I wanted to have a chance to connect with those living closest to us, and let them know we care about them. The 2nd reason was because I want to make sure our boys grow up knowing that Christmas isn't about what you get, but what you give. We've been focusing on it being a celebration of Jesus' birth through playing with nativity scenes, lighting our advent candle weekly and reading our verses that go with it, and talking about it in conversation. December has been a great month for us. I have really been able to enjoy this time. In the past I've felt pretty flustered, but I decided that I didn't want to miss out on the fun of this season due to craziness, so I'm just making it a point of having family time a priorioty this year.

Since Andy was going to be going to the SEC game this past weekend, I thought this would be a fun time to put my plan into action. I wanted to bake goodies for our neighbors, so last week I began searching for some new recipes. I went to my favorite recipe web-site http://www.allrecipes.com/ and found some great recipes to try. Everything I made for my neighbors was a first time for me. Some were successful right away and some I got a chance to make a 2nd time. Here's pictures of our adventure, and I'll give some more details with the visuals!

Here are the boys in their aprons helping to decorate our cookies on Saturday morning. I used a new sugar recipe this year and the cookies turned out nice and soft, as long as I didn't roll the dough too thin. Also, I used a new icing recipe. It was powdered sugar and milk (like usual) and then it had you add corn syrup. It helped it to harden up like more professional cookies. It was very yummy, too!

This turned out to be one of my favorite recipes. It's called Tiger Butter, and it consists of 3 ingredients, semi-sweet chocolate, white chocolate, and crunchy peanut butter. It was one of the easiest items to make, and when I sent Andy to work with all the treats this week, it was one of the biggest hits.

Here's a close-up of one of the plates covered and ready for delivery.

Here's a picture of all of the treats. I'm not sure why it's sideways, but just turn your head to the right a little for a better look. On the plate was

caramel corn

sugar cookies

peanut brittle

(which I burned on my first attempt and got to redo, and I'm still cleaning that pot)

Tiger Butter

Oreo Truffles

(another favorite at Andy's office)

I thought that the best way to make the deliveries would be to load up the boys' truck and head out. We all had so much fun. Even though we could only carry a few at a time, it just added to the adventure when we had to head back to the house for a refill.

Plates ready for a ride.

Here we are at a friend's Mr. Brent and Ms. Catherine. As soon as we pulled into their driveway they rushed out to greet us and invited us in. We got to see all of their Christmas decorations (since they were in the midst of getting them all out). This year they are doing an animal themed tree with some really cool ornaments they ordered. The boys loved seeing it all. Drew enjoyed orange juice while we visited and Knox got a set of beads with Santa on them, to take home as his own. Here they are added to his other beads he decided to wear that day.

One of our newer neighbors is a couple where the wife is from Romania and the husband is from Germany. They were so happy to meet us, and the wife rushed back inside to grab some cookies to share with us. These cookies are a European recipe, and they are delicious.

Here are the boys getting ready to deliver to our neighbors at the end of the street. Drew's job was to carry the plate, knock on the door (or ring the doorbell), and say Merry Christmas! He did great.

Here we are on our way home. As you can see it was almost dark out. It took us just under 2 hours to deliver 11 plates, and we enjoyed every minute of it. It was great getting to visit with some of our neighbors, and it made Andy being out of town not feel as lonely. Our 12th plate was reserved for a mailman and we got to deliver that yesterday. It was definitely a success!

Riding off into the sunset....