Tuesday Tutorial: Dinner Rolls

I have found the recipe for the best dinner rolls ever, and if like me you still have 3 Christmas parties to go to yet on New Year’s weekend, you’re in luck!  These dinner rolls will make you the hero of your party!

Start out by mixing all your ingredients in a bowl, and let it raise until it gets nice and big, like that…

Next, roll them out, and I have found it works best to allow your 2 year old daughter to help, it’s more fun and entertaining that way!

See how neat and clean she makes it?  (yeah, it took daddy 2 tries in the wash machine to get those pants clean!)  Granted, that amount of flour is probably waaay too much for these rolls!

Then, smear on the butter, again allowing the 2 year old to help!

Those silicone brushes are the best…just like an art project! 

Cut out the rolls, roll them up and bake them, and despite the 2 year old help, they turn out beautiful!

Don’t forget to brush a little more butter on top when you’re done, because that is what really makes these rolls, the excessive amounts of butter we use.  Without it, why would we make New Year’s resolutions? :)

oh yeah, that one there, that’s the one my 2 year old made, it was great too!

Here’s the link to the Diner rolls.  That girl at How Does She is amazing!  Subscribe to her blog while you’re there!

And, Happy New Years, and thanks for a great year from the Sassy Sisters!

The YUMMIEST cookies I ever made...

These cookies are not the prettiest, I will admit.  But they are soooooooo good. Especially if you like German Chocolate Cake, and have an entire house of people who don't.  The best part about them is that they are QUICK and EASY (my two favorite words!

I found the recipe in 2010 Better Homes and Garden's Ultimate Cookeis and Bars magazine.
1 box German Chocolate cake mix
1/2 C butter (melted)
1/4 C milk
1 egg (lightly beaten)
3/4 cup rice crispies
1 /4 c flaked coconut
1 containter of German chocolate frosting (the kind with the pecans and coconuts)

Preheat oven to 350, combine mix, butter, milk and egg,beat on low unitl well mixed, then add the crispies and coconut.  Spoon onto an ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake for 10-12 minutes and then let stand for 1 minute on cookie sheet before transferring to wire rack/wax paper to cool completely.  Frost and enjoy!  If you are into presentation, you can garnish with toasted coconut or pecans.  You might also want to flatten cookies a bit before baking, it looks prettier that way!

The best part (for me) is that they are easy to freeze (BHG and recommends freezing unfrosted, by the way), and I can enjoy my favorite flavors whenever I want without having to eat an entire cake!

Tuesday Tutorial: Cookie Exchange

 

Last weekend I hosted a cookie exchange at my house.  It was quite fun, but requires a little planning.  First of all, I researched it on different blogs.  There are a lot of ways you can do it, but I selected the most basic.  Each guest was asked to bring 4 dozen homemade Christmas cookies.  Given that it was Christmas for a theme, chocolate chip cookies just didn’t cut it!  Then for the tough part.  We all had to find a sitter and leave the kids at home so there was plenty of time for girl talk!  My kids went out hunting with their dad…gave them all plenty of bonding time!  Plus, he could take them out for dinner at that happy meal place which they loved.  I also asked them to bring recipes so that we could all make the cookies again if we loved them.  I thought the girls who came did a great job with their holiday cookies and my family has definitely been enjoying all the food!

I had hot cocoa ready for everyone.  Sadly enough, it was not my favorite recipe.  Next time I’m going to try making Red Velvet Hot cocoa.  Doesn’t it look much prettier?

Here are the cookies I made with their link to the appropriate blog.  By the way, I LOVE blog hopping and trying new recipes!  Thanks to pinterest, I can cut back a little on the 20 or so blogs delivered to my email every day!

Reindeer cookies were definitely a favorite of my family.  The hardest part was finding the tiny little chocolate covered pretzels.  Needless to say, I found them finally through keebler 100 calorie packs.  I stocked up with enough to spare!

Spiral cookies were a little work, but definitely fun.  I switched the strawberry flavoring out for a little peppermint extract to make it more festive and it turned out great!

 

Candy Cane Blossoms were definitely fun.  I even made the colored sugar like she suggested and it turned out pretty good!  I think this would even be fun with a plain kiss in the middle and different colors during other times of the year! 

Obviously if you’ve seen our pictures in the past, you know that these pictures came from their respective websites.  I’d like to thank those awesome bloggers for being much better with the camera than I am.  Hopefully though someday I’ll get better.  Until then, hope you got some great cookie ideas, and maybe next year you’ll invite me to your cookie exchange, or just come to mine! :)

glittery ornaments

I recently saw an awesome video for making Christmas Ornaments.  I thought I would try my hand at them this week... while Sarah (the crafter on the video) made it look so easy, it wasn't quite so simple.  I found I had to do some tweeking, which I will share with you today!  See the original video here  and while your there, look around... she has some cute stuff!

Supplies:

Glass ornament- mine is round but somewhat flat, I found them with Christmas Decor at both Hobby Lobby and Michaels

Spray glue

photo

clear adhesive (I recommend xyron sticker maker)

glitter

 Print your photo to a size that will fit in your ornament.  This one is about 2x2.  I STRONGLY recommend using plain paper to print, as opposed to cardstock or photo paper.  The reason for this is because when I tried the other types of paper, they were too firm, and did not roll up nicely to fit inside the ornament. 

The next step is to put some adhesive on the FRONT of the paper... again, I recommend the sticker creater.  THen very lightly roll the paper into a tube so it fits inside the ornament... you DO NOT want to roll this too tightly, as the point is to UNROLL it inside the ornament.  You're going to want to use some long objects, such as a knitting needle, pencil, etc.  I noticed that it worked really well to put the adhesive all over the object (in the video she just says corners, but I noticed that when I put the glitter in, the glitter would get in front of the picture.  I also found it worked best to smooth out the air bubbles, and a pencil eraser works well for this!  Make sure you try to get the picture as centered as possible before you start sticking it down!

OK, next, you want to GENTLY spray in some adhesive... I recommend a repositional/non-permanent adhesive, as this kind didn't seem so "wet"... the permanent adhesive would leave drips and puddles when I sprayed it in.    Just do a few gentle bursts throughout the ornament.  

Next:



notice you can see the film from the spray adhesive on the glass!  (the picture is not centered, I ended up doing this one over)

 Make a paper funnel and stick it inside your ornament.  Then you can use this to put your gitter in neatly... It doesn't take much for glitter... I used 2 kinds, white (to look like snow) and gold.  After you add your glitter cover that hole with your finger and give it a good shake... this distributes the glitter evenly!  You can empty out the excess... if you want to save the extra glitter probably do one color at a time...

Finally, put the cap back in the ornament, and decorate with a pretty ribbon.  You have a lovely ornament for your tree or a gift!!  Hopefully these tips help you avoid several attempts at trial and error (like mine), and leave you with a Merry Christmas!  Again, thanks to Sarah for her cute idea!!

A Report card from Santa!

This past week I was at the store with my ornery kids.  I ran into a friend who told me that when her son was little, she would give him a report card from Santa to make him behave better for that month.  I thought it sounded like a great idea, but couldn’t find anything on pinterest! (I know, sad day, right!)  So, here is what I came up with this morning and I am going to share it with you.  Print as many as you like, change it to fit your kids better, and enjoy!  And if someone can figure out how to pin it on pinterest, please do that too so we can all have a report card for our kids!