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!

Tuesday Tutorial: Snowflakes!

 

A few weeks ago my kids were wanting it to snow.  It of course did not here yet, but I did find a good pinterest craft!  We made some borax snowflakes!  The process is simple, mix some borax with hot water, dip in your flake and let it soak for a day or two.  Ours turned out pretty good, but I never got a good picture!  Oops!  So here it is for you step by step!

First step is to make a snowflake shape, we did ours with pipe cleaners cut in half.

Then you suspend it in a bowl, we did ours by hanging it with string from a pencil, it worked quite nice!

  

Finally add the borax mix.  We tinted ours blue, can’t say it worked all that well to add the color, but the kids liked it!

 

Check out the complete instructions here: 

Martha's snowflakes

Tuesday Tutorial: Christmas Cookies!!

In our family, baking and decorating Christmas Cookies is an annual tradition, one that I look forward to every year!  I thought I would share some of the tips that we have found useful over the last several years. 

So tip # 1:  If possible, Do all of this at GRANDMA'S house.  This will eliminate messy clean up for mom later on (ha-ha).

tip # 2: To save time, we bake our cookies the night before, or earlier in the morning, that way the day we plan to meet and decorate, we are able to just decorate all the cookies.  This is a family affair: we try to get to gether with as many sassysisters and sassysister-in-laws as possible, as well as our mom and grandma.  Dads are not invited, as they make too much mess, but all the sassykids come, and if they are able to eat solid foods, they help!

 Here we have the sassy family busy at work.  So some tips from this picture: Have the grown-ups or older kids frost the cookies.  I like to store all my sprinkles in a cute wire basket, that way they are ready to go and easy to find whenever I need them.  We also all bring our own containers to store cookies in, so we can bring them home.  I think we usually make 4-5 batches to accomodate this!

 Grandma (our mom) found that the easiest way to contain the sprinkles is to put cookies needing to be frosted in a pan with sides, that way they don't sprinkle everywhere.  She also conserves sprinkles by using a spoon to pick up excess sprinkles and put on cookies.  These cookies aren't as pretty, but the kids really like them!

As I mentioned before, everyone gets involved, even the little ones!  This is my niece, who's 1 in the picture.  She got 1 cookie and a bottle of sprinkles, which kept her busy the whole morning (we just kept putting more frosting on her cookie, as she licked it off.  Between the high chair tray and the pan on her tray,  not so messy!  However, I do advise giving the little ones an older bottle with fewer sprinkles... this one was pretty new, and she licked it, which made it so that we couldn't use the sprinkles.

Another tip, not pictured, is that every woman brings a batch of cookies to bake while we are there that day, that way we get a ton of cookies to bring home!

Enjoy the holidays and happy baking!

Tuesday Tutorial: Hat soup

My kids love to eat hat soup, and anything that is fun makes it even more delicious.  I love hat soup because to me it is very delicious, and easy to make too!  Plus, adding some left over turkey next week would make it even better, just incase you needed some ideas!

I came across the recipe for Tortellini in Brodo last year at the Tasty Kitchen website.  It’s amazing and I make it every chance I get.  As you can see, I skip the vegetables…I know, evil right?   I’m just too lazy.  Plus, its good without them. 

Give it a try with your leftover turkey next week, you won’t be disappointed!

Tortellini in Brodo

(A classic Italian soup: Tortellini in Broth)

 

Preparation Instructions

1. Into a large Dutch oven, melt the butter over medium-low heat. When melted, add the celery, onion, carrot and garlic. Cover and reduce heat to low and cook for approximately 8-10 minutes until vegetables begin to soften.

2. Add the broth, water and cheese rind and increase heat to medium-high and bring to a boil. When broth boils, add pepper and nutmeg. Stir to combine. Reduce heat to low and add the tortellini. Allow to simmer until tortellini cooks to al dente (follow package instructions for timing).

3. Once cooked, remove the cheese rind. Add the parsley. Stir to combine. Garnish with freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano!

Ingredients

• 3 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter
• 2 stalks Celery, Chopped
• 1 whole Small Onion Chopped
• 1 whole Carrot - Peeled & Chopped
• 2 cloves Garlic, Minced
• 8 cups Chicken Broth
• 4 cups Water
• 1 piece Small Parmigiano Reggiano Rind
• ½ teaspoons Pepper
• 1 pinch Ground Nutmeg
• 20 ounces, weight Cheese Filled Tortellini
• 2 Tablespoons Flat Leaf Italian Parsley - Chopped
• 2 Tablespoons Parmigiano-Reggiano, Grated

Tuesday Tutorial: Thanksgiving wreath

Sorry for the belated post!  Today I am showing you a simple craft project that you can use to display what you are thankful for!  Because you just stick the cards between twigs, this is a very versitile project... you can use it for Thanksgiving every year, (have guests/family members take turns writing what they are Thankful for, count down the days to the holiday by writing something you are thankful for each day, etc.) or you can change it out to put in memories for someone's birthday or anniversary, well wishes for the holidays, and so much more.  You could even use it to display photos!  (I wish I had though of that earlier, this would probably be an entirely different post!)


Recipe:
1 grapevine wreath
Ribbon to hang your wreath
cardstock cut to size (3.5 x 2) in this case
Marker

Simply use the marker to write down the items you are thanful for onto the cardstock cut to size, and place on wreath, sticking the cards (photos, whatever) between branches of your wreath.  Use the ribbon to hang the wreath and enjoy!  Wouldn't this be a cute way to do a photo display at a graduation or birthday party?

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