Christmas 2011: Baking

I mentioned yesterday that I had Christmas baking recipes swirling in my head.  I'm planning to make up a few trays to deliver to our new neighbors and a few other friends and since December 1 is Thursday I decided that I should do a little less swirling and a little more list making.  So here I am with a list of recipes that I want to try out this year.

Pumpkin Snickerdoodles: I made these for Thanksgiving and got compliments from my 4 and 5 year old nieces so I know they were a hit!

Soft Gingersnap Cookies: A new recipe this year.  I love gingersnaps and figured a soft gingersnap couldn't be terrible :)

Candy Cane Marshmallow Sticks: I'm thinking of setting up a hot cocoa bar when I host my family for Christmas and I think these guys would be a perfect addition to the bar.

Peppermint Bark: One of my favorite Christmas treats.  Speaking of Peppermint Bark, have you tried the Dove variety?  They are delicious!

Oreo Pops: Because they are festive and easy.

Banana Bread - Mini Loaves:  My friend Ali has a great banana bread recipe that I plan to use.  And, I'll probably add chocolate chips. 

Peanut Butter Blossoms: A Christmas staple.

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies: I made these for Valentines Day and liked them so much that I'm making them for Christmas too.  Plus, they are very cute and festive.

Lemon Shortbread Cookies: Another new recipe.  I've developed a strong love for all things lemon and I think these would be a nice Christmas cookie.

Chocolate Crinkles: Because these should appear on every plate of Christmas cookies.

Looking at this list, it would appear that I need to start baking!  The beauty of most of these cookies is that they will freeze well so I can make them ahead of time and pull them out when I'm ready to assemble the plates.

What are you baking this year?  What are some of the Christmas baking staples in your house?

Thanksgiving: The Celebration

This year we spent our low-key Thanksgiving weekend at the lake with my family.  The weather was beautiful most of the weekend and we had a great time together.  We did a lot of eating, playing games, crafting, and just hanging out.  We also made a trip to Branson to see the Miracle of Christmas show at the Sight and Sound Theatre.  It was an amazing show and gave me a whole new perspective on the Christmas story.  If you are in the area, I would highly recommend seeing this show!

Anyway, here is a glimpse into our celebration!



{family dinner table, minus my sister who was taking the picture}



{kids table}

{enjoying the weather and throwing rocks in the lake}

{she LOVES koby}

{girls craft night - t-shirt scarves}

{one of my creations}

{these two have come a long way - this has NEVER happened before}


I hope you had a very happy and relaxing Thanksgiving!  It's now full-blown Christmas in our household.  Christmas trees are up, mantles are ready to be decorated, lists are being made, cooking and baking ideas are swirling in my head, Christmas music has ensued -- I just love this time of year!!

Giving Thanks

1 Thessalonians 5:18

Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.

Psalm 105:1

Give thanks to the Lord and proclaim his greatness. Let the whole world know what he has done.

Ephesians 5:20

And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I thought these verses seemed appropriate for a day when many of us are reflecting on what we are thankful for.  We are all blessed in so many ways and these verses are a good reminder of who should be receiving the credit for our blessings. 

As for me, I'm thankful for:

• God's peace that fills my heart.  While this has been a year of a lot of "unknowns," God has provided me with peace every step of the way. 
• His grace because it has covered me more than once this year. 
• A patient husband and a husband who makes me laugh when I take things too seriously. 
• Family and friends who provide steadfast love. 
• Good health, especially on the days when getting up for work is the last thing I want to do -- afterall I get to get up and go to work.   
• Koby, the best dog ever and the one that brightens our lives every day.
• Salted Caramel Mochas - they just make the mornings that much sweeter!
• The people who fill the candy bowl on my desk :)
• A new big bath tub!
• The changing of seasons that allow for renewed spirits.

I hope everyone is enjoying time with loved ones today and taking a chance to relax and kick back for a while!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just Popping In

Last week was a crazy week with the move and a variety of other responsibilities and committments that I had.  And this week is going to be just as crazy with Thanksgiving preparations and family time so I wanted to pop in for a quick minute to capture a few thoughts before I sign off for the week.

• First, I want to thank everyone who helped us move this past weekend.  We were able to get the whole house moved and put away in the course of about 36 hours!!  It was a nice feeling to get up for work yesterday and actually be able to function somewhat normally.  So, to those of you who helped we are forever thankful for all you did!
• I am excited about what God is stirring up in people's hearts this year.  My good friend organizes the Angel Tree ministry for our church and this past weekend was the first weekend that people could pick their angles.  Our church has three services and by the end of the third service she only had about 20 angels left!!  That has never happened since she has been in charge of this ministry so she has told the organization that we could accept 25 more angels this year!  Each year our small group provides a treat bag of some sort to accompany the gifts.  We used to make 80+ dozen cookies and provide each child with a batch of homemade cookies, but in the past couple of years we wanted the treat bags to contain a little more than just treats -- we wanted to share the true meaning of Christmas with them.  So, last year we included the candy cane story, which is a simple way to share the message of Jesus.  This year we have asked the different childrens/teen ministry departments to provide us with an invitation to join them for Sunday activities at our church.  We figured it was worth a shot to invite them to a safe place where they will feel loved and can see Christ's love in action.  We are also going to include some kind of activity page for the little kids to work on and maybe some kind of object lesson for the older kids.  Hopefully these kids will feel the kind of blessings we feel by providing them with a few small things for Christmas.
• We will be spending Thanksgiving with my family this year.  I took on the meal planning task so my mom did not have to stress about it.  We are doing a pretty traditional meal this year that is easy to prepare.  We all signed up to bring a few different dishes for the main meal, along with the responsibility to make an additional meal throughout the weekend.  I am in charge of a vegetable side dish, rolls (I was planning to make homemade but just don't have the time), and a dessert.  My mom wanted to make a cherry pie so she took over my dessert duty, so I decided to make a few snacks instead.  I'm making pumpkin blondies, pumpkin snickerdoodles and seasoned pretzels (this isn't the exact recipe that I use but it is pretty close).  I haven't done much cooking or baking since our has was on the market so I'm pretty excited to break in the new kitchen tonight!
• New house "before" pictures will be coming soon!  We have a lot of big ideas for ways to make the house our own so we are going to be sure to capture the beginning stages!

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving and do take time to slow down and reflect on what you are thankful for this year and how you can bless others in the way you have been blessed!
   

Autumn in Asheville - Part 2

Our second day in Asheville was a little more adveturous than the first. We decided to take a beautiful drive to a park called Chimney Rock. We didn't really know what to expect and we certainly didn't bring clothing for hiking, etc., but we knew that we could see spectacular views so we decided to head there anyway. Did I mention the drive was beautiful?

We pulled into the park and looked up to see Chimney Rock.

This was the view from the parking lot.  Our destination was that little American flag that is barely visible.  Thankfully, they had a shuttle that took us half way up the mountain!

Here is a view from the shuttle drop off.  This looked a tiny bit less intimidating.

Here is my pretty momma posing for a picture before we started our "hike".  That is Lake Lure behind her.  Again, the views were amazing!

Here is a picture of both of us as we were psyching ourselves up for our "hike".  We deemed ourselves the best dressed hikers of the day :)  Everyone else seemed to throw fashion out the window and wore tennis shoes and exercise clothing.  Don't know what they were thinking?!  Ha ha!

Another view of the rock.

 
Mom wanted me to snap a pic of the last set of stairs that we had to climb.  In total, I think we climbed close to 1100 steps that day.  Whew!!!

A view from the top.  It was super windy up there!

And then there is me, posing like I've conquered the world!  Don't I look like a natural hiker?!?!

After our climb down (which seemed to go faster than the climb up) we headed to the little town of Lake Lure for lunch and a little break for our feet.  After lunch we ended up taking a boat tour of the lake.  By the time we arrived and went to purchase our tickets they had apparently sold out for the day, so we were pretty bummed.  We decided to walk around a little bit to kill some time and ended up close to dock where the tours were departing.  We heard a couple of the guides talking about how part of their group was late so I piped up and told them that we really wanted to take a tour and if their group didn't show up we would take their spots.  Well, the guides must have taken pity on us because they let us on the boat even though the group showed up!  The lake was beautiful and and also had breathtaking views. 

However, the most exciting thing about Lake Lure was this:

You may be wondering what is so exciting about a quiet little cove and a set of old stone steps.  Well, maybe this video will help (I tried to embed it but couldn't.)  Or how about this one?  That's right!  We got to see where these two scenes from Dirty Dancing were filmed!!  That little cove pictured above is where all of the water scenes were filmed.  Apparently, they had to film in October so it was very cold and since the leaves turn beautiful shades of red and orange in October, they had to spray paint them greeb every morning to make it look like it was summer.  I need to go back and watch the movie again because our guide said if you look closely you can see leaves falling from the trees. The steps obviously need a little repair as they were white in the movie, but these are the exact stairs that Baby danced down!  Crazy huh!

After our adventurous day, we headed back to town to clean up for dinner at the Grove Park Inn that we had visited the day we arrived.  We had a delicious dinner overlooking the mountains and got to watch a beautiful sunset.  It was a perfect evening.

Our final day in Asheville was Sunday and since our flight didn't leave until later in the afternoon, we decided to take another beautiful drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Our pictures do not do the scenery justice.  It was amazing and we were still about ten days too early for the full color!  As we stood at the overlooks, we were reminded of how big God is and how amazing His creation is. 

My mom and I had a wonderful time together and this is a trip I will remember forever!  We have never traveled together, just the two of us, and I can't wait until we do it again. 



A couple of things.

I have so much to blog about right now and have had a hard time finding time to write it all down but here are a couple of things I want to share for now.  I will be back soon with part two of my trip to Asheville as well, but I need to finish downloading the pics.

• No, your eyes are not playing tricks on you.  The sign really does say SOLD and it really is in our front yard!!  Thanks to much prayer and turning the situation over to God, our house sold last week.  The buyers looked at it at 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon and we signed the contract at 6:40 p.m. that same evening.  After more than a week of not having any showings, we were feeling pretty down, but that feeling quickly turned to a feeling of huge relief!  So, now we have a lot of packing and moving in our future, but at least we can be excited about it (as excited as we can be about the process of moving).
• Along with selling our house this week, I also had another huge stress relief that came on Thursday.  My many months of planning came to fruition on Thursday night when President George W. Bush spoke at the Chamber's Annual Meeting.  We had a sold out crowd of 5,000 people who were all very excited to hear the President and from what I hear (I didn't exactly get to listen to the presentation because I was trying to get photos approved for the media) he did a fantastic job!  My family decided to come to the event and they were all very pleased and I heard a lot of positive comments from other people as they were leaving the event.  While it was a lot of work for a lot of people, the event was a huge success! 
• Since my family was in town for the Bush event, I talked them in to spending the weekend with us.  My siblings and their spouses stayed the weekend while my parents took the grand kids home with them for the weekend.  I think everyone had a great weekend and I know my siblings enjoyed a little grown-up time :)  Us girls went to lunch on Friday, got pedicures and shopped at Target for two hours (ha!) while the guys played golf.  Then, we capped off the day with a sushi dinner and a little night out.  Saturday we watched a lot of football and hung out with other family members who live in town.  Today ended a little abruptly when my mom called to say one of the girls had the stomach flu so they all left earlier than planned to get the kids and head home.  We spent the rest of the day cleaning up the house and running errands.  Now, we are sitting in the couch and letting our bodies catch up from a crazy week!