We usually go see a holiday lights exhibit each year. Until this year, for the previous 5 years, we’d all load up in a car and head to Callaway Gardens to see their Fantasy in Lights show. That show peaked in excitement for us about 3 years ago, and Frog asked if we could see something new. Around the Atlanta area, there are a number of great holiday light exhibits, including our next door neighbors, but last year we went to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens to see the Garden Lights exhibit, and we had heard that the display was supposed to be even better this year.
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Monthly Archives: December 2012
Cinnamon Bread {A Family Favorite}
Posted onCinnamon Bread was one of my grandmother’s holiday baking staples. She would bake it along with Zucchini Bread, and then deliver two small loaves to each one of her neighbors during the holiday season. I can remember being a small girl and helping her make the bread and then watching her package the two small loaves in colorful Christmas wrapping before walking around the block to drop off her treats. She lived in a neighborhood where everyone knew each other, and all of the children played and grew together. One of those old-fashioned suburban neighborhoods that seems to be rapidly disappearing in our current digital age. (I suppose this is rather ironic for me to to say, as we live in my grandmother’s house!)
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A First Christmas: Visiting Santa and Christmas Card Photos
Posted onI love Christmas. I mean really, I *LOVE* Christmas. I love Christmas Carols. I love the smell of Frasier Firs and Balsam. I love Gingerbread and Pumpkin Pie. I love reading Holiday Newsletters. I love seeing light displays around our neighborhood. I love finding the perfect gifts for the people I love. I love spending the day with my family. I have been so very excited about this season since this Christmas is Monkey’s first. I’ve wanted to make sure that he looked the part to commemorate all of those special firsts.
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Mario’s Special Spaghetti {A Family Favorite}
Posted onOne of my most favorite people in the whole world, my dear friend Ella, first cooked this for my birthday about 6 years ago. It was when I was going through a really rough time, and there is nothing like a delicious home cooked meal to warm the heart and heal the injured spirit. I found the meal so delicious that I asked her for the recipe. Mario’s Special Spaghetti was one of the first dishes that I cooked for MM when we were dating. It’s in his top five favorite dinners that I cook, and I probably make it 2 times a month. What’s even better is that Frog loves it too. When I have a dish that both MM and Frog request, it instantly becomes a go-to dinner in my household.
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Date Night at The Hobbit Movie
Posted onWhen Frog was about 3 years old, I was in the middle of graduate school, and Frog would spend his days in his fabulous, nurturing 3-year-old preschool classroom. (His first daycare center has forever spoiled me!) We were still living above the Mason-Dixon line in Pennsylvania, and I found a wonderful restaurant called Aladdin’s Eatery. (It is actually a small chain with restaurants in Pennsylvania and Ohio.) This particular restaurant has the world’s best salad. I love it, really, really *love* it! It is called the Lamb Salad because it has warm, seasoned pieces of lamb it in. It melts in your mouth… but I digress.
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Sequined Christmas Trees {Been There, Done That! Pinterest Project #1}
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While making a run to Hobby Lobby to buy a few foam wreaths (as wreaths are my current obsession), I saw those wonderful foam cones that make excellent miniature Christmas trees. I bought 4 of them: two were 6.25″ tall and two were 9.5″ tall. I’ve seen dozens of ideas on Pinterest and in blogs to turn foam cones into Christmas trees, but thought that these sequined trees at Sweet C’s Design were fun and would look cute in our family room.
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
Posted onOn 12/12/12 we had my annual holiday office party. This year it included a game of “Dirty Santa” (White Elephant) and a Christmas cookie exchange. My lovely mother-in-law sent me a recipe for Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies earlier this fall, but with the arrival of Monkey, I hadn’t gotten around to trying them. Frog was excited to test out the recipe, as he loves all things pumpkin, so he hovered around the kitchen the entire time I was preparing the cookies.
Besides our beloved breakfast standby, pumpkin bread, I haven’t baked many cookies, cakes or breads with canned pumpkin. The cookie dough was much closer in composition to a cake batter than the traditional cookie dough. (The batter tasted delicious though!) I talked to a coworker who told me that all of her pumpkin cookie recipes end up being more cake-y than cookie-y, maybe that’s what happens when you add canned pumpkin. Here’s what the dough/batter looked like:
The cookies didn’t expand outward as much as I expected, so I realized after one batch that I could put more on a cookie sheet than I thought. They actually took only 12 minutes to cook perfectly in my crotchety electric oven. (BTW, if you don’t have SILPAT sheets for baking, you don’t know what you are missing. They are fabulous!)
The final product was a rich, chewy, cake-like cookie. Frog said that they didn’t taste much like pumpkin, and I would agree with him. I was expecting more pronounced pumpkin flavor. However, Frog still enjoyed a few and complained when I took the majority of them to work. The cinnamon in the recipe was noticeable, and I’m curious what they would taste like with pumpkin pie spice.
Here is the recipe we used:
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
Ingredients:
- 1 cup canned pumpkin
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 c. vegetable oil
- 1 egg
- 2 cups flour
- 2 tsp. baking powder
- 2 tsp. cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1 tsp. milk
- 1 Tbsp. vanilla
- 2 c. (1 bag) chocolate chips
- 1/2 c. walnuts (optional ) *We didn’t use walnuts, as I’m not partial to them!*
Directions
Combine pumpkin, sugar, vegetable oil, and egg. In separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Dissolve baking soda with milk, and stir into pumpkin mixture. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture and mix well. Add vanilla, chocolate chips, and nuts. Drop by spoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for approx. 10-12 minutes or until lightly brown and firm.
Gingerbread House Decorating Party
Posted onTonight we went to a Gingerbread House decorating party with my parents. Frog and I both love to create and do crafts together, so this was a lot of fun for both of us. Since Monkey is too little to make his own house, I decorated one for him. My parents and MM gave me and Frog decorating suggestions and complimented the designs, but they weren’t particularly interested in actively decorating the house. MM and my father spent most of their time snuggling Monkey:
We were given huge bags of Royal Icing (the kind of frosting that dries hard) along with blank gingerbread houses. There were about 15 different types of candy available for use. I used gumdrops and mints on my house along with a few nonpareils. Frog had a lot more fun with his house, and used a little bit of everything. He went for a Spanish style, attaching Twizzlers for his roof.
Afterwards, MM and I tried to get a few photos of Monkey and Frog– we’re still working on our Christmas card photo, and we’re running out of time. Monkey had patiently waited for 2 hours while we worked on our houses, so he wasn’t in the best mood for taking photos. We’ll have to try again later in the week. Unfortunately Frog’s sweater has Royal icing and is back in the wash.
Of course, the best part of the party, besides the two nice houses sitting in my kitchen, is the fact that there was absolutely no clean up for me. All the dried frosting, chocolate smudges and peppermint crumbs were cleaned up for us after we left!
