Sweet Treats

I have meant to get on and post this for two weeks, but things have been a little busy around my house. We are getting ready for the holidays, I have been working on Christmas cards, letter, and making gifts, my dad gave me my Cricut Expression Christmas present early (which took up about three days of time trying to get set up, experiment with, and use) my Internet somehow started to have advertising pop-ups all over, and my laptop suddenly stopped talking to the wireless printer (an of course my husband has waited until December to print of information needed for tax prep and needs it now!) so I have spent lots of time on the computer creating and trying to get everything working properly.

Almost every year since before my husband and I were married we have gotten together with his family to make cookies for the Christmas holiday. It started out as just a small little afternoon gathering to let the kids have fun cutting out sugar cookies and has grown into a whole weekend of baking, cutting, decorating, dipping, and packing the goodies up to share. My sister-in-law even mixes and cooks a few days before to prepare for the weekend.

Each year I pick a new recipe to try (and usually flop) for the weekend. With the invention of Pinterest this has grown easier to find, but harder to choose just one to try. This year I tried two. One was a simple wreath decorating idea with a shortbread cookie and the other was called a hot cocoa cookie. I am happy to say I did okay. The hot cocoa cookie did not look just like the Pinterest version, but it was okay and I managed to only brown the marshmallow on top, not burn it like I have been known to do with S'Mores brownies. So now I think I have a new recipe to add to the festivities.

The cookies are nice to have and share, but the best part of the weekend is opening up our home to family and having the time with them. We have been doing it the first weekend in December for a few years now so the women bake and the men go deer hunting and come in for lunch and cookie dough for a break from the cold. My girls get to spend time with their aunts, uncles, and cousins and learn about baking (which is something I do occasionally, but not as often as my husband wants or as good as my sister-in-laws.) It is a tradition that I hope continues with our family for years to come.

The 'tail' end - comment about some fun holiday activities you do with your family to celebrate the togetherness of the season.

I am also posting some collages I made on Smilebox to show the fun we have :)

Gobble til ya wobble

I think Christmas starts earlier every year and Thanksgiving is forgotten, so I wanted to make sure I took a moment to say thanks for all I have. Last year at this time I was barely getting out of bed and worrying about almost everything. Today I am thankful to say I was up a little too early finishing turkey cookies, checking out online deals,and helping feed calves. I am also so thankful for the family and friends who stuck with me along the rocky road - I can never thank them enough.

As I have said before Pinterest is one of my biggest time wasters and I found these fun turkey shaped cookies made with oreos the other day I thought the girls would love to help make. I pinned them and bought the supplies.

The first one we tried were from Our Best Bites (click on the link to see the steps we followed)
I cruised the baking and cookie/candy aisles and found -

• Chocolate and vanilla (the girls decided not to use these) sandwich cookies -for back and base
• Cookie icing (white and red was what I found) - for holding things together
• Cake icing (in a squirt can) - for holding things together
• Candy corn - for the feathers and beak 
• Chocolate assortment (Rolos, Peanut Butter Cups, and Kisses) - for the body
• Malted milk balls - for the head
• Confetti sprinkles - for the eyes

Here is a Smilebox of us putting these and the next recipe together

If you can tell from the pictures it took like three change of clothes to get them done as we waited for the icing to hold. Gretchyn prefered to take the sandwich cookie apart and out the frosting on the cookie - then the candy corn on the frosting - then frosting on the candy corn -then top of cookie back on, but you can also just put frosting in and stick the candy corn between the two sides. The tutorial said to put the cookies against a wall after you frost the back to the base and that advice was very helpful to getting them made. I also found it helpful to wait inbetween steps to give the back, body, and head a chance to set a little. The tutorial called for peanut butter cups for the body, but we used Rolos and Kisses and they worked fine too. The tutorial also said they used the cookie icing for decorating purposes. We found this icing wasn't quite thick enough for holding things together so we used the cake icing for holding the cookies, chocolates, and candies together and the cookie icing for keeping the feathers in the cookie. The tutorial also said to use chocolate frosting, but I guess I missed that when shopping so I bought white. It worked just fine, but ours don't look as clean as the ones in their pictures, but we had fun and that is all that counts. I also did not pick up the yellow icing or chocolate sprinkles for eyes so we used the white confetti sprinkles instead. We also did not add the feet or gobbler, because it was enough to do the other parts. 

The other turkey shaped cookie we tried were from The Krazy Coupon Lady (click on the link to see the steps we followed)

The ingredients we used were - 

Chocolate covered pretzels - for the feathers

Sandwich cookies (they used fudge dipped ones, but we did not) - for the head/body

Candy eyes - for the eyes

Candy corn - for the beak 

Chocolate chips (melted with 1/2 TBSP oil) - for holding everything together

These were super simple to make and put together. I would suggest it for any quick cookie get together, to make with kiddos at daycare or school, or to send to a party when you need a quick treat. 

Now we are all ready to take to grandma's house and watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade!

The 'tail' end - share any fun recipes or traditions you have for Thanksgiving in the comments.