Author Archives: Tessa

Cocktails & Crafts: Gingerbread houses and crazy boys!

Posted on by
3

We had our December Cocktails & Crafts party this weekend, hosted by my friend Erin. Each month there is a slightly different crowd, some regulars and some newcomers. I’m interested to see, if we can keep the momentum going, whether it will end up being a consistent group or ever evolving.

Erin made homemade eggnog, which was nutmegy and delicious! I’ve never actually had eggnog before because I don’t like eggy things (or eggs in general, I suppose), but I decided to be brave and try it (like I tell the kids a hundred times a day!) and it was great!

She also made snowflake quesedillas (I can’t get spell check to help me with this word! Tortillas, cheese, snowflake shapes, you know what I mean!) with lots of sides.

For a craft project we made gingerbread houses with graham crackers, special seasonal gingerbread graham crackers! :) They are delicious. The kids decorated their graham crackers with gusto and lots of “one for the house, one for me” motivation. Then the grownups stepped in to help with assembly. Some houses went up a little more smoothly than others, but I think everyone had fun and no one walked away without at least some frosting on them!

step one

Step One: Don't eat the graham crackers

step two

Step Two: Affix candy to graham crackers with a liberal dose of frosting.

step three

Step Three: Eat candy while your mom attemts gingerbread house construction magic.

step four

Step Four: Go play and let your house dry.

done

Done! Can't you just feel the sugar coursing through your body!?!

Then it was time to let the wild rumpus begin! Take one part “Friday after a busy week,” add in two parts sugar, and three parts little boy and you have quite the excitement! When we left everyone was exhausted. Lex came home and ate dinner (heaven forbid he eat quesedillas!) while I bathed Eve, who had previously bathed herself in frosting and sugar!

eve

Eve found a quiet area to take a break and eat a snack.

lex

My bright-eyed boy!

wild boys

Wild boys!! I made my kids bring their gingerbread houses home instead of eating them on the spot, so they weren't quite as jacked up on the sugar as these three wild boys! :) All they're missing is some frosting war paint!

I think a good night was had by all! :)

pretty houses

Pretty houses. They made a nice addition to our table decorations. A short-lived addition! We were all picking at them by 6:30 the next morning.

Linked up to the Happiness Is… blog hop at Rub Some Dirt On It

Photobucket

Christmas lists

Posted on by
1

This week the kids decide to write Christmas lists for Santa. I love this time of year because whenever they ask for anything I just say “put it on your list.”

lex

I LOVE that he smiles when he sees the camera. That makes me so happy! (Ignore his crazy hair. I don't know what's going on with it these days.)

eve

Can you guess what Eve wants?

together

The next day Eve wanted to add more to her list and Lex helped her. They are so sweet when they work together.

the lists -p1

The lists

the lists -p2

Eve's drawing (well, her coloring in my very rough drawing) and her name written in very small letters. She has been practicing that.

Enjoy! Let me know if you need help deciphering. On Lex’s list the first two items he saw in stores and the rest came from an SI Kids magazine special feature on Gift Giving. I wonder who they think their child readers are going to be GIVING these gifts to… hmmmm….

A pleasure to have in class

Posted on by
2

That was the message we received at both parent/teacher conferences today. The kids are happy, well adjusted children. Eve’s teacher wrote “Eve appears to be happy, content and confident.” and “She is kind to all.” Lex’s teacher said he is a fun and funny kid who knows how to have fun and knows how to stop when asked. She also said that he is all kid, not growing up too fast like many of his classmates. As an example, she said that the “boyfriend/girlfriend” thing has been going around and kids were even talking about kissing. One day she spoke with the class about it and said no, no, no. There will be no boyfriends, no girlfriends, no kissing. Lex raised his hand and nervously asked if it was ok if he kissed his family, because he loves his family. She said he really seemed concerned that she was going to say no :) I think we’re doing a good job raising these kids!

Speaking of kissing, we were at the aquatic center with one of Lex’s classmates the other day and the three kids were swimming around the current pool. At one point this little boy said to Eve, “If you can catch me, you can kiss me!” and he swam off. She looked at him, looked at me, shrugged, and kept swimming. I tried not to burst out laughing!

A few about Eve

Posted on by
Reply

The kids are full of crazy this weekend. Eve is a constant source of noise (woofing, meowing, hooting, chugging, etc. constant!) and Lex has been very stubborn and obstinate. Between the two of them it has been a draining weekend. However, there have been a few sweet moments in there. Last night Alan and Lex were fighting at dinner time. When Alan brought a screaming Lex upstairs, Eve went to the white board and wrote:

love note

A love note to her brother. I wonder if it was to make him feel better or to make herself feel better. Sweet, either way.

This is a better picture of the nativity people with their new gingerbread necklaces, courtesy of a very thoughtful Eve.

nativity

A very fasionable nativity scene.

Today the two of them were so buggy and picky (those are the best terms I can come up with at the moment) so we decided to separate them. Alan and Lex went out to run errands while Eve and I stayed home to work on a few projects. She mellowed right down and was sweet and helpful. One project was an idea I got from Pinterest (great site!) for icicle trim on the mantle. Theirs came out better than mine, but Eve and I had fun making it all the same. She undecorated the mantle for me:

eve

Helpful Eve. She did a great job keeping the advent boxes closed and in order when she took them all down :)

Then we put up the icicles (sparkly white felt) and Alan got back in time to help redecorate the mantle.

alan

Santa Alan and crazy Eve - together they make a wacky, yet sometimes helpful, pair!

By this point the boys were home and Lex wanted to do more blog posts, so I let Alan and Eve redecorate the mantle while I helped Lex. That part of the evening was quite nice :)

mantle

Kinda cute, I think. You can't tell from the picture, but the white felt is sparkly and pretty. I think they will straighten out over time too, with a little help from gravity!

Lex had another obstinate fight at dinner tonight, resulting in stress eating on my part (hello KAF burgundy chocolate chunks!) but bedtime went smoothly and the day ended well enough. Now, to get myself into bed at a reasonable hour…

Crazy Saturday

Posted on by
2

We had a busy day today! I’m exhausted! Alan went to an energy conference all day so the kids and I decided to do some holiday activities. Starting with a Gingerbread Festival! I hear about this every year, but this is the first year we’ve actually made it. People donate fully decorated gingerbread houses that are auctioned off for a local non-profit. There’s also a silent auction, craft booth, and tons of a kids activities. It was fun, but totally chaotic! We bid on one gingerbread house when we first got there and another one at the end, once we saw we’d already lost the first one and I wasn’t willing to bid more than $30 for a gingerbread house! I suspect we didn’t get the second one either or else I think they would have called by now. I also bid on two items from the silent auction… but again, I’m assuming no call means no win. Oh well.

There were some pretty awesome gingerbread houses on display…

This one made me laugh. Occupy Candyland.

This all white one was just amazing!

Decorating gingerbread cookies, donated by KAF. Yum!

It's 10:30am and this is her second holiday cookie of the day! Can you tell?! :)

Holiday story time

After about an hour and a half of that chaos we decided to head to Panera Bread for lunch and a few errands over that way. I’m not sure where my brain was when that decision was made! Saturday in West Leb is never calm, but when you add in the whole holiday thing, it was just more chaos. The line at Panera was out the door, but we waited and luckily it moved quickly. Then we went to Home Depot where they had nothing I wanted and Jo-Ann’s Fabric which I’m super excited is now open and expanded! We got lots of things there and lucked out because the line was insane when we first got to the store, but there was no line at all by the time we got around to checking out. That balances out the Panera line, right?! :)

This is how we roll these days.

Eve was initally mad that she doesn't get to use the kindle in the car too, but she's eventually resigned herself to old fashioned books again (which I think she really prefers anyway!)

Lex found a train set at HD that he really wanted. I told him to write a letter to Santa. He left the store in an existential crisis. :) (just kidding... kind of!)

When we got home were were all EXHAUSTED! I was so tired that no only did I set aside my to-do list (ha! like I’m that organized these days!) and sat down on the couch to read for an hour, but I actually dozed for 15 minutes! I haven’t done that in a very long time. Lex came down from his quiet time and announced that he had four blog posts he wanted to make. :) Late afternoon passed by with some blogging, some crafting (Eve made gingerbread necklaces for the nativity characters), and some dinner. Then bedtime! Yay. Now it’s bedtime for me. We are all looking forward to a DO NOTHING day tomorrow! I hope to read the paper. That’s my big goal :)

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas… (or Friday at our house)

Posted on by
1

We did some decorating yesterday. The kids were super excited! They helped me carry down the boxes, eagerly set up the nativity scenes and then got lost in the books. Think we have enough Christmas books? Seriously! I’ve also already bought two new ones this year and there’s a book fair at Lex’s school on Monday where I’ll probably buy more. I have a kid book addiction! :)

Nativity scenes line our hearth.

Books, books everywhere. These kept the kids quiet for well over an hour!

After dinner I had a laugh when Lex grabbed the Kindle and settled on the dining room floor, and Eve grabbed a soft Christmas book and snuggled on the couch. Such opposites. :)

That's his "Kindle touch" finger :)

Snuggle bug on the couch.

Later that night we watched Alan on TV for a few minutes, then Alan and Lex played Macala (or beads and buckets as they like to call it) on a homemade game board.

Proud Alan! He was interviewed about energy commission stuff a few weeks ago and it aired last night.

Beads and buckets... and blocks!

Chocolate Peppermint Drop Cookies

Posted on by
Reply

cookiesThese things are outrageous! Seriously. You know about peanut butter blossoms, right? They might be one of my favorite cookies. With that in mind I’ve been thinking about chocolate drops with peppermint cookies. Sounds yummy, right? I searched my cook books and the Internet and couldn’t find a recipe for this idea, so I made my own! Starting with a chocolaty chocolate cookie, we decided to double the recipe and add some dark chocolate and mint. So good I can’t leave them on my counter for long! Today they were either packed in a box destined for the other side of the world, or packed in the freezer for another day when there are more people around to help me eat them! If you will not be on the receiving end of the aforementioned box or at my house for Christmas I’d highly recommend you make these yourself. Have I mentioned they are delicious?!

Ingredients
* 2 cup butter, softened
* 3 cups white sugar
* 4 eggs
* 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 2 teaspoons peppermint extract
* 4 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 1/3 cup Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa powder
* 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
* 2 10oz bags Hershey’s Peppermint Kisses

Directions
* In large bowl, beat butter, sugar, eggs, and extracts until light and fluffy.
* Combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt; stir into the butter mixture until well blended.
* Mix in the chocolate chips.
* Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls (or a small cookie scoop) onto parchment paper (or ungreased) cookie sheets.
* Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in a 350° preheated oven, or just until set.
* When they first come out of the oven gently press a Peppermint Kiss into the center of each.
* Cool slightly on the cookie sheets before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.
I ended up with 123 cookies!

* I’m sure there is lots of room to experiment here. Perhaps KAF Burgundy chunks instead of the chocolate chips, tweaks on extract proportions, etc. Feel free to play around. I don’t think I’ll make them often enough to fine tune the recipe. That would not be good for my waistline!

In case you were wondering, this is how we cook around here. It’s a wonder anything ever gets done.
upside down lex

This, however, is a favorite job that always gets done. Eagerly. With a bit of sampling along the way.
kisses

Apparently I didn’t actually take a good picture of the cookies. How unlike me. The little image above was cropped from this one. It will suffice, but I prefer this one with his smiling face :)
smiling lex