in the kitchen ...

Ruby and I made cookies!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Yummy!!!

She was a fantastic helper!

The ingredients says "NO MORE taking pictures!"

We didn't follow the recipe exactly! {grin}

Ruby carefully placed each chocolate chip one by one in the batter.

Ruby: It okay I put all dese in there?

Mom: Sure!

Ruby: Oh!  It okay I put one a dese in my mouf?

Mom: Of course!! 

  From then on it was one for the cookies, one for her!

Thanks for baking with me Ruby
I had a lot of fun!

i heart desserts

... I do. I really, really do!

This week at i heart faces they are focusing on desserts instead of faces and who better to celebrate with than Bakerella herself!?! I love Bakerella ... and her cake pops!

I was so excited for this weeks theme because I love to take pictures of food. I think it has something to do with the fact that it doesn't run away from me! But I am not a baker. I like baking ... but it just doesn't take a priority in my day. I am more of an occasional baker. I did however make a dessert yesterday, but it somehow got all eaten up before I could get a picture of it! I may have had more than one or two helpings myself. So today I ran to one of my favorite bakeries and got my favorite cookies ... coconut chocolate chip ... mmmmmm! So yummy.

Just looking at them makes me want to go get another one from my kitchen!

Christmas Memories

There are so many little things about Christmas that I remember fondly when I was small. Eating on the Christmas dishes, wearing my rudolph sweatshirt, sitting at the top of the stairs with my sister waiting for my Grandma and Grandpa to come over on Christmas morning, family Christmas parties, anticipating various Christmas gifts, shaking wrapped presents under the tree, spending Christmas Eve with my best friend, Tiffany. The list really could go on. Just thinking of these things make me smile. But one of my all time favorites was helping my mom make the Christmas goodies. Every year we made Christmas treats ... fudge, toffee, and festive cream sandwiches. I remember that it seemed as if our dining room table was filled with the tempting goodies. So now to me it doesn't seem like Christmas without making and eating some yummy Christmas goodies! And trust me I have done more than my fare share of eating them.

This year I made some peppermint bark. Yum!

chocolate is so yummy!

the store i went to didn't have peppermint candy canes. seriously. tons on other flavors but no peppermint. so i had to settle on these instead.

The kids even got in on the baking fun. They made chocolate covered pretzels to give to their teachers as gifts. Collin was so good at it and stuck with me until all of them were done.

they both had a few ... errr a lot of tastes of the 'frosting'

these were so yummy too. any extras we had are now gone! and yes, it was me who ate the majority of them!

Soon we will be making gingerbread cookies. Sophie has been dying to make some for Santa this year so we will give them a try.

halloween happenings ...

We have been having fun celebrating the spooky Halloween season around here.

We have feasted on spider cookies. Aren't they so fun? The kids loved them . . . and I had fun making them!

We got dressed up in our costumes and headed out for our 4th annual Neighborhood Halloween Parade (even with the snow). So much fun! I love seeing all of the costumes.

the beautiful ballerina

Sophie's costume morphed a little for the parade. Instead of ballet shoes, she chose snow boots and instead of wearing a coat to stay warm, she wore Ruby's Baby Legs on her arms. It was quite the combination! She did eventually wear her jacket after freezing and seeing everyone else in jackets.

the adorable flower

and the spooky dragon ... not to be confused with a dinosaur!

Sophie and her friend Hannah

We carved pumpkins ... which turned into Mom and Dad carving pumpkins. Well, really it was just Dad carving the pumpkins! But the kids were thrilled with the end result. Sophie wanted Ariel carved into her pumpkin and Collin wanted a skeleton. Logan did a great job!

We did get Sophie to help take a few seeds out of her pumpkin. Collin freaked when he got any pumpkin guts on him.

Giving me their best BOO faces

We sang this song

Pumpkin, Pumpkin

Round and Fat

Turn into a Jack 0 Lantern

Just Like That!

We even roasted pumpkin seeds for the first time. Pretty Yummy! But I am not really sure if it is worth separating the seeds from the guts! I must be lazy!

Tonight ... mummy pizzas, trick-or-treating, and eating way too much candy!

happy halloween

Celebrating Summer: Red, White, and Blue

I'm not much of a baker (I like it . . . but it seems to take up a lot of time, and it creates a lot of unnecessary treats around my house that I end up eating) but every once in a while I get a baking bug. Today was once of those days. When I was little, at Christmas time I remember helping my mom make some delicious cookies called Festive Cream Sandwiches. It had been forever since we have made these. I could barely remember how they tasted. When Ruby was blessed I asked my mom to bring some of these cookies and when I bit into one they were even better than I remembered them. I have been thinking about them ever since. We only made them at Christmas time, but I thought why not make them to celebrate our upcoming holiday, the 4th of July! So the kids and I had a lot of fun making these cookies with a Red, White, and Blue flare.

I made the dough and the kids rolled it into marble sized balls and smashed the balls with a fork.

Then came the frosting . . .

I really had to take a step back and tell myself that it didn't really matter how they looked. The kids were having a great time . . . and they all taste the same, right?!?!

Collin just couldn't resist. After he got frosting on his first cookie, he put the top on it and started eating! MMmmMmm!!!!

Sophie couldn't resist either. Only instead of going for the cookies, she went straight for the frosting. Watching her lick that knife makes you want to eat some of our cookies, doesn't it?

Those look so yummy!

And they taste yummy too! You know you want one!

Later in the evening, I told Sophie she did an excellent job making cookies and that she should be a baker when she grows up. She didn't like that idea. It doesn't fit with her plans of becoming a Fire Fighter AND a Teacher! Such a cute girl!