Prepping for Christmas

 As Christmas neared, we started celebrating with friends.  First up on December 22, dinner and presents with Desiree and Audrey!  Andrew and Audrey had a great time rough housing, chasing each other, and Andrew sort of understood the Christmas present thing :)

 After Andrew went to bed, Santa Dave started building Andrew's kitchen.  The wooden kitchen came in probably 75 individual pieces (not counting all the screws, bolts, etc) with picture instructions (vs. words).  Dave, the master, set all the pieces out and started from step one.  Melissa and I supervised! 

 Two hours and ten minutes later, Andrew's "stainless steel' kitchen was assembled (and hidden in the master bath for Christmas morning).  The reviews online said it would take four hours to assemble, so Dave is pretty proud of himself!

 

Christmas Eve-Eve was a relaxing day at church and home.

Sunday morning, we got up and ready for church--these pictures were just too cute NOT to share.

Andrew played with his choo-choo sticky (he loves this thing).

After church, a nap, and a visit from Tawni, Andrew helped Mommy and Daddy make salt dough ornaments.  He LOVES standing on the chair at the counter, adding ingredients to the bowl, and mixing (other than the flour on his face at one point).

 He did pick up a little bit at this point and put it in his mouth--he quickly spit it out and said, 'yuck!'

Final product coming soon (well, after five hours in the oven at 200 degrees).

 

Baking Cookies!

 December 15

The three of us make chocolate chip cookies on Sunday after church. 

Andrew stood on the chair and helped put the cookie balls onto the cookie sheet.

 He was so proud of his work!

See Mommy?!

Baby Food Makin'

Three gala apples made 24 1 oz cubes

I'm cheap and baby purees are expensive, so I decided that it would be easy enough for me to make my own.  I ordered a cookbook online that divides up the recipes by months that they are recommended to be introduced.  I picked a few out of the 6-month chapter, made a shopping list, and went to the grocery store.  I spend $12.74 total.

None of the recipes are hard, nor did any of them take a huge amount of time. The apples were the 'hardest' only because it wasn't easy to peal the apples after they were mushy.  The sweet potatoes were probably the easiest.

Three large sweet potatoes made 48 1 oz servings

Thee large bananas made 12 1 oz servings

After they froze in the ice cub trays (with lids), I transferred them to a zip lock bag and into the deep freezer.  I really want a vacuum sealer, but they are expensive and I keep reminding myself the whole point of this is to save money.

The mirror is a useless intevention

"The mirror is a worthless invention.
The only way to truly see yourself
is in the reflection of someone else's eyes."
~ Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

Voltaire is obviously right, but the mirror isn't the only thing telling me that I have a few (read 50) pounds to lose after welcoming my cuddly baby.

My normal clothes don't fit.

My maternity clothes don't fit.

Not a single pair of pants/shorts/capris I own, fit.

Instead of whining about this any longer, or feeling bad about it, I have started Weight Watchers again. This isn't shocking to me, nor did I ever think that I wouldn't start up as soon as Andrew was here, but it is still a shock to the system. When I stopped WW (or was actually told that I couldn't come anymore), they were on the Flex plan. Now, the "Points Plus" plan is here and everything is a bit difference. I'm sure that it is a wonderful thing for me and everyone else, but I have to re-learn all the points I had memorized because now they are "points plus." This week (Thursday actually), was my first official day on program.

My super fussy baby and I walked to the Plaza for lunch with Dave at Pick-up Stix (Child's House chicken with brown rice for me--9 points) and then walked home and all around the neighborhood to get him to stay calm.

The before mentioned fussy baby kept me from cooking the dinner I'd planned, but wonderful Dave stepped in, read the recipe and make "Weekday Night Stew and Veggies" (6 points per serving).

While I washed bottles (my least favorite task of the entire mommy hood), Andrew and Reese chilled in the kitchen and watched Daddy cook.

Thankfully fussy baby turned into Captain Adorable and was wonderful for the rest of the evening/night.

So here is to losing the weight again and fitting into my HUGE wardrobe of clothes that I've been missing since last September. I'd love to stay I'll be back at goal by September, but I'm not crazy. It took me 9 months to gain it, I'm going to give myself 9 months to lose it (February 2012).

Cookie Baking

Just like last year, I managed to make over 400 cookies for presents! It was a bit different this year than last year (read about it here and here), with the need to sit down as much as possible. I made dough and put it in the frig; with the table in the kitchen, I was able to do all the prep work sitting down.

Melissa helped me finish up the last set of sugar cookies!
I ended up making 32 tins of cookies!

Butter Cookies

I finally got to use my cookie press that Dave suprised me with. These little one inch cookies are a dream of my childhood and remind me of my mom. This container was full just two days ago :) I'm sure that if I hadn't remembered to take a picture, they'd be gone!

Cookie Baking, Day 2

Day two started after church on Sunday and was going to be much calmer.

Our goal?

1. Roll out, cut, decorate sugar cookies
2. Finish containers

We started with a clean kitchen (thanks to our cleaning skills Saturday evening), spread flour out onto two different areas and began rolling and cutting. The dough was in the frig overnight so it was super hard. Dave had to use his mighty man strength to get it out of the mixing bowl for us. It was the best rolling out experience even! We used lots of sprinkles to make beautiful cookies!With the time, we decorated some pretty cute cookies (if I do say so myself) with details! They are a far cry from the sugar cookies I made with my mom when we were little (although I'm sure my mom wanted our cookies to look like these).

After we finished decorating and while the rest of the cookies baked, we filled our plastic containers (3 for $3 at walmart) with each kind of cookie. Each container found itself full of 18 cookies. We wrapped up the cookies for Tawni and Desiree to come and take home :)

Look at all those...

Like my makeshift table?!? This is why I've requested a folding table for christmas! My wonderful husband created this table, there is nothing like a piece of plywood on sawhorses.

After recleaning the kitchen and loading up Robyn's cookies and KitchenAid mixer, I reflected on the fun that we had while we baked and the laughter we shared.

Thanks Robyn for two days of fun! I'd love to say that we'll do it next year, but I don't think your four month old will appreciate the 12 hours away from you. Maybe on a small scale?

Christmas Baking, Day One

When Robyn and I decided that we were going to having a baking day, we thought it would be a fun way to spend a girls' afternoon. Originally other girlies were suppose to join us, but it ended up just being the two of us.

Our plan?

1. Make 548 cookies in less than eight hours (sugar, gingerdrops, magic cookie bars, cinnamon-oatmeal, peppermint bark, divinity, mexican wedding cakes, blossoms, and shortbread).
2. Create 37 cookie packages to give away as presents with the cookies (10 for Robyn, 15 for Jenni, 5 for Tawni, and 7 for Desiree).

The plan execution started on Wednesday (12/9) when I put all the ingrediants for each type of cookie into the magic of an excel spreadsheet and sorted it to combine it for a shopping list. Off to Walmart I went, picking up 15 pounds of flour, 27 eggs, 12 1/2 cups of butter, etc!!

Saturday morning, Robyn arrives promptly at 10 am. Reese, wearing her new Christmas sweater, is confused about the actions, but happy to sit in her bed and blanket and watch...
I'm prepared with my pink Christmas shirt (which you've sadly missed out on) and my mom-made, cute apron.

Robyn is ready with her giant KitchenAid mixer, but sadly without her shield for dry ingredient (look closely to the flour explosion in this picture... this is what happens when you triple a shortbread recipe without your shield).

Our trusty mixers worked and worked, spinning and churing butter, eggs, flour and sugar so we didn't have to (several times we mentioned, "what did people do without theses?" and came to the conclusion that no one would have tried to make this many cookies in one day without a beauty like my red and her white KitchenAid mixer)... the second mixing bowl that I registered for when we got married, but haven't used, came in very handy as some recipes required refrigeration.

This is what 120 sugar cookies look like...

It worked out well that I have A LOT of counter space, because we used every square inch of it... just the ingredients took over this corner. This picture was taken about an hour into the day.

The first set of cookies go into the oven! Robyn's mom's famous shortbread cookies, cut into squares with a snowflake impression from my terracotta cookie press.

We continued until we were tired, then kept going... here Robyn is making Mexican wedding cakes as I peel Chocolate candy cane kisses for the blossom cookies.

We decided that it was time to stop when the Mexican wedding cakes came out the of oven like this...

Still in the frig are the sugar cookies in dough format and never touched is the ingredients for divinity...

oh for another day...

Thanksgiving Classic-Pumpkin Pie

Although it is Thanksgiving, and typically we overeat to the extreme on this day, I wanted to share my favorite (WW) trick for the day.

One Point Pumpkin Pie!

I love pumpkin pie--so much so that I can't just eat one slice. Regular pumpkin pie is 9 points for an 1/8th of a slice. These beauties are 8 points for the WHOLE THING!! Or 1 point per slice.

Here you go (this is for one, I always double it so that I can eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner):

• 15 oz can of pumpkin
• 12 oz can of non-fat evaporated milk
• 3/4 cup egg substitute (egg beaters) or 3 egg whites
• 1/2 tsp salt (don't leave it out, it helps set up the pie)
• 3 tsp pumpkin spice
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2/3 cup Splenda

Combine all of the above and beat until smooth. Pour into a Pam sprayed 9" pie pan. Bake at 400 degrees fro 15 minutes, then lower temperature to 325 and bake for an additional 45 minutes. Make sure knife put into center comes out clean. (There is no crust)