Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Christmas Baking

We spent the weekend baking up a storm for our annual Christmas baking marathon. Friday-Sunday we whipped up 20-25 different kinds of cookies in quadrupled batches to give away to friends and families. It was A LOT of goodies. We always run out of containers. :) #firstworldproblem.

This year we also had my sisters senior Christmas Choir performance to attend Saturday evening plus Hubs was in and out reffing all weekend. We were busy!

We finished all the traditional recipes, my family has been making these recipes for generations so it definitely aids our speed. :) Frankly it's impressive everyone isn't 300 pounds and rolling in with pounds and pounds of butter & sugar being used. ;) You can find many of my families Christmas favorites here, plus spicey gumdrop cookies, almond cookies, peppermint truffles, the best chocolate ganache truffles, oreo truffles & cookie-dough truffles.

One of these days I'll get around to posting the delicious extra thick & soft gingerbread cookies and the rest of the family Christmas favorites. I'm still working to wrap up the family cookbook and that's been taking all my recipe typing time. I've got more than 150 in so far but I feel as if I've barely made a dent.

My next projects are breads and bark. My work has decided to have a baking contest and I am still undecided if I want to enter. I'm thinking something eggnog-y if I do. Eggnog frosted sugar cookies? Eggnog poundcake? My absolutely favoritest Eggnog sweet bread?

In case you've never tried it, I'll post it here:

Eggnog Bread
1 C eggnog
2 tsp rum-flavored extract
1 C white sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 C butter, softened
2 1/4 C flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350°. Grease a large loaf pan (I do 3 mini's if I'm giving away!) Mix together the first 6 ingredients until they are blended well. Combine flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. Add dry ingredients to the eggnog mixture and mix until just moistened. Pour into pan(s). I bake the large pan for 45-50 minutes or smaller loaf pans for 35-40 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes, remove from pan, and then cool completely on a baking rack before wrapping tightly. I store mine in the refridgerator and serve it with cinnamon cream cheese or honey vanilla butter. So yummy!

I'm also trying to decide on what sweet breads I want to deliver to people this year. Sweet? Savory? I have a caprese quick bread that is delicious and looks all christmas-y with the basil, tomatoes & cheese dotted throughout the bread. But I could also do mini gingerbread loaves, Chocolate Cinnamon bread, eggnog bread, chocolate cherry nut bread or snickerdoodle bread. What sounds good to you? Maybe if I pick your selection, I could even send you one! :)
Posted by Jen | Our Life Accounts at 10:36 AM Links to this post
1 comments
Labels:

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Christmas Traditions

The holidays are filled with traditions for us. Some have been passed down through family generations & some we've created for our own family. Every year, we refine. Add a few more, maybe cut out some that we aren't feeling anymore. I always enjoy reading what others do so I thought I would share some of our favorites that have stuck over the years.

  • Every year we go out to a Christmas tree farm & pick out the biggest & fluffiest tree that we can find & haul it home over thanksgiving weekend.

  • Said tree is decked out with many many strings of lights and covered with a selection of hodge-podge ornaments collected over the years from our travels & our Christmases together. Each year, we gift a new meaningful one to each other in their stocking.

  • My mom, sisters, grandmother & (sometimes husband & brothers) I get together for a baking extravaganza. We churn out quadruple batches of homemade cookies, candies, bars, breads and other snacks and goodies over the course of a weekend & then give them out to everyone we know. Our UPS, FedEx & mailman always get a big plate from me for all the extra hours I have them working during the Holidays. ;)

  • We have certain Christmas movies that must be watched every December including: Home Alone, Polar Express, White Christmas, Muppet's Christmas Carol, Grinch Who Stole Christmas (animated!) & several others. ABC Christmas countdown has got nothing on us!

  • Christmas Eve after the Christmas service we have special gifts we give each other. Brent gets me pajamas & jewelry and he gets pajamas and food from me.

  • A tradition passed down through my German side is the tradition of hiding a pickle in the tree. There is always a giant candy basket for the winner! (note this works better amongst a larger family, with two its hardly a competition ;)).



  • Christmas morning is celebrated with a huge breakfast feast of fresh fruit, breakfast scramble, Swedish tea ring, sticky buns and cinnamon rolls. We roooooll out afterwords.

  • In the aftermath of the Holiday, we celebrate a second Christmas every year and enjoy a glorious week long Christmas extravaganza in the beautiful winter wonderland of Vermont. Home of our favorite Cabot Cheese & Lake Champlain Chocolates. We are already excitedly looking forward to some hockey, snow-shoeing, cross country skiing and other fabulous activities.

  • And a new tradition added this year? A weekend trip up to NY to enjoy the lights, decorations & Broadway. I am thinking we might need to add the lighting of the Christmas tree in the capital next year!


Obviously, this list will expand greatly once kiddies are added to the mix. There is a whole other list waiting for that time! What are some of your families favorite Christmas traditions?
Posted by Jen | Our Life Accounts at 8:03 AM Links to this post
2 comments
Labels:

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Dear Santa...

Dear Santa...I know I've been rather naughty this year but perhaps you could still see your way to loading up my stocking? ;)

Just in case your elves haven't been doing their due diligence and making notes of my "needs", I've made you a special list.

A kindle for reading on the go.



An iPod touch cause the shuffle only goes so far.



Comfy & warm gear for workouts & outdoor fun.














Some pretty books to adorn the shelves







Some Sparkly shoes for my feet







Some playthings for the kitchen



















Or perhaps a little sparkle to add some glam to my every-day...






Signed,
Yours Truly xxooxx
Posted by Jen | Our Life Accounts at 7:58 AM Links to this post
0 comments
Labels: ,

Monday, December 5, 2011

iRecs

Part of Hubs and my anniversary gifts included an iPad. Since we were married a mere month before Black Friday we figured it was silly to purchase it around our anniversary date when the chances of scoring it for a good deal a month later was highly probable. So we waited. And we scored big.



$100+ off plus an upgrade in size and lots of cash back. It was totally worth the wait.

We're now diving into the fun world of apps and all the extra gadgets and covers to go with it just in time for the holiday season. We are enjoying researching the heck out of it but I would love to hear everyone's favorites. I'm sure there are plenty we are missing! So tell me, what are your favorites & must-haves???
Posted by Jen | Our Life Accounts at 9:20 AM Links to this post
3 comments
Labels: ,

Friday, December 2, 2011

Shopping Traditions part 2

Part 1 here.

Black Friday morning I was in bed before 1:30AM and grabbed a couple hours of sleep before my alarm went off at quarter to six. Anthropologie decided to participate in black Friday for the first time ever with all sale items an additional 50% off. Joyfolie shoes were available for $30 bucks! I had my cart all ready to go, so I just refreshed, clicked check out and hopped back into bed to sleep for another couple of hours.



I may have also check to see what deals Apple had released before heading back to bed. BAD IDEA. The news that the ipod touch, ipad and imac were all marked down may have made me a bit giddy. And may have resulted in me struggling to fall back asleep due to said excitement.

All hypothetical of course.

I was back up at 9am to discover that Endless had at long last, after 2 long years of watching, put my Marc Jacobs purse on sale. 33% off plus 15% cash back through ebates plus free over-night shipping and no sales tax. I happily added some distressed chocolate Frye Melissa button boots to my cart while I was at it. You just can't mess with near 50% savings.




Our final stop of the morning was loading up on fresh wreaths and poinsettias at Home Depot. Every year they offer poinsettias for $.98 and we always stock up.

This year they had a gorgeous variegated variety that is a white/gold shimmer in the center and red on the outside. Similar to the jingle bell variety but without the random splashes of white. Absolutely stunning.



Similar to this but in red and gold.

We celebrated all our Black Friday successes over our Chickfila traditional breakfast, this is Brent's favorite part. :)
Posted by Jen | Our Life Accounts at 8:40 AM Links to this post
2 comments

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Shopping Traditions Part 1

Every year my mom, sisters, husband and I go out on Black Friday and score a bunch of deals. Often we are all looking for wildly different things but we're able to hold each others spot in lines, check out together, take advantage of double promos etc.

This year many stores kicked off their deals Thursday evening and although I feel for employees who were working (though I asked at every single store and lots were making at least time and a half if not double), I still wish stores would do this every year. I love being able to stay up a little bit later and get it all done, rather than sleeping for a few hours and then having to drag myself from my warm bed for several hours and screw up my sleep schedule for a week. But seriously, NO EARLIER. This is the earliest it should go! Hear me on this, DO NOT touch the sacred Thanksgiving meal corporations!

Please do continue to offer all your deals online Thanksgiving day that will be in stores on Friday. That is just magical and will definitely earn my money! We were able to knock out Dick's Sporting Goods, Under Armour & Lands End all by Thursday evening (plus some killer promos on Amazon!). So nice to cut down on the stops.

We arranged our shopping a bit differently this year to accommodate the early openings. Since the Ravens were still playing, Brent stayed home to enjoy the game and keep me updated on what was going on while my mom, sister and I hit up Michaels (open until 10PM), Walmart (deals kicked in at 10PM) and Kohls (opened at midnight).

Target's deals were crap this year and every single remotely good deal they offered was beat by an online retailer that offered free shipping but we were happy to cut a store from the list. I don't really like their return policies anyway, total hassle for the giftee and gifter.

Because we hit Kohls right when they opened and thus didn't join the hundreds who were silly enough to form a line wrapping around Kohls, we walked in with the first 10 people or so when they opened up the doors.

Sidenote: Why do people persist in standing in a non-store sanctioned line while waiting for a store to open? Just because you formed a line, it doesn't mean anything once the doors are opened unless the store has specifically set up a place for a line to form. I will never understand this. Such a waste of time.

Anyway, we were in and out of Kohls so fast. Gathered up our items and were in the line just as the lines started forming. We were in and out in well under forty minutes, a record for Kohls.

At this point some of the deals had included:

MichaelsS
50% of Melissa & Doug
Candy melts for $1
80% off Ribbon
plus addtional 30% off total purchase

Walmart:
DVDs for $1.96
Bluerays for $5 (including Cars 2!)
TV seasons for $9

Kohls:
Barstools for my parents new kitchen at 80% off
20 piece Pyrex set for $15
10 piece CorningWare set for $18
Cable Knit throw for 75% off






There were several other items from the above stores but I know a certain someone occasionally reads this blog and I can't risk spoiling their surprises! Needless to say, I knocked out a good chunk of shopping.

I will end it here and save the rest for tomorrow, this is long enough as it is! Did anyone else score any great deals during Black Friday? The deals seriously get better and better every year. All the naysayers who say that the deals during Black Friday aren't that great are totally off their rockers.
Posted by Jen | Our Life Accounts at 8:24 AM Links to this post
1 comments
Labels:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...