Our Christmas Card

Well I will finally get our Christmas Cards in the mail, Yep ON CHRISTMAS EVE!! OH Good heavens, I really thought I would do better this year. Ummm..... Well......since I have not sent any out for the last 3 YEARS I guess I am doing BETTER! lol This was the best Photo I managed to get of Kaylie in her Christmas Dress so yep I am using the same one as my blog header. I love her in her little dress and I really love how much of a kick Justin gets out of putting her in cute little clothes :) He is such a good Daddy!

I am wishing for all of you a very BLESSED CHRISTMAS and a Wonderfully Happy 2008!

Credits are:
Tracy Ann Frippery Music
Shabby Miss Jenn Christmas Cards
Christmas Joy is from the wonderful free kit Whimsical Wonderland by a great group of gals!

Maybe the strangest Recipe ever!

Caramel in a Can

So I had to try this recipe Kayla posted on her blog, sounded almost to good to be true! BUT Oh GOOD GOLLY let me tell you it is YUMMY! Strange recipe but YUMMY results.

So here is the start so you can see, 'yes you put the cans right in the water' boil for 3 hours making sure to keep water over the cans at all times. Not sure what would happen if you didn't but if I am going to work on something for 3 hours I want to be sure and do it right! lol Here it is afterwards. Pour it in a bowl, add a teaspoon of vanilla, stir it all up and like I said

OH BABY!!! YUMMMMM

I didn't take a photo of what it looked like when it 1st came out of the can and I should have because it is sorta yucky looking. But as soon as you stir it, it becomes this beautiful flow of golden tastiness. hee hee

This is what Kayla's looks like finished, I have not made my labels yet. But if you go over to her blog she has a template all ready for you to download. That way you don't have to bother with measuring, it is all ready to go! Pop on over to Kayla's blog and check out her Gingerbread man freebie and story. Love her blog!

Thank you KAYLA!!!

Sunset tonight

What an amazing sunset this evening. Even stranger because it was more to the south of us than it was in the west! Because the hill goes up to the south of our house I had to take this thru the window, so it is a little grainy. But still beautiful! Off to watch 'Amazing Grace' catch ya later :) - Brooke

Kaylie and the Tree Ornaments

As soon as we put our tree up Kaylie started this little 'blowing' thing. We told her it was a 'pretty' and she couldn't touch. So her compromise was to 'blow' on it! Totally cracked us up. She comes in and wants to look at each ornament, so I tell her all about them, then she gets real close and sorta squats down sticking her little rear out. Oh my gosh it is just to cute :) No she is not eating the tree here this is just another shot of her 'pose' as she blows on the tree. Gramma has a few things that she is not allowed to touch so the blowing thing works pretty darn good!! As you can tell I am having lots of fun with the Totally Rad Actions!
This one is probably my favorite shot so far, just makes me smile :) See the little white bear ornament in the bottom right corner? Our friend Julie made that YEARS ago, it was our son Justin's favorite ornament. If you squeeze it's tummy it plays a song, that goes on for a long time (so long that Justin's sister Amber hid it from him one year cause it was driving her crazy) That is the ornament that Kaylie can touch, along with the felt mittens. I pretty much put the non-breakable ones within her reach just to be on the safe side :)
We get to have my 94 year old Gramma come and spend Christmas with us and I am just tickled pink!!

Girls Nite Out with a Twist - Cookie Swap

Finally here are the photos of the yummy cookies everyone made! These are sugar cookies I used a stamp with food coloring on! Yep got it right out of 'Martha' I would use a different cookie recipe next time cause while these are fine, the were not Fabulous!! These are the ones Phyllis made, the candy kiss is a cherry cordial, YUMMY

This is Laura's cookie, nice gingerbread cookies with peppermint kisses on this one

Caroline made 2 different kinds, I need to get the recipes to get them all posted so I am not sure of names on these. This one reminds me of a spice cookie, nice and chewy :)
Patricia made these Almond Crescents, I LOVE this cookie. Melt in your mouth!
Tina made these mini muffins. They have a bit of powdered sugar on them from one of the other cookies. She took some into work that she called 'dud muffins' cracked me up. Ones that were not quite as full, but still tasted yummy.

These are the ones Andrea and Darcie brought but they cheated and had Gramma make them! lol Sour cream sugar cookies, my favorite recipe for sugar cookies.
These are Lime Meltaways, another recipe I grabbed from Martha! We LOVE these, sort of a shortbread texture, light and crisp. But the recipe says it will make 10 doz, oh good grief NO WAY!! I had to make 3 batches to get my 8 doz for the swap and 1 doz for the family to much on!
This is another Caroline Cookie, I think it is either a Rachel Ray recipe or an Emeril recipe cause she said it was a new recipe and she loves watching both of those cooking shows!
Last but not least this is Regina's sugar cookie, this is my favorite way to have a sugar cookie. With no frosting, YUM
This was the 1st cookie swap I have ever hosted and I learned a few things from this one. Both of the sugar cookies came in at the same time so I thought they were just one batch. I did the separating of the cookies while the gals soaked their feet. Well I messed up, I gave everyone the correct amount of cookies but since I baked 2 batches I should have received 2 batches. Silly me, I only baked 2 because I had only received 7 rsvps so I figured I would make it EASY! What a dorko I can be. But all is good I just sent the two sugar cookie gals home with extra cookies so no problemo!

I picked up some cute snowman platters to put the cookies on and made all of the gals a little ornament to take home. I thoroughly enjoyed the evening!!

Tomorrow I will post photos of the gals soaking their feet, drinking wine and just relaxing :)

New header

Ok, I see I still need to work on the size of my new header. FINALLY I made a header, I know, I Know I am way way behind but things are going to start to slow down now and I will try and catch up :)

Hubby is ready to watch a movie so I will have to fix the header tomorrow. Night all!

Shutterfly book and re-doing layouts!

I am working on getting layouts ready for a shutterfly book. I want to do Kaylie's 1st year in one book. The problem is as I am going thru some of the 1st layouts I made, I am not liking them so much! So it is taking lots longer to get the layouts ready because I keep re-doing things. Some I just add a bit to or move but this one I totally re-did. Now my ?? is, did I make it better or not? I like it better but then am I going to come back in a month and say 'What in the heck was I thinking?? lol

So what is your opinion, better before or after??

Credits for the original layout:
Chipboard Calendar and Circle template: Misty Cato
Paper, Ribbon and Flower: Sara Marie
Font: CK Good Day

Credits for the updated layout are:
Chipboard Calendar and Circle template: Misty Cato
Everything else is Tracy Ann (TADA) lots of Frippery