Christmas Creations

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! This time of year is always super busy, so I haven't had time to do my usual posts, but I at least wanted to share some of my culinary creations of the season!

It's a pinecone!
I used my favorite cheese ball recipe, shaped it into a pear-shape, then placed roasted pecans on the top. I finished it up with a sprig from our Christmas tree.

Viola!


Now this was my prize....a 6 layer rainbow cake. This sucker took me 6 hours to complete! It was totally worth it, and the baking process was great therapy during the craziness of the holiday season. Kellen's mom's birthday is Christmas Eve, and since we got married I have taken over making her Birthday cake. This year she requested a classic white cake with butter cream frosting...and you know me, I had to sass it up a bit. I think I set myself up for failure next year.

I only had two 8-inch round bakers, so I had to do it two colors at a time and allowing full cooling time in between. (patience got the best of me that day!)

I leveled each layer before assembly, and this was my 'scrap' pile. I thought it was fun :)

slowly but surely...

Finally all 6 layers assembled!

crumb coating
I had to make like 4 batches of icing!

Perhaps one of my favorite things about this cake was that it looks like a usual tall cake on the outside...it was such a surprise to everyone when we cut into it.

SURPRISE!

I made sure to 'ROYGBV' the colors as Kel's brother is a science teacher ;)

It was so yummy and festive!

Hope everyone is Merry and Bright, like this cake!

I am totally gonna make this for Christmas morning this year!

Click for deliciousness

3rd Annual Baking Day!

It's that time again- for Gretchen and my's annual baking day! I look forward to this every year. We both agree that we have gotten way more efficient since our first year (and I didn't kill any pans this time!). The keys: baking the sugar cookies in advance, and making some of the doughs the night before. Also, foil and wax paper are life savers. We made rolled sugar cookies, peanut butter surprise cookies, mint chocolate chip cookies, buckeyes, chocolate fudge, peanut butter chocolate fudge, white chocolate mix, and peppermint bark. wew! Here were some of the sights:

we estimated that we used 4 lbs of white chocolate and 5+ lbs of milk chocolate!

double batch of white chocolate mix

we busted out another table for things to cool on this year!

buckeyes

we used peppermint m&m's instead of going through the mess of crushing up peppermints

peanut butter surprise cookies

candy canes, snowmen with scarves, stars, wreathes with bows and berries, christmas trees with stars on top, and peace signs!

annual picture

what baking day would be complete without someone burning themselves? last year it was me, and this year it was poor gretchen :(

Jason was Santa's little helper


This is a total side note, but you know me and glitter- I went all out during the fall and right now I can't find any motivation. I did do these monograms that look really pretty in the middle of a wreath. You can see ours from the road!

Circle of Lights

This last weekend Kellen and I went downtown for a little romantic holiday get-away. Seeing as I have NO decorations up (just not feeling it this year), I thought it might help put me more into the holiday spirit. It was perfect. Did it motivate me to bring down my boxes? Nope, not yet, but now I am more open-minded to getting them out at least. We do have our tree up!

We shopped all day (during the festive snow storm! I enjoyed it because I didn't have to drive in it), checked into our hotel downtown, got dressed up for happy hour (gotta love embassy suites), an amazing dinner at Morton's, and a walk around the Circle of Lights. I just love our downtown during the holidays!

Ready for happy hour

All bundled up to walk to Morton's.

After dinner at the Circle.
Even though we were way full, we still had to get hot chocolate from
South Bend Chocolate Company ;)

The next day, we slept in, had breakfast, and walked around the circle again during the daytime. AND we just might have gotten another hot chocolate ;)

They sure know how to treat you special here!

We found the cherub for good luck!

What a pleasant treat! My 2-year old God-daughter and infant I took care of at work, Evangeline, came to visit me! She is the most darling little thing. I just love her family too- I am so lucky to let them share her life with me. Isn't she a hambone?!

Craft Day

Last night we had our weekly dinner with our dearest friends, Jason and Gretchen. Gretchen surprised me with my Christmas present, EARLY! She knew we were going out to cut our Christmas Tree this weekend, and she schemed this up with Kellen :) She handmade me a tree skirt. I was so in shock, I didn't know what to say. It was so beautiful it brought tears to my eyes. Let me give you a bit of history: Kel and I haven't had a tree skirt on our tree since our married lives. We always just used a blanket. I could never justify spending the money for the really nice ones I wanted (don't you feel me- they are way too $ for what they really are!), and never had any luck with the sales after Christmas. This was one of the sweetest gifts I have ever been given. I am so in love with it. It is totally me, too! I will think of Gretchen every time I see it.

Classic white and silver poinsettias.
It is HUGE!

I couldn't get a photo that gave it justice; it has so much detailing

So after talking to her a little bit about how she made it, this inspiration carried over to another project I have been working on before even receiving this. I got the idea from Crate & Barrel's holiday catalog....I had an old red pillow (I almost threw it out- so glad I didn't!) that I spruced up for the holidays. I then added a 'touch of gretch' to make the pillow coordinate with my tree skirt.

Total cost: $1.25 for the felt
Step One: Cut out the felt in different sized circles. They don't have to be perfectly round.

Step two: Lay out your shape and hot glue around the parameter, overlapping the pieces so they get ruffled.

Continue filling it in. I added some variations in color and cut out a white dove on top :)

Tada! I added the tree skirt to match my real one! In person it is soft and feminine because of the ruffles, but the textures and colors keep it from being overly girley. I think it looks pretty close to the 'real' one, don't you (below)?!