New Years Eve

The last day of the year and I finally get around to trying two recipes I've been wanting to try for a long time. Once was this grape jelly, I read about on this blog, The Simple Green Frugal Coop. The blogger said she used grape juice and I was excited to see that it might be pretty easy. The jelly we were using had high fructose corn syrup in it and I couldn't bring myself to buy the organic jelly because my kids eat it so fast. We haven't tried it yet but it smelled good when I was cooking it up. Fingers crossed that they'll love it.

The other recipe was homemade marshmallows. I think they either wrote down the wrong size pan or I did something goofy it called for 8 x8 pan and i ended up filling 2 and half pans. Now I'm waiting three hours to try them out.

We are staying home with our kiddos tonight, eating appetizers and hopefully playing card games. Amy just fell asleep on my lap.

I've been looking for some plastic candy canes so I can prim them up for next year. I haven't had any luck finding any on clearance.

Merry Christmas

May you and your family have a Merry Christmas!


We ended up being snowed in last night. It was 16 degrees and it felt like 1 degree. Sleet starting coming down later afternoon and than it turned to snow. My in-laws have a steep driveway and it was icy, so we would have had to park at the bottom and walk up. With Melissa just getting out of the hospital last Saturday we didn't want to take the chance of her falling and hurting herself. We were all pretty disappointed but the sun is out today and we should be able to get over there for a late Christmas dinner.

I pulled out a frozen breakfast casserole I had made earlier in the week, cooking it from the frozen state took forever. I found this recipe for Fastest Cinnamon Buns everybody liked it.




My brother and me, maybe 1967. My mom made the stuffed dogs for us.



Before my mom married my step-dad we would always celebrate Christmas at my Grandpa and Grandma Rinehart's house. It was a lot of fun with all the aunts, uncles and the best part was the cousins.

Our church had Carols, Candles, Cookies and Santa last week. Jaime and Amy were singing, well Jaime was singing, Amy was just having fun.



A picture with Santa with a hooky thing right in the middle.





Today was spent baking cookies and trying to finish up a few Christmas presents.
On the list for today was

Cinnamon Toast white chocolate pretzels

Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies
also made were nut crescents, peanut butter balls and a cheese ball.

Peanut Butter Fudge
Puppy Chow, fudge and Chocolate Peppermint bark were all made the day before.

This is the second time I've made the peppermint bark and both times I screwed up by putting all the white chocolate on the bottom instead of half of it, maybe next year I'll get it right.

I wanted to make these but I don't think it's happening today but hopefully soon.

Update on Melissa and more swap pictures

Melissa's second surgery attempt was December 15th and everything went great. She came home on Saturday, she was glad to be out of the hospital. She's still in pain and has to stay out of school for seven weeks. We're so thankful everything turned out great and she's home for the holiday.










I finally got around to taking pictures of the ornament swaps I was in this year. The first group was our local AP group.



The second group I swapped with was on the Sewing Mamas Forum.




Here are the items I received in the swap I mentioned a couple post back along with the picture of the oven fingertip mitts I made. I'm still making more but absolutely hate bias tape and it hates me especially on curves.

The stocking were hung!

The stockings are hung, the tree is decorated at a 3 year old level, and a few hung at Jaime's arm length. I've been reading all my favorite prim blogs and looking at all their beautiful trees and all the other prim goodies everybody has decorating thei homes. With Melissa in the hospital and spending most of the day with her I haven't decorated as much this year. Before Amy was born I would have one big tree and than a smaller one and than 2 or 3 table top trees. This year so far it's just one tree. I took the one I usually have in the kitchen to the hospital so Melissa can have a little cheer. I'll have to take a picture of my beautiful tree soon.
;-)







This is part of what I sent to my swap partner in the Old Fashion Christmas swap. I did not send the cat leg in the last picture!

Melissa

Volleyball team

Being goofy

Trying to be funny when Jaime didn't feel good


My daughter Melissa has scoliosis and had surgery Tuesday, they had to stop three hours into the surgery take the screws out and close her back up because the nerve monitor went off. The Dr. made sure she could move her hands and feet and she had a MRI and everything looks good so they rescheduled the surgery for next week.

After the nurse told us they stopped the surgery my husband wasn't feeling good and the nurse wanted him to go the ER. Since it was a children's hospital they transferred him to another hospital across the street. Long story short it was caused by stress and he was dehydrated and had a gastric issue and only had to be there a couple hours. They moved her from the PICU to a regular room tonight.

She's enjoying the room service, you can order your meal whenever you're hungry and they deliver it within thirty minutes.

Swap goodies

These are the swap goodies I received from my swap partner Kim. The Old Fashion Christmas swap hosted by Char was a lot of fun. Kim sent a mini bread board with a wonderful smelling cake, two tarts, a santa, lighted Christmas jar, a cute snowman made from an old quilt, a fabric bag ornament,a santa ornament and two bags of bowl fillers.







Kaitlyn made this cute apron in sewing class. I think it would be cute to make a little girls skirt with the pillowcases.


These are some fingertip oven mitts I made for another swap with 3 friends. Bias tape oh how I hate you. The talented ladies made a cute picture frame, holiday kitchen towel and a fancy pin cushion.



Our local AP group had an ornament and playfood swap. This is the sugar cookie dough I made for the swap. Hopefully soon I'll get pictures of both swaps. It was fun to be able to eat good food, talk with friends and go home with new ornaments and playfood.


The kitten in Laura's box of playfood!

Melissa turn 13 on the 19th and had a melt and wax soap party with her friends. This is what the table looked like afterwards.





I made 30 of these for a couple ornament swaps I did and there asre still more cut out to make.

Happy late Thanksgiving! We had a wonderful dinner and time with family.


This is our no name kitty. We can't agree on a name so he's just kitty now.



Kaitlyn and Melissa hamming it up!





Every year I try to get a good picture of the girls together and so far no luck, if one looks good two others don't. I'm still holding out for a good picture.




We get together once a week with friends this time we made turkey hand-prints. The kids had a lot of fun getting their hands painted.