Christmas Candy

I told you I'd write a post about our candy making session today - and so I shall. Of course, being the amateur blogger that I am, I forgot to take my camera along. But DBiL to the rescue! He was willing to loan me his and then emailed me the photos while I was still there so I could get this posted tonight! Awesome guy.

The blizzard has finally been wrangled under control by the local snow plows, so I was able to make it to Sis's house without incident. However, when I got there, the nephew was down for his afternoon nap (don't we all wish we still got to do that?), so we got to work pretty quickly. Mom, Sis and I had 6 pounds of chocolate to melt down and either mix things into it or coat things with. We started with my personal favorite, peanut butter balls (as seen below):

Mom immediately started work on her favorite, peanut clusters:

And I totally forgot to get a picture of Sis's work on the dipped pretzels...nummilicious!

Below you can see a shot of Mom getting ready to break apart the coconut she had coated all over the tin foil to make coconut bark. Can we say good?

(By the way, I told Mom I'd tell her if there were any eligible men out there - so if you're lurking out there, speak up! LOL)

Of course we had to have an official taste tester. And who better than the darling nephew when he woke up from his nap?? He kept asking for "nummies" all evening - I think they were a hit!

Below is the Mother Load of our work. We spent a little over 2 hours working on this and we figure we've got roughly 15 pounds of chocolate candy to enjoy over the various Christmas celebrations we'll be attending this year. Not too shabby!

We all had a great time today with much laughter and story-telling. And I got to see nephew's new favorite face. I secretly call it his Evil Face. Just don't tell him I said that!

I came home with those 3 little tubs you see in the picture above. I figure that will satisfy DH and my sweet teeth for at least a week or two ;) Oh shoot! I forgot to get some for the in-laws....well, I guess I'll have to make another trip down the road before Christmas to get that plate all set.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Snow Day!!

We have been under a blizzard warning since 1:00 yesterday afternoon. It's supposed to last until 4:00 this afternoon. We've got snow, wind, ice and more wind. Brrr, it's cold outside!!

DH and I piled in the car this morning to attempt our normal 45 minute commute to work, but after spending 20 minutes to get about 10 miles down the road, we decided to call it quits. Especially when the Interstate was covered with snow...we travel west to work, and it's always worse the closer you get to Lake Michigan. Lake effect snow and all that...

I'm back home now, in my pj's and fuzzy pink slippers and loving every minute of it! DH is out playing with his new snowblower, and looking to be loving that, too! Hehe, men are so weird sometimes. I'll stay inside, thank you very much!

I have one gift I'm planning to make this year for Christmas, although, if I don't get it done, it's not that big of a deal. My little niece certainly won't miss it for want of the amount of gifts she's getting from us. Yes, DH and I wen't a little crazy this year on the neices and nephews....well, crazy for us anyway. No, I think today I'll be spending more time with this little lovely..

I've been working on the quilting for this one for about 7 years now. It is the second quilt I ever pieced and it was supposed to go to DH when it was done. However, it's just too small for him. He likes long quilts or afghans over him when he's watching tv. So, I've asked DH to build me a quilt rack for our blank dining room wall, and I hope to have this quilt hanging up for Christmas. I doubt it will happen, though - I haven't even started the border yet! Oh well, it's a goal, and goals are a good thing right now.

Saturday I'm planning to go over to Sis's house and make our Christmas candy with her and Mom. DH has decided to opt out this year (so much for building a Christmas tradition). I'll try to remember to take the camera so I can post some pictures. It's always been a blast in years past, I hope we have a fun time again this year.

Ok, time to go wrap up in my quilt and stay warm!! Have a great day everyone!

How long has it been?

Wow - over a month! I didn't mean to stay away so long, but, well, you know how it goes.

I finally got my computer upstairs set up with wireless internet, so now I can surf and post anytime I want (no more waiting for DH to get off the computer downstairs). We're still working out the kinks up here, but we do have the basics.

I've been in a bit of a slump this week, not working on much of anything. Maybe I'm still recuperating from Thanksgiving. I know I'm about a week behind in getting my Christmas decorations up. I finally got the tree up Friday and decorated today. We usually have this all finished the day after Thanksgiving.

Well, this year, we hosted Thanksgiving here - we've hosted for the last 5 or 6 years I guess. Mom, sis, brother-in-law and nephew came over. It was small, but very nice. We had the usual turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet bread, homemade white bread, rolls, cranberry relish, Sis's green bean casserole, 7-layer salad, pink stuff (cottage cheese salad) and yams. All topped off with pumpkin pie and cherry cheesecake for dessert. It was wonderful. And the best part of the day? Sis wouldn't leave until all the dishes were washed! I think that was what I was most thankful for on Thanksgiving. Of course, having Mom in good health is a great blessing as well.

DH and I ventured out on Black Friday to attempt to get some deals at 2 area stores. We managed to snag the things we were hunting for, but whew! What an adventure! We were up by 3:30, and at the first store by 4:30. We picked up the one thing we wanted there - a wireless router - and were out the door by 5:15. Not too bad. We then crossed the street to stand in line at Menards with the other crazies, I mean shoppers. After watching many people cut in line, 3 right in front of us (and oh yeah, I went and spoke with them sharply. They will just have to live with the karma they are earning), we finally were able to enter the store. Talk about rude people! I had one little lady shoving me from behind when all I could see in front of me was a mass of people. I finally turned around and told her to stop shoving me, there was nowhere to go. She attempted to explain that she just HAD to get through, so I informed her there was "NOWHERE FOR YOU TO GO!" She finally backed off. Sheesh! But we were eventually victorious there, too, and were out of the store by 6:15. I do believe these were new records :)

We then went home and I went back to bed. DH proceeded to return the wireless router as it didn't work, thus losing the sale price (I made sure to inform him before I went back to bed that if it didn't work, he should hold onto it until they got more in stock and we would exchange it). Oh well...what can you do?

We got our first real snowstorm of the season this week. It came down so fast Thursday night that we woke up to 3 inches on the ground when we had grass the night before. When DH went out to clean off the car, about 10 minutes later he came back in announcing we weren't going to work that day. Yay! He said he couldn't clean off one side fast enough before the other side was covered again...no way was he going to try to navigate the roads when it was like that! So we had another long weekend this week and did I get anything done? Not really. I mean, I got the tree up, and some cleaning done, but nothing spectacular...nothing worthy of three days of free time. Oh well...

Oh! We did make it to the big craft show in our town yesterday. We were able to get gifts for about half of our family in one swoop! And, we found 2 Jim Shore figurines to add to my collection for a total of $10! It totally made my day :)

Well, that about gets you caught up for the last month or so...Sorry about no pictures this time, I'll work on that and see how the new computer likes them. Meanwhile, welcome to my 2nd follower! I can't see who you are just yet, but I see there are now 2 of you!

Erin walks away mumbling to herself about getting DH to get this computer up to par soon.