Christmas recap

Today is the 12th day of Christmas, which means that I am officially not too late to post about everything that we did for Advent and Christmas. At least that's the excuse I'm allowing myself for taking so long to get everything put together.

We had a busy month of seeing family, cooking, and activities! As a review, here's what I thought we would do this Advent:

• Cut down/choose our Christmas tree  check! Posted about here
• Decorate the tree check! Posted about here
• Decorate coffee mugs using porcelain pens Kind of a bust. My Porcelaine pen dried out so I tried a Sharpie like Pinterest recommends... and it wiped off in part in the dishwasher. Michaels doesn't carry those pens anymore, so I'm trying Martha Stewart paints. We'll see.
• Watch a Christmas movie together in Mommy & Daddy's bed check! John and LE watched lots of old Christmas shows together before bedtime
• Make snow angels a big bust; post coming
• Go sledding also a bust; post coming
• Make snowman  check! Posted about here.
• Make mint scented playdough check! Did that just today
• Make cornstarch ornaments (like salt dough but comes out bright white) check! post coming
• Decorate Christmas cookies with church check! got cancelled due to our blizzard. Decorated with friends and at home instead
• Drive around to look at Christmas lights check! Lots of informal times with just LE, H, and me. LE loved it. But... when we went out intentionally as a family of 4, Hannah screamed the first time and LE decided she saw enough the second time.
• Make s'mores in our fire pit Not even close
• Decorate gingerbread houses or ice cream cone Christmas trees check! we did gingerbread men, trees, and snowflakes instead (posts coming)
• Shop for a kid on the angel tree check! It wasn't an angel tree, but it was for a little 2 1/2 year old homeless girl who we heard needed clothes
• Make footprint Christmas trees and reindeer faces check! Though I already packed them away without taking a picture of. Woops! Maybe I'll show you when we unpack them next year. ;) 
• (Truth in the Tinsel has daily crafts that correspond with the reading, too) We only sort of did this and played with the nativity set a lot instead.

So, all in all, we did a pretty good job, I think. I'll go into detail over the next few days sharing some of the highlights.

Hope you all had a great Christmas!

Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Balls

Cookie exchanges are among us! I made these easy peanut butter balls as my contribution to cookie platters for the volunteer teachers who play with and teach LE for two hours on Thursdays. She adores them and often has to be dragged away when the two hours are up.

I found this recipe on Pinterest. Though it took a long time to patiently dip each ball, these were really easy to make and don't use the oven. The nice thing about these is that you can start and stop at any point without affecting the end product.

I imagine you could speed up the dipping process by doing it the way that the original poster does it-- get a big spoonful of chocolate and use your fingers to dip the ball. I'm not keen on using my hands all over the food I'm going to distribute, especially if it's uncooked. Even with washed hands, I feel dirty doing it. That's just me.

To get around rolling the balls in my hands, I quickly made all of the balls with a small portion scoop. Then, I dipped them one by one by balancing a ball on a fork, dipping it into the chocolate,  and scraping the bottom against the edge of the bowl or another fork to remove the excess chocolate.

(Instagram phone photo)

Chocolate Dipped Peanut Butter Balls

Adapted slightly from this recipe
Makes approximately 70 balls

You can easily scale this down or up depending on your needs. It's wise to have some extra chocolate chips handy in the event that you run out. I used 1 3/4 bags total.

Ingredients
1 jar smooth peanut butter, 18 oz (I used Simply Jif)
4 tbs butter, melted
1 lb (approx 3 cups) powdered sugar
3 cups Rice Krispies cereal
1 bag milk chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli)
1 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli 60% Cacao)

In a large bowl, mix together (by hand with a sturdy spoon or by electric mixer) peanut butter, melted butter, and powdered sugar. Add the cereal and stir/mix until a ball. Add more peanut butter if you need more glue or powdered sugar if it's too sticky. (I didn't need to do any adjustments.)

Scoop with a small 1 1/2 tsp portion scoop the peanut butter mixture onto a lined cookie sheet or two (parchment paper, wax paper, or Silpat all work). Alternatively, roll into a ball in your hands 1 1/2 tsp of the mixture.

In a heatproof small bowl, heat together half of each type of chocolate in the microwave. Start at one minute on 50% power, stir, then 30 second 50% power increments until it's all completely melted and smooth. (Alternatively, use a double-boiler or glass bowl over a saucepan with barely simmering water).

Using a fork or your fingers, dip the balls one by one into the bowl, scrape and drip off the excess chocolate, and place on the lined cookie sheet. Continue with all the balls, reheating the chocolate as needed.

If you desire to add sprinkles, do a few at a time so that the chocolate isn't too soft (the sprinkles will slide down) or hard (they won't stick).

Refrigerate until the chocolate is completely firm then store in an airtight container in the fridge. These can be eaten at room temp or cold. These also freeze well.

Enjoy!

Granola Nut Clusters

It's not secret that I follow the Smitten Kitchen blog and love almost all of the recipes that I've made from there. Deb recently posted the recipe for these granola nut clusters, and I have to spread the word. I made these 5 times in one week because everyone who had them said they loved them and wanted the recipe.

I was surprised by how fast and easy these were. It only takes a food processor, 5-10 minutes of hands on time, and 20-30 minutes in the oven.  I like to save for breakfast the leftover granola that doesn't stick to the nut after baking. You could give these as neighbor gifts in lieu of sweets. I'm sure you'd be thanked!

Since I really didn't change the recipe from how it was written, I'm going to just send you to Smitten Kitchen to see how they're done.

the first (real) snow

It snowed our first real snow of the season on Sunday, December 9. We have had a couple of days of flurries before, but this was the first snow that actually accumulated.

John took Monday off of work since he has been traveling so much lately, and we got to build our first ever snowman. The snow packed well and was the perfect type for building a snowman.

LE had a wardrobe malfunction and lost her mittens. It looks like she's holding an invisible snowball here, but I really think she was just brushing the snow off of her hands.

Fast forward a ball or two, and here's John putting on the finishing touches! Coal for the eyes and buttons, a carrot for the nose, and cranberries for the mouth. We don't live near many trees, so we don't have arms yet. We did bring home some of LE's "trees" from the tree farm; maybe we could add those in later.

Here are the proud snowman creators with the finished product. The snowman looks really cute in our backyard.

Speaking of really cute, we can't forget Hannah! She was there, too. It's not really all that easy to take photos and try to rock a baby at the same time.

During LE's nap, John went out to buy a super tall ladder to put up our Christmas lights. H and I helped (mostly moral support mixed with a little ladder support). We snapped a couple of photos with our phone.

trimming the tree & cookies with friends

John left for a trip the day after we brought our glorious tree inside, so I set up the tripod to capture just a couple of photos of the girls and me. I wasn't going for award-winning photos here; I just wanted to document that I was, in fact, present, too! 

LE and I decorated our tree together while Hannah napped. This was the only time that she was allowed to touch the tree. Surprisingly, this hasn't even been a temptation for her.

After the last ornament was hung, LE snatched up her whole collection of nativity kings and Christmas sock monkeys (she has 4) and demanded, "Take a picture!"

We then went to my friend Monica's house for a quick cookie decorating playdate. Monica has two kiddos-- Oliver and Natalie-- whom LE adores. "Olligar" is a year older than LE, and "Nallie" is a year younger. 

In case you weren't aware, decorating cookies is very serious business.

Advent traditions are well underway!