Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Valentine's Day Cookies

This cookie recipe comes from my Mom, as do most of the other cookie recipes I use and have blogged about.  I use this recipe for every season and love it because I always seem to have the five ingredients on hand. They come together quickly and easily and aren't a fussy cookie.



Here is the recipe.

Traditional Rolled Butter Cookies

1/2 pound butter (2 sticks/1 cup)
1 cup confectioners sugar
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Cream the butter.  Add the sugar and mix until light and fluffy.  Add the flour in small amounts, mixing well after each addition.  Add the milk and vanilla last.  Turn out onto a board and kneed for about a half a minute.  Roll out to 1/4 inch thick.  Cut out with cookie cutters.  Bake at 325 degrees for 15-20 minutes.  Watch them closely.  They should be almost white when ready to remove from the oven.  {I almost always double this recipe}.


I typically use a butter frosting to decorate these cookies but for some reason I used a cream cheese frosting this time.  My boys loved the change, so I'll share it with you!

Cream Cheese Frosting

6 ounces softened cream cheese
1/2 cup softened butter
2 teaspoons vanilla or almond extract
4 1/2 to 4 3/4 cups confectioners sugar

Beat together the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla until light and fluffy.  Add the sugar one cup at a time and beat well after each addition.  {This was more than enough frosting to cover the doubled cookie recipe}.


I divided the frosting in half and added a couple of drops of red food coloring to make a lovely shade of pink.  The other half I left white.  Decorate the cookies however you wish!



And so, since we're in the month of love now, I would like to thank all of my lovely readers for reading this little blog and for your sweet emails and questions.  Keep them coming!  I didn't know if I would stick with this blog thing but have found such enjoyment in it and appreciate the friends I have made.  You're all pretty terrific!

Happy February to you all!

Also, thanks Mom for baking such wonderful things for us as kids!

I'm linking up to:

Decor Chick

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

A Play All Day Kind of Day

Jason has been so busy with work lately and the boys can tell.  They weren't getting as much attention from their dad as they usually do and were pretty frustrated about it.  People were getting cranky around here and something had to be done!  I declared last Wednesday as a "play all day" kind of day.  I didn't do any laundry or any cleaning and took the boys sledding instead.  We were at the sledding hill by nine in the morning and spent two and a half hours having fun.  Since we went so early on a school day, we had the hill to ourselves.










This little guy wasn't such a big fan of walking up the hill, so I got my workout in for the day as I pulled him up on the sled a dozen or so times.




I lost track of how many times Henry went up and down that hill.  He was having the time of his life.














A morning of fresh air, exercise, and fun was just what we needed.  If Jason had been there, it would have been perfect.  We spent the rest of the day playing with Legos, tools, coloring, and baking cookies.  It was a pretty great day.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Some Cinnamon Rolls for Your Valentine's Day

Folks, I didn't come up with this idea.  I pinned it on Pinterest from the blog Poppies at Play and wanted to try it out for my three Valentines.  Turns out, making your cinnamon rolls look all lovey-dovey and cute is easy.  Here's what I did to make my cinnamon rolls look like hearts.

Roll out your dough and cover with your cinnamon sugar mixture.


Roll up the dough along the length until it meets in the middle.  You can roll as tight or as loose as you please.


Slice the cinnamon rolls up and place into your pan.


Bake according to your recipe.


Frost and share with the ones you love.


Well hello there, little Valentine rolls!


Have a happy weekend!

And thank you to Poppies at Play for the really cute idea!

Monday, January 23, 2012

Cream of Broccoli Soup

We love Martha's recipe for cream of broccoli soup.  Throw in some shredded cheddar cheese and it is an amazing little bowl of soup.












We had a little bruschetta with our soup and it made for a pretty good meal.  Rubbing a clove of garlic over the pieces of toast is the trick to making them taste extra special, or so those cooking show people say.


I topped half of those little toasts with some Parmesan cheese, sun dried tomatoes, and basil.


The other half got some leftover caramelized onions, kalamata olives, Parmesan, and rosemary.




Winter, you're really not so bad as long as there is soup.

Monday, December 5, 2011

Our Outdoor Christmas Decor

When my husband made me these window boxes this summer, I was already getting excited about decorating them for Christmas.  I knew I wanted to use fresh evergreen boughs and some Christmas lights to add some festive touches to the front of our home.  We bought the evergreen boughs at a local florist shop.  The "dogwood sticks" are just some sticks from our yard that I spray painted "Colonial Red."  We did want to buy real dogwood sticks but they were over eight dollars for a small bunch.  DIYing them ourselves saved us a bundle!








What do you do to decorate the front of your home for Christmas?  Leave a comment and a link if you like so we can all visit!  Happy Monday!

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Our Front Door Winter Wreath


Welcome, December!  I'm so glad you are finally here and at the same time, I know you'll go to fast and be so busy.  You'll be filled with snow, shopping, baking, wrapping, more snow, more shopping, parties, concerts, and the list goes on and on...  I think I just gave myself a headache.  Actually, I'm probably coming down with the boys' cold.  They just got over being sick and seemed to have caught another cold over Thanksgiving.  Oy!  I think I'll end this grinchy paragraph before you think I'm not excited about Christmas.  I am.  I mean, I AM!  To prove how excited I am, I'll share with you our wreath for our front door.

I began with a grapevine wreath.  I hot glued and wired various sizes of pine cones to the front.


I then headed outside and lightly spray painted the pinecones white.  After I was done, this is what I was left with.


I hung the wreath on our front door with a gray satin ribbon.





To give the wreath a little Christmas sparkle, I added some glittered sticks I bought from Michaels.  The best thing about this wreath is that I don't have to take it down with all of the other Christmas decor.  It looks like winter to me and can stay up long past Christmas.

On another note, tonight we will be doing our first Advent devotion and our first activity from our Advent calendar.  Henry and Oliver will be getting a new Christmas coloring book.  Also, Jason and the boys bought me an Elf on the Shelf as an early birthday present!!!  We'll be reading the book tonight and then Jason and I will have fun posing our little elf tonight after the boys go to bed.  I'm pretty excited!  Have a great day!

I'm linking up to:

Simple Home Life

Tatertots and Jello