holiday sweets & treats!

I am just going to go ahead and say it, I am damn proud of my baking efforts this Christmas.  I'm not much of a baker, chef, or candlestick-maker, but I put forth the effort this year and I'm just going to go ahead and boast.

While my family was visiting, I felt like a powerful woman with all the "free time" (aka someone else was watching the dog and the baby) and I went to the kitchen like one of those women you see in old movies that bake because they're nervous.  Brandon said, "holy crap, why do you keep baking more?"  I just couldn't stop myself, I was overcome with the ghost of christmas bakers past.

I started my baking journey with the ever favorite sugar cookies & boiled icing; both recipes from my late Gram Adams.  When we were little girls, every holiday we would make the trek two doors up the street to my grandma's house to bake sugar cookies and ice them.  It was a full day event and all the granddaughters would join in the fun.  The table was caked with flour and our bellies full of raw dough be the end of the day, but we sure cookie-cutter'ed and ice'd the heck out of about 10 dozen cookies.  After four years of Gram's passing, I am still trying to perfect the icing, just can't get it yet - but I'm getting a little better each time.  I made the dough and icing earlier that morning, and then slapped my sisters in some aprons and put their behinds to work!

By the end of all that flour mess-making, laughing, and creating of weird designs; we had ourselves 5 dozen of delicious sugar cookies.  here's to you gram; my best attempt at your icing - miss you everyday.



Know that your great grandson is enjoying your icing recipe, Gram!

I also got a deliciously amazing recipe from tasteasyougo.com called Montana whoppers.  They are basically chocolate chip oatmeal cookies on uppers, and by uppers I mean with milk chocolate & white chocolate chips AND mini m&m's.  The recipe is here if you feel like totally blowing your diet before your new years resolution kicks in.


waah!  messy kitchen!!

Then it was a quick toss in the oven for our store-bought sugar cookies for our December kindness; deliver cookies to St. Mary's of Asbury's.  Those are no trouble, but are much appreciated by the folks over at St. Mary's. 

Then I made some chocolate covered pretzel sticks and my baby sis reluctantly helped decorate them.  The secret to melting the chocolate; which somehow I forget every single time I make these, is that you put the chocolate in a pan on top of a pan of water.  Then the boiling water, melts the chocolate in pan above.  If you just melt the chocolate in a pan right on the stove burner, you'll get what I get at the start of making these, not kidding, every single time:  burnt chocolate.  You'd think a girl would learn? I'm blaming it on how nutty I was at that point from all the raw dough and chocolate intake!?



final products!!

Later in the week, I hesitantly baked up some pumpkin roll.  I know, one holiday too late, but Brandon has been pleading with me to try it out since before Thanksgiving (oops) and I finally caved and tried it out for the first time.  It was suprisingly easy and delicious.  I even threw in some coconut into the cream cheese filling for my hubs.  best wife ever?  yes, if you don't count the fact its a month late.

Bully has the best day ever...

While my family was visiting, Bully had a great day when almost all of us went outside and chased him around the yard.  We played keep away, football, and some snow tackles were in order for everyone (thanks, Dad!)  Bullet had a blast running all over the backyard and getting so much attention from so many people!

After all that release of pent up energy, Bullet threw up twice in the garage and then went to sleep.  That's basically the equivalent of dog complete happiness.  hah.

photo editing is a girl's best friend

We have a good camera, thanks to one of my birthday presents in years gone by from  my hubby.  We have a Nikon D40x and I have given that thing a beating over the year.  But it withstands all of my abuse and produces beautiful pictures.  Definitely worth the money if you're looking for a better camera that can withstand the test of time. 

I am no photographer, although I aspire to be - however with my great camera my pictures usually come out pretty nice.  But I didn't know how nice I could make my pictures until I was introduced to Picasa. 

First of all, I love google and any products that were produced from the womb of google are automatically in my good graces.  A few blogs in the past, I mentioned that I use google to create my header collages (love) and I've been using it ever since to create collages, as if you haven't noticed.  But I've recently discovered the amazing feats that Picasa can do to my pictures to make them even more memorable and adorable.

The thing with me is that between the job, baby, dog, husband, blogging, house work, and normal hygiene - I do not have time to go through every picture and edit it.  I'm sorry I can't be bothered with photoshop or picnik.  Photoshop has waaay too many options for me and it takes too long for my pics to upload to picnik.  I have found that Picasa is the quickest, idiot-friendliness, laziest, and easiest ways to get my pictures looking gorgeous with just a few clicks!

So here's the original taken with our awesome camera.  Pretty freaking cute pic of my son in the bathtub making a goofy face.  I could have just left it be, right?

Once I upload my pics to my computer, they go straight into Picasa.  So it's easy for me to edit them right there.  This picture stood out to me as one of my favorites, so I took a few minutes to edit it before it made it to facebook.  hah.   Following are a variety of edits I made to the original to give its cuteness some different flavahs.

Title:  My little blue eyed booboo bear.

The Picasa edits for this one included: croping, film grain, and color temperature decrease.

Title:  Retro booboo

Picasa edits include:  cropping, highlighting, shadow increase, fill light, and warmify

Title:  perfect babydoll booboo

Picasa edits include:  cropping, fill light, shadow, highlights, filtered black&white

Title:  Mumma's baby
(this one's my favorite both visually and ease in editing)

Picasa edits:  cropping, "I'm feeling lucky" button

Lesson for the holiday:  Snap away!  You can edit until the pictures look professional in your FREE download of Picasa.  seriously, I love it.