Archive for December, 2007
My Birthday and X-mas were good. I am now 22 and keep forgetting most of the time because it doesn’t feel any different.. it never does until you look back on the past few years and realize how time flies. But anyways, I got some nice things. My grandma had tons of gifts for everyone and my daughter loved opening gifts but there were just so many that by the time she finished she was pretty pooped out from opening gifts. She had double the gifts because she opened her brother’s too since he’s too young! She kept busy with new toys for a few days and then got kinda bored of them as the days passed hehe. She still does play with a lot of them though. My little boy got lots of cute new clothes!
Dinner was yummy and by the end of the day we were all ready to pass out.. from getting up early and then fussing about all day.
I’ve been baking a lot during the holiday season. I’ve made lots of cookies, fudge, cakes and other things. I recently got a new cookie press for my birthday and the spritz cookies I make with it have to be my favorite thing I’ve baked lately. Everyone else who has tried them, loves them also!
Not only are they fairly simple but they are so fun too! You can make such a variety of them because of all the different shapes that come with the press and you can also add food coloring to them if you want and decorate them very pretty. There is also a chocolate version. I’m going to be making a lot of these cookies!
| 1 | cup butter, softened |
| 1/2 | cup sugar |
| 2 1/4 | cups Gold Medal® all-purpose flour |
| 1/4 | teaspoon salt |
| 1 | egg |
| 1/4 | teaspoon almond extract or vanilla |
| Food color, if desired | |
| Currants, raisins, candies, colored sugar, finely chopped nuts, candied fruit or fruit peel, if desired |
| 1. | Heat oven to 400ºF. Beat butter and sugar in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed, or mix with spoon. Stir in flour, salt, egg, almond extract and a few drops of food color. |
| 2. | Place dough in cookie press. Form desired shapes on ungreased cookie sheet. Decorate with currants. |
| 3. | Bake 5 to 8 minutes or until set but not brown. Immediately remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. To decorate cookies after baking, use a drop of corn syrup to attach decorations to cookies. |
Oh by gosh, by golly, it’s time for mistletoe and holly,
Tasty pheasants, Christmas presents,
Countrysides covered with snow.
Oh by gosh, by jingle,
It’s time for carols and Kris Kringle.
Overeating, merry greetings
From relatives you don’t know.
Then comes that big night,
Giving the tree a trim.
You’ll hear voices by starlight
Singing yuletide hollers…
Oh by gosh, by golly,
It’s time for mistletoe and holly,
Fancy ties and Grandma’s pies
And folks stealing a kiss or two,
As they whisper Merry Christmas to you.
We have Christmas lights outside on our balcony, we have colored lights all around and we also have a snowman and a candy cane hanging. Well I went to turn them on and had this weird feeling so I looked over the balcony to look at them and I noticed that a whole row of lights were out.
For a few seconds I was really baffled and wasn’t sure what happened, I thought maybe they broke somehow.. well after I looked closer I realized that 7 lights were actually pulled out of the line. Obviously some kids did this as a prank thinking it was funny. It actually made me pretty upset.. how could someone do this to someone’s Christmas lights *sigh*
Well on a more pleasant note, we received a Christmas package today from Omaha Steak’s. I would’ve never expected it but it is pretty cool. Fillet mignon, omaha steak’s burgers and some au gratin potatoes.
Me and my daughter also went outside and looked at some Christmas lights hanging before she went to bed. There’s actually some pretty nice displays around here.
I had an alright weekend. My brother came over on Saturday. This made my daughter pretty happy because it gave her someone new to play with. We had a good dinner together, watched movies, talked and played games.
On Sunday I got the kids all dressed up in their Christmas outfits and tried taking pictures of them by the tree. I got some pretty cute ones of them but my daughter wasn’t being too cooperative, she seemed like she didn’t want to take pictures when usually she does. I want to send out a nice Christmas card with their pictures to some people for the Holidays, I thought it was a really cute idea.
I wanted to take them to get professional pics but decided doing it myself seemed more special and is of course less money = )
My heart goes out to all of the people and families involved in the Nebraska mall shooting. It is really horrible how the boy had to involve so many other people and then kill himself.
I really believe that the institution that he was staying in should have been more on top of things and should have realized that he was not ready to leave. With his history of threatening to kill his step mother and of possessing drugs I believe he was put into the ward for a reason. I personally don’t believe that these places do enough to help people and don’t take things seriously enough… if they did there would be fewer dead today.
I don’t even know what to say about Maruca-Kovac, a supposed close friend to the boy. She had seen him with a gun and said she thought it was too old to work(yeah right) and then she got a call from him saying there was a note.. she thought he was going to commit suicide but she still didn’t do anything!
She said the note said something about him and that he will be famous now.. I doubt he really cares about the fame.. he obviously just had some problems that nobody was helping him with.
What a horrible time of year for such a tragedy. Again, my heart goes out to the boy and all involved.
Christmas is a great time of year to me, not only because of the extra presents and the fact that it’s my birthday either! I love the beautiful decorations, lights and displays, the shopping, the feeling, the baking, the food and the music. It can bring such a nice feeling to my life.
I’ve already put up lights outside that look very nice if i do say so myself. I decorated a Christmas tree too. Just a 4 foot one this year.. we don’t have that much room and it fits perfectly. My daughter helped me put some of the decorations on it, I think she had a blast. I plan on baking lots of different kinds of cookies this year also. My grandma has always baked dozens and dozens of different cookies every year and this year we’re going to combine our batches.
The shopping can be kind of hectic but rewarding when I see the looks on my Children’s faces Christmas morning when they get to open all of their gifts. That is the absolute best part of it all!
I hope it will be a Happy Birthday to me and a very Merry Christmas..
