Sickness strikes and so does Mommy!

It seems as though our family is always sick around the holidays. This weekend I became sick, as did little miss Lia. I am forever sick when she is. I have to cuddle my little baby whether she is sick or not! I try to limit kisses and such but it is just so hard. My wonderful husband, since he is finished with his finals, was able to help me completely. I took full advantage of this. 


I covered up on the couch Sunday after church and just worked on knitting Ava's scarf that I want to put in her Christmas stocking all day long. Ian's scarf is finished and I cannot wait to give them these cute scarves. They both picked out the exact yarn color that they wanted. These are simple scarves mind you. I am just beginning and Ian's stocking was the very first one I have ever knit. The color he picked was great though because it almost looks like I worked very hard on making stripes. Yeah right! I aspire to get there. I really do but I am not there just yet. I will post pictures of the kids wearing their cute little scarves once I give it to them. I hope they love them!

Anyway, this weekend was fun, minus the sickness, and it was actually somewhat relaxing. Jared woke me up with coffee, eggs, and toast. What a nice surprise but I do believe I ate about the first half of breakfast with my eyes barely open! I do love that man. (o; I am so truly blessed. 


Today is PJ day for Ian in his Kindergarten class and he woke up with the sickness. Uh! I hope that he will be feeling well enough to attend school today in his pj's. Tomorrow is his Christmas party in school so I will be praying extra hard today that he is able to attend tomorrow to have his fun party at school.


I hope you have a blessed day! †

Candy is Dandy for Christmas time!!!!!!

I love chocolate. I love it. I just love it. I know that God loves me because he blessed us while we are here with coffee and chocolate. Oh there is nothing better than these two things in life. These are the two essentials things in my life. ANYWAY...now that I got that out of my system. I could go on forever.

Here is a SUPER simple recipe for a great little treat over the holidays and let me tell you from my toughest critics that this is truly a hit! My son told me I am a genius (which I think I am so I am glad he is finally on the same page!). I found this recipe the other day on My Computer is My Canvas by Colette but I have seen it elsewhere also. My sister-in-law had made these and I thought they were cute a while back and when I saw it on Colette's blogs I just had to make them. She made them with the peppermint kisses which are great but VERY strong peppermint flavor so I decided to mix it up! Please check out her site. She has the most amazing printable for this that she made. How cool?! Really check it out and you could totally make little bags of these up for neighbors, friends, or even your children to share with classes.

The end product! Yum (o;

Here's what mine look like. I made dark chocolate kisses, milk chocolate kisses, hugs which is the white chocolate with white chocolate inside, and the peppermint ones as well. I found the peppermint at our local grocery store, Giant. JUST A QUICK TIP...the different chocolates have a different melting point which completely did not even pass through this poor little mind of mine. The white chocolate hugs (which by the way I hate calling it chocolate when it is not chocolate whatsoever) melted SUPER fast in comparison to the white and the dark chocolate. I would suggest to always do the white separately since the time is just a bit less for that. You do not want to end up with a mess!

Anyway...it's so easy. Here's what you need...
Baking Tray
Wax or Parchment paper
Bag of Square pretzels (My personal preference is Snyder's and I'm sorry but everytime I look at the bag I just wanna say "OH SNAP!!!!!!")
Hershey's Kisses
Hershey's M&M's
(I live in PA so...GO HERSHEY!)

Square Pretzels & Kisses

M&M's

These are ready to go into the oven. Place one kiss on one square pretzel. Make sure they do not overlap whatsoever!

Put one little M&M on each and push it down slightly. Let these cool in the fridge or anywhere cold. Our enclosed sun porch works WONDERFUL when it's so cold outside.

DONE!

So that's it! My hubby is going to be a happy camper taking these into his Christmas party at work tomorrow. When I was making them he really didn't believe it was as easy as I told him and he couldn't believe how quickly they were done. He did steal some already to test. I am also making some homemade biscotti but these were the easy peasy recipe. Now onto the more time consuming recipe. I hope you get to try these because they are fabulous and especially the dark chocolate kisses. YUM!

On a totally 'me' note, I was listening to music while writing this post and heard the Happy Holiday by Bing Crosby (Beef Wellington Remix) and I thought, "Man...I need to put that on my mix for my blog because I love it!" Yeah...I was listening to the mix on this blog. HELLO?!?!?!?! Sheesh...I am one tired mommy. I need a nap myself. (o;

Have a fabulous day and I pray these little treats will be a blessing to you and yours!

God bless! †

Boredom Equals Danger

There is virtually nothing in my house right now that is safe from my craft spree I have been on lately. I can almost see the things in this house cringing when I look at them like they are thinking "Oh man...is she going to turn me into something else?!" Yes...I probably would if I could. There is a beautiful little black frame that my husband bought me as a gift that might possibly be the only thing safe in the house that I am not willing to rip apart, mod podge, or hot glue at this point.

Here it is in fact. The one thing I own I promise I will NEVER use for crafting purposes. What a great husband I have!

"You are the one who makes me smile."

Anyway...yesterday I got bored. I was not bored in the sense that I had nothing at all to do. No. I had lots of cleaning and things I should be working on but I was bored in the sense that it was absolutely nothing that I wanted to do. That's always a problem for me. I need to have the proper motivation and you can never tell what that's going to be at any given time. I don't know if anyone else has this problem. I kind of hope so because sometimes I feel like SUCH a slacker because of it. Instead of cleaning I had decided to try and finish up Christmas decorating which I feel like I will never be done with but not because I have SO much to put out but just because I keep coming up with so many neat ideas.

I had this sign that I saw at the Dollar store that I thought was just hilarious. I put it out last year but this year I just wasn't feeling it. I wanted something that was a little more country and felt like it fit into our home more. I love, love, love the warm country farmhouse look. That is what I am trying to achieve in our house. Little by little it is coming together. Good thing it's not coming together too quickly or I would be out of things to work on. LOL

This was a fun project yesterday while the girls were napping and our son was at school. Here's the original sign which I do still find funny.

I looked at this and thought boy I would love to redo this but I do think it's funny and I don't know if I feel like dealing with all the sparkles on the front....then I flipped it over!

The back was PERFECT and already painted a nice red for Christmas. I also just happened to have some scrapbook paper to put on it.

I only used the top portion of this paper above that I already had in my stash. I can't wait to figure out what to use the bottom half for. I just love that little house! I carefully printed out NOEL from Word in a font and size that would work and PATIENTLY cut out the letters from some red card stock type scrapbook paper which matched the back of the sign. What a pain but it was worth it.

I used Mod Podge underneath and on top of the cut piece of scrapbook paper. Then I placed the letters on carefully after the first layer of Mod Podge dried and did a layer over the letters. This is what I ended up with.

I like it. It's cute and simple but I don't think I am totally finished with this. I may run to Michael's and get a sprig of berries to hot glue to the sides of the sign or something.

This was a fun little project, cost me nothing at all, and I don't think it looks too bad!