Christmas Decorating

It's that time of year again. Christmas Decorating! This Christmas I had a mantel to decorate and I was excited as ever to see what I could do with it. I always loved the fake branches that people hung from their mantels so I went with that theme. I also put up the Christmas tree.

Since it was a cold night, I decided to light a fire to get into the Christmas spirit. It took me a couple of tries but eventually I got it lit.


I went to Garden Ridge for all of my Christmas mantel decorations. The good thing about next year will be that I won't have to spend all the money trying to get my Christmas decorations. I had to do that last year for the Christmas tree decorations. Let meet the characters shall we?...

Santa


Ginger Bread Guy #1

Jesus, Mary, Joseph

White Mini Christmas Tree

Reindeer

Candle

Mr. Snowman

Ginger Bread Guy #2

I had to put up the Christmas Tree another day because I was just so tired from Thanksgiving but here is the final product.

Any every time I go home it feels like Christmas. Now all I have to do is make my list and go shopping.

Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving was a great one. The food was great, almost everyone of the family was there and it was good conversation the whole time.



Every year my uncle Dennis fries the turkey. We all like to stand around to see the turkey drop like the ball on new years eve in time square.

At first it smells like french fries but then it just smells like fried chicken and you want to take it out immediately and eat it with some ketchup right there on the grass.

My cousins are in full teenager mode. Lazying about with no worries at all. And that's how it should be. Heck that's how it was when I was that age.

So let's go through the menu shall we. It was a wonderful one I have to admit.

Fried turkey

Mashed Potatoes

Shrimp dressing...( I have to admit when I took this on my plate that I only ate the shrimp off of it. I don't like dressing but I love shrimp)

Broccoli rice casserole

We also had rolls and green beans. It was a nice dinner and having everyone together felt like home.

Happy Thanksgiving and I hope everyone had a good holiday. Next up....Christmas!!

Sisters...

Over the past couple of weeks I have been thinking a lot about my sister and what she is about to become....A MOM!!! We have always been close so it is really hard to see her so little and life changing so fast. Especially when she is pregnant for the first time. I thought I would put up some pictures today to share and reminisce about all the times we spent together. We are both growing up but still are really close. I will always love you sister.

Eclairs

I think this book is amazing. I got it from the Houston Library and it had so many wonderful recipes in it. Cakes and Pies, Torts and Cookies...And then I saw a recipe for Eclairs. Oh wow how I wanted to go fly to Louisiana where they have the best Eclairs on the face of the earth. (Besides Paris of course) So I rounded up some courage and decided to try it and did you know it only took me 6 tries to get the pastry part right? (Only 2 hours but everyone at work loved it). At least next time I know how they will turn out.

Pardon the few pictures. I was curing so bad that I forgot to snap what each one of my disaster turn outs looked like.

This first recipe is to make the eclairs. Basically it is your typical pastry dough.

The second recipe is to make your chocolate glaze to go on top of the eclair.

This is what mine turned out to be. It was a little bitter but turned out to be a nice combination with the filling.

Next and I thought this was the hardest part...the pastry creme. It was so good I had to stop myself from eating out of the bowl.

I had to cover mine wit wax paper to keep the top from crusting.

This is what the picture in the book looked like.....


And these are mine. It wasn't too bad I have to say.

Baby Cake.....kinda.....

So here I am again with another fabulous cake. I decided to make this cake for a girl at work that is having a baby and we were all going to go eat lunch and then I figured we can have something sweet after. This cake on the other hand has a story behind it when I was making it. This cake was supposed to be a two layer cake but it was a little bit of a disaster. Lets start with the baking and I will tell you more a little later.






First I was going to do a homemade cake. Right from scratch and it was going to be great. Then I realized, you dummy, you have school until 8:30 tonight and how are you going to get that done so I opted for boxed cake. Everyone like that and they probably won't be able to tell the difference. So the ingredients are: box of cake mix, 1 3/4 cup of water, 3 eggs, and one stick of butter.






I used my mixer for this because I haven't bought a hand mixer yet. I dumped everything in the bowl and started the mix for 2 minutes in till it was nice and smooth.

While that was mixing I took out 2 pans about 9 inches and lined it with parchment paper on the bottom. I always find that it is easier to get the cake out if I do this.

After you mix up the ingredients really good you can pour the mix into the pans evenly and set it in the oven for 33 minutes or whatever it says on the box. It should come out nice and golden.

Again I was going to make my own frosting but I came to my senses and realized that I didn't have the time. So it was can frosting and everyone still loved it.

I also decided to put strawberries on it so first thing that you need to do is wash them slice the tops off and slice them in single slices.

So here is the part where the story get interesting. It was a Thursday night and I had come home from school. I started the cake at 8:30 and thought it would be enough time for everything. I made the cake and set the two pieces out to cool. I started on the strawberries and cutting them up nice. After I was finished I felt the two cakes and thought they were a bit warm but it would be safe to assemble the cake. So I put on the first layer...ice it up...and them the second layer....I put it on upside down so that I would have a nice even top. I began to ice it and there was a little crack in the center. I thought no big deal, I'll just cake on the icing and it would look good as new. When I put more icing on it split even more....Then even more...until finally my whole top layer was in three pieces. It was hilarious and sad at the same time. So that I how I winded up with just one layer. Rocky had a nice time licking up the access icing on the kitchen floor. HA HA so below is the finished product and I thought it turned out really pretty.