Christmas Breakfast!

We started off our Christmas with a delicious breakfast this morning. We made porridge, cranberry nut muffins and mimosas! It was amazing!! I've got to run to our first Christmas celebration so be looking for a Christmas breakfast recipe soon.

Merry Christmas!

Secret Santa, How I Love Thee

One of my favorite Christmas activities is participating in Secret Santa at school. This year I had a VERY generous Secret Santa. Along the way I received an adorable "Let it Snow" sign to hang on my classroom window, a funky Santa pen, a pooping/singing Christmas cow and my final gift(s) was a super cute and warm blanket, a dog (I wanted a real one but am satisfied with this fun Fido) and the move Julie and Julia (which is the best movie of the year). Thank you Secret Santa! You made my Friday night very enjoyable :)

Cookie Weekend 2009: Done

One of my favorite weekends of the entire year is the weekend where my mom and I get together to bake Christmas cookies. We bake, and bake, and bake. The first year we made about five different cookies on a Sunday and had so much fun that we decided to extend the weekend to two days last year. This year my mom came over on Friday and just left (it's 5:30 on Sunday) and we baked over 15 different kinds of cookies! Crazy! Some of our favorites this year were mini cheesecakes, double chocolate kiss cookies, peppermint bark, santa's sugar cookies, and strawberry pastry twists. One of our favorite finds this year was Taste of Homes Holiday Issue. They had MANY simple and delicious recipes we tried out this year and all of them were a success. Try their cranberry nut fudge recipe. You won't regret it. Happy Baking!

SNOW DAY!

Today was the first snow day of the year. When I woke up this morning I was hoping to stay in my pjs all day while watching movies and reading a good book. Well, I did stay in my pjs all day and I did watch a movie but it turned out to be a BUSY day! The first batch of cookies were baked, mail was organized, soup was made for dinner and now I'm finally sitting down to enjoy this beautiful tree skirt I quilted this fall for our first Christmas in our new home. Isn't it cool (and you'll also see my beautiful kitten on the skirt)!

Happy Snow Day to All and to All a Good Night!

The Holidays are Here!

Jon and I had an awesome but busy weekend. We started off the festivities by heading down to Chicago for their Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was awesome! We had such a good time. Hopefully we'll make that into a new tradition--plus we were able to make it to my parents' in time for a huge Thanksgiving feast. Yum!

The night before, Jon and I happened upon an outdoor German Christmas village in downtown Chicago. I got this yummy spiced warm wine and we had a brat for dinner. We also found a beautiful ornament to take home with us to remember our fun Thanksgiving mini-vacation.