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Congratulations to Cheryl at TidyMom who is the winner of the A Christmas Carol game. Thanks to all who participated in the Merry Merry Munchies blog event. There were some really delicious entries. Come back again next year! Happy New Year to everyone.
Today is Five Question Friday hosted by Mama M at My Little Life. It’s a fun and easy way to share some thoughts about yourself and your family traditions. Go check it out. It’s not too late to participate. Just copy the questions below and link up.
Remember to come back here next week for Crock Pot Wednesday. I’ll be looking forward to what you have to share.
1. Do you do a real or fake Christmas tree?
I have to confess that I now use a fake tree, but we never used one until we started travelling over the holiday. We always gathered our tree from the family farm or purchased one locally from the Kiwanis tree lot. Also, for many years one of my husband’s clients allowed us to come to his warehouse and select one. He was a tree wholesaler to places such as K-Mart so it was tree Heaven for us!
2. What is your favorite Christmas tradition with your family?
Over the years we have developed so many, but one of the ones that has been a constant is the reading of Barrington Bunny from the book The Way of the Wolf and The Littlest Angel. My husband still reads these to our Perfect Daughter and, now, our Perfect Babies each Christmas Eve.
Of course, Santa has to have his milk and cookies!
3. Do you celebrate Thanksgiving in your neck of the woods? And, if so…how many calories do you think you consumed yesterday?
I read somewhere last week that the average person consumes at least 3,000 calories at the Thanksgiving meal. That is followed by another 1000 to 2000 calories later in the day from snacking on leftovers. I seriously hope that wasn’t true for me, but it sure was tasty!
This year we were at Perfect Daughter’s house where four families came together to celebrate. Our meal consisted of fried turkey, beef Wellington, roasted sweet potato casserole, roasted vegetables, mashed potatoes, roasted asparagus, Southern cornbread dressing, ginger-apple-cranberry chutney, spinach, blueberry and Mandarin orange salad, blueberry cobbler and apple and peach pies. We would have had green bean bundles except that I forgot all about them until the meal was over! Oh well, they are safely frozen away for a tasty addition to another meal.
4. Have you started decorating for Christmas, yet?
I began last evening preparing the materials to decorate my daughter’s front door. As for my house, I’ll be working on that later this week.
I used to decorate every room in my house, but I no longer do that since we are not home and do not have any events planned there this year.
5. What is your favorite Christmas cookie?
While these aren’t necessarily Christmas cookies, I usually make them during the holidays. Hubby’s cousin, Carole, gave me the recipe in 1977 according to my notes. It is a Pillsbury Bake-Off recipe, but I have no idea from which year. These are somewhat time consuming to make, but they are so good that you won’t care!
Candy Bar Cookies
3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup sifted powdered sugar
2 Tablespoons evaporated milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups sifted flour
Cream butter. Gradually add in the powdered sugar and mix well. Add the milk, vanilla and salt. Mix well. Gradually add in the flour and mix thoroughly. If necessary, chill for easier handling (I always chill the dough.)
Roll out the dough, half at a time, on a floured surface, making a 12 x 8-inch rectangle. Trim the sides. Cut the dough into 3 x 1 1/2-inch rectangles or 2-inch squares. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake until lightly browned (about 10-12 minutes). Cool on a cake rack.
Spread each cookie with 1 teaspoon filling and 1/2 teaspoon of the icing. Decorate with a toasted pecan half.
Caramel Filling
Combine in the top of a double boiler:
1/2 pound Kraft light caramels
1/2 cup evaporated milk
Heat until the caramels are melted, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and add:
1/4 cup butter
1 cup sifted powdered sugar
1 cup chopped pecans (I toast mine because I think it improves the taste.)
Chocolate Icing
Melt 1 cup (6 ounces) semi-sweet chocolate pieces with 1/3 cup evaporated milk over low heat. Remove from the heat and stir in:
2 Tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup sifted powdered sugar
Linked to:
Designs by Gollum “Foodie Friday”
Friday Feasts @ Mom Trends
Woops! Just a tad bit late posting this:) The holiday bustle gremlin must have gobbled it up:)
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Very cute! Thanks for sharing. We use a fake tree too! I sort of hate it because I always grew up with a real tree and love the smell…But, with a husband who is often deployed it is more practical to have a fake one! lol Happy Decorating!!
Our tree is a nine foot fake tree. I have over 700 ornaments and I like to leave it up until mid January. I love going to church on Christmas Eve. Yes to Thanksgiving and who’s counting! Tree is up but that’s it so far, I have been feeling lazy since Thanksgiving.
Pecan Tassies and my family loves Spritz.
I love it! We are a real tree family…well, actually, I guess both! We have a small, fake one in the basement…and our big, main, real tree, upstairs! So glad you joined in!!
Fake tree, with the lights already string. I love collecting ornaments, so I have boxes and boxes of them.
Making biscochitos, these are an anise cookie that we make here in New Mexico. I also make sugar cookies with my grand-daughters. They each decorate one for Santa.
My favorite Christmas cookie, well I love baking and started making cookies the day after Thanksgiving. i make about 3 to 4 batches of biscochitos. Each batch makes about 20 dozen, these go in the freezer until I start making my Christmas cookie baskets.
Geri
We used live garland this year, and while it smells great, the clean up reminded me why we’ve been putting up faux trees for the past few years. My vacuum cleaner may never be right.
We looked at a Crockpot yesterday at KMart. When I start writing (my holiday is almost over), I will need that Crockpot!
Here’s wishing you a wonderful year!
XX00
A fake tree is the way to go… I just buy a pine scented candle and burn it all the time… it works and no mess!
My 8 foot artificial tree has white lights… but a friend of mine had one too and wanted colored lights so she just added them over the white lights.. it looked beautiful! I have to remember to come back for crock pot Wed next week! I made crock pot lasagna for New Years dinner…
I’m having a little New Years Give away too… stop by and enter if you get a chance…
~Really Rainey~
Those candy bar cookies sound lethal — but delicious! We use an artificial tree at our house, but I’d love to graduate to a nicer one that’s pre-lit. I’m too excited to have found another AR blogger! I’ve linked up, so come visit me sometime!
Big Doll’s Boomtown
Thanks so much!! We received the game in our mail yesterday! My family was really excited…..it looks like fun!!
~TidyMom