Christmas 2011 Family Photos

This year, our Christmas was busy as usual!  We started off at Jeremy's parent's house and then headed towards my Grandparent's the next day to spend time with my family.  After looking at our photos, we clearly didn't take the camera out for the second half of the trip and we need to take more pictures in general.  We just get busy chasing kids around and forget about the camera!  At least we got a couple of each of the kids and they are the important ones at Christmastime after all.

One of the only photos of myself with the kids.  Must improve on this next year!

I hope everyone has a Safe and Happy New Year!

Gingerbread Man Cookies

I am soo happy to be posting a new recipe as it means I finally have some free time in my life!  I saw these cookies on Pinterest and Connor happened to be standing next to me.  Of course, he was excited to make them and I hadn't tried making Gingerbread Men before so thought I'd give it a try.  It wasn't too difficult except for finding the cookie cutter but fortunately a friend lent me hers.  I find that cookie cutters are really a hit and miss item.  You have to buy them when you see them.

The cookies were delicious.  I just bought the decorating tubes at Safeway and also used M & M's for the buttons.  I changed a couple things in the recipe and included the changes below.  You could also try the recipe with orange zest instead of lemon and use 2 tablespoons of dark corn syrup instead of the molasses.  I liked it the way we made it but that was the original recipe so they are also possibilities.  I also changed the cook time to 3-4 minutes less as I burnt our first batch and found that 8 minutes was just about right for our oven.

Gingerbread Man Recipe

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 tablespoons lemon zest
• 3 tablespoons molasses
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

 Directions

1. Cream the butter and the sugar together. Add the egg and mix well. Mix in the lemon zest and molasses.  Add the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, ground cloves and salt, mixing until well combined. Chill dough for at least 2 hours, I like to chill overnight.
2. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets. On a lightly floured surface, roll dough out to 1/4 inch thick. Cut into desired shapes using cookie cutters. Place cookies 1 inch apart on the prepared cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 8-10 minutes in the preheated oven, until cookies are firm and lightly toasted on the edges. 

My little cookie monsters:

Decorating the Christmas Tree!

My Masters class is finally over for the semester so I've got time to blog again.  We also finally had time to buy and put up our Christmas tree. This year, it was almost completely decorated by Connor.  He was really keen to put all ALL the ornaments so we let him...although I did move a few a bit higher so we didn't have fifty ornaments at the same height.

I am also excited to start doing some Christmas cookie baking today and we even managed to buy a couple more presents today too.  It wasn't quite as crazy as I expected although we only went to Canadian Tire and they weren't overly busy.  I'm sure that Walmart and Costco are a zoo.

I feel like I have possibly survived the hardest part of going back to work full-time.  The four months in the fall is a long stretch with only a few days off and it's been tough with the kids, sickness, and my university class.  We made it though and I plan on enjoying every moment of the next few weeks.  I have to give some credit to mother nature for being so kind with these mild temperatures.  It's so much easier not having to totally bundle up the kids in the mornings.  I know there will be super cold days to come but it's been a decent fall at the very least.

Finally, here's some lovely photos of our tree decorator this year!  Christmas with Connor has been a lot of fun so far this year.  He is so excited about it and it makes the holidays so much more special with that kind of enthusiasm around!

A sweet picture in front of the Christmas tree.

This is more like my child!

Another Christmas Stocking Mystery has been Solved!

A few readers have asked me about the patterns for the Christmas stockings I posted on my blog last year.  I don't actually own the pattern books but my Mom and Grandma do so I asked them and they came though for us!  The pattern books come from Mary Maxim and are available on their US and Canadian site.  They have most of the patterns that I am familiar with so hopefully this helps those of you who have been desperately trying to find them!  They are $14.99-$19.99 depending which country you buy it from.

Mary Maxim USA - Shows all patterns

Mary Maxim Canada Website - Same pattern books but only shows a few

Since I'm here posting, I just wanted to say that I am not taking a break from blogging intentionally.  However, I was battling various sicknesses last month and now I'm busy writing my final paper for my Masters class.  I hope to get back on track once that is done and post a few more Christmas cookie recipes and share the great gifts and items I bought in the past couple of weeks.  I also have a review and giveaway coming up that I am excited about.  We are just doing a very thorough review process this time around while I finish up my final paper!