Christmas Recap

Christmas is over and I must admit I feel a bit adrift right now!  I was just so busy cooking, crafting, playing and celebrating for so long that now I'm not sure what to do with myself!  I figure I'll write a little recap of our Christmas and then get to working on some new things to share with you.  :)

We had a very fun month and Christmas itself did not disappoint either.  Mr Pears and I got to attend Mass on Christmas Eve without two rambunctious toddlers thanks to Grammy and Grandpa.  It was so nice.  Then we came home and did our Santa duties and placed all the gifts and stockings under the tree with care. (and ate the Santa cookies of course)

The boys were a bit surprised to see the Christmas tree the next morning!  I had been telling them that Santa was coming but I don't think they were expecting such an extravaganza, lol.  It took us all morning to open gifts.  The boys loved their presents and wanted each one taken out of its packaging so they could play with it right away before moving on to another.  It was cute.  We tried to encourage them to open things at first but then just decided to let them go at their own pace.  It was fun enjoying it all over the course of a few hours.

In addition to Cozy Coupes the boys got a teeter totter, dishes and play food and a shopping cart for their kitchen, a toy Dyson, some really great Melissa and Doug wood unit blocks, puzzles, a giant bean bag chair....I can't list them all.  But, with the exception of the Dyson which does turn on, none of the toys make noise or require batteries.  Most, if not all, have great learning potential and lots of room for imagination and pretend play.  My little guys were truly spoiled by all of their family and I'm sure we'll have lots of fun with all the awesome gifts they received.

And of course we also had lots of great food!  I made cute little donut snowmen to munch on with our coffee during the gift opening and then Alex made some amazing Eggs Benedict for brunch a bit later on.  For dinner we had prime rib with cauliflower puree, brussels sprouts, creamed corn and yorkshire pudding.  For dessert I made individual Mexican spiced chocolate puddings.  Delicious.

It was great spending so much time having fun and visiting with family in December and January is sure to be just as fun too.  Our nephews are visiting next week, my best friend a week after that and then Grandpa!  We might even sneak in a visit to Disneyland!  I'm really looking forward to everything.

No plans for New Year's Eve yet.... I'm sure we'll figure out a little something or other soon.

I hope everyone reading had a wonderful holiday; best wishes going into 2013!

This post is linked to:  Multiples Monday on Capri +3

More Toddler Christmas Fun

Two is my favorite age so far.  The boys are finally starting to talk and play, really play, and they are just so much fun.  They are still mostly well behaved (no tantrums!) and still contained in their cribs.  They are just the right mix of baby and little boys. I still call them "the babies", not sure when I'll stop.  They sleep from 7pm until 7am with a two hour nap at noon.  Some days, like today, I hear them on the monitor laughing and jumping around for a half an hour but luckily they settle down on their own and go to sleep after they are tuckered out.  The calm before the storm?  I hope not.  :)

I also love that now, at two, while they don't completely understand holidays and haven't got a huge vocabulary with which to express themselves, they are enjoying our activities and are (very) active participants in our family activities and traditions.  Here are some of the fun things we've been up to this past week or so since I last posted.

A visit to Santa...  We went for low key Bass Pro Shop over the crowded outdoor shopping district this year and I'm really glad we did.  No line, free photo, a train table! Lot's of things for the kids to look at and enough room to let them explore a bit on their own (with a parental shadow of course).  Aaron happily sat on Santa's lap while we did everything we could to convince Alex to sit still for a photo.  Finally we got him to sit on my lap with a candy cane, so Mama's in the Santa picture!  I just wish Daddy had stepped in as well.

We made gingerbread men.... Aaron LOVES to help me make cookies.  Every time he sees me pull out the stand mixer I see this:

He drags a chair right over and climbs up to help me out.  This would be tough with both boys but typically Alex isn't interested so it is some nice Aaron and Mommy time.  Usually, after he finishes dumping in my ingredients, I give him his own mixing bowl with some flour and water and let him mix up his own concoction.

Candy Cane Bath Time...  This was super simple to put together and the boys had so much fun!  I bought a can of Barbasol shaving cream ($1 at the Dollar Store) and put in a few drops of red food coloring and a few drops of peppermint extract and swirled it around with a wooden skewer.  (I found this idea here)

The boys had a blast smearing shaving cream all over themselves and the bath tub.  The water even ended up looking like a candy cane!  Pink with white foam, lol.  Very fun and it all just rinsed away when bath time was over. Though there were a few tears when bath time was proclaimed over.

Sticky Christmas Trees.... I got this idea from Twodaloo.  As soon as I saw it I knew I had to add it to our advent activities.  To get started, I bought 1 large sheet of green poster paper from the dollar store along with a roll of sticky clear contact paper.  Using the largest circle I could find in the house that fit on the paper (a little tikes table) I traced a large circle, folded it into quarters and cut it out and then in half.  I rolled each semi circle into a cone and secured it with some tape.  Next I wrapped each cone in the contact paper, sticky side out.

When it was time to play I gave each boy a "tree" and set out some bowls of sequins, pom poms and foam pieces and let them go to town.  The both had a lot of fun decorating their trees and tossing sequins around the living room.

Whew!  Lots of fun.  I'm so grateful to have my happy little boys (and their Daddy) to share such a wonderful Christmas season.

This post is linked to:


Hosted by Multiples-Mom and Caution! Twins at Play

Play School: Christmas

Due to our Advent Calendar, we aren't actually doing organized Play School this month.  Instead we are doing an advent activity each day as I've talked about before.  The boys are having a great time with it so far and they are eager to "do the calendar" each day.  :)

Many of our calendar activities make for great "play school" though.  Here are a few we've done this month so far.

DIY Build a Indoor Snowman - This snowman is made of craft foam I bought at the craft store.  I just traced the circles and cut them out along with a few other snowman features.  See the full tutorial where I got my inspiration here.

Aaron in particular loves any activity that involves a spray bottle so this is right up his ally.  The boys just spray our large sliding glass door in the kitchen with the water, spray the pieces, and stick them right up.  This toy is great for identifying body parts, shapes and size sequencing.

Insta-Snow Sensory Tub - oh my this was a hit.  Since we live in sunny Las Vegas snow is quite the rarity here.  I decided to buy some Insta-snow for the boys and they love it!   The stuff is just cool.  One little scoop mixed with 2 ounces of water immediately puffs and fluffs up into a very snowy looking substance!  It feels slightly wet and cold too, very neat.  The boys played with it for a long time the other afternoon.  So long, in fact, that Mr Pears and I got slightly less vigilant about supervising only to find two little boys covered in "snow".  Luckily, with the help of the vacuum, clean up was super easy too.  Since this stuff supposedly lasts a while I am looking forward to bringing this one out for the boys to play with again soon.

Decorating the felt Christmas Tree - The boys are very good with shapes and colors and love showing off their skills while decorating their own little tree.  

To make the tree I just bought a large piece of green felt from the craft store and a pack of smaller felt pieces from the dollar store.  I cut out the tree shape and stuck it to the wall in the living room with some double sided tape.  I cut different colored shapes out of the smaller felt pieces for the ornaments.  I found inspiration for this here.

Handmade Clay Ornaments- I want to make a tradition of the boys making a Christmas ornament each year for Grandparent gifts and for our tree here at home too.  I want the ornaments to really be made by the boys (not me!) so our options this year were limited. Luckily the classic "salt dough" (we used this clay) ornaments were perfect for them to do almost on their own. 

 Aaron and Alex both dumped in our ingredients (just baking soda, cornstarch and water!) and mixed up the dough.  Mommy cooked the dough on the stove.  Then the boys helped roll and cut the dough into trees.  I baked the ornaments and then the boys painted them the next day with tempera paints. Once they were dry I wrote their names and year on the back and sprayed them with a sealant to help the paint stay nice.  I also added a string to hang the ornament on the tree with. I think they came out really well.  It is so sweet to have our first child-made ornaments hanging on our tree.  I think the grandparents are going to love them too.

So that is about it for now.  We are visiting Santa tonight...I have no idea if they will actually sit with Santa but we'll see.  

Sorry for the abundance of kid posts and lack of new recipes lately.  We aren't starving over here or anything but our focus has definitely been on the holiday season and we are having a great time.  I promise to try and post something yummy soon!

Christmas Cookies

It just isn't Christmas without cookies, is it?  Ok, I know I know, Christmas has nothing to do with cookies but I like cookies, a lot.  And Christmas is such a great excuse to explore as many new recipes (and old favorites) as possible.  You can share them with visitors, give them as gifts, eat them yourself....

Last week this guy made his way back onto my kitchen counter, just waiting for his belly to be filled with cookie yumminess.

I'm not usually one for "whimsical" decor....but this snowman is just plain cute and I have to make some concessions for my two 2 year-olds.  And those boys know where the cookies come from.  They can't say "cookie"  yet but they can point at the pot-bellied snowman just fine. :)

So here is a round up of my current favorite cookies, and some links to some I want to try but haven't yet.  I hope you enjoy them.  Feel free to leave me a link to your favorite cookie recipe in the comments, I'm always hunting for more great cookies!

Ginger Cookies - my all-time favorite, these stay soft and chewy for days...if they somehow manage to stick around for days....

Cherry-Almond Crinkles - I adapted the recipe from BHG leaving out the candy center which I though was a bit much.  I just scooped the dough onto sheets and flattened them slightly before baking them for 10 minutes.  They are so good!  I love the almond flavor with the sweet cherries and they are very pretty too.  Perfect for gifts.

Lemon Crinkles - soft and lemony but not too sweet, delicious and very easy to make.

Cocoa  Thumbprints - (they are pictured above with Frosty the cookie jar) these are light and airy and so pretty with festive sprinkles or candies on top

Classic Sugar Cookies - these have a touch of almond in them as well which I think really makes them so flavorful.  I can't wait to decorate some with my boys this year!  PS. there is also a link to a great Royal Icing tutorial in that post.

New recipes I want to try:

Gingerbread Men - another one I think will be fun to do with the kiddos.  The recipe I linked has a ton of good reviews on AllRecipes.com and I am looking forward to trying it out.

Peanut butter Reindeer - Click the link and tell me, how cute are these?  And they look so easy to do too.

So that's it!  Happy Baking... and eating...

Advent Activities

So our month of Christmas fun has officially begun!  Ugh, that rhymed.....oh well, it just conveys my overall optimism and cheeriness towards the whole thing.  It is only Day 3 after all.

On the first we started sharing our Advent Activity calendar with the boys.  They don't really get the whole idea of a countdown until Christmas yet but they can't help but enjoy the fun things the calendar brings.  The first day was "open a present" so they had a great time ripping the paper off the new Christmas pj's I got them.  They were pretty excited to find Mickey Mouse on the jams too. :)

Yesterday we "Read The Christmas Story and set up the Nativity".  As a family we read a great book about the biblical Christmas Story, and then opened our Little People Nativity set.  The boys had a great time today playing with the animals, Baby Jesus and his Mama.  We are going to leave the nativity out on a table in our living room for the boys to play with and talk about all month.  It is hard to find interesting ideas to talk to the boys about the real meaning of Christmas so I'm really happy the boys are into their Little People.  I wish I could share a link to the book since it really is a great one but I can't seem to find it on Amazon.

Here is how Aaron placed the figures for the first time.  He did pretty well all on his own....except for that cow on the stable roof of course.

Here he is giving Mary a hug.  And wearing his Christmas pj's from the night before.

And here are the rest of our activities, in random order because Mr Pears is hogging the iPad with my behind the scenes calendar on it.

3.  Visit Santa!
4.  Decorate your own Christmas Tree  (I made the boys a felt Christmas tree, more on that later)
5.  Make Christmas Tree Ornaments
6.  Paint Ornaments
7.  Watch a Christmas movie as a family
8.  Drink homemade Hot Chocolate with Homemade Marshmallows (I'll post a recipe I promise!)
9.  Sing Christmas Carols  (these boys love to sing with their Grammy so this should be fun)
10.  Visit the Magical Forest
11.  Make Gingerbread Men
12.  Visit with Grandma, Grandpa Doug, Great Grandma Ruth, and Leah :)
13.  Play with Snow!  (Since we live in the desert I bought this stuff, I'm excited to try it out)
14.  Play with our Christmas Sensory bin (I'm sure I'll post this one in more detail)
15.  Decorate Sugar Cookies
16.  Candy Cane Painting in the bath tub!
17.  Visit the Holiday Spectacular at the Springs Preserve
18.  Have a Holiday Play Date
19.  Make a Snowman in the living room  (we are going to play with this foam DIY snowman on our patio door)
20.  Go to story time at the library as a family
21.  Visit Ethel M's Chocolate Factory and see the cactus Christmas lights

There are also a few boxes with candy inside for my own sanity and/or to allow for schedule changes or additions.  I have to admit, that as great as this project is, it was a bit daunting to schedule something for every day in December in advance.  I know I could have put the activities in as I went along but I like knowing what to plan for in the coming week.  Mr Pears has a ton of vacation time this month too so I am super happy that he will be around to do a lot of these activities with me and the boys.

Looking forward to a fun-filled month and wishing the best for all of you as well this holiday season!

This post is linked to:  Artsy Play Wednesday at Capri +3

Merry Christmas Menu

For me, certain holidays mean certain foods.  For Thanksgiving there is obviously turkey, but Christmas is always ham.  Even though Alex has been threatening(?) me with the idea of a "Festival of Liver" Christmas dinner, we will be having ham.  I rarely put my foot down around here but when I do I mean business! This also applies to the pancakes with blueberry sauce we'll be having Christmas morning, even though my poor husband isn't such a huge fan of blueberries.  I've been having them Christmas morning ever since I can remember and it wouldn't be Christmas without them!  Memories of my Dad making blueberry pancakes or my Grandmother's mac and cheese are part of what makes the holidays special.  I'm looking forward to making those memories with my own children soon.

So despite Alex's desire to do something exotic and interesting for the big holiday dinner, we'll be sticking to simple family favorites. Our Christmas dinner will be quiet this year...just us and two good friends.  We'll miss having our family around us but at least we'll have a dinner that reminds us of home.  I'm pretty sure even Alex will be happy with all the holiday comfort food.  :)

Here's what will be on our dinner table for Christmas this year...

Alton Brown's City Ham

Homemade Baked Macaroni and Cheese

Boosy Braised Greens

Brioche (I already got a brioche pan for Christmas, now I just need a recipe!)

Pumpkin Pie with Maple Whipped Cream**

**this could be the best whipped cream on the planet, just add 1 tablespoon of good maple syrup to a cup of cream and mix until fluffy**

Have a Merry Christmas or a joyful holiday of another sort.  Enjoy your family, friends, and of course, dinner.  ;)

Cocoa Thumbprints

Have you had enough Christmas cookies yet?  I haven't.  But I think I'm close.  Between ginger cookies, these cocoa thumbprints, homemade truffles and those eclairs I made last weekend (another post for another day); my blood sugar level is probably a little high.

Here's the latest addition to our snowman cookie jar, I hope they end up in a cookie jar near you soon! They are delicious.  Light and fluffy and pretty too.

Cocoa Thumbprints, adapted from Food Network Magazine, December 2011 issue....or here.
(about 3 dozen cookies)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar, plus 1/2 cup for rolling
1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
toppings... ( I used sprinkles and icing but you could use hershey's kisses or candies, jam or dried fruit, etc.)

In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar (only 3/4 cup), cocoa powder, baking powder and salt. Stir in the melted butter and eggs until the whole thing is well combined.  (This could be the easiest cookie dough ever, right?)  Now just refrigerate it for about 30 minutes, covered.

Line your baking sheets with parchment paper (or a silicone baking mat like the one's Mr Pears got me for Christmas!) and preheat the oven to 325 F.  Put your two types of sugar on two separate plates.  Roll about a tablespoon of dough into a ball in your hands and then roll the ball first in the granulated sugar, then in the confectioners' sugar.  Put the dough on the tray and flatten it slightly, then make an indentation in the middle with your thumb. You can fill your cookies with your toppings now, or if you are using something like the icing I used, you can wait until the cookies come out of the oven.

Bake the cookies for about 10 minutes then let them cool on the sheet for another 3.  Remove to wire racks to finish cooling.  Once cooled I used some Betty Crocker (gasp!) pre-made cookie decorating icing to fill in the indentation then put on some red and green sprinkles before the icing set.  Very festive!  Merry Christmas and happy cookie eating.

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells....

Ok...so since you may have noticed my lack of posting around the country's largest food-related holiday you might have guessed that we didn't host T-Day dinner at our place this year.  Instead we packed up our baby pears and headed over to a friend's house to enjoy the day with three other families.  We had a lot of fun....but sadly, did absolutely no cooking.

So we are moving on!  Just like all the department stores, we are playing Christmas music!  It may not be December yet but the first Christmas Classic DVD (Rudolf) has been viewed by the kidlets (fail) and the first Christmas cookies have come out of the oven (success!).  Christmas is such a great reason to eat a ton of cookies...don't you think?  And maybe also to watch kid movies that your children are way too young to even begin to enjoy.

Though my favorite cookies aren't really Christmas cookies, I will be sure to continue baking (and sharing!) with these to start:

Crinkly Butterscotch Pecan Cookies.  I found this recipe simply because Mr. Pears wanted cookies (I blame him) and we had butterscotch baking chips and pecans in the pantry.  A little Google search and I stumbled upon this blog and recipe.  Looked like all was in order, good comments....worth a shot.  I'm so glad I gave them a chance because they really are delicious.  If you love Butter Pecan Ice Cream, you'll love these.  Hope you love them, and Happy almost Christmas!

Crinkly Butterscotch Pecan Cookies, adapted from Cookie Madness
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup of butter, cold and cut into tablespoon-sized pieces
1/2 cup of shortening (like Crisco)
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 3/4 cups butterscotch chips
2/3 cup pecans, toasted and chopped (to toast them just put them in a non-stick pan on high heat and shake them around every minute or two for a few minutes)

Stir together the flour, baking soda and salt in a small bowl.  In your mixer, cream the butter and shortening together.  Once they are smooth and combined add the sugars.  Beat for about two more minutes.  Lower the speed on the mixer and mix in the vanilla and egg.  Now slowly mix in the flour combo.  Once everything is mixed together fold in the pecan and chips with a rubber spatula.

Use a mini-ice cream scoop to drop tablespoons of dough onto parchment paper-lined baking sheets and bake these for 12-15 minutes at 350 F.  Mine took just 12 minutes but the original author said hers took 15....so check on them!  When they start to get brown on the edges they are done.

Once out of the oven you can use your spatula to kind of push the cookies in a bit...it makes them crinkly!  Let them cool for a few minutes before you move them to a wire rack to finish cooling.