Chex Winner!

I am very sorry I am late posting the winner. My entire family has been sick, including me. So I have gotten a little behind.

So without further delay... the winner of the Chex Party giveaway is ...

The Zookeeper! Congrats! I will email you shortly. Thank you to everyone that entered!

Pen Pals

We have had a bit of a rough weekend here. Luckily Nathan gets an extra day off this week because he came home sick on Friday. He is going to live but the extra day will be good for him, since he has just rested all week. Ellie and Meghan have a touch of it too but not too bad. Tomorrow I will be putting away all the Christmas decorations and getting all the school stuff out and ready for Tuesday. I decided to get started tonight and made this.

I found this idea at Mama Jenn's and thought it would be a great thing for Meghan and I to do. She copied it from someone else and so on. I am not sure where it originated. ;) I will be putting it in one of her workboxes on Tuesday when we get back to school.

It is just a journal, (notebook) that I covered in pretty paper. We will write letters to each other back and forth.


I copied the letter she used as well for the first entry.

Dear Meghan,
Would you like to be my pen pal? Instead of mailing letters to each other, we can keep them here in this notebook. Does that sound like fun?
I will write to you and then leave the notebook on your bed. Then, when you want to write me back you can begin writing on the next page and leave the notebook on my bed when you are done.
You can write about anything! It can be funny or serious! Just write about whatever is on your mind! 
I am so excited and I hope that you are excited too!
Love,
Mom
P.S. Write back soon! :-)



I think that Meghan will have a good time with this. I can not wait to see what she wants to talk about and love the idea of writing practice too. :)

Foodie Trends

You know by now I am a huge baker. :) I love trying out new recipes when I have time too. I was sent some cool information from Betty Crocker through My Blog Spark I wanted to share. These are baking and food trends. You can find all the red hot trends on Betty Crocker but I wanted to share my personal favorites here as well.

Trend: Double Desserts

Taking two desserts and mixing and mashing them together is one of our favorite trends. Things like pie shakes, cookie stuffed cookies, and pie-filled cupcakes deliver a whole new kind of delicious. It’s a 1+1=3 kind of thing.

Recipe: Pumpkin Pie Cookies

Pie, meet cookie. Cookie, say hello to pie. When two all-time favorites come together, you get Pumpkin Pie Cookies, the star at your next holiday cookie exchange.

Trend: Boozy Baking From booze cakes to cocktail pies, bakers everywhere are bringing the bar into the kitchen. A titch of tequila or a skosh of scotch whiskey  adds a serious shot of fun and flavor for the over 21 crowd. We’re loving these boozy baked goods! Recipe: Boozy Bourbon Chocolate Cupcakes Taste for yourself what the buzz is all about! A bit of bourbon, a hit of coffee liqueur and some vanilla vodka-spiked frosting make  these sophisticated chocolate cupcakes the ultimate “holiday helpers.” Trend: Food Craft The kitchen is the new craft room. With food as their medium, clever cooks are making amazing edible food crafts that are as good to look at as they are to eat. Recipe: Chocolate Coal Lumps Naughty or nice, everyone will love these easy cho-coal-late treats. Cocoa Puffs® cereal dipped in melted chocolate and  marshmallows create these tasty stocking stuffers. Check out all the fun trends in food!

“Update the Traditional Cookie Exchange: Host a Chex Party Mix-Change!” (Plus Win it!)

What is the one thing you for sure have on New Years Eve? Snacks! Thanks to My Blog Spark and Chex we had a Chex Party for New Years Eve! It was lots of fun and so easy. There are so many recipes using Chex for lots of fun snacks! The favorite was the Chex Muddy Buddies, of course. The kids love it!

Here are some more recipes though and all of them are yummy!
The Original Chex Party Mix
Chex PB and Chocolate Blast
Chex Pumpkin Pie Crunch
Hot Buttered Rum Chex Mix
Chex Caramel Chocolate Drizzles
There are MANY more recipes here.

What is great about these recipes and most of the Chex recipes is that they take about 15 minutes using the microwave. Since I have been so busy with baking for my business and then Christmas baking I really didn't want to do a lot of involved snacks. These were perfect!




The prize pack provided by Chex and My Blog Spark included these cute Chinese take out containers for sorting and taking home the mixes. Fun!

Now for the fun part! You could win a prize package and host your own Chex Party Mix-Change!

Your prize package will contain:

2 boxes of Chex cereal to create Chex Party Mix recipes

5 featured Chex Party Mix recipes

10 takeout containers so your guests can take their Chex Party Mix to-go

$20 gift card to purchase recipe ingredients and decorating supplies

There are three ways to enter.

#1 Leave a comment and let me know what event you will host your Party using the Prize package.

#2 "Like" Chex Mix on Facebook. Leave a 2nd comment letting me know you did.

#3 Share this giveaway! On your Facebook or Blog. Leave a comment for each place you shared.

Winner will be chosen via Random.org on January 8th, (2012 yes it really is!!).

Thanks and good luck!

Christmas Photos

Our Christmas in photos.

Decorating cookies at Girl Scouts.

Edible playdough

Christmas Eve with the Adams'

Christmas Eve gift, slippers!

Tree ready for Christmas morning.

Christmas with my side.

My new chair covers.

Crayola Giveaway Winner!

The winner of the Crayola Giveaway chosen via random.org is comment number 2, Mr. Write!!

Congratulations to you! Thank you to everyone that entered!

Adobe Mountain RailRoad Field Trip

My son loves trains so when this field trip came up again I decided we should go. We haven't gone on a lot of field trips this year. There has been less cash and for several months we let my brother and his family use one of our cars, which means we didn't have one all the time. I hope that in 2012 we will be able to go on more. We will also be starting a park day for the new homeschool group so we should be busier with school stuff. hmm I think we were already busy. haha

Anyway, on Monday we went to the Adobe Mountain Railroad. It was so cool and the kids loved it. The trains are 1/8th the size of a regular train, built to scale. Everything works just like a big train would. It is on a huge area of land with tracks all over and the people who volunteer there have made little towns and different tiny sites along the tracks. It was fun to watch for all those things too. We rode the train, stopping halfway through to look at the museum and huge model train set up. Then we rode back to the station. We were lucky enough that they took us on a second ride, we switched trains and went on different tracks that time. It was a lot of fun. I think Nate would have enjoyed it too. Hopefully we will be able to go again when he can go too.

In the station waiting to start the ride. See my friend Tina behind Kaden. :)

A picture from our train of another one. There were three trains and our group had them all going. Only 21 people were aloud on each train.

One of the old fashioned looking towns along the track.

The train model inside one of the buildings on our stop.

Meghan was sooo happy to get to see her friend Miqa! Miqa's brother Dante is in this photo too.

Did I mention it was cold? We drove an hour and 20 minutes for this one, going through patches of rain the whole way. It was in the low 40's, but at least the sun came out.

Miniature airport along the track.

They have a big wooden train the kids can play on. I believe they said it was built by an Eagle Scout.

A great time! They had inflatable Christmas Decorations, (not inflated when we went through) and lights strung all over. They mentioned having nighttime tours this holiday season. You can find more information on their website.