Russian Tea Cake Cookies (Cookie Day #9)

I am so back logged on blogging!!! So many fun things have happened since my last post and I know I need to just take some time and catch up! Bill is studying, Sawyer is napping, it's snowing lightly and there is nothing that absolutely needs to get done today....except for blogging!

It seems like ages ago that I was bustling around the kitchen with six little red aprons in toe. I have had over a week off for the holidays and while it's been a much needed treat of sleeping in and lounging around, I really miss my Day Care kiddos! I can't wait for all the exciting stories they will bring tucked in their pockets and stuffed in their bags of sledding, gifts, Santa, cousins, church and wintery fun!

Well, before the kids left for winter break, we made Russian Tea Cake Cookies that are a favorite at our house! I was excited to share the cookies with the kids and have a dusting of confectioner's sugar coating every surface of the kitchen! When I looked into my flour canister, much to my dismay, I didn't have any white flour left! UGH! but way in the back of our pantry was some whole wheat flour. "Oh, I can totally just substitute whole wheat for white flour. I do it all the time with homemade bread!" thought I.

Alright folks, listen up because a nugget of culinary knowledge is about to be bestowed upon you:

You CANNOT substitute whole wheat flour for white flour when making Russian Tea Cake Cookies!

....because if you do, they come out a crumbly, heavy, chewy ball that no amount of confectioners sugar can remedy. So, that batch promptly got tossed in the trash and after a quick run to the store by my wonderful husband, we produced some gorgeously perfect cookies! Yummy!

Beginning of a New Christmas Tradition

There have been many Christmas traditions that Bill and I have wanted to start with Sawyer but have just been really lazy about it in years past because we had given ourselves the excuse to slack off on the grounds of, "He's too little to remember it yet, we'll start it next year." Being as how he's FOUR this year, we thought we'd better get our behinds in gear! So, I was watching Oprah the other day (and YES, I do sometimes watch Oprah!) She had mentioned the importance of making a list at the beginning of the holiday season of all the 'Christmasy' things that you wanted to do, mark them on your calendar so that you actually set aside time to do them, and in our case, start them.

One Christmas tradition that I wanted to start doing was driving around to look at Christmas lights. So, last Sunday we piled into Nana & Papa's car and headed out in search of some beautiful lights. None of us had eaten dinner yet, so after a quick run through Burger King drive through, we were headed to Dundee. I had been looking forward to it for a while because I was sure that Sawyer was just going to have a blast. I couldn't wait for the wide eyed, "oohh's and aaahhh's and look how pretty's!!!" that were going to rise up from the red booster seat! Not one moment after the last French fry was pulled out of the Happy Meal box, a little voice rose up from the red booster seat, "Are we done yet?!?" and there were many more of those throughout the evening. (........sigh........) Well, all I can say is, I know that in years to come, he's going to really enjoy our special times in the car looking at the twinkling of lights.

Once we were done admiring the lights, snooping into people's homes and almost colliding into a mailbox, we stopped at my old haunt, Starbucks on 147th & Maple for some Christmas cheer!

After snarfing down a chocolate doughnut, Sawyer was in better spirits :)

Triple Venti Caramel Brulee and a Tall Caramel Apple Spice.

Hopefully this will be the start to many more evenings of lights in the future for the Rollins family. It was too bad Nana Jane wasn't here to join us......

Annual Christmas Dinner Party

This is the motley crew that we hang out with-some singles, some families, some loonies but they all have something that we really enjoy about them! :) This is our second annual Christmas Party. Last year we had a white elephant gift exchange and then went down town to the Old Market Passageway to this upscale place called V Mertz. After needing to take out second mortgages for our homes, we decided this year to tone it down this year just a tad :) So, everyone came over for the white elephant exchange before wqe went out to dinner.

Now, we all have very differing ideas of what a white elephant gift exchange really is. Bill and I thought it was bring something random but still something nice. Other people (cough, cough) think that you just dig something out of your garbage can or some good will reject, throw it in a gift bag and bring it! So, needless to say we had a hodge-podge of things........last year I got stuck with some cow boy belts....and our friend James's family had this tradition of always hiding some of the white elephant gifts around the home of the host....so later that night after getting home, we found all sorts of 'treasures' stashed in our shower, in our bed, under our sink and in our washing machine. But the worst one of all was some vile smelling imitation Paris Hilton perfume. Now, I've held onto this bright pink bottle of stink for an entire year so that I could try and give it back to them at our party! And I was pretty proud of myself that I still knew where it was last weekend. :)

After the crap exchange, oh sorry, gift exchange....those of us dressed for the occasion, went out to Biaggis for a really yummy dinner! A slight damper on the evening came about when I went to pull out my ID for my drink, and it wasn't in there! UUUGGHH! How annoying! Anyways, Bill and I started out with a Shrimp and Crab Arancini (A Sicilian classic of Arborio rice, shrimp, tender crab and a blend of spices shaped into balls, lightly breaded and fried for a crispy and creamy combination.) Then we shared these two meals pictured above. The one on the right was a CHILEAN SEA BASS (Fresh fillet of moist and flaky Chilean sea bass brushed with herb-garlic oil and seared on iron. Served with couscous ratatouille, clams, mussels, a garlic seafood broth and a touch of saffron aioli.) SO GOOD! The one on the right was one of the specials, a New York strip topped with onion rings, with garlic green beans and potatoes Au gratin.......YUM.

Dessert is what I was looking forward to the most. My friend Laney and I couldn't make up our minds so we decided to order two and share. I got the fabulous Tiramisu and she got the Chcolate Lover's cake ala mode....D-Lish!

After dinner we ended up at James and Arliss house with a movie and wine. The guys had stopped to grab some cigars and they sat out in the backyard, around the fire pit. It was such an enjoyable evening together and I'm excited to see what we'll end up doing next year!*

Note: The next morning I pulled our silverware drawer open to get a spoon for my yogurt and there it was......the bright pink bottle of imitation Paris Hilton perfume.

I'm warning you James~My sweet revenge is about to rear it's ugly head!

All The Way From The North Pole!

Last Friday was our Day Care Christmas Party! We started out the day with a visit from the one and only, Mrs. Clause!!! "I had to take three airplanes to get here from the North Pole so that I could be here with you today, boys and girls!"

She was Mrs. Claus from head to toe! She came with tales from Santa's workshop, an

tlers and jingle bells and a big basket of candy canes! The kids sat and listen really well to her story and then we all got to put on antlers and prance around like reindeer! (And yes, it was official prancing.)

Then the kids got to take a seat on her lap and tell her what they wanted from C

hristmas so that she could remind Santa one last time before Chris

tmas Eve.

We all gathered for a group picture and as you can tell, Kendyl (from row) really

enjoyed Mrs. Claus! Poor little thing would burst into tears whenever Mrs. Claus said anything to her! As soon as she left, we had a nice healthy lunch: Pizza! I figured, "Hey, it's a party day

....we can be unhealthy for once."

After afternoon naps, the kids were just giddy with excitement for our party! We

have been doing the Nativity story everyday for the past two weeks now, so the kids have gotten really good at knowing what comes next and what the characters all said. So, we sat down and went through it again before the party to remember that the most important party of Christmas is the birth of baby Jesus. The parents began to arrive and join us and the kids sat down to a Christmas treat-Brownies, veggie chips, pineapple chunks and blue be

rries. The REAL crowd pleaser were the cool juice bottles with different characters on top!

After our snack, we all headed downstairs to sit by the fire, listen to some Christmas tunes and dig into the stockings that have been dangling on my banister for the past couple of weeks! The kids had such fun unwrapping all of the gifts that they had brought for each other! I've been so very blessed with wonderful, God loving families that have been so great to work with this year! They were so sweet and brought me all sorts of fun Christmas gifts~hot chocolate mixes, mugs, candy, wine, books, CDs, and gift cards! It was such a fun afternoon for families to finally meet each other and end 2010!

Christmas Wreath Cookies (Cookie Day #8)

We made Christmas Wreath cookies the other day that two different families sent in! Being as how they were the family favorite for Sawyer's friends Dalton and Michael there was a lot of pressure to make them well! They were suposed to have little 'red hots' on them for decoration, but the kids just hated them, so we left them off!

Avery and Sawyer were in charge of the marshmallows.

What a HAM!!!

Secrets of Italian Cooking

Saturday evening the girls and I spent our 'Girls Night Out' at the Minicks house! The Minicks are an Air Force family that spent a lot of time over seas in Italy. Mrs. Minick graciously offered to let us come over for an evening of Italian cooking! She had us divided in teams to begin working on all the steps for an amazing Italian feast!

One of the main things that we had wanted to learn how to make was a traditional spaghetti sauce. The secret: lots of garlic and TONS of extra virgin olive oil!

Trying to get the wine open....

Now the party can get started! :)

Now what Italian meal would be complete without one of life's greatest pleasures...TIRAMISU!?!

Looks pretty good huh? It tasted even better! We made a caprese salad with tomatoes, fresh buffalo mozzarella and basil, Traditional spaghetti, sauteed vegetables in an Italian vinaigrette, and chicken in wine with lemon and rosemary......

It all looked SOOO good!

We had such a wonderful time just sitting and laughing and eating to our heart's content! The food was out of this world, the wine was flowing, and the company is always fantastic!

We ended the evening with delicious Tiramisu and a bottle of my favorite Moscato!

A Morning in Bethlehem

These are Sawyer's favorite slippers. He calls them his 'dinosaur feet'. He always tries to con me into letting him wear them out in public instead of wearing shoes.

Most weekend mornings I'll come out of my room to find him sprawled out on the couch in this outfit. 'Underwears and dinosaur feet'. Last Saturday morning, I made him cover up his perfect ensambel because we were headed off to 'A Morning in Bethlehem' at church and it was like a mini blizzard outside! The wind was so unbelievably strong and just cold as cold could be!

This was the first year that our church has put on this morning event for the kids where they can walk through all these different areas of the the church that were made to look like Bethlehem, do craft projects, see a live nativity ect. At the very start they were given a large envelope with a felt manger scene and every room that they went to they were given one of the felt pieces to fill up the scene! Each room that we stopped in, we were able to make some sort of Christmas ornament that symbolized a portion of the story. Here in the angel room, Bill helped Sawyer pound down his clay to make a star.

We were stopped by the wise men who were looking for directions to the baby Jesus.

In the wise men room, Sawyer ground a bunch of different spices together that were then poured into a little cloth bag to be hung on the tree!

The shepards were also on their way to find baby Jesus....

In the shepard room we made angels to remind us of how God can use all kinds of people to spread his good news.

One of the longer group activities was a birthday party for Jesus that was hosted by the shepards! We all sat at round tables as the shepards took us back to that amazing night when the angels appeared to them and spoke of the birth of our savior. We each had a cake that we decorated with different items such as an angel, a star, an evergreen branch and candles. One of the little boys at our table kept pointing to the shepards and saying, "Mommy, look at all those pirates!" :)

After gobbling down some cake, we headed to the chapel to finally see the baby Jesus in the stable. Mary and Joseph were there along with the baby Jesus that really looked the part except for his little Gap socks that would pop out every now and then :)

We thought we were all done until Sawyer spotted one more room that we missed. So he got to dress up like an angel, get his picture taken and decorate this card with tons of nativity scene stickers. It was a really fun morning and Sawyer is already talking about all his friends that he wants to bring with him next year!

Sour Cream Cookies (Cookie Day #7)

(You can find the rcipe on the 'Recipes from Posts' page located on the right side of the screen)

These might be some of the best cookies Ive ever had.....wow. Sawyer's friend Kendyl brought this recipe in and we knew it was going to be good because it was her Daddy's favorite and he was sure right! After baking the sour cream cookies, we made a rich brown butter glaze that the cookies were dipped in. The glaze made them velvety smooth and just heavenly! We had made a double batch so after all the kiddos took some home, Sawyer and I delivered some to all of our neighbors.

This was a flying airplane car that Sawyer likes to make and yesterday he wanted me to take a picture of it to put on the blog :)

I had bought a new nativity scene set from the Christian book store the other day that had lots of different people~that way, when we're doing the story, each of them get to hold a couple of characters rather than squabbling over them.

We've been doing the story everyday before lunchtime and the kids just can't get enough of it! They are quick to correct me if I leave out a certain phrase that I've said the other days but left out today. They love holding their two characters and placing them in when it's their turn.

Afterwards, I let them tell each other the story while I get lunch ready and let me tell you that we have some very creative children because I've never herd so many different renditions of the Christmas story! According to them, Mary and Joseph end up taking quite a few pit stops at different gas stations to get Diet Cokes and corn nuts......the shepards locate the star using 'sky map' on their phones and the inn keeper doesn't have a pool to swim in...... I bite my tongue to correct them because at the end of each story, no matter how they get there, baby Jesus makes it into the manger and they say, "The real meaning of Christmas is that Baby Jesus was born and was the best gift of all!"