Thanksgiving blessings.............

You're looking at them.................

Chocolate peppermint patty cookies!

I haven't tried these but found the recipe and more importantly, the picture of these beauties! I can't find a picture of them to post but trust me, they are beautiful. They look like chocolate whoopie pies with crushed candy cane sides. BE.A.UTIFUL!
10 oz. bittersweet chocolate such as Guittard, chopped
2 oz. unsweetened chocolate chopped
1/4 cup unsalted butter, cut into chuncks
3 large eggs at room temperature
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup flour
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp kosher salt

Put chocolates and butter in a medium metal bowl and set over a pan filled with 1" simmering water. Cook, stirrring occasionally until melted. Remove from heat and let cool slightly. whicsk in eggs and sugar, mixing until combined. Whisk in flour, baking poder, and salt. Chill dough, covered, until firm, about 2 hours.
Let dough sit at room temperature 15 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 and line baking sheets with parchment paper. Scoop 1 Tbsp. portions of dough, rolling each into a ball, and put onto sheets 1 " apart. Press into 1/4" rounds.
Bake until they no longer look wet on top, about 8 minutes. Let cool on baking sheets.
Filling:
3 cups powedered sugar
4 TB. milk
3/4 tsp peppermint extract
Spread 1 heaping tsp. peppermint icing onto flat side of 1 cookie. Top with flat side of a scond cookie to form a sandwich. Press together to squeeze filling to the edge. Roll edge of cookie in crushed candy canes!

Makes about 20.

Now I'm thinking that you could probably find any chocolate cookie recipe and have this work. You could probably make regular frosting and just add in some candy cane and still roll the edges. You could probably use cool whip mixed with crushed candy canes as well and then just keep them refrigerated..........

Let me know if you try any of this!

Merry Christmas!

Onesie........

Summer, my daughter, has been adorning baby onesies. She puts lots of things on the fronts. She sent me a link to adorne the back/bottom of onesies. This is my first try at it. Super cute I think. I decided to put pockets on and thought that would be cutie patootie for a boy but alas, no boy material......... The girlie pockets are pretty cute. I just bonded them on and then sewed around them. Be watching for boy bottoms............

Now I just need a baby bottom to put in these! Any takers?

FIRE!

So I've been at Basin Choral Festival tonight and Paul was SUPPOSED to be having a quiet night at home. Uh, that didn't really go as planned.

Dad fired up the four wheeler to move some horse feed from the garage to the shed. He had to fill it up with gas. He did his chore and parked the four wheeler back by the shed. About 30 minutes later he heard/felt a big boom. He of course, thought I had come home early and ran over something. He said it was a different enough of a sound (it rattled the windows) that he got up and went to the front door. He could see the glow of fire on the front rock pile. He ran around to the side of the house and the ATV was on fire to the tune of about a 12 foot flame. He ran to the hose and then realized it had burned up under the ATV. Then he remembered that we were not getting much water thru that hose anyways and had scheduled that to be fixed a few days ago. It had not gotten fixed. UGH! So he ran to the front of the house and pulled on that hose. It was frozen. NO WATER! He grabbed some work gloves and ran back to the ATV and pulled it away from the shed. The thing is still shooting flames. Why he thought that was a good idea is beyond me. Then he ran into the garage and grabbed a small bucket and ran to the pool. He filled it and ran to the ATV and started to try to put out the fire. He's thinking the house is going to start on fire or the entire mountain. He ran back to the pool and the water that had spilled on the deck had frozen so he slipped and fell and just about went into the pool. The bucket flew into the pool but he was able to grab it back out. He must have made dozens of trips to the pool. He enhaled so much smoke - burning tires, plastic, etc - so he kept throwing up on top of all of that. He's still coughing really hard. This is what is left of our ATV, atv wheelbarrow, and the side of our shed melted too. Dad has a few minor burns on his arm and a boatload of junk in his lungs but he's fine. He came in and called All State. It's all covered thank goodness. More importantly, dad's okay and nothing else started on fire. How that was possible is amazing.

Note to self: Call the fire department when things start on fire. Paul did not.......silly man...............such a man thing to NOT do!

Enjoy the pics!

Crafting.......

This is my newest craft creation. It sure took more ribbon than I had anticipated. It took about 12 yards for each ball. I cut the strips into 4.5". The ribbon that worked the best is the wired, thicker ribbon. The red stuff was a nightmare. I painted the clay pots black and then covered them in modgepodge for better wear. Then I put black river rocks in the bottom of each of the pots. I wrapped the dowels with gold ribbon.

March Madness

Two new babies are to join the ranks of our grandkids. They are both due in March. March 18th and the 26th. This will be Sam and Nikki's first baby - a boy and Summer and Josh's second baby - a girl.

Baby boy Stewart - eta March 18 This one belongs to Sam and Nikki.



These next two girls belong to Summer and Joshua.
Baby girl Andrus - eta March 26th




Reece 13 months


These two boys belong to Ben and Sharon.
Calvin almost 2


Grayson 3 1/2


The final three belong to Dani and Jefferson.
Taytum 4 months


Andi 2 1/2


Carter 3 1/2


The baby domino has tipped in our family and we are loving it. So, any takers to tip the next one over? Alli, Sharon, Dani?

Halloween.............

Ugh - that's all I have to say about Halloween. However, I did bring out the old scone recipe and ditched the Rhodes Roll Dough scones. I forgot just how good a real scone is. Thought I would share the recipe. And for my family - you'll remember that it comes out of that cookbook that I put on the burner and then proceeded to turn the burner on. Half of it's missing now and it's all burned and crunchy around the edges. You know, the yellow one......a Family Raised On SunShine. I would love a new copy of this cookbook. This happened clear back when we lived on Eldorado. Anyways, here's the recipe:

German Scones

Dissolve 2 packages yeast in 1/2 cup warm water. Add 1 T. sugar.

Pour 1 cup boiling water over:
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c. butter
2 t. salt

Add:
3 beaten eggs
Yeast mixture
2 cups flour

Bear with mixer until smooth. Add 2 1/2 c. flour and stir in. Let rise for 1 hour. It will be pretty sticky so when you go to roll them out, make sure you have lots of flour available to you. Roll out and cut into squares. Fry in hot oil. ( After the dough has risen you can put it in the refrigerator until you are ready to use it.)

Instead of the traditional chilli soup this year, we had Lobster Bisque. It was soooooo delicious. Here is the recipe for that:

Lobster Bisque

Go to Costco.
Go to the back where they keep cheeses (in the open coolers) and look for the Kirtland brand Lobster Bisque. It's fresh - not canned.

Heat it up. Lots of lobster in in. Very inexpensive.

Enjoy