Merry Christmas From Our Family To Yours

Our morning began at 5:38 on the dot! Thanks to the eldest boy in the house. He couldn't stand it. He had to wake the little ones. They seem to be pretty satisfied with their loot. Our house looks like a toy store exploded. Did I mention that all the unwrapping took about 20 minutes. Amazing how long it takes to prepare and how quickly it all gets disassembled.

How many guys does it take to put together a doll house? I'm sure there is a joke in here some where. Have a great day with your family! Don't forget to be kind to your garbage men. They are going to have some serious picking up to do come trash day.

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Gorilla Bread by Paula Deen

My hairdresser Sharla has been telling me about this Gorilla bread. I have made Monkey bread but turning it into a gorilla is another level. I'm making this for our boot camp class. There may be a riot! lol I have no idea. Merry Christmas guys. I'm hoping they fill up on this stuff so I can catch up with them.

Prep Time: 10 min       Cook Time: 30 min        Serves: 12 to 14 servings

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 3 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese
• 2 (12-ounce) cans refrigerated biscuits (10 count)
• 1 1/2 cups coarsely chopped walnuts

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Spray a bundt pan with nonstick cooking spray. Mix the granulated sugar and cinnamon. In a saucepan, melt the butter and brown sugar over low heat, stirring well; set aside. Cut the cream cheese into 20 equal cubes. Press the biscuits out with your fingers and sprinkle each with 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon sugar. Place a cube of cream cheese in the center of each biscuit, wrapping and sealing the dough around the cream cheese. Sprinkle 1/2 cup of the nuts into the bottom of the bundt pan. Place half of the prepared biscuits in the pan. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar, pour half of the melted butter mixture over the biscuits, and sprinkle on 1/2 cup of nuts. Layer the remaining biscuits on top, sprinkle with the remaining cinnamon sugar, pour the remaining butter mixture over the biscuits, and sprinkle with the remaining 1/2 cup of nuts. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool for 5 minutes. Place a plate on top and invert.

I was inverting the bundt cake pan onto a paper plate and BAM! That's what I get for trying to fatten up my workout buddies. I lost most of it but I think it was going to be really good.

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Baking FOOL!

Every year for Christmas I will bake up a bunch of goodies to show our appreciation to those who provide us service all year round like our garbage men, the mail carrier, the employees that work in the child watch area at our Y etc... I will also make some for a few of my close friends.

It started out with this yummy Oreo Truffle recipe. Then someone left a comment and said, "try the Mint Oreos" and we did! These are messy but everyone that tasted them loved them.

 Next are these chocolate covered rods. This year I threw in some pretzel nuggets.

These are white cupcakes with white icing and red and green sprinkles. Dex our boot camp instructor has a birthday coming up so he's getting most of these.

These are new! They are Marble Brownies and I found the recipe inside a box of Philadelphia cream cheese. These are an awesome way to break out of the traditional brownies. My husband and I thought they rocked!

My boy didn't agree with us and insisted we make the brownies the old school way.

Next up! Texas trash. I didn't like the way it turned out. I think we did something wrong so they didn't end up on the plates.

Then I was going to make these sugar cookies and put some colored sprinkles on them but something went horribly wrong! These didn't make it on the plates either.

These are the finished products! I'm happy to be done. It's been a couple of days but most of it was done today. Don't worry I didn't eat everything. I just tried the new stuff. It was worth it and a lot of fun. Nothing expresses appreciation like homemade food from the heart.

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Still Getting Ready For Christmas

This is my dog! She was not inspiring me while I was working out this morning. I think she had the right idea for a Sunday afternoon.

The one on the left is her stocking. What do I do with the other three? Do I try to scrape the glitter glue off? All three of these dogs have died, we lost two in the past four months. It was really sad to pull these out. Our son was really sad. It's tough on him because these dogs have been with him his whole life.

He was VERY excited to decorate the tree though. It's a nice sized tree that's real. We enjoy real trees.

Amazing what garland, ornaments and icicles can do! They really enjoyed putting all the ornaments on the tree. I save all the ones they make in school so they get to see how they have been maturing. It's really neat. Now it feels like Christmas time in our home.

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Oreo Truffles by Tiffany Ard

My son and I are Holiday treat making fools today! I put out a request on Twitter for an easy no bake recipe for a new holiday treat. We are trying this recipe sent to me by Tiffany Ard for Oreo Truffles.

Easy Oreo Truffles

1 pkg (1lb., 2oz) oreo cookies, divided
1 pkg (8oz) cream cheese
2 pkg (8oz each) bakers semi sweet baking chocolate, melted

crush 9 of the oreos to fine crumbs for later use.

crush remaining 36 cookies to a fine crumb, place in a medium bowl. add cream cheese: mix until well blended. (it's easier to use your hands) roll cookie mixture into 42 balls, about 1 inch in diameter.

dip balls in chocolate: place on waxed paper covered baking sheet. Sprinkle with reserved cookie crumbs.

Refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour. Store leftover truffles, covered in refrigerator.

makes 31/2 dozen.

I like to drizzle some with white chocolate, or instead of putting the reserved cookie crumbs on it i like to add crushed pecans on top. They are awesome and easy to make! Try them and let me know what you think!

Tiffany - I can't use pecans because my other son has nut allergies but it sounds good. I went with your suggestions of the white chocolate. This was a messy dessert to make but it sure was fun! I only got 23 balls out of the recipe but maybe I made my balls too big.

They are in the refrigerator right now. We can't wait to try them and give them out. I have a list of people on my baking list. It's usually my friends that want to exchange gifts but would rather be on my baking list. So get ready people because these are full of yummy badness!

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Santa Claus Comes To Town

Just wanted to share what that Santa Claus has been up to around here! He's been making a lot of appearances of late. At least she isn't crying this year! You can never go wrong with a candy cane.

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Getting Ready for Ole St. Nick

All the kids have written their letters to Santa Claus. My 10yo old cracks me up! His letter starts out, "Dear O Gracious Lord of Presents..."  and he ends with "P.S. The reindeer food will be in the front yard." This kid cracks me up.

I think our town is really cool to provide Santa's Mail Box every year. Some of these letters get printed up in our local newspaper. The kids are really excited for Santa to come around on the fire truck too. It's little things like this that we make part of our Christmas traditions and they will always remember it.

 This is their TA-DA photo! Then they had to run through the yard at City Hall because they have all of these wonderful holiday decorations.

Silly ran around this pole so many times it made me dizzy to watch her.

 All aboard!

I can't wait until we get a real tree in our house. That's another family tradition we have. We got to Houston Garden Center as a family and pick out the tree! Maybe we can make that happen today. Can't wait to see how you guys are getting ready for St. Nick!

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It's All About The Pie! - Happy Thanksgiving

Special thanks to the Deer Park United Methodist Youth Group for making these yummy pies! Our contribution to the Thanksgiving feast were these cherry and apple pies along with a ham. There was so much food. I'm thankful that our families were able to come together, join in prayer and eat. Also, I'm thankful that my husband has spent the day killing that honey do list! He has done such an awesome job tackling things around the house. I'm super happy about it.
Look at Toni, you would think she had some turkey but she didn't. I caught her this morning snoozing on the couch. Since she is the last dog standing I had to cut her a break. It's Thanksgiving after all and well, I'm thankful to have her still around. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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Happy Grandparent's Day!

I don't really care if Hallmark just made up this holiday as another way to get more money. My family LOVES this holiday and we have been celebrating it for years. My mother (aka Nana) and my grandmother (aka Granny) are always helping my family out if we need it. We try to have them over often for dinner just as way to say thank you. We've been in lots of pinches with the kids and emergency room visits and times when I get sick and I need help!  Thank goodness they live so close by. We are very lucky to have them around.

My son made them some presents and those are the best kind. He also picked out a single rose for each of them. We found some Fall candle holders that are hand painted to give to them as well. They love home made stuff! Hope you celebrated the Grandparents in your family today.


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