Christmas Party 2011

I had been wanting to have a party or get together for some time. Halloween was my first choice, but didn't work out, so we went ahead and had a party for Christmas. My first thought was to do a cookie exchange of some sort, but it kind of spiraled from there. My good friend Amanda graciously offered to help me out. She is a complete party planning genius and is amazing. She was in charge of the decorations on the tables. I was kind of bummed that we were limited as to how many people we could invite because of the size of our house. Next year I think I will copy another friend's party which was the day after ours. She just made her party an open house which was brilliant because anyone can stop by at any time, leaving room for as many people as you can afford to feed :)

We had so much food it was ridiculous. We had little smokies from Costco, chicken roll ups, dipped cinnamon topped oreos, oreo bon bons or truffles, wreath cookies, pretzel peanut bark, rolo pretzel pecans, assorted Christmas candy, chips and rotel dip(made by our friend Jerry), bread and spinach dip, crackers and pretzels and another dip. Amanda made a buffalo chicken dip, cake pops, Christmas chex mix with the cutest little santa hats, yummy peppermint chip cookies, delicious red velvet cupcakes, and the toppings for the hot chocolate bar. I hope I didn't forget anything. Plus all our guests brought yummy food to share as well. I will try to come back later and write down recipes or links for some of the food shown.

We played stuff Santa which involved 2 lucky guests dressing up in my maternity and fat clothes and stuffing them with balloons. We played girls against guys and raced to see who could stuff their person with all their balloons the fastest. The second game we played was building a snowman. One person from each team was the snowman while teammates wrapped them with toilet paper, dressed them with gloves, boots, scarves, and hats, and put big black paper buttons on the front. The first team to finish building their snowman wins. I had prizes for everyone who participated for being such good sports. We also played name that toon. Our friends Jerry and Amanda had recorded several different Christmas songs and we had to match them with the artist that sang them. We played a present game where I had wrapped a gift several times in different boxes and each person got to take a turn trying to unwrap the present with oven mitts when they rolled a certain number. The kids also got to play pin the nose on Rudolph. It was a lot of fun and I wish I had taken a few more pictures.

Yo Gabba Gabba Concert

This concert was a while ago, but I just got around to uploading the pictures from the laptop. I won a contest for 4 free tickets to see Yo Gabba Gabba Live in San Antonio. Thank you Macaroni Kid for such an awesome opportunity! So, Chase, myself, Emery, and Joelle went. We had awesome seats as you can tell by our pictures, I think we were around something like the 11th row. It was sooooo much fun, we had a really good time. We danced right along with the kids. We would totally do this again if we could. We LOVE Yo Gabba Gabba!

Chase texted "Emery and Joelle Rock!!!" and I got a picture of it up on the board during intermission.

Cheese and Vegetable Soup

Soup and French Bread before any changes
1 of 2 loaves of French Bread (I can fit 2 loaves on one baking sheet)
Soup after adding bacon and broccoli.

I've been kind of on a soup kick off and on for the last couple of months. So, expect to see a lot of soup recipes soon :) I got this recipe from one of my favorite food blogs...Jamie Cooks It Up! You will see that I tend to use a lot of her recipes, I usually never go wrong with one of her recipes. I made this first without really changing anything, but my family thought it needed a little extra something. So, on the second night I took the leftovers and added some broccoli and bacon. I served it with homemade french bread. My family loved it! I got the bread recipe from Deals to Meals, another blog that I follow. Here is the link for the soup... http://jamiecooksitup.blogspot.com/2009/11/cheese-soupbest-in-west.html and here is the link for the bread... http://dealstomeals.blogspot.com/2009/03/blog-post_09.html . Enjoy!

Homemade Dulce De Leche

So, I've been meaning to post more food items and recipes that we make on my blog to keep track of them and share them. I had read about making your own dulce de leche before using your crock pot or on the stove. Chase came home from work and wanted to try it out after one of the guys at the fire station had made it. So, we decided it would be a fun and cheap family dessert. We decided to make it in the crock pot and we didn't bother looking up how to do it, we just did it and it turned out pretty tasty.

First you take a can of sweetened condensed milk and remove the wrapper. Stick it in the crock pot or sauce pan on the stove. Cover with water and cook for about 3 hrs on high in the crock pot, if you're doing it on the stove go for a lower temperature for longer. It was late when we started, so it probably would have turned out better if we had done it low and slow in the crock pot as well. We had a limited time to cook it before the kids had to go to bed. The one thing I had read about making this is some people reported that your can could possibly explode if you weren't careful, I think that was on the stove. I think you're pretty safe using the crock pot, and just to be safer, cook it on low. When you're done cooking just open your can and serve with ice cream, brownies, or fruit, etc. Oh, and maybe let the can cool a bit first before opening :) We served ours with apples and the kids loved it as you can see from the pictures below. For some reason I don't have a picture of Emery, she was probably in trouble or in the bathroom when I took the pictures. I think Chase's friend at work used his to make some type of a banana pudding. I believe there is a version of this recipe found at 365daysofcrockpot.com if you're wanting to use the crock pot and want more specific instructions than what I have provided. If you want to use the stove, I'm sure you could just google it. Try it you'll like it :)

Cam's Cool Valentine Box

Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine CookiesCookies the kids decorated with way too much frosting and candy.
Bailey's masterpiece.
Addie's creations.
Cam's breaking heart.
Emery's art work.
Joelle's cookie licked clean of frosting.
Me and my hunky hubby :)
Beautiful Bailey.
Sweet Cutie Pie Addie.
Handsome Cam.
Silly Emery.
Serious Joelle.
Crazy Like a Fox :)
Fabulous Fox Fam :)
Happy Valentine's Day Everyone!