Rambling # 31 White Christmas in Kentucky

I feel it is totally fitting that after I post about my Mr. Schuester Valentine Card I follow it up with another holiday~Christmas! My family had a long and lengthy discussion about where and who was hosting Christmas this year. We finally came to the decision that Christmas would be in Kentucky at my sister Melissa's house. My mom, Sookie (my dog), and I went up there first. Followed a couple of days later by my dad, sister (Donna), Blink (parents dog), and June (Donna's dog). My sister had totally decked out her house, including her fridge. When you opened the fridge to get something out you would find this:

The cute little snowman had several songs he would sing when you opened the door. You could turn it off but it was kind of fun. Here's the living room with their beautiful Christmas tree.
Every time we go to her house we go to a Christmas Eve service at this little church up the road. Right before we started to head out to the church it started snowing (yes we had a white Christmas, like in Christmas Story) so Donna and I went outside and took some pictures in the falling snow.

the inside of the church where we attended the candlelight Christmas Eve service

The next morning Melissa made us (that were awake) breakfast and we got somethings ready for lunch later in the day. Once we were all awake we sat down and opened presents. After years of asking I finally got this:

My green apple Kitchenaid Mixer!!!! I totally love this thing! I used it right away. It was a great Christmas. The next morning we all went to breakfast at Toast on Market to celebrate my mom's birthday and it started snowing a little again. Then my mom, Sookie, and I left to make the trek back to Texas.

Happy Valentine's Day!

My Valentine's Day card from my best friend Stacie! I just love Mr. Schue!
Inside it says:
I think I would still be in high school. Failing classes on purpose. Yup. Here's to an oh-so-HOT Valentine's Day.

What a great card!

Non-Adventure # 40 IBC Christmas Women's Dinner

Sometime back I got an email from Leah asking me to be part of a decorating team. For the last couple of years, Leah, Amy, and their mom Nancy have been in charge of putting on a Christmas dinner at the Irving Bible Church. Every year the women at the church decorate tables and come for some delicious food, fun, and great entertainment and raise some money for a good cause in the process. Well last year Nancy, their mom, decorated a ton of tables all on her own and barely finished in time. So this year, Leah had asked some of us to help and be on a team that could help her mom out.

So early one cold December morning I met up with my friend Jennifer and we headed out to the Irving Bible Church. When we got there tons of tables had already been decorated but there were still tons in progress, and some still waiting to be done. Here is what the scene looked like when we arrived.

Our team (minus me) Jennifer, Tiffany, Lindsey, and Leah
Once there we set about to get things decorated. Nancy does a wonderful job of planning these tables out during the year and then sets them up at home, takes a picture so even if she isn't setting the table up someone could easily use it as a guide to set up the table. We divided into two teams Tiff and Lindsey, and me and Jennifer. Nancy even had stuff to decorate the bathrooms. Here is the girls bathroom:
And the boys (no boys were actually there so it was used as a 2nd womans bathroom)
Jennifer and I's first table was a black and pink table with a pink christmas tree. I loved this table it was girly, glitzy, fun, and of course it had one of my favorite things, it was PINK!
The pink Christmas tree, it had a pink feather boa and black feathers and sparkly ornaments in pink and black.
The place settings
Nancy had provided these back loofa scrubbers to decorate the chairs but they were too short to put on the way she had and so we changed it up and tied them on and added some leftover ornaments. There were two different chair types. It kind of reminds me of an old perfume bottle.

The centerpiece was a cute hatbox and it also had these cute crosses
and some small purses
It ended up super cute and we totally loved it. I would have loved to have sat at this table. Our finished product! Our second table was a little more difficult. Nancy had put a box together of black, red, silver and white, but didn't really have a plan. She told is we were free to make it look however we want, to play around with what we had. Here is our start, There was a started centerpiece and we played around with the fabric till we found something we liked.
This was our planning process. We kind of made a huge mess. we drug everything out of our tub and we started looking at everything


The finalized place setting
The final product:
from another angle
Sometimes people don't show up until too late to decorate their table or don't show up at all so we have to set up some tables really quickly. The last table I helped with was one of these. The theme for this table turned out to be: Peppermint Candy Canes! The chairs had cute candy cane striped ribbons.
The place setting
The centerpiece
The final table! Not bad for 15 minutes!
Some of the tables were raffle tables, meaning some part or all of the table was up to be won. All you had to do was buy raffle tickets and drop a ticket into the glass bowl on the table. One of the tables decorated by Amy had a coffee theme because part of the prize on the table was Keurig coffee maker. It was super cute!
Leah had also made it possible for us to stay and enjoy the dinner, and entertainment by getting is a table. Here is my name holder at our table. It is a cute pin that can be used for other things like your hair or pinned to a sweater.
The dinner in full swing. It was tons of women walking around, laughing, talking, hugging, dropping off their tickets, and having a great time.

The dinner was delicious! And after dinner we had some great entertainment. They had an improv group called Pavlov's Dog come and perform for us. They were hilarious and had everyone laughing. Here are Jennifer and I all glamed up at dinner.
Leah, Amy, and I
And how cute are these ladies in their aprons! Leah, Nancy, and Amy. It's hard to find a cuter, sweeter, kinder trio of women! I just love them all. Thanks Leah for asking me to help and Nancy I had a blast! If you need help next year, I'm in!!!

Non-Adventure #18 & #20 and Rambling #17 Holidays! Celebrate! (think Madonna)

I was going to give an update about our Thanksgiving but I fell behind and I have decided to make it more of a holiday season update. This update will include Thanksgiving, some Christmas fun with friends, a road trip with my friend Stacie and Sookie (my dog), Christmas in Kentucky, and to finish it off a recipe from cooking with Baylee!

Sooooo.......

Thanksgiving around our house used to be this giant family thing where we all (aunts, uncles, cousins) went to my Aunt Julie's house and had a huge Thanksgiving feast! But as the years have passed, people have gotten married and the number of people attending has dwindled. So we now just have a meal at our house. My sister Melissa and her husband Michal drove down and we invited my Grandad, my uncle JF, and my aunt Kay. That is the all of them in the picture below.

Our spread of food minus the corn
This year I helped make the food as usual but my main contribution was dessert (oh and breakfast we had the Pioneer Woman's Cinnamon Rolls). I made pies, three of them this year. I made a cherry (cause it's my dad's fav), apple (my fav), and I made the Pioneer Woman's Chocolate Pie.

Here is my cherry and my apple pie

all three pies with fresh whipped cream
the cherry up close
Apple
The chocolate pie (she uses a pie crust and i changed it up and used a graham cracker crust)
The next day we made some more Pioneer Woman recipes. We made the mac and cheese and my dad made the bbq bacon wrapped japaleno peppers. She (my sister) liked my cookbook so much she wanted one of her own. So we headed up to Barnes and Nobles to get her a copy. When we got there, there was a giant bus with Mike Huckabee's name on it. Turns out he was doing a book signing. We called the rents and they came up and my dad got a copy of his book signed right at the end of his time in the store. Here he is signing away.

He was nice and signed really fast. Unlike PW, he didn't personalize with names or anything but he did sign a lot in the 40 minutes he was in store. We had a pretty great Thanksgiving and I am thankful for the family we had there and the time we got to spend together. I only wish Donna (my sister) hadn't had to work so she could have been there with us!

Now that Christmas season had officially started I could start listening to my Christmas music! (I mean I was already listening but now I wouldn't get all the strange looks!)

Here are some of the ways I spent my Christmas season. I went Christmas shopping in Southlake with Robin (here we are in front of the BIG Christmas tree!)

I also met up with some longtime friends Hope and Valinda, we went to The Chestnut Tree on the square. It was beautiful inside! They always have Twinkle lights up but for the holidays they added huge beautiful ornaments. While we were eating, Hope looked behind me and said Baylee! I turned around and there was Baylee! Here they are together! They are so cute! I just love those two!

Baylee was there with her great grandmother Mer. Just two fun gals eatin and chattin!I also got to hang with Baylee before heading out of town. We mixed up some hot chocolate and drove to Dallas to look at Christmas lights in Highland Park. As always the lights there were beautiful and elaborate! And we had a great time listening to Christmas music, talking, and looking at lights.

For Christmas I had planned to go to my sister Melissa's house to celebrate! I of course brought along Sookie (my dog) and my best friend Stacie. Sookie turned out to be a fantastic car dog! She slept practically the whole way. Here she is hanging our on her bed in the backseat.
and sleepin' in Stacie's lap

and again in the backseat
Stacie and I took turns driving and we stopped to spend the night at Homewood Suites in Memphis! It was a nice place with a FULL kitchen and it was a pet suite so I didn't get charged a pet fee for Sookie. Here is Stacie on one of her turns driving!
We arrived on Tuesday afternoon (which practically became night because of a time zone change) unloaded the car, and the we headed off to Cheddar's with my sister to meet one of her friends, Becki. Here they are below.
Becki was 9 months pregnant. She ended up having the baby the day after Christmas on my mom's birthday!
We grocery and gift shopped our way through the next two days. On Christmas Eve we got up and headed out to eat lunch/brunch at this place called Toast on Market. It is such a yummy place to eat. We had eaten there before on a previous visit and we (Stace and I) were dying to eat there again. The front of the menu:
Here we are Melissa, me, and Stacie. We are waiting patiently (or trying to) for our food to arrive. Normally there is a HUGE wait but we lucked out being Christmas Eve and all we didn't have to wait at ALL!!!!!
Melissa's food
Stacie's (ignore her "you'll poke your eye out claws!")
And mine. I didn't eat anything all morning in anticipation of the yumminess!

The outside of the building
Melissa then wanted to show us her office building in downtown Louisville and since we were full and in the area we headed over! In the lobby they had a beautiful tree. We took turns posing in front of it.

Then we headed back to my sister's house so I could get started making my pies and other desserts for the next day. Here is my Christmas apple pie (one of my best yet!)
We also made the sausage cream cheese pinwheels for breakfast and oreo truffles. We watched Four Christmas' and then we headed out to a 10pm Christmas eve service. The Sanctuary was beautifully decorated and the candlelight ceremony was really good.

We headed home and went to bed. The next morning we woke up I made my last pie (the chocolate one from Thanksgiving from the Pioneer Woman) and made breakfast. After we had eaten our fill we went and opened presents. Here is her house all decorated.

Ater opening all our swag (mine included new phone covers, juicy pants, a cookbook , earrings, and gift cards to my two fav places itunes and Nordstroms!) we started preparing the holiday feast for later. Melissa and Michal got the turkey in the oven and when it was all done it was a gorgeous looking bird!
Our whole Christmas feast! Hashbrown casserole, southern green beans, turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, deviled eggs and yummy rolls.
Our yummy and totally dangerous desert table. Chocolate pie, apple pie, fresh whipped cream, and oreo truffles!!!!!!! Oh it was soooooo goood!
That evening we watched some more movies (Christmas ones of course) and played some games and drank hot chocolate!

Saturday we just hung out and then we went and saw the Blindside. It was such a fantastic movie! I just love Sandra Bullock! Before bed we again played some games and snacked on the desserts from our Christmas feast!

Sunday morning we packed up the car and headed home, stopping at a pet friendly Holiday Inn in Little Rock. Which was a very nice hotel but had two doors one leading into a hall and one into an atrium area and Sookie barked all night long. Oh, and when I was taking Sook outside for a potty break , the parking lot appeared wet but was actually frozen because of the drop in temperature. I went to lift her over "the puddle" and in doing so lost my balance and busted so hard in the parking lot! I was ok a little bruised and some strained some muscles, but fine. I was glad that a car didn't come flying around the corner and nail us both or that she didn't bolt off. Here is Sookie doing what she did best on the trip!

While I was gone (up north!) there was a white Christmas at home but up north we had none of that. So when I got home I was glad when a couple of days before NYE I was able to at least watch snow fall. I was even able to catch some pictures.

I am so glad it's still college Christmas break because that means that Baylee is still home from ACU! I'm thrilled she is having a fantastic time but I still miss our good times. On Wednesday (before NYE) she came over and we made Oreo Truffles (the ones we had at Christmas)
Aren't we just so precious! We had to take a picture in our aprons! Hers has a B embroidered on the pocket! And as promised I am finishing this post with a recipe!

Oreo Truffles

Your ingredients: Oreos (any kind, you can even use the mint ones), cream cheese, and melting chocolate. I found this one at Sams it is reallly yummy and super smooth!
You start by dropping the WHOLE bag, that's right I said it the WHOLE bag into a food processor and crush them up into crumbs. You can also crush them in a plastic bag.
It is ok if you stop and eat a couple like Baylee!
Here I am crushing them up!
And Baylee playing around with the camera.
They should look like this when all is said and done
Next drop in the whole box of cream cheese (make sure it's good and softened!)
And mix it up good and well
When it's all mixed up chill it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes preferably an hour. When your mix is chilled, choose your favorite melting chocolate and melt according to package directions.
UMMMMM! Try and not stick your finger in the yumminess!
Then like Baylee is demonstrating, roll Oreo mixture into 1-inch balls. You can make them big or small really it's upto you.
And place them on a baking sheet with parchment paper.
When all are rolled out dip them into the melted chocolate and get em all good and covered. Use a fork and pull them out making sure to let excess chocolate drip off.
Place them back on the parchment paper. Here is a good time while the chocolate isn't solid where you can add some other things like crushed nuts or crushed peppermints. Don't worry about any holes left in the chocolate from the fork those can be covered with leftover chocolate later.
When all are coated, additions made, and holes filled/covered put the whole tray in the freezer to firm and set the chocolate.
It doesn't have to be long 10-15 min. After they are firmed up you can store them in container in the fridge.
Be prepared for people to think you have slaved for hours to make these yummy treats!

I had a fantastic holiday season and I hope all of you did too!

Oreo Truffles

1 bag of Oreos (your choice on which you would like)

1 box cream cheese, softened

Melting chocoloate (the amount you will need will depend on how many balls you make. Remember you can always melt more!)

Crush the whole bag of Oreo's in a food processor or by hand until only fine crumbs remain. Add in the softened cream cheese and mix well. Chill for at 30 minutes-1 hour. Melt chocolate according to package directions. Roll Oreo mixture into 1-inch balls (or bigger or smaller however you want them). When all are rolled out dip them into melted chocolate and cover them good. Using a fork, lift them out, let all chocolate drip off, and move to parchment paper. When all are dipped and covered add any extras you want and put them into the freezer to firm up for about 10-15 minutes. Store in a container in the fridge and Enjoy!