Lilli reciting (from memory!!!) Luke 2:8-12

Sisters on Christmas Eve:

Eleanor’s First Christmas:

Sisters:

Whoops!!

Happy Eleanor:

Hello Up There!

Lilli, Baby Eleanor, & gentle Nicki:

Lilli’s Excited for Christmas:

Clarke Girls Christmas Dance Party:

New Princess Outfits::

Making Birthday Cupcakes for Jesus:

Singing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus:

Today, our German Shepherd, Nicki, is three years old!  That equates to 28 human years according to http://www.dogyears.com/

Lilli even decorated Nicki’s “House”

Here’s to many more birthdays! We love you Nicki!

I’m a stay at home mom. That always cracks me up, “stay at home mom.” As if I don’t have loads of laundry to do, three kids to entertain, meals to prepare, and  I can just kick my feet up all day & eat bon bons.

Well, after making this Truffle / Bon-Bon recipe, I might just have to take some time to kick back and relax!

Here’s what you do - pay attention because this is going to resemble a run-on sentence

Just take about a pound of sandwich cookies (such as Oreos…I chose a vanilla flavor), blend it so that it resembles sand, add 8z of cream cheese, blend together extremely well, chill in the fridge for about 30 mins (or until a little more firm), roll into small balls, dip & cover with melted chocolate, let dry on wax paper, chill in the fridge, enjoy!

Of course you could decorate with sprinkles, sugar, chopped nuts, or contrasting chocolate - the possibilities are really endless!

My dear hubby is a HUGE peanut butter fan and I am a GINORMOUS chocolate fan. Put the two together and you have irresistible Peanut Butter Blossoms!

Lilli and I made these ever so delicious cookies today and her favorite part of course, was licking the bowl…literally.

In the words from Sally McDodd from Horton Hears a Who: “That’s one of my girls!”

I skipped posting about batch #5: Greek Butter Cookies because they weren’t anything special - just think of a butter cookie…and put the word “Greek” in front of it.

But today we did make something special:

Cocoa Meringue Cookies. I really enjoy making meringues for two reasons:

1. It only calls for two ingredients: egg whites & sugar (I substituted with Splenda though)
2. They’re fat free! (I cannot tell you how much butter we’ve used in our past batches!)

We got creative and added about four tablespoons of cocoa - Corinne was very excited to have “chwokween keetins!” (Corinne speak for “chocolate cookies”)

Eleanor’s Christmas gift. If I were a 5 month old, I’d want one too

Even though I’m taking a break from blogging, I did want to continue to share my Christmas Cookie adventures!

Clothespin Cookies! Time consuming, yes…but worth it, if you intend on making a lot of them!

Batch #3 was Cream Cheese Brownies that I made with Lilli yesterday. I didn’t get a picture because they were gone before I knew it….but I did get a picture of my little helper after she was done licking the bowl

Here is another favorite decoration of mine that I display during the Christmas season:

Glittered pine cones surrounded by faux pine branches. These sit in a large, shallow, gold bowl on top of my coffee table - a perfect place to be able to watch the sparkles!

Thumbprint cookies! Or, as this recipe calls them, Rosenmunnar.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter (softened)
1/4 cup white sugar
1 cup sifted flour
(I got 33 one inch cookies out of this)

1) Combine sugar & butter…

…cream until fluffy.

2) Add flour…

…mix until dough forms (this takes a quite a few minutes…at first the “dough” becomes very crumbly, but eventually turns into a more solid dough).

3) Shape into small balls and press thumb into center.

4) After filling center depression with favorite jelly or preserves, bake at 375 for about 10 minutes (I take a spatula and slightly lift a cookie to see if it’s light brown on the bottom).

***Just a friendly tip***
Remove from oven and let cool on baking pan for about 5-7 minutes. If you try and remove them before they have cooled, they will crumble (speaking from experience…)

The girls had so much fun making these thumbprints. And one usually has all these ingredients on hand - it can’t get much easier than that!

As I was sitting in my rocking chair knitting Eleanor’s Christmas gift last night, my eyes wandered around the living room. I love the evening when I can do this…the girls are in bed, the house is quiet, and I have time to rest.

My eyes came to our Christmas tree and I realized (after being reminded by Mandi) that I never picked out a *favorite* ornament. I love our “Baby’s First Christmas” Lladro ornaments for the girls, and there are a pair of pink ballet shoes that always seem to catch my eye, but I’d have to say that hands down my favorite ornament is this cute Thomas Pacconi bear (I happen to have a thing for bears…you should see the hutch in Eleanor’s room filled with Boyd’s Bears that I used to collect when Lilli was born). The camera didn’t pick up the glitter on his present, nose, or ears…but they sure do sparkle in the light!

Do you have a favorite ornament?