Survived the Holidays

So you probably thought I disappeared and I kind of did in the black hole that is called 'the kitchen'. The holidays were rough. I did not have a holiday luncheon this year for the ladies as there wasn't enough interest in it so I spent from Yule to Christmas (I know a strange span) getting ready for Christmas dinner in which we had a friend over because no one should be alone then and we were able to see other dear friends that stopped by including one that just came back to the states from serving over seas. The last few weeks have been a blurr trying to get the house back to order and then trying to get back into the swing of school for the kids and work for me.

I will try to have at least one product opinion from me in every post at the bottom but I've done a lot less deals and freebies the last few weeks so I'm going to have to get back into the swing of it.

So let's zoom through my holiday baking frenzy shall we?

Well first like I said in my last post I was going to make shortbread and berlinerkraser cookies. Both of these have become a tradition for our family as the girls really enjoy cooking with me and being able to help cut out or decorate each cookie.

Now the thing about shortbread cookies is it uses a LOT of egg yolks which leaves you with all the whites and I just could not justify throwing those out nor did I feel like making scrambled egg whites to eat so what uses egg whites? Why Angel food cake of course! Now I have to admit the reason I never made this cake from scratch before is because of the huge amount of whites needed and because of this need I ended up doing 2 batches of shortbread cookies (which is a LOT of cookies) and I didn't have cake flour so I had to take out 2 tbsp from 1 cup of flour and replace it with 2 tbsp of cornstarch and it worked out great. In fact the cake was the first thing ate. Now if you are wondering why it looks so dark its because I made it a Spiced Angel food cake which went over really well.

So during break we all went down to the Hospital Day at Winter Wonderland for the hospital employees. We ended up not staying very long because it was crowded and due to the down town construction they did not have the normal activities but they did have the crafts section still so each of the girls got a big bag of crafts that we did over winter break. Everyone thinks I'm so crafty but here's my little secret I don't put these crafts together myself... shhh don't tell anyone.

We had our Christmas dinner this year with a honey orange glazed ham and potato soup with bread bowls I made from scratch. I took my normal savory pizza bread recipe and just made the bread since I knew it was a recipe I could trust. I had to make it twice since I didn't feel comfortable just doubling the recipe.

 

So there you have it a Sims Holiday. We also made a plaster volcano during the break for Katherine to use though sadly didn't get much of a reaction out of the chemicals provided so I grabbed a big box of Baking Soda and a giant bottle of vinegar and we made that volcano go! but first we painted the newspaper green and we took some extra plaster and crumbled it up too look like the rocks at the bottom of a mount and use Monopoly houses/hotels to give us a nice little town at the base. The girls had great fun with it!

Alright then! Let's move on to a quick product review for this week...

Dr. Pepper 10 : If you like it great! Personally since I'm in love with Dr. Pepper I found it to be blasphemy they claim it tastes the same but it's very light on flavor in my opinion and has an after taste like Splenda. It's drinkable but it's not even remotely close to the original.

Well until next time folks! Peace!

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