Christmas, Crafts, & Cookies

Only a couple months late. Here's another catch up post:

Sometime before Christmas the Relief Society in my ward had a Christmas craft night with dinner. It was really fun and delicious! I haven't done anything crafty in awhile due to our living situation, so I really enjoyed it.

You could only pick two things to do (they had about ten options), so I picked things where you just show up and they provide everything for you instead of having to bring something. The less work the better!

^ These two shadow box frames were really cute, but I didn't make them. They were part of the crafts where you had to bring something with you. I just took pictures for my own future reference. The one on the left would be a cute Christmas decoration. The frame on the right would be cute on a kitchen.

^ This was a frame I made (not the actual frame, it's from IKEA). All we did was spray glued a piece of burlap to the plexiglass that came with the frame and then you could hot glue the clip on the front. I couldn't decide if I wanted to permenantly have my frame be vertical or horizontal sooo...

...I bought magnets at Walmart (the clip was already a magnet) and then depending on if I want it to be vertical or horizontal I can change it. I liked the idea of clipping a recipe up when you're cooking or changing out different photos or whatever else you can think to clip on there.

^ The pic on the left is of the clear plastic ornaments that I made (again, I didn't make the actual ornaments). I did wrap strips of Christmas paper around a pencil and then packed the coils through the top of the ornament. Those are actually our first Christmas ornaments.  On the right are the Christmas cookies I made. They're actually called Candy Cane Cookies, but my visiting teachers had given me a little Christmas gift and one of the things with it was a snowman cookie cutter so I thought I'd use it with the dough (the consistency is similar to sugar cookie dough).

candy cane cookies

preheat oven to 375 degrees.

mix together:
1 cup butter or shortening
1 cup powdered sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla

then add:
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt

at this point you can divide the dough in two and put red food coloring in one of the doughs.  roll out some dough from the white and from the red like worms. twist them around each other and curve the top so it looks like a candy can.

bake about 8-9 minutes.

when cookies are still warm sprinkle with mixture of 1/4 cup crushed peppermint candy cane and 1/4 cup sugar.



*side note: My husband said I should've put frosting on them. He can make them next time.

Halloween and the Freezing Cold

 I feel bad for the kids in Canada when it's Halloween. Yes, they do dress up. Yes, they do go trick or treating and get lots of candy. However, they must do all of this in the freezing cold and snow. Mark told me that he was always hopeful that it wouldn't be like that one year, but pretty much every year it was and this year was just the same.

Rocky and Crew came over to get bigger candies from Grandma's house. For some reason Crew took off some of his ninja costume, but I got Rocky in his spiderman. He's actually more puffy than normal in it because they put him in warm clothes underneath his costume. Most kids that came to out door had on winter coats and snow boots over their costumes.

 (On the right, Rocky is "webbing" and he totally did this pose and the serious face...he's not just dressed up as spiderman...he IS spiderman!)

 Doxy was a skeleton for Halloween.

 Then we decided to make Blue try on Doxy's costume.

This past week on Thursday, I think, it started snowing again...A LOT...again! It never stopped snowing that whole day. Then it snowed some more the next day. This time I actually took some pictures of all the beauty...well, except for the bottom right photo of our car's CA license plate...that just ain't right!!

Five Not So Quick Takes

Kind of a catch up blog post. Here it goes:

1. While I was reading this hilarious blog I found a link to this white noise website and found a free download for thunderstorm noise. This is awesome! It totally relaxes you and helps in falling asleep. It's also great when you have young kids. My sister in law has a white noise machine for putting her son down for his nap.

2. We went to visit the new LDS temple in Calgary. It's up in the north (we live in the south). It's really beautiful. We brought the two nephews who were really reverent the whole time we were inside. I think I heard that Rocky (2yearold) asked grandma "where's Jesus?". Too cute!

 Rocky (aka: spiderman)

 Family shot

 For some reason I thought the whole building was going to be in the picture since my mother in law said, "I'm trying to get angel Moroni (the statue on top) in the picture." I guess he didn't fit.

 These windows on the outside were so beautiful. They're images of wheat (reflective of the building being in the province of Alberta...I guess there's lots of wheat in Alberta.) It kind of reminded me of peacocks though, which are also beautiful and which remind me of home.

Crew and Rocky partaking of cookies and water in fancy schmancy chairs.

3. Canadian Thanksgiving has come and gone! What? No! "That's weird!" says all the Americans reading this. 

Canadian Thanksgiving fell on Monday 8 October this year. I think it's usually around the second Monday in October. My mother in law said it's because the fall season happens sooner here (and is over sooner too). They have all the same foods as American Thanksgiving. It's not as huge I've heard. Prob because they don't make a four to seven day weekend of it. We actually ate on Sunday instead. On Monday it was raining so we couldn't go do much. We did go see The Amazing Spiderman at the $5 theatRE*.

(*Canadian lesson: they spell some words slightly different than the states. They switch the "er" to "re" in words like centre, theatre, litre. I've also noticed they like to add "u's" in words where Americans got lazy and took them out of like colour, harbour, labour. Here's a  big old list of these differences.)

 Not the best pic of our dinner, but I had to document before everyone stuffed their faces. Missing are the sweet potatoes which were just coming out of the oven with the marshmallows getting huge on top.

I tried an autumn dessert recipe found on pinterest. It's called Pumpkin Better Than Anything Cake. I made a slight mistake. I was supposed to mix pumpkin puree and just the cake mix together, not the other stuff for the cake (eggs, oil, water), but it still came out okay. I think I would've liked a little more pumpkin flavor happening though which may come from doing the recipe the right way. There was also some helpfulness from this other blog about the recipe.

4. Since I made the above recipe there was still some pumpkin puree left over in the can so I decided to make some pumpkin cookies. This recipe comes from Barbara Terrill from Monrovia, CA. I grew up eating these cookies every year. They are delicious and pretty easy to make. You just mix everything up and throw 'em in the oven. So easy!

I got about four and half dozen out of the recipe and they were gone in a day. Soooo...they taste pretty good.

Here's the recipe:

1 cup sugar

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup shortening

1 egg

2 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 cup chocolate chips

Mix together - drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 to 375 degrees for 10 - 12 minutes.

I cooked at 350 for 10 minutes and they came out perfect!

Here's some pics to show you how perfect and yummy!

5. It was my birthday yesterday. I hate getting older, but I love my birthday. It was a bit/really hard to have a birthday where I couldn't have friends and family call me because they don't have out of country long distance (except for my mom and stepdad - my mom did call). But my in laws did get me pizza for dinner (love) and an ice cream cake (looove) and got me some presents. 

Oh, and Canada got me the first snow to stick for the season! Whaaaat? Don't like that gift Canada! Take it back! Exchange, please!

Labour Day

I know, I know. Two blog posts in one day. Too much! Oh well.

To finish off the weekend on Monday was Labour Day (yes, they have labour day in Canada and they put a "U" in it) and we got together with Mark's mom, Dave, Tanessa, and Mercedez who were watching our nephews, Crew and Rocky, while Chelsea and Steve were out of town.

We went to Peter's Drive In. It's near downtown Calgary and they have burgers, hot dogs, fries, onion rings, and (what I think they're best known for) milk shakes. You can get a shake in probably almost any flavor you could want. Oreo, please.

Then we went down to where this old mall is. It's not too huge and a little ghetto. We were mostly walking through until we saw a cool little store and stopped to check it out. Crew and Rocky didn't think it was as cool as the escalator, which they rode up and down until everyone looking in the store was ready to go.

Then we went to this nice park that was outside the mall and walked around. There was a river by it that the boys loved throwing rocks into. It kind of felt like a mini Central Park because we could see all the big buildings from downtown right next to the park.

Left: Rocky saying "cheeeeese" / Right: Crew going down

Mark isn't throwing Rocky over the side. He's showing him the ducks.

Okay, now I have to stop wasting time and go work on permanent residency stuff.