Solstice, and Birthdays

Well, I missed it yesterday since I was busy from about 6 AM until after 9 PM making presents, so HAPPY SOLSTICE AND BLESSED YULE!!!

Ok, I'm not going to have time to post about everything I got done yesterday and today until probably some time tomorrow, but to run down a list of what will be coming....

Lemon Curd Coconut cupcakes
Peppermint Bark
Checkerboard Cookies
Apple Cinnamon Raisin Oatmeal cookies with Maple Glaze
Christmas Name tags that double as a gift!
Easy Chocolate Fudge

Sorry no pictures at this time, I gotta run to take presents to a birthday girl!!! Oh, and cupcakes, can't forget the cupcakes....

Lotion Bonanza

Lotion is really expensive right? You know the best all natural beeswax and essential oil ones that are kinda thick and come in a jar? The ones that smell absolutely heavenly and leave your skin so soft you would think you've never done dishes/gardening/cleaning a day in your life? I thought I can make that at home! It's only got like 5 ingredients. YEAH RIGHT!

I've spent the past 3 hours getting failure after failure. Hubby even gave it a try and it didn't work. Every time I tried to do this, I would ended getting excited, and it looked good, no separated liquid, not chunky, OK good, pour it into a little tin and 5 minutes later I had a chunky lotion with a lot of water squishing out every time I touched it.

See the dark spots? That's the water that separated.

I started off with The Whip from Root Simple, but I must be doing something wrong. For her it works, for me it breaks. Every time. The first go round, I tried squeezing and kneading the lotion to work the water out, but I ended up pulling out almost all the water I put in, so that got tossed. My first batch was uncolored so it wasn't as pretty looking, but man did it smell great! We tried blending the first batch in a big beer stein I picked up for hubby about 5 years ago as a gag gift (it holds nearly 30oz of beer!) so at least we had a lot of fun with that.

The second batch same story. Looks great, smells great, managed to tint this one, and FLOP! Scraped that one into the trash too.

I pulled out my jar of beeswax lotion that I absolutely covet because it is the most amazing stuff EVER! Read the ingredients, and the only thing I wasn't adding was some sort of stabilizer  Hubby decided to try his hand at lotion making, and tried Epsom salts and a bit of borax. When he was all done blending, we had a measuring cup of foamy purple something, floating on top of gray brackish looking water. It didn't mix at all!!! Into the trash. But hey, at least my trash is going to smell like sweet honey lavender for a while.

OK, OK, I'm grumping to myself at this point. There has GOT to be something I"m missing. Handy old inter-webs told me that beeswax won't naturally emulsify with water like the oil does. The whole time I'm going about this thinking it'll work like making mayonnaise right? So start Googling beeswax lotion stabilizers. The two most common I found were glycerin, and borax. Well I didn't have any glycerin, but I have big old box of borax from making laundry detergent. A couple sites suggested mineral oil instead of olive oil, which for some reason I have that on hand too. It's a lot cheaper, and I've already used up about 3 cups of olive oil in the endeavor.

This was almost full when I started.

So finally I mashed together a few different recipes I've read, and at this point I have no idea which ones. So far it seems to have worked. 

My kitchen after my lotion making explosion. I still have to bake cookies!!

What I tried that finally seems to have worked (verdict is still out but no obvious signs of breakage yet *knock on wood*)

• 1/4 cup distilled water
• 1/8 tsp Borax
• .75 oz beeswax, plus a pinch more, I think I may have used closer to 1 oz
• 1/2 cup mineral oil
• 1 tsp coconut oil
• Lavender oil
• 2 drops blue soap dye, and 4 drops red soap dye (it looks really dark, but turns out well when mixed.)

1. Mix water and borax and heat until almost simmering and borax is dissolved. If your soap dye is water based, add it to the water after borax is dissolved
2. Heat the oils and beeswax in a double boiler until melted. 
3. Add Lavender oil a few drops at a time until the desired scent is reached, then add a few more drops because it will be diluted when the water is added. If your soap dye is oil based, add it now to the wax/oil mix.
4. Pour the oil/wax into a warm mason pint jar, using either a whisk, or a stick blender, add the hot water a few drops at a time, blending until the water is fully combined before adding more, again only a few drops at a time. 
5. Once all the water has been incorporated pour the lotion into the container you're going to use to store it. Let it cool uncovered. 

Now to clean up the kitchen and get some cookie dough started for tomorrow. Not to mention make about 5 more scents of lotion. Rose, tea tree, honeysuckle, lilac, and vanilla, and I REALLY hope I'm not forgetting a scent. I'll need to make a run to the store for more mineral oil, and beeswax.

Aww, my hubby is cleaning up my lotion making mess for me! I love him! Better go help, since after all, it is my mess. Happy Crafting!

Comfort foods

It's that season! Time for baked goodies, and comfort foods. Between the grey skies, and nippy weather (although it has been warmer than normal), the Yule decorations, and Christmas music I seem to just want to curl up on my back porch, with a warm kitten on my lap (speaking of the holy terror - she just jumped up to join me), a good book or knitting project, a mug of home made hot cocoa, and a nice big plate of cookies.

Currently in the oven are some super simple, crazy yummy coconut macaroons. I unashamedly and whole heartily blame my good friend Katie. I can't seem to spend more than 5 minutes with her without remembering our mutual love of these delectable, fluffy little treats. Thankfully, it only takes about a half hour to get a batch ready to eat, and are so simple which makes for some of the best yummies.

Don't they just look heavenly?

 Melissa's Cinnamon Coconut Macaroon Cookies

3 cups flaked sweetened coconut

2/3 cup sugar

1/4 tsp salt

4 tablespoons all purpose flour

4 egg whites

1 tsp vanilla

cinnamon sugar for dusting

Mix coconut, sugar, salt and flour together. In a separate bowl, mix the egg whites, and vanilla together. Then pour egg white mix over the dry ingredients and mix well. Drop by generous teaspoons onto a greased cookie sheet (I just use a parchment paper lined sheet) then dust with cinnamon sugar, and bake for 18-20 minutes at 325ºF. 

See? Easy, quick, and oh so delicious! 

Also on the line of comfort food, I made a frittata yesterday. Now, keep in mind while reading this, I despise mushrooms and tomatoes. But I will eat them in this. 

Spinach, Mushroom, and Sun Dried Tomato Frittata

1 Small onion diced

5 white mushrooms, sliced

6 oz Baby spinach

1 cup milk

4 eggs

2 oz swiss cheese, shredded

2 oz cheddar, shredded

1/4 cup sun dried tomatoes, chopped

1/4 tsp garlic powder

salt and pepper to taste

Pre-heat oven to 350º

Sautee onions, mushrooms, and spinach in 10 inch oven safe skillet until tender, and most of the moisture is cooked out. 

Mix milk, eggs, cheeses, tomatoes, garlic (we love garlic, so we tend to use a bit more than called for) and salt and pepper,  then pour over vegetables in skillet. stirring till well mixed. 

Allow mixture to cook until almost set, only stirring at the VERY beginning to make sure everything is mixed together. Remember, this is going to be a solid piece of egg yumminess when done. Then put in oven for 15 - 20 minute or until cooked through. 

Now, one thing I have noticed with this, is no matter how much you let the moisture cook off from the onions, mushrooms, and spinach, there is always more left when the mixture is mostly set. Some of this may be oils from the cheese as well. Just let it bubble away, don't be tempted to try to soak it off. It really is enough for two people, easily, but so yummy it's hard to share some times.

Hope you enjoy your holiday cooking and baking endeavors! 

Christmas Crafting Countdown

OK, it's been an interesting week, both good and bad.

The weekend.

I'm still not sure if the weekends are a glorious invention for the work weary, or just a horrible tease for those wanting a vacation. Either way, we spent a quiet, relaxing weekend at home, each working on our own pet projects (of which I have too many), and watching movies together. I put all the cookies I had managed to make in ziploc baggies to go into work on Monday with the hubby. He also decided to make cottage pie to take in, which of course we had practically nothing for it. So off to the store.

Those that know me, know my loathing of driving this time of year. Not because of the weather, but because everyone else seems to forget how to drive, on top of forgetting politeness, kindness, and generosity, you know, all those things this time of year is about. An turn signals become Christmas lights, and completely optional. Yeah. Please people, if you go to the store, park in the flipping parking spaces! That's what they're there for, USE THEM! Please. But anywho, we got in, got what we needed, and got out.

It was a particularly sleepy weekend at that, and we almost forgot to make the food, we were so warm and snuggled under the blankets watching a movie. ::Sigh:: can't wait to do that again. The cottage pie turned out really yummy, although he added bacon, which really through me off since I don't expect that flavor, but it was still great. Sorry, I didn't get any pictures, but I will share my recipe for Cottage Pie (Shepherd's pie, but with beef instead of lamb)

Shepherd's Pie (Or Cottage Pie)
Left over mashed potatoes abour 2 cups
1 onion, chopped
1 bag frozen veggies of choice thawed, I use the peas, corn, carrots, green beans blend
1 lb ground meat (beef, turkey, lamb, etc)
3 TBS flour
Salt, pepper, garlic powder, rosemary, and thyme to taste
2 cups broth

Sautee the onions and veggies until tender, I toss in a little butter for extra flavor. In another pan, brown the meat, and drain excess fat. combine into large skillet, and add flour, seasonings, and broth. Bring to simmer and simmer about 3 minutes, or until thickened.
Put the meat mixture in a casserole pan, and stop with mashed potatoes. Bake at 400ºF for about 30 minutes or until potatoes are slightly golden and hot and bubbly.

Monday rolled around with it's usual fan fare. Grumpy mornings, lots of coffee, and trying to convince myself not to tell hubby to call off work so we can snuggle and sleep more (I think I always ask at least once). But up and away and off went the cookies and cottage pie. Both were a hit. Apparently several people asked for the recipes too! Got the house all tidied up for the day, and spent a nice evening relaxing.

Wednesday I finally got to crafting!! I made more lotion bars. Well I attempted to. I mixed everything like I have for the past few batches, but somehow I managed to melt my mold! So instead of pretty little bars I ended up with wonky shaped pieces all interconnected. I also somehow ended up with almost 2 oz more at the end than I did the first time around...still haven't figure that one out! On top of melting my favorite mold, I also think I managed to burn every finger at some point. My poor aloe plant can't be happy with me.

Mom and I ended up going hunting at the local craft store for unsuspecting little goodies to work with. Mom found some really cute little mini ornaments, and I found the magnet sheets I needed to make some fridge toys for my girlfriends little girl, the Monkey. She LOVES Madagascar, and a while ago I found some little wooden animals of lion, zebra, giraffe, and hippo. I think I let out a little squeal at the store :). Since I found those, I also found patterns to make the penguins in crochet from that movie, on Wolf Dreamer that I want to try out.

Thursday mom had her shoulder surgery, so I dropped her off at about 10, and went about my day. I got the magnets on the animals, and got them sealed so no worries about splinters or paint chipping off as kids that age always manage to put everything in their mouth at some point. Don't worry I put another coat on top of the modge podge of beeswax to make it mouth safe. I know modge podge is non-toxic, but I feel better knowing there's a layer of natural between the Monkey and her new fridge pets.

I made a cute little present for my sister, but, because a certain someone has a REALLY hard time keeping a  secret, I'm not going to say what or post a picture until after she gets it :) I also started and ripped out probably about 5 patterns for my mother-in-law, trying to find something nice, but quick enough that I'll actually have it done in time for Christmas.

When I went back to pick up mom around 4, they couldn't discharge her, because for some reason she wasn't able to keep her oxygen saturation up high enough. After trying several different things, they finally decided to keep her overnight. Today she was fine, and the Dr's can only suggest that it was simply that her body took a little longer than normal to get back up to speed after the surgery. Spent the better part of the day with mom today, had to get her to the pharmacy to get a script filled, and she needed a few things at the store, which going shopping with mom is never a quick job, but today was even longer than normal because of how much pain she was in. Finally got her home and settled, and fed, and medication in her, and she was heading to sleep when I left.

One good thing about the hours at the hospital, I managed to settle on a pattern and get about 1/4 of it done. Now I have to wait for my wrist to stop aching before I can work any more! Perhaps tonight I can try to make lotion in a mason jar instead. I have some rose oil, and since that is probably my favorite scent, I'm excited to try. If I get to make it, I'll take some pics, and share. Hopefully this will turn out better than my last batch!

Count so far - 1 present completely finished, 7 presents mostly finished, 1 present slightly finished, and 1 present I still have no clue on....yikes!

Friends, Family, and Learning.

Today was one of those day where I couldn't seem to get motivated. Ever have those days? Of course you do, we all do at some point or another. Maybe it's because I slept way too long, or maybe because it's Saturday and hubby was home so all I wanted to do was snuggle. Who knows.

After an incredibly lazy morning, we met up with some family friends for lunch, that we hadn't seen since we got married about two months ago, which helped perk me up and get me ready to go. Then hubby said some magic words, "Wanna go to Barnes and Noble while we're out here?". Best response to that is "Oh, you're evil!" so yes, we went to the book store, and ended up spending probably an hour in there, with me on the floor picking over sign language books. For $19.12 I picked up a book with a DVD.

Sign language seems to be my new 'gotta learn it' item. I took some sign language in elementary school, but all I remember is the alphabet, how to ask where the bathroom is, and a few colors (hey give me a break it was almost 20 years ago!). Also a few year ago when I worked for an in home health care company, I had a patient that was deaf, so I started to look at ASL again. Now all of a sudden, I want to learn again, and perhaps even become proficient. Maybe it's because it's something I've always wanted to learn, maybe it's because I've seen my friend communicate with her 16 month old daughter with sign language before she could even speak. Maybe because I've also been bit by the baby bug, and want to know how to communicate with a child I may have as early as possible. It's probably a combination of all of the above. My wonderful husband is once again encouraging me to learn, and even offered to learn with me. Maybe this will go just as far as learning Japanese did, maybe further :).

By time we got home, I was geared up and ready to make something! So....I started on some lotion bars I saw on Frugal by Choice, one of my favorite blogs to follow. Now I had made these once before, but they turned out REALLY oily, and just dissolved into a puddle in your hand. Not quite what I wanted... This time, I added more beeswax, so it was 1 1/2 parts wax to 1 part of each oil. I think this worked better, but now it's really firm, and doesn't like to let go of the oil. Maybe I see that way since my hands were cold from being out putting up garland outside for the winter. I'll have to try it again when my hands are nice and warm (yeah right, like that happens this time of year).

If you do try to make these...don't poke at them until they are completely cooled....the one I poked at exploded up and outward all over my face...well at least now I smell even more like a flower than normal, and got a slightly hot oil facial treatment at the same time!

I found these cute little molds at the local craft store, with an adorable little snowflake on top. The batch here is scented with gardenia. Special thanks to my 'sister in life' from Global Odyssey who is going to help me find homes for my extra gardenia scented items!! Don't worry, I'll get on the lemon grass, or lavender ones for you soon!

Ever trying to reuse instead of toss, I pulled out some tulle circles left over from the wedding, and viola, pretty little packages to stuff in stockings! I can fit 4 little lotion bars in one baggie so I'll be able to give an assortment of scents.

My next creative endeavor was to make some body scrub. Just about everyone on my gift list this year is a crafter, gardener, or just in need of some pampering (mostly all of the above!) so my whole theme this year is bath stuffs. I followed, and I use the term loosely, a recipe from Martha Stewart and used some more gardenia scent. I also found out that coloring it, isn't as easy as it sounds. I ended up with a mostly green bath salts, with blue and yellow spots...really makes me feel like I should be in Alice and Wonderland. 

Thankfully I just did a small test batch with the coloring, I left the rest plain, and put them in little favor tins from the wedding section of the craft store. 

I still haven't decided how I'm going to decorate them, but I'll work on that tomorrow. It's time for snuggles and movies now, and hopefully I can convince hubby to have a LOTR marathon. Until next time!

Cookies Galore!

While listening to "Year without a Santa Claus" I pulled out the dough from the fridge for the French Sables I had started last night. I loved the look of the cookies on Sprinkle Bakes, but wanted a simpler taste to the dough.

Unfortunately I didn't think to start taking pictures until today...so sorry, no pics of how I put it together. The dough was really simple, and very easy to work with. I didn't feel like dragging the food processor out, and our Kitchen Aid is having fits if we try to go any higher than low speed, so I did this the old fashioned way, a bowl and a wooden spoon, and my hands.

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg yolk (reserve the white)
• Vanilla 
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup all purpose flour

I creamed the butter and sugar together until it was all an even consistency, then added in the egg yolk (set the white aside for later!) and vanilla, mixing until all even again. Then I added the salt, and sifted the flour in, working at first with the spoon to mix, then my hands. Once the dough was all mixed, it was still a bit crumbly. I separated the dough into halves, and added some red Wilton Gel food coloring, and about 3 drops of strawberry flavoring to one half.

NOTE** Strawberry flavoring tastes like NASTY cough syrup if you try it straight!!! It MUST MUST MUST be very well diluted. Blech, my tongue is still curling from the thought of that flavor. I'm sure my face of revulsion must have been priceless :)

I kept working in the red coloring a little at a time until I got the color I was hoping for, and it turned out great, it's the perfect pink that reminds me of all sorts of strawberry treats as a kid. I noticed that the pink dough was much more pliable than the white dough, I picked up the white and started kneading it a bit to warm up the butter and soften the dough. Now on to the hard part, rolling out the dough!

My recent foray into rolled sugar cookies gave me some ideas for doing this next part. I pulled out the waxed paper and squashed the white dough between two sheets, rolling it out as thin as I could, probably about 1/8 inch, maybe less. I guess thickness really wouldn't matter too much, just evenness of all the dough. Of course, trying to roll this into a rectangle was proving impossible, so I kept folding over the rounded ends and flattening again until I had some semblance of a rectangle. Pull off the top sheet of wax paper, flip it over so the dough side is up, and plop the pink dough on that, grab another sheet of waxed paper and repeat. 

Ok, so now I have two sheets of dough, roughly the same size and shape (I was actually really amazed at how close I got it) that needed to end up looking like a spiral. I wanted the pink on the inside, so lay out white dough, and lay pink dough on top. 

Rolling the dough.... not for the impatient!

Starting along one wide edge I grabbed the wax paper on the bottom and used that the flip over a little of the dough to start my roll. I kept pulling the paper up and over the dough, while tucking and pressing so that I was able to roll a fairly tight cylinder of dough, wrapped it all up, and popped it in the fridge over night.

When I took it out this morning and cut it open, a pretty pink swirl waited for me! So excited!!

Now remember that egg white that was set aside? Brush the log of dough with egg white, and sprinkle with, well sprinkles, until it's as coated as you want. I LOVE sprinkles, so as you can see....

Now, slice into cookies! This reminded me so much of all the tubes of cookie dough at the store that I always scoffed at, because to me, that's cheating...totally making my own cookie dough logs from now on. Yeah, so anyways aren't they pretty?

Arrange on a cookie sheet (I strongly urge lining the pan with parchment paper, melted sprinkles are a PAIN to clean off) about 1 - 1 1/2 inches apart, they don't spread too much, but better safe right? Unless you want a giant, baked together cookie that you're not going to share...but I have to behave, these are going to be given away.

Pop them in an 350ºF oven for about 10 minutes. Once they cool, you'll have very light, and airy cookies, that are mildly sweet for those odd people that don't have much of a sweet tooth. I most definitely am not one of those people, as my husband will attest. 

All baked and ready to eat

Next up, Cinnamon Bun Cookies!! I listened to the movie "White Christmas" while I was baking these noms.

I found these on ProjectFoodie.com and happily made some of the most amazing cookies. I followed their recipe in the link above, and loved them. They smelled just like cinnamon buns, and taste very very much like them. Did I mention that I'm in love with these cookies?? I'm thinking of trying to make these as thumbprint cookies, and put the smear in the middle, then top with icing. Anywho, here's a picture of the finished cookies, sorry for the poor quality, only have a camera on my phone right now. 

Sadly, between laundry, dishes, and other general housework I've put off all week because of a headache, and then exhaustion from said headache (not to mention a REALLY late night bowling) I only managed to get these two batches of cookies done today. But tomorrow is another day, and another chance to bake, knit, sew, something!

Wait, what's that? Cookie time!

Good Morning! I've been playing around with the idea of finally starting a blog to share (show off) the things I make (spend way too much time on). The agenda for today.....COOKIES! Well, at least as soon as I can convince myself that snuggling with the Pepper-Kitty isn't better than baking yummies....

Pretty eyed Pepper glaring at me because I stopped the snuggles!

I found out my wonderful Hubby will be having a holiday pot luck at work on Monday. So me, being the dutiful housewife I want to be, started brainstorming all kinds of baked goodies to take in. So, right there at the restaurant  I pulled out my handy-dandy-how'd-I-Ever-Live-without-it-Smartphone, hop onto Pinterest, and viola, I have a half a dozen cookie recipes filed away to try.

On the menu today:

• French Sables (I actually started these last night)
• Cinnamon bun snickerdoodles
• Apple cinnamon oatmeal cookies
• Checkerboard cookies 

I will admit wholeheartedly to getting these ideas from other people, but I am playing around with how to actually make them after reading many different recipe variations, both online, and in some of our dozens of cook books. If they turn out well enough, I'll post pictures, and even if they don't turn out, I guess I'll share that too. 

Off to the kitchen to start baking :)