Life's Whirlwind Adventures

Every year I tell myself I am going to be super organized and I am going to have lunch snacks pre-made as well and menu plans done for a month and without fail two weeks in everything falls apart and we are back to our rushing at supper to get something made, something we thought of at the last minute.  And well lunch snacks often look like those things you buy from the store in bags that may or may not be full of some very unhealthy chemicals.. (let the mom shaming begin :P) Life is busy, but I still believe it's important for our sanity and emotional health to try to make things that are easy and won't cause undue stress on the family.  It will also help with our budget to get things into perspective and only shop in our allotted amount each month/week.  So I got a head start this year. I decided to bake one day, it was the first coolish day of the summer, you could completely smell fall in the air and I thought it would be a good time to start and start I did. ...

I was so lucky this year!! Like super duper lucky!! I got a Kitchen Aid Mixer!! It's something I've always thought about buying, something I've said would be awesome to own, but I've had a hard time justifying a $200 purchase on a kitchen appliance.  Now before I was given this mixer I'd never used one so I didn't really see the value in the mixer.  Now that I have one, and now that I've used it I would most definitely pay to have this appliance in my house!! I'd been procrastinating this year to complete my Christmas baking, usually by the beginning of December I have started and I'm done by December 10th or so, this year I didn't start until December 19th.  But I also finished on December 19th thanks to my new Kitchen Aid Mixer!! Thanks Mom and Dad In law!!!! I went crazy that day baking, I made two batches of Bread, and three different types of cookies!! It was a good day to be in my house!! I made Thumbprint cookies, Oatmeal choco...

This year I was a tornado in my kitchen. I made some family favorite recipes and I tried some new recipes(that became family favorites).  It was a busy few weekends when I got to baking.  Here is a list of things I made for Christmas baking; bread, crescent cream cheese puffs, oatmeal muffins, pumpkin cookies, butter tarts, thimble cookies, rolo snickerdoodles, shortbread cookies, and cheese cake thumbprint cookies. Our family favorites are the shortbread, butter tarts and thimble cookies.  The new favourites are the rolo snickerdoodles, and cheesecake thumbprint cookies.  The pumpkin cookies went over pretty well, but I don't know if I would put them in the favorites category.  The oatmeal muffins, were a breakfast muffin but they weren't very good at all, I may try the recipe one more time, but I will do some things differently for sure.  And the pastry puffs were ok, but I am the only one who likes those and well with trying to lose weight and st...

Tis the season to be... baking.  Apparently in my house, this is what I am doing. I LOVE baking though so it makes the season so much more fun!!! I love to bake, cooking and I don't see eye to eye all the time but the baking concepts that's where I excell.  I should have gone to school to be a baker, because I love working with dough and creating new desserts.  I made maple cinnamon buns this weekend. They were delicious. I like my cinnamon buns plan, meaning no nuts or raisons.  But I like to experiment with differnt tastes and add things in that I think would be a little tasty.  And the maple cinnamon buns were exceptionally tasty.  I also made regular cinnamon buns and bread this weekend.  I have my Great Grandma's bread recipe and it is a phenomenal recipe. Adrian made chocolate chip cookies on Saturday.  They were pretty tasty but I still think mine taste better.  I may be a biased judge though.  The house smelled delicio...