I finally finished our stockings. They turned out better than I expected. I purposely made them so I could change the photos as our son gets older.
Oh, and we do have stocking stuffers for our son, but I didn’t wrap a lot of them and I wasn’t sure how he would do with the stockings and if he would pull them down. So we will fill his stocking tomorrow.
This was my first month participating with Have the Cake and I think it turned out good! I had never made Biscotti before and while the recipe that was posted looked good, I had a lot of lemons gifted to me recently
(ah, the joys of living in southern California in December), so I was hoping to find a lemony biscotti recipe. I turned to my friends at the Food Network and wouldn’t you know, Giada had a recipe for Almond and Lemon Biscotti.
I started out by whisking the dry ingredient: flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt.
Next I zested my lemons. I needed three to get enough zest for the recipe.
Once I had the sugar and eggs whisking in the mixer I was ready to mix it up.
Ready to go into the oven.
After 25 minutes in a 325 degree oven I let the loaves cool and then sliced them up into biscotti.
Another 25 minutes in the oven and these were nicely browned.
While they cooled I decided to put the rest of the lemons to use so I juiced them to add to my lemonade. As I was mixing up the syrup I thought some “lemon sugar” might be a nice addition to the dipped biscotti. So I mixed about a quarter of a cup of sugar with a teaspoon of lemon juice and then let the sugar dry on some foil.
Next it was time to dip the biscotti. I melted my chocolate in my “double boiler” and started dipping.
And Viola! Almond and Lemon Biscotti dipped in White Chocolate (with some “frost”)
We have been baking. This year I decided to try a different cookie recipe than my mom’s standby, which bakes up a dense, doughy cookie. I tried using Alton’s Sugar Cookie recipe and even though it was a bit finicky to roll out I will use it again. My friend Jill and I baked the cookies yesterday and then decorated them last night. We had a lot of fun. I had never done the full blown icing and decorations but I think I will be willing to do it again as my kid(s) get old enough to have fun decorating. We also used some of the colored sugar I made this weekend.
I like Christmas. I love finding or making the perfect gift for someone and gifting it to them. And I am so excited for Christmas morning this year because my son has caught on to unwrapping gifts and finding what’s inside. I am sure the joy of watching him will make up for the disappointment of not being at “home” for the holidays.
Here are some of the things we got for our son for Christmas:
1) Magnetic Letters
We got him the giant lower case letters. I like these because the magnet is glued to back of the whole letter so it can’t fall out. The little man has decided he likes to be wherever I am so when I make dinner he plays in the kitchen. We have a magnetic fridge and dishwasher so now he can use these letters.
2) Tonka Trucks
We have so many of these, but S loves them. His first word the other day was “car”, quickly followed by “truck”. We got him more of the small trucks, which are nice for carrying in my diaper bag/purse since they are small. We also got him the garbage truck and the tow truck in the big version.
3) Car Mat
We are ordering this car mat from Grandrabbit’s Toy Shoppe. We were going to get one from Home Depot but this one folds up into a portable mat which is nice.
4) Puzzles
We got S a car puzzle a few months ago and he is getting good at it so we got him these two.
5) Books
S loves the lift the flap feature of the Spot books so we got him 2 of his own. We also got him Panda Bear, Panda Bear What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle, and Richard Scary’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go.
6) Finger Puppets
I found some cute finger puppets that look similar to these but are full body versions. I got him a lion, giraffe and elephant. I am also thinking these will be good to keep in the diaper bag for those times we have to wait (a restaurant or at the grocery store).
For the most part our shopping is done. My husband and I exchange stocking stuffers only so we will be finishing that up this week. We also do Christmas jammies and need to find those plus some cute socks (family traditions). Then we can sit back and enjoy the last few days before the holiday!
Ugh, I am trying to be better about my bloggin but seriously, I don’t know where my motivation goes. I know that some of it is related to the fact that we have to mail all our gifts this year so I have been busy trying to finish up the shopping, get everything wrapped and the boxes in the mail. Oh, and next year we might just be doing gift cards. We shipped the first round of boxes yesterday, 7 total, and wow. After the small fortune I dropped at the UPS place I wonder why the postal service has to make cuts. And I have 3 more packages to mail. Ce la vie.
Let’s see, we put up the tree. We went with the little one and put it up on the table. I was surprised it took two strands of lights to look right. Speaking of lights, last weekend we went to December Nights in Balboa Park and participated in the light exchange hosted by SDG&E. We walked away with three strands of LED lights and a water saving kit. The lights have grown on me and I LOVE the kitchen faucet attachment and the water saving shower head. Plus, it’s about time we got something back from SDG&E after our $350 electric bill this summer. So anyway, we have the tree up and the little man has learned to crawl onto the chairs for the sole purpose of trying to get the tree. He seems to be okay with just looking right now. He does run out in the morning though and want the lights on right away, so I guess it’s good we have the energy saving ones!
I also joined a fun blog named Have the Cake. I love the idea of baking for a purpose, especially since the purpose is honing your baking skills. Each month someone hosts a baking challenge that is something you (the host) has never baked before. You can choose to use the recipe posted or find another of your choosing. You then bake the item, document it with photos and post to your blog and the site. This month is Biscotti and I have my recipe all picked out. I am waiting to bake until the last gifts are in the mail this weekend.
Speaking of baking, after our trip to San Francisco I was inspired to make my own sourdough. I found this site outlining the process and thought it sounded easy enough. So I prepared my starter and left it on the counter. Within a few days I had what I thought was a nice frothy substance, so I mixed up the dough and left it to rise. Well after 5 hours of waiting (you read that right) all I had was a mass of dough. I am thinking that since we have the windows closed in our house right now that maybe the starter wasn’t able to get anything to feed on? I replaced my starter and fed it, but after a few more days it just smelled rancid. Maybe after the holidays I will give it another go with a bigger container and a mesh top. I hope we can get it to work because I am craving some yummy, fresh from the oven sourdough.
Asdie from some knitting projects that’s about it here. I would post the projects but they are secret. I will post more after Christmas.
Since I have been behind on my posting in general, I figured I would keep up the trend and post about our Thanksgiving. We were not able to go home this year, which means we had our very first Thanksgiving. It was nice in a way to have the freedom to do it our way. And hopefully we can make some good memories for the little man.
Anyway, originally the plan was to celebrate Thanksgiving on the Friday afterward because we were going to drive back home on Thursday. Since S and I were both not feeling well though, we decided to come back earlier. We had bought all of our dinner fixings before we left so we were set there. The hubs picked out a 17 pound brined turkey from good ole Trader Joe’s (Colorado sure doesn’t know what they’re missing out on) and all the fixings. On our menu was:
This was the first time my husband and I had made a turkey and I have to say it was delicious! We didn’t cook the stuffing in it, but we did fill it with onions, carrots, apples and herbs. Since we weren’t home the day before to get a jump start on the cooking, we got rolling about 8:00. The rolls we make are a family recipe and take 3-4 hours start to finish. Once I mixed up the dough and left them to rise I worked on the pie. I cheated on the crust though and used a frozen one. My husband wanted little individual pies so I started by cutting little crusts. It was a disaster, they all fell and were masses in the bottom of the tins. Luckily I had 2 crusts so I put the other one in my pie plate and baked it. It also fell, but we figured no big deal, it was just for us. So I mixed up the filling according to the directions on the can and it all looked and smelled wonderful. I placed it in the oven and baked it up and thought I had a nice looking pie…
Once it was out of the oven I moved onto the rolls. I had to roll them out and cut them and then let them rise again. The second rise was fast though since the kitchen was getting warm.
As we baked the rolls, we got the turkey prepped. We tried placing butter pats under the skin and put the aromatics inside. We roasted it breast side up, covered with foil. We must have done something right though, because our bird was done in 4 hours, about 30 minutes before we expected.
Once the turkey was cooking I made the cranberry sauce (I love this recipe BTW. Alton is awesome!)
Since the turkey finished early we popped the sweet potatoes in the oven while the bird rested. I also whipped up the gravy and the green beans and then we were ready for our feast.
Everything was soo good and the baby liked it too! Unfortunately the pie was not set in the middle so we didn’t have any pumpkin pie. But we did have these a few nights later to celebrate my birthday:
Yummy!
On our second day in San Jose we took the little man to the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose. It was very cool inside and so much fun for little S. He could touch everything and play with whatever he wanted. Of course all he really wanted to do was touch all the wheels on the vehicles they had inside.
The stoplight was cool. The kids could take the wires and plug them into different circuits to make the lights turn on.
That was all fun, but then we got to the water display. Oh my gosh. S would have crawled right into the water channel if we would have let him. He was soaked from head to toe afterward. We let him play for 45 minutes before his lips were chattering. Luckily we had a full change of clothes, minus shoes, but daddy was able to stuff them with paper towels and get them fairly dry.
After we got him away from the water we went upstairs to the little kids area. It was such a well set up room. They had an adjustable ball track, a “pretend” area, a little library, letter blocks, a tunnel with stars, a sensory station, a motion room, and an art center. It was also a fun area to play in since the other kids were all about the same age.
Once we finished at the museum we walked around the little square looking for somewhere for lunch. We stumbled upon the Spaghetti Factory and had a delicious lunch. Then we decided to head over to the Tech Museum of Innovation. What a cool place. We spent an hour looking around and then went to the I-max showing of Under the Sea. It was the first movie for the little guy and the first time we have seen something in a dome I-max.
This was a cool display:
The lights would turn on and off if you pushed them and the light bars were like piano keys. It played music but you could manipulate it to play different notes. S loved that he could reach it and press the buttons.
Once we finished up we headed back to the car. We had such a wonderful day!
The last week was busy! We decided to drive up to San Jose for a few days to check things out and it was a lot of fun. We left a week ago Sunday and drove straight through, 12 hours with lots of stops for the little bud. Our first day we went into San Francisco and saw a lot of the sights.
The bottom two were from Pier 39. We ate lunch at the Boudin Sourdough Bakery. It was delicious. When you walked in though the bread was traveling around on this track in baskets.
It was fun to watch. After lunch we walked around the piers a bit and then ventured up the hill where we saw them turning the cable cars. Across the street we found Ghiradelli Square. We stopped in for a yummy treat of cupcakes. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of them!
After a bit more walking we headed back to the car and drove over the Golden Gate Bridge. It was really pretty.
Then we headed back to our hotel in San Jose and got to experience quite a bit of traffic, which worked out since the baby was sleeping in his seat.
I will post more about our trip and Thanksgiving later.
Who decided it was a good idea to not put a door on the master bathroom? Apparently it is a very popular thing to do in CA. However this person also thought it was a good idea to place the smoke detector right outside the bathroom entry way. Now this might not sound like a dumb thing, until you take a WARM (not even hot) shower and the detector starts going off when you open the shower to get your towel. Ugh!
It is also important to note that this happens to a lot of people around us because I can hear other detectors going off all the time.
This post will be a mish mash of stuff, just an FYI.
As I posted before we went this weekend to check out the Little Gym’s class for toddlers. The session we attended only had one other participant plus another little girl previewing the class. S was the oldest child in the class. He did really well though. Lots of exploring and curiosity about the equipment. He liked the bells, the bubbles, and climbing on things. He also worked on jumping, running, forward rolls (somersaults) and turning in a circle. It was pretty fun to watch. Unfortunately I had to take him by myself since the hubs was called out of town unexpectedly on Thursday night. After previewing the class though we decided we liked the Little Gym set-up, their philosophy and the way the class ran, so we went ahead and enrolled him for the remaining 8 classes of this session. It should be a lot of fun.
So, as I said, Zach had to head to San Jose last week. He left work on Thursday night to come home for dinner but by the time he got home he had been called and told he needed to be in San Jose. He booked a 9:40 flight, landed there at 10:50 and was on site by 12:00. He was scheduled to fly home on Sunday morning but by Saturday night they had made very little progress and he had to stay until at least Tuesday. Finally by Monday night he was able to book a flight home for Tuesday evening. He had to be at the airport early though so he got on a earlier flight, but with the warning that the flight may be diverted to Las Vegas on account of fog. Luckily he landed here and was home by 10:30 p.m. It made for a long weekend though. S and I had a lot planned already, the zoo, our gym class, husbands extended family in town Saturday night, Balboa park (twice), and just some fun time at home. I know he has to travel occasionally but it’s these last minute trips that are harder I think. And the extending is hard too, especially since S doesn’t understand where daddy is. But he is home now and we got to spend all yesterday together, and Zach has next week off so we will get more family time. Yea!
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