busy busy busy

Life has been chaiotic to say the least. We are still dealing with sickness....mostly runny noses, but I felt queasy last night. I've been baking and wrapping and doing last minute shopping and sewing and cleaning. What a crazy time of year this is!! This morning Maddie and I went to the library and got some new books and then went to the park to get some wiggles out. It was so stinking cold, we only stayed for about 35 minutes. We have some more cleaning to do today, but then thats it, I'm, not going to lift a finger until after Christmas day!! Well, I guess I'll have to lift fingers to cook our Christmas dinner, but that is way more enjoyable than cleaning lol. On the menu this year is:

Marinated, grilled steak (probably fillet.....I'll have to search our deep freezer)
Stuffed mushrooms with kalamata olives and feta (appetizer)
Broccoli gratin with swiss and parmasan
Twice baked cauliflower with bacon and three cheeses
Roasted sweet potatoes with red onions, rosemary and parmesan

And check this.....all of those recipes above are South Beach diet friendly, so we won't even be cheating when we have our Christmas feast!! I think they sound delicious, and although I would really enjoy some of my grandma's stuffing, I think these will hit the spot and hopefully help us forget about the normal holiday starches!! I haven't decided whether I want to make a dessert or not, but I still have time to think about it.

I finally got my sugar cookies to turn out the way they are supposed to. I found a recipe off the Food Network and had to substitute whole wheat flour instead of all purpose flour (because that is all I bake with) but it actually helped to make the flour a little stiffer which made everything a lot easier. Maddie and I frosted and decorated the cookies a couple days ago while Charlotte was napping. I think they turned out beautifully!! I ended up sending Dan to work with 7 or 8 dozen cookies lol. His team really liked them, and I got to get the baking bug out of my system and get them all out of my house so I wouldn't eat them!! I ended up making the sugar cookies, Mexican wedding cake balls (or snowballs) with peppermint, and banana praline cookies which I was told tasted exactly like babana bread but in cookie form!!




I've been so busy, and we've been totally housebound because of the plague that I haven't really gotten a lot of pictures taken. There isn't really a lot of inspiration in my beautiful girls with bad attitudes and snot running from their noses. I hope to get outside more as we start to feel better.....although it is super cold out there.....but hopefully I'll capture something magical in the near future. For now I will leave you with Maddie helping me add another day to the advent calendar (I LOVE this advent calendar, so FUN!), a normal view of the girls "playing" together on the floor, Charlotte the beautiful and the view outside my window most recent evenings. Alright, I'm off to go grocery shopping for our Christmas feast.....wish me luck!!