Week In Review

This week was a busy week for us! I got started on my holiday baking, we went to Christmas on the Avenue, I spent LOTS of time reading, kiddo and I spent LOTS of time crafting. Needless to say, this week was pretty awesome.

SANTA STOP HERE

One of the traditions that has carried on in my family is that instead of an Advent calendar, Santa leaves you a small present each day leading up until Christmas. My grandma has a Santa with two sacks (one for me and one for my brother), kiddo has a Piglet stocking in her room that Santa leaves small gifts in each night. Here are a few of the things she received this week: 

CRAFT TIME

As I've mentioned before, kiddo LOVE crafts! I've been getting a little crafty this holiday season, myself. Here are a few pics of our projects or just of us getting crafty. (Or painting our hands, we do that a lot too)

HOLIDAY BAKING

I'm a holiday baker. My schedule this season is a little tighter than normal, so I'm having to cut back. This week I attempted a cupcake recipe from scratch (which you'll see all the details on later) as a gift for my grandmother. 

CHRISTMAS ON THE AVE

This was the highlight of our week! Our local town puts on a huge street festival with vendors of all kinds, a petting zoo, bounce houses, and Santa himself. Kiddo had a BLAST! Here are a few pics from our "Christmas adventure": 

GIRLS NIGHT OUT

My mom and I had a small Girls Night Out this week. She wanted to go to an open house of a local shop, and it just so happened that Will from America's Next Top Model was doing a meet and greet at a store on the same street! We had a blast looking around the shops, and I even won a door prize! They had some awesome snacks, and I came away with a hat. (It was on sale, so I couldn't pass it up!)

PERSONAL PROGRESS

This week had me making some progress on some personal goals that I had set out for this month. Here are the goals that I had, plus the progress that I made: 

1) Make 2 new recipes

One down with the Ferero Rocher cupcakes, one to go! 

2) Read 2 books 

This week was huge in the reading department. I got so into the books that I started that I stayed up until 1am many nights in order to finish them. Here are the books that I read this week: 

   

3) Complete the #Quickfit Holiday Challenge from Jessica Smith

Week 1 complete! 

4) Complete 2 crafts 

I got extra crafty this week by finishing up my office holiday party invites, and the Happy Holidays banner for the party! 

Craft-therapy

This edition of Craft Time doesn't feature kiddo. It also doesn't show you the full process of my creation, but you'll get the gist of it. (Hint: It's SUPER EASY!) 

This month seems to be my month to get all excited about Pinterest. I love Christmas, and may have persuaded my boss into letting my co-worker and I throw a holiday party for the office. Around the time of his approval, the boy up and moved back upstate, so I had lots of free time on my hands. 

Lots of free time of being depressed watching sappy movies. 

I decided to turn that time into being productive when I saw this on Pinterest: 

Pinspiration hit me! I could make these for our holiday party invites! It can't be that hard. ANYONE can paint some Popsicle sticks, glue them together, glue some buttons, glue an actual invite, and VOILA!

To prevent myself from gaining the breakup weight I normally put on, I went to work painting 75 Popsicle sticks. My co-worker reminded me that it was probably quicker to just spray paint them, but I needed to paint them individually by hand. I needed to not reach for 20 more Oreos. I needed the distraction. 

I soon found that this project was therapeutic for me. It was calming, even the hot gluing. Mine don't look near as perfect as the ones in the example above, but I think that helps it's case. The invitations are snowflakes, and no two snowflakes are the same, and no snowflake is perfect. 

These went out to all of the offices in our department today, and I can't wait to get started on the decorations for the party! There will be lots more homemade goodness to share with y'all, soon!

Adventures In Cooking - Chicken Enchilada Puffs

I was scrolling Pinterest one day, trying to find something a little different to make for dinner. I feel as if we ALWAYS have the same things. Not because I have a toddler, but because I have a mom who is even more of a picky eater than any toddler on the planet. 

As I kept scrolling through endless pictures of amazing looking dishes, I was beginning to lose hope. A side goal of trying to find something different was to work down my pantry and fridge before the holidays hit. Most of the recipes had more ingredients than I was willing to go out and buy. But suddenly, I came across this picture: 

Tidy Mom knew exactly what I was looking for! (Click above to get the recipe!) All I needed to buy for this was taco or enchilada seasoning! 

MAJOR SCORE! 

PINTEREST VICTORY! 

They didn't seem that difficult, so I made them one day before my folks arrived with kiddo. First, I lined up all of my ingredients to take a picture. (So you can all see just how prepared I am when I start cooking.) 

See? I'm prepared for culinary battle!

A little mixture of seasoning, sauce, cream cheese (which makes everything taste awesome), cheese and chicken

This really can't be this easy, right?

 Even I can spoon amazing tasting mixture onto crescent rolls!

So, my bundling skills leave something to be desired, but if you top them with extra cheese, nobody needs to comment on it. 

They look so tasty when they come out of the oven. 

Tasty and golden brown! 

Kiddo wanted to have a picnic, so we sat on the floor and enjoyed our chicken enchilda puffs with some Spanish rice and salad. 

Kiddo at her entire enchilada puff. My mom mentioned multiple times that I need to make this recipe again. My dad ate a couple, but he's not a very picky eater and will eat most anything. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed them and split a second one with my mother. (UNHEARD OF FOR MOMMA B TO GET SECONDS!)

B-Family Rating: 

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

I have a Christmas problem. Most people say obsessive addiction, but I'll only admit that it's a small problem. I realized that I owned too many Christmas decorations, when I went to get the boxes of ornaments for our tree and noticed 5 boxes were devoted JUST to ornaments.

Now that kiddo is in the pictures, I don't go as all out with decorations as I have in the past. It may sound like I'm trying to deprive kiddo, but it's not. Most of my Christmas decorations are village houses. I collect Christmas village houses. Since these are breakable, and kiddo is at the age where she has to play with everything, I've opted to just keep most of them in the storage unit until she gets older.

I usually wait until after Thanksgiving to put up our tree, but this year kiddo kept asking to put it up the week before. I figured it was just a week early than planned, so why not? (Remember, I'm trying to be flexible on that whole holiday schedule)

As you can see from the pictures, our decorations will never be some that people aspire to be like, but for us it works. While not Pinterest worthy, we enjoy them. :)

She was ready to get started as soon as I brought the tree in to the apartment!

How could you say no to that face? 

I wasn't putting the tree together fast enough for her.

She liked putting the ornaments on the tree...

But then she went back to her role of dictator quickly by telling me where to put the ornaments.

She wanted the tree to have a hat, and chose this Cubs stocking to be the hat. 

With all the practice that kiddo that got decorating our tree in Texas, she was MORE than ready to take on the decorating the tree at my parents house in Louisiana. She slipped into dictator mode early, so I was putting the ornaments on the tree, but from these shots, I think she had a good time. 

She wanted to hug the Christmas tree before we started decorating. 

She started hanging the ornaments, but gave up on it sooner this time around. 

Kiddo showing off her masterpiece of a tree! 

Happy December!

I've been a little quiet around here this past week because a lot has been going on with our family personally. I wanted to take the time that I had off from work and was able to be home with kiddo to just spend the time enjoying being with kiddo.

We put up the tree at our place in Texas and at my parent's house in Louisiana. We watched LOTS of Alice in Wonderland (her current favorite movie). I spent lots of time having tea parties, picnics, reading books, and letting her take pictures with my phone of her toys. (I'm afraid that kiddogram is going to be an ongoing thing now that I've shown her how to take pictures with my phone!) 

My grandfather was in the hospital over the holidays, and is still in currently. He went in for a procedure that they were unable to do because he was weak and his blood pressure was low. They then found a tear on his bladder, and once they were able to get him strong enough to go through the surgery, he seems to be on the up and up. I appreciate all of your prayers and positive thoughts that y'all have sent our way. They truly mean a lot to myself and my family. 

Since our family situation is in a state of flux, some of our holiday plans will change, and I'm at peace with that. Most of you who know me, know that I have very strict and rigid holiday plans that I don't like to change. I'm working on being more zen and going with the flow. This Christmas, I want to appreciate the time we all get to spend as a family instead of worrying about checking things off of my holiday to do list. (We all know that in the grand scheme of things, the holiday to do list doesn't always matter.) 

I'll have more on the holiday decorating, and thoughts on the holidays later, but for now, let me leave you with some pics from what I like to call Kiddogram: