Guess I was good

I must have been a good girl this year because Santa was good to me. Actually, he was VERY GOOD to me.

Just look at what he brought me!!

It also came with an embroidery attachment, and he brought a quilting foot too.

My wonderful husband went and picked it out, bought it, and wrapped it all on his own. Quite frankly, it's far nicer than anything I would have bought for myself even if he told me to go get whatever I wanted.

He may have just earned himself a lifetime of brownie points.

I'm terribly excited to sit down and really play with it. I've done a little bit of playing but with all the family that's been at our house through the holidays I haven't been able to do much. I am so far beyond excited about it!!

Chocolate Hazelnut Snickerdoodle Cookies

These cookies were as good as they sound and were a hit with everyone that tried them. I got the recipe here.

And I should mention that it's super easy. Start with a snickerdoodle cookie mix and add a chocolate hazelnut spread on top. That's two of my favorite things......easy and delicious!

It's that time of year....

Every year I make about 100 dozen (yes, really) cookies for some of our monthly clients. Next week is that time so I've been busy using my family for taste testing. I don't know why it didn't occur to me sooner to share the recipes here, but at least it finally did.

The first recipe we tried was for Lemon Bars from Living Practically's blog.

Now, these are SUPER easy....only two ingredients! A single step (only add water to the mix kind) angel food cake mix and a 15(ish) ounce can of lemon pie filling. Boom! That's it.

 And we liked the way they taste. However, because they really aren't very bar like they won't be included with the boxes of cookies.

I really think it would have been better if I had cooked them a little longer. The bottom didn't cook quite long enough to hold them together when I tried to get them out of the pan. So we just scooped it out with a spoon and ate it that way.

Hey, whatever works!

Now, if you want to make these, go to her blog and read the instructions and follow them. You will find that there are a lot of comments and some of them might scare you away from trying this recipe, but if you follow the directions they're super easy and will work for you. I suspect many of the commenters didn't even bother to actually read the directions.

I would have included a picture but, like I said earlier, I never thought to post the recipe links here until now.

Many more to come.....

Quick Necklace

I put together a quick necklace over the weekend.

I really like it.

Too bad I never remember to wear necklaces.

DIY Coffee Creamer

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving (if you celebrate it.) We had a great time. The kids turned 14 the day before so we spent that Wednesday celebrating with them. Then everyone was at our house on Thursday and we all ate too much. Mostly on Friday we laid around trying to recover (and eating leftovers.) Then on Saturday Dax and I headed to Las Vegas for several days to attend an accounting continuing education conference......what? if you have to spend your days listening to people talk about accounting, there's got to be something fun to do at night so we don't go completely mad. :0)

We got home late Thursday night and it seems that it's been non-stop business as usual since.

But, some time ago, I found this super simple recipe for homemade coffee creamer at Mrs. Happy Homemaker's blog. Actually, I found it on Pinterest and followed the links to her blog.

It's as simple as these three ingredients.

Milk, sweetened condensed milk, and flavoring.

I used a mason jar and poured in one can of sweetened condensed milk, I refilled the can with regular milk and poured it in the jar, and added some flavoring. I think the original recipe said 2 Tbls. but I'm not really one for exact measurements so I just poured it in until I thought it looked good. Then I put t he lid on and shook it until everything was combined.

You get something that looks like this:

I've made the recipe several times now. I've made the dulce de leche, vanilla, and right now I have a cinnamon vanilla that I just made.

I love how easy it is to make, I usually have all of the ingredients on hand, and I can make the flavors as strong or as weak as I choose. Win, win, win!