Holiday Recap-Recipes, Pictures and More

It took me getting sick and camping out on the couch to find time to write this. Two kiddos, work, hobbies there's just not enough time in the day is there.

This year we hosted a dessert party, did a day trip to Houston and back on Christmas Eve, and managed 4 Christmas celebrations in 42 hours. Talk about controlled chaos. The new van came in super handy, the kids were fabulous and I enjoyed every minute. of course I kept thinking to myself on the road...if I had an IPad I'd be writing right now hehehe! Thanks to all the family and friends who showered me with gift cards I think there's an IPad in my near future.

The natives are restless so I'll keep this short and sweet!

My favorite holiday recipe...hands down it was the Crockpot Chocolate Pudding Cake I made for our dessert party. It was quick to prep, cooked while we were out and about and combined with the timer on our coffee pot, allowed me to arrive home minutes before our guests and have everything ready to roll!

Crock-pot Chocolate Pudding Cake (dairy free, gluten free, corn free, soy free options)

• 1 pkg (3.9oz) Jell-O Chocolate Instant Pudding Mix (or check out www.allrecipes.com for an allergy free recipe sub)
• 3 cups milk (regular, almond, coconut)
• 1 pkg (2 layer size) chocolate fudge cake mix (I use Cherrybrook Kitchen Gluten Free Chocolate Cake Mix)
• 2 squares Baker's Semi-Sweet Chocolate chopped (sprinkle Enjoy Life chocolate chips for dairy/soy free)
• 2 cups thawed cool whip or whip cream (Soy whipped cream if soy tolerant, or omit, I didn't mind the omission :))

To Make It:

• Spray your crock-pot with cooking spray, or lightly coat with shortening. (Some Pam sprays have soy so check labels). Beat pudding mix and milk in your crock-pot with a wire whisk for 2 minutes. The recipe calls for a 3 1/2 quart but I have the larger oval and it worked fine.
• In another bowl prepare the cake batter according to the boxes instructions. Slowly pour it over the pudding mixture. DO NOT STIR. Cover the crock-pot with the lid.
• Cook on low 2 1/2 - 3 hours (or on high 1 1/2 - 2 hours) until toothpick inserted comes out of cake clean. Top with chopped chocolate or chips. Turn off the cooker and let stand covered 30 minutes to allow the pudding to thicken. Serve with cool whip and dusted with cocoa powder or chocolate shavings.
  

My Must Have Kitchen Gadget for the holidays: Hands down it was my new Beka sauce pan. I whipped up quick quesidillas, chocolate sauces, you name it in there and was able to wash and reuse in minutes. The non-stick coating is amazing and a few more of these will be on my Christmas list for next year. And even better...this company has an environmental record that puts most other companies to shame. I just love them! Check them out here.

My 'Couldn't get dinner on the table without it' recipe sites: I have two favorites without question are Dinner Tool and All Recipes. Dinner Tool lets me meal plan, add my own recipes, create shopping lists and have a quick printout of my weeks plan. Allrecipes.com lets me search by ingredients so I can plug in something I'm trying to get out of the pantry or fridge and up pops a slew of choices. LOVE IT!

My favorite photo sharing site: With all the IPads, E-readers, and smartphones out there we've become a society of digital sharing. In most cases I'm right on that bandwagon but some vestiges of society are being lost in the cyber rush. I firmly believe it teaches real values for kids to recognize the generosity of Christmas and respond with a heartfelt thank you note. However I've found that over the last few years it is tough to interest my oldest in writing them. This year I stepped up my game and we used Smilebox to create digital thank you cards we could send to family. Normally this would have gone against my edict that thank you notes are personal and it's hard to get that touch with a digital card, but Smilebox allows you to add video clips to your card. So we sat down and recorded a bunch of 10-30 second clips on our Flip with my son thanking friends and family for their gifts. Each person got an individual thank you card with a video clip of Alex thanking them. Better than forcing him to sit at the table and write his name on cards he couldn't read, this worked great. He could relate to this and I loved the message he got from working with me to put it together.

Last but not least to catch me up over the last few weeks...Livi turned 6 months. It's been an amazing time with her and we are truly blessed to have such an angel living with us.

Personalize your own newsletter design

Goodbye 2009

Image via Wikipedia

2009 was a FANTASTIC year for us. Alex is growing by leaps and bounds and never fails to amaze me with his questions, insights and imagination. He loves Phineas and Ferb, a cartoon funny enough to entertain Eric and I too, and of course Cars, the movie. He's constantly quoting his favorite characters and starting to make up his own songs. All in all a joy to be around...now if only we could FINALLY teach him to sleep!


Eric and I are still plugging away. We've installed new doors, upgraded a few appliances and generally just kept pace this year. I hope 2010 will be the year for us to get some gorgeous landscaping done, finally paint the guest room and get some finishing touches done on our decor.


Our Hoppin Johns are in the crockpot and we look forward to the luck they'll bring in 2010. Eric's a stick in the mud and refuses to "have" a new year's resolution, but I'm determined that we'll do more as a couple.


From our family to yours we hope 2010 brings health, wealth and happiness and sees you surrounded by family and friends.

<img style="border: medium none ; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=b7a927e2-389b-407a-b44d-781ba8bc6607" alt="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]">

The most wonderful time of the year!

I love the holidays! From hanging with family over Turkey, to shopping for gifts and decorating the house, this whole season just fills me with joy. Alex has declared himself in charge of turning on all the lights each night and I just love seeing his face when everything lights up. His imagination abounds and I'm so looking forward to our first season where he "gets" all the Christmas traditions.

La Dia del Madre!

What a great weekend. I took the weekend off of work, hobbies and my to-do list and spent it having some great quality family time. Eric’s IPod is kicking the bucket so we spent some of that quality time Saturday at the Domain here in Austin getting to know our local Apple store a bit better. And since Alex isn’t able to visit the Domain without a penny pitching trip to the fountain I snuck in some photo time! Check out the mini scrapblog below!

An organization I happily support, called MomsRising.org knows all about being a Mom and the work it takes and awarded me an honorary Mom of the Year award. You can read more here and spread the fun! ☺


Then Sunday it was off to brunch to celebrate Mother’s day at one of my fave restaurants called North by Northwest, who luckily enough have a great Gluten Free menu for hubby. I’m trying to embrace his lifestyle but cheated today and had an AMAZING pork tenderloin with this fantastic bacon, spinach and cheese risotto. YUM! Then back to the Domain for more Apple store time and home for naps and mommy time.

And how did I spend Mommy time you ask? Filing ☺! I had over 1200 emails sitting in my email inbox and I’m a fanatic for filing all my emails into nice neat folders and only having a week’s worth of emails at at time. Recent craziness has not allowed me time to file and I was going nuts with my overflowing inbox! Am I nerd or what!


http://www.scrapblog.com/viewer/viewer_v2_embed.swf?scrapblogId=1804380&showShareButton=true&showShareInitially=true&showOnlyShare=false&partnerId=1

One Seriously Jammin Dude

This will be quick since its Easter Eve and we are off shortly to church but I wanted to get it down before I forgot.  Thursday Alex stayed with his Noni and Pa all day while I got some work done.  Then Eric and I enjoyed a very rare evening out alone...whoohoo date night. We went to Outback and then on to the dollar movie to see Enchanted.  I loved it but the fun was just beginning. We headed off to my inlaws to pick Alex up and he was dead asleep. We put him in the car and he began to stir so we quickly turned on the nursery rhyming music that has the amazing ability to put him to sleep or calm him right down depending on the time of day.  Well Alex with his eyes barely open begins jamming, bobbing and dancing in the carseat to the music.  Eric and I were dying laughing.  We got him buckled in and started towards home (all of 2 miles away) and when I looked back and checked on him he was sound asleep.  Then I heard something, looked again and he was dancing in his sleep.  Memories like that make the cranky, screaming, teething days all worth it!

New Years Day

2008 is here and I want to remember it is as my year of organization.  Although we keep a clean house, there is still a crazy toddler, two dogs and two busy parents that daily clutter up our house.  I want to spend January really getting everything in a designated place that is easier to maintain. 

Today Alex had his first New Year's Day meal.  He at Corned Beef, mashed potatoes, carrots, cabbage and black eyed peas...mmmm.  By far his favorite was the meat.  I got half the Christmas decorations down and will finish up tomorrow, but it was kind of sad as all the holiday charm is being packed away.

I got our Thank you cards ordered today and will hopefully have those out next week.  I really enjoyed hosting Christmas and hope that in the future we can surround ourselves with even more family than we have this year. I made so much food that we are just now getting down the end of the leftovers and it was so nice not to have to cook over the holidays. 

Ok off to get a good night's sleep and then tomorrow I have my last day of freedom! Here's to a great 2008 for everyone.

Home for the Holidays

Growing up the holidays definitely meant family to me... All four of them!  A typical holiday rush was visiting my mother's parents two days before Christmas or Christmas eve, my fathers family on Christmas eve, exchanging gifts with friends on Christmas Eve, Christmas morning at home, and Christmas day with my step-father's family.  Then we would rush home, pack quickly, leave all our neat new things and fly off to spend the week after Christmas with my dad and step-mom in Maryland.  We did Christmas the evening we arrived and finally got a few days to sit back and relax before flying home in time to start school.

This year, our first Christmas as a family in our own home, we decided to start some new traditions, one of which is staying put for Christmas.  So we invited the family to join us for a day of festivities, and I got cooking.  I have to say there is nothing like Holiday entertaining to get you cleaning.  Our home was ready for company a good 2 days before Christmas, and it was a darn good thing, since that was when disaster struck!  Since we were so ahead of the game I decided to sneak off for 30 minutes of remembering that I'm a woman and not just a mommy time and get my hair cut.  The guy who cut my hair was super quick, probably since he was chop happy :), and as I was leaving a mere 30 minutes later, Eric called and told me what no mother or hostess wants to hear.  Alex was defiling my clean house, but you can't blame him, the poor kiddo had a stomach bug.  For two weeks Alex had been fighting a cold that I told myself would be gone by Christmas, but now 48 hours before family arrived for the day, he was throwing up like crazy.  Luckily it only lasted about 12 hours and then he was good to go, but as these things have a habit of doing, the trouble was just beginning.  My Mother in law was kind enough to come and help me while Alex was sick and sure enough the next morning she and I both woke up feeling horrible.  Fortunately for me, my episode was brief and after liberal use of lysol the entire house I was ready to get in gear for Christmas day.  We celebrated Christmas even at my in-laws and my father in law was put to work in the kitchen while Debra rested and entertained. 

Christmas day was wonderful and thankfully sickness-free, but as the day wore down and the paper and boxes piled up Eric started feeling bad.  I cleaned and tidied, saw our overnight guests settled and grabbed what sleep I could before Alex's cough (his cold never went away and was back in force) woke him up at 5am.  Our day got an early start since I could only keep him in his room until 6:30, and we headed out to rouse the troops.  We made breakfast and I started on what was left of the Christmas dishes while Eric slept off the bug in our room.  At 10 last night he emerged briefly before sleeping a little more, and I am happy to say that today he is feeling much better, but weak from spending a day as a bump on a log.

Like most mom's around the world, I am working on finding a place for all the new toys Alex got and trying to get my house back in order.  I have also settled on my two New Year's Resolutions for 2008.

1. I want to get pregnant in 2008.  Now this is a little more involved than it sounds :), since I need to lose about 90 lbs before that happens.  Eric and I have both agreed that it would not be healthy at all for me to get pregnant now, so over the next 12 months I want to get to the point that we can start trying for #2.

2. I want to blog daily. This is a goal of mine for a couple of reasons. I have always wanted to journal and keep a record of the daily events in our lives, especially since I became pregnant with Alex.  However keeping up with a journal and dedicating the time to be consistent with it has never happened.  Since I am on the computer daily I have decided to blog my journal.  Another great reason for this is that I have always been told, by doctors, friends and more that keeping a journal can really help keep you motivated and losing weight. 

It is so lovely to sit here and be able to get these thoughts down on paper, so to speak, instead of being on the run somewhere.  I am truly looking forward to a great end of the year vacation starting off 2008 right for our family!