Christmas Martini

This is my favorite mixed drink to make at home. I love how it tastes, how easy it is to make, and how versatile it is. It takes you through the holidays, straight to Valentines Day, and through the 4th of July! Just change out that sugar rim to match whatever season you will be serving it. I took these to my sister-in-laws this weekend. She had these very interesting martini glasses which hold ice underneath to keep them cold. I'm more of a traditional martini glass girl, but these were kinda fun too. I originally got this recipe of All Recipes, I added the sugar rim and if I don't have the same ingredients I tweak it a bit and it is just as good.

Ingredients:

2 fluid ounces citron or regular vodka

1 fluid ounce Cointreau or other orange liqueur

2 fluid ounces pomegranate juice

1/2 fluid ounce lemon juice or orange juice if you don't have a lemon, but lemon is best

2 Tbs. Sugar, I used green sugar, found in the cookie and cake decorating section

Pour sugar onto a small plate. Use a lemon wedge to wet the rim of the glass and then dip into the sugar. Pour the vodka, Cointreau, pomegranate juice, and lemon juice into a cocktail shaker over ice. Cover, and shake until the outside of the shaker has frosted.  Strain into a chilled martini glass to serve.

Days 9-3 of The 12 Days Of Christmas For Teacher Gift

On the 9th day, my student gave to me...Granola!

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Shortbread Cookies

On the 7th day, my student gave to me...A giftcard of music money! ($10 Itunes giftcard)

On the 6th day, my student gave to me...Pistachios!

On the 5th day, my student gave to me...A Notebook!

On the 4th day, my student gave to me...Many, many cups of tea!

12 Days of Christmas For Teacher

Christmas shopping is pretty much done, house is decorated, and presents are wrapped and under the tree. Of course the list never ends and even when I think I'm ahead of the game...I remember I still need to ship out gifts and cards. A while ago Chloe and I decided we would do 12 days of gifts for her teacher. They are just little tokens, some better than others. I only have about 6 of the 12 in mind. I did see a lady on Pinterest who did this, but she wrote cute little poems for each gift. You can check out her ideas here. I didn't use her gift ideas and I definitely don't have the time to be that creative. So I went with this simple theme of just writing the number and the name of the gift. We are going with her idea of "secretly" giving the gifts. Then Chloe can reveal herself on the last day. Here's is today's...

Macadamia Nut Snow Covered Shortbread Cookies

Snow-Covered Macadamia Nut Treats

*This post is linked to Tasty Tuesday's @ 33 Shades of Green.

I don't make many cookies at Christmastime, or any other time for that matter. I have about 5 different cookies in my rotation and I mostly ever just make chocolate chip. My chocolate chip cookies are special, don't get me wrong. They're fat and soft, and they get many compliments on their full figures. I wish I could eat batches of them and get compliments on my full figure! But I digress, I want to share a special cookie that only makes its appearance in our house once a year. It's small and buttery shortbread goodness and it's dusted with magically festive powdered sugar. And if all that's not enough it's all laced with macadamia nuts and white chocolate chips. It's like a tropical snowstorm in one melt in your mouth crunchy bite. Seems like a contradiction of a cookie, doesn't it? What's even better than all of this? I'll tell you. It's prepared in just one bowl. And it has no eggs, so you can eat the dough and be worry free!

Oh, and check this out! I took these photos on my phone, my Verizon Droid. I was quite happy with the results. And it was so easy, I just emailed mysself the photos and didn't have to worry about plugging in my big camera and downloading the pictures onto the computer! Amazing technology!

Snow-Covered Macadamia Nut Treats

From: Pillsbury

{Printable Recipe}

Ingredients:

1/2 C. sugar

1 C. buter, softened

1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

2 C. Pillsbury BEST all-purpose flour

1/2 C. white vanilla chips

1/2 C. chopped macadamia nuts

Powdered sugar for dusting

Heat oven to 350°F. In large bowl, combine sugar, butter and vanilla; beat until light and fluffy. Lightly spoon flour into measuring cup; level off. Add flour; mix well. Stir in vanilla chips and nuts. (Dough will be sticky.)

With lightly floured hands, shape rounded teaspoonfuls of dough into 2-inch logs. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets.

Bake at 350°F. for 12 to 15 minutes or until cookies are firm to the touch. Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheets. Cool 5 minutes or until completely cooled. Sprinkle lightly with powdered sugar.

Teacher Christmas Gift Ideas

10 Holiday Gift Ideas For Teachers

Some years I feel it is so difficult to shop for teacher gifts. Do they really want another Starbucks card? Nash is in 8th grade so he has 7 different teachers, many of them are men, which makes it even harder! Also, this year Chloe's teacher is going through a really difficult time and I want her gift to be perfect. Chloe's teacher just lost her husband to Lymphoma the week before Thanksgiving. She took two weeks off and is already back teaching. She does have two teenage boys to take care of, so it's no wonder. I don't know her well at all, this being a new school for us and all. To top it off I am the room-mom and I've been told that she is extremely private and even instructed the students not to discuss what has happened. Ouch. My heart just aches for her.

1.Here's one of my absolute favorite ideas, because we all know what teachers really want is cold hard cash, and to know we care! It's a sweet little stack of cash all wrapped up in thoughtful notes of admiration!

Book of $100 Reasons @ Every Thing Is Pink

2. My own post brings us to my next suggestion, the always useful teacher supplies. You could put them all in a Christmas basket or even a large stocking and sub the Caramel Apple for some Christmas treats.

Teacher Supplies Basket @ Lavender Clouds.

3. For the men! Pretty easy actually. A treat, a tool, and a techy gadget! The treat is a box of my savory family recipe Chex Mix, the tool is a package of dry erase markers, and the tech is a SanDisc Flashdrive. Total cost, less than $10 bucks!

4. My wine charm ornaments are great gifts for Nash's female teachers. They are handmade and with the right packaging with make a lovely gift. Find them on the Popular Post section of this blog. I have even included printable instructions.

5. A dear friend of mine whom I have much domesticated respect for once put together a wrapping paper storage container full of supplies and gave that to her child's teacher. It was full of wrapping paper, tags, scissors, tape, gift bags, tissue paper, etc. Everything they would need to wrap their gifts. I thought it was a fabulous idea.

6. My SIL is a teacher and while she is in her 20's she said the best gift she ever got was a purse. For me, it's too intimidating to try and purchase something like that for someone, unless I know them really well. Even then, I can mess that up! But, how about a more personal gift card to somewhere more fun than Starbucks! Like, JCrew, The Gap, TJ Maxx, Michael's Craft store. See where I'm going with this. It's December and hopefully you know your teacher a little better by now than I know Chloe's.

7.  Does she enjoy reading? How about Oprah's Book Club Choices w/ a copy of O magazine?

Oprah's Current Book Club Picks

8. Homemade Sugar Scrub or if time fails, head over to Bath and Body Works.

Homemade Sugar Scrub @ Tip Junkie

9. Personalized Key Chain $9.98

Personalized Ruler Key Ring @ Lillian Vernon

10. Finally, For a small treat that I want to make a little more special, I will purchase a porcelain Christmas bowl, like the one here that I got for under $5. Perhaps they even have some cute ones at the dollar store? To me this is so much nicer than putting your cookies or what not into a tin that they will in turn gift to someone else. This way they can actually keep the dish and use it to serve their own goodies in. Just line it with some tissue or parchment paper and put the entire dish in a cellophane bag and tie it off with some cute ribbon.

There are amazing and talented people who have many great ideas to share with us. I saw so many fabulous gifts by google searching simply "teacher gift ideas blog". I still haven't decided what to do for Chloe's teacher, so I would appreciate any suggestions! Chloe spends half of her day in this woman's care. Regardless of what is going on in her personal life, I think she deserves something special, because I do appreciate what she does everyday.

My Christmas Candle Lit Fireplace

*Disclaimer: As stated above, please remember I am not a perfectionist. This explains why I didn't take the time to clean the splattered wax off the mirror before snapping these photos for your viewing pleasure.

Below is my fireplace. I change this with every season. You can see my fall fireplace here. Yes I know, you're probably wondering why I don't have an actual fire in my fireplace. Well for starters it doesn't really get all that cold here and also, between you and I...I don't really know how. But I digress, who needs that big mess to clean up, and all that wood to deal with. This is so much simpler, and clean, and it smells good, and I don't have to worry about escaping embers burning my carpet. Now that I have justified my candle lit fireplace please enjoy the following pictures and feel free to spruce up your unused fireplace with this simple solution!

In case you're wondering about the fat black cat statue, well my husband and I purchased them together before we were married over 13 years ago. I say them because there is a smaller one on top of the fireplace. The baby fat cat. I love their festive spirits. They don't have names....do you have any suggestions? I'd love to hear them.

How to display Christmas Cards

Thanks to Diane over at In My Own Style  who gave me this great idea for how to display years worth of my saved Christmas photo cards. Anytime anyone has ever sent me a photo card over the holidays I have saved it. In years past I have just taped them all up on a wall in collage form. Not the most stylish and eye catching way, but still my friends and family loved to see their old Christmas photos displayed.

This year I knew I wanted to display them in a more fashionable way. I simply emailed Diane and she had the perfect answer for me in no time at all! She does amazing things and all of her displays are so beautiful I knew I could trust her advice. So now, I have many doors in my house displayed in this fashion. She instructed me to hot glue a long piece of ribbon on the top of the door. Then simply attach the cards with a pin. I actually glued my cards onto the ribbon. That way I can just carefully fold them up with tissue paper and rehang them next year. Thanks so much Diane. I LOVE my card displays. I love seeing how the families have grown through the years. I even see my kids looking at all the cards multiple times throughout the day.

How do you display your holiday cards?

Free Printable Letters FROM Santa!

I'm back! What a perfect vacation we had. Honestly, hubby made me leave a day early and while that threw off my packing schedule a bit, I'm sooooo glad he did. The original day we had scheduled to travel ended up being the first day of a very heavy week of snow that followed. They had record breaking snowfall and below zero temperatures. It was exactly why we went. My husband loves the dark cold gloom of winter, don't ask me why! It was really beautiful, I must admit. But I do love the weather we came back to in SoCal. It is sunny and the air is cold and crisp.
We did get our family photos done. The day we did it, it was like 7 degrees below zero and windy! But we managed and got some great shots in the snow by the lake. They won't look like all my friends cards I'll be getting from the beach, I know that!

Now that I'm back and in Christmas card and photo book mode, it reminded me of something else I plan to send out along with Christmas cards. Last year Chloe recieved a letter in the mail FROM Santa! It was very very exciting for her. One of her friends mother sent it. Chloe is 8 and has started questioning Santa's reality. I know this is the last year she will "believe" so I want her to get the letter this last time. I know a ton of other young children I can send it to as well. If you want to send some letter's from Santa, click HERE. They're free!

Wine Cork Ornaments

Wine Cork Ornaments

{Printable Instructions}

Aren't these lovely and adorable? I'm so excited. I have been wanting to make these little ornaments since last fall. (I know, I know!) After searching for an answer for what to do with all my wine corks I remembered this. I can't quite remember where I saw it. This was way too easy and I'm looking forward to making tons of these and giving them in sets this Christmas. These guys were my first try at it, so I'm looking forward to what else I can do. I picked up all my supplies from Michael's including a mini hand drill and I paid $4 for the set of three key charms. Here's a simple photo turtorial, so you can make them too. Just don't forget to share your ideas with us after you've made some. Let's get started, shall we?

Some supplies (shown below) you'll need is a drill, small drill bit, cord ribbon (in the ribbon section), glue, scissors, 9mm split rings (they look like mini key rings), decorative charms with an attached split ring, & buttons with holes.

First, drill a hole through the center of the cork. From one side, through to the other. The hole has to be big enough to thread your cord ribbon through.

Next, attach the split ring (#1) onto the charm(#2). Cut a piece of cord ribbon to 12-18 inches in length. Slide your charm onto the ribbon as you would a necklace.

1.) Slide on the button. One end of the ribbon through one button hole and the other side of the ribbon in another button hole. 2.) Thread both ends of the ribbon through the hole in the cork. 3.) Add a little glue to the button and pull the ribbon so the cork and button are affixed. 4.) Add one or two more buttons as you did in step 1 and 2. Then glue those in place. You should now have something that looks like (from top to bottom) button, button, cork, button, slip ring, slip ring, charm. All held by the ribbon and glue.

To further secure your glued button, simply loop the ribbon one time as if you were going to tie your shoe. Just don't make a bow or not. Now towards the end of the length of your ribbon tie a double knot. Tight. Cut off any excess ribbon.

Wha-La!

ADDENDUM: Dec 27, 2010

I'm adding some more photos to this post, I have been experimenting with different charms, the crystals are expensive, but I really love them. I have also started using a different type of cord, I picked up in the jewelry making section. The cupcake one is perfect for the baker in me, and the ones with the crystal look great hanging from my rear view mirror, although I'm not sure if that's a safety hazard! If you choose to go that route, cut your cord extra long. I also experimented with beads and I started using larger slip rings :