Walking In A Winter Wonderland - Part 3

Have you been receiving lots of adorable Christmas cards lately? Here's a very simple and fun way to display the cards for everyone to enjoy!

Make any form of bow that you would like, to place at the top of a long ribbon. If you have more cards just make your ribbon a bit longer. 

Paint a few clothespins any color to match, and decorate with a little bit of scrapbook paper, or maybe fabric. Our paper just so happen to have fun Christmas words on it so we just cut out the words and glued them on the pins. 

Fast and simple, and who doesn't like to stop and glance at adorable Christmas cards.

Walking In A Winter Wonderland - Part 2

Christmas decorating at my house growing up used to be a 1 week ordeal, but so worth it when everything is up and looking so beautiful! I love Christmas decorations, and am always on the hunt for more good ideas. I thought we could all use some fresh Christmas decorating ideas from this beautiful home, so come on in and stay a while!

 

 

The nutcrackers just so happened to be my all time favorite decoration in the house, and there are tons of them here!

 

This tree is covered with these adorable tiny hand painted nutcrackers, can you say incredible!

  

There's just something about a house full of lights that is so magical!

 The snowman tree, the tree my sister and I were in charge of growing up! We made these ice-cycle ornaments with a little glue and and bowl of glitter, so easy and perfect for the snowman tree.

 

 This Christmas tree is also a favorite, I love the green birds and giant globe ornaments.

Thanks for stopping by, we hope to see you again soon!

Walking In A Winter Wonderland - Holiday Recipes

Today my Lovely sister Brittany is stopping by to share some of her delicious and very simple holiday recipes. Trust me, these treats are highly addicting, consider yourself warned.

One Christmas memory I will always have is of my Mother making cookie sheet after cookie sheet of candy. She starts just before Thanksgiving and keeps the candy production rolling right up until the week of Christmas. She learned the art of candy making from her Mother & Father (restaurant owners) and Grandmother. I'm not to the point where I can perfect her recipes. She slaves away all day and at times is disappointed by the outcome because they don't look professional enough. One day I hope to get there but for now I'm far far away! I need fast easy fool proof recipes! These of course hold no candle to her amazing candies but they'll do! (:

I found this recipe in the Costco cookbook (Home Cooking the Costco Way) and fell in love. This spiced walnut recipe is my favorite spiced nut recipe ever! I eat them until my tongue starts swelling! The recipe requires no cooking skills at all and is pretty quick (well I multitask while they bake so it seems quick). Make a bowl for a party or give them as a gift, just be warned that you might eat a bowl before you leave the house so you may want to make two batches! This year I spiced four batches and bought cute tins from the dollar store, filled the tin (with pistachios & almonds as well). I wrapped each tin with cellophane and a cute ribbon. Super simple! I had neighbor gifts done in one afternoon, so nice! An added bonus is the way the delicious smell fills the entire house! Enjoy!

Spiced Walnuts
1 Egg White
1 Tbsp Water
2 Cups Walnut halves & pieces
1/2 Cup Sugar
1 Tbsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Ground Allspice
Bake 225*F Bake for 1 hour stirring every 15 minutes

- Preheat oven to 225*F
- Mix the egg white & water in a bowl and beat with a hand mixer until foamy.
- Add 2 cups of walnuts to the egg mixture & stir to coat. (The recipe says 2 cups but I use 3. 2 leaves the spices a bit strong for my taste)
- After I mix the nuts & egg white mixture, I transfer nuts into a strainer and let the excess liquid drain off while I prepare the spices.
- In a gallon size zip lock bag add 1/2 C. Sugar, 1 Tbsp Cinnamon and 1/2 tsp Ground Allspice. Shake until it's all mixed.
- Line a cookie sheet with tin foil
- Pour nuts into bag and shake to coat.
- Pour coated nuts onto cookie sheet
- Place in oven and bake for one hour, stirring every 15 minutes. (My husband likes them baked for 45 minutes, he seems to think they are a bit softer & prefers them that way. I don't care either way! I'll eat them all no matter what!

Turtles
1 Bag pretzels
1 Bag Rolos
1 Bag walnuts

- Preheat oven 325*F
- Unwrap Rolos
- Cover a cookie sheet with wax paper
- Place Pretzels on cookie sheet
- Center Rolo on top of each Pretzel
- Bake at 325* F for 3 to 4 minutes
- Remove from oven and press 1 walnut in the center of each Rolo (I don't think there is a wrong way to do this, the chocolate & caramel just squish out covering the pretzel)
- Let cool, remove from cookie sheet and Enjoy!

If you couldn't tell I like simple yet delicious recipes. This recipe does it for me! My children love to help in the kitchen so I let them unwrap and place all the Rolos on top of the pretzels. Makes my job easier and they are happy to be helping! Pretty fool proof recipe, great for me!

Happy baking!

Stay tuned for Walking In A Winter Wonderland- Part 2, Christmas Decor

We'll step through the door of this beautifully decorated home for a few Christmas decorating ideas!

Bean Bag Name

Looking for yet another idea for a cheap stocking stuffer? Well pull out your felt and get a move on, the kids will love some personalized bean bags and you will love how fast you can whip these up.

For a seven letter name I used 3 sheets of felt for the bean bag portion and 1/4 of a sheet for the letters.

My sheets were 12 X 9 so I cut (3) 4" strips out of a sheet.

Cut each strip in half, leaving you with an almost square 4 X 4 1/2".

I cut out the letters I needed on my Cricut and pinned them onto my piece of felt, that way my letters would all be the same size and in a cute font.

Then pin the felt letters onto each of the felt squares. Sew around the letters securing then to the felt, now your ready to sew your bags.

When I'm sewing felt I don't worry about sewing right sides together, one less step to worry about and I think the raw edge of the felt looks fine. Line up two squares (wrong sides together) and sew around edge leaving a small opening to fill with beans.

I put about a 1/2 cup of beans in each bag, sewed up the hole on my sewing machine and your done...fun little bean bags to fill a stocking for the kids! They will love tossing them around and seeing how many words can be spelled with the letter of their name.

Ornament Popcorn Balls

My mother-in-law sent us a package for the 12 days of Christmas, and we decided to get started a little early. Tonight's card said, "finish the inclosed craft", and it just so happen to be the neatest thing ever that I thought I better share.

These ornaments look beautiful on your tree, and they are so fun and easy to make! Any guesses on how in the world you get fully popped popcorn in a glass bowl?

Supplies

* Clear glass ornament

* Popcorn Kernels

* Ribbon, Vinyl, Stickers or anything you would like to decorate you ornament with.

First remove metal lid from glass ball.

Count out 25-30 kernels of popcorn and place in glass ball.

Place the glass ball in a brown paper bag and fold down the top of the bag, place bag in microwave.

Push the popcorn cycle button on your microwave. Listen for the popcorn to stop popping (Do not over cook).

* Remove and cool.

* Shack out any popcorn that did not pop.

* Replace the metal lid.

With glue gun attach your ribbon, or decorate how you would like.

Hang your popcorn ball on your tree and enjoy!

* some microwaves may not be powerful enough to pop all the kernels through the glass. If your ball is not as full as you would like, push in a few small pieces of already popped popcorn to fill to the desired amount.*

Finger Twister

I have been racking my brain trying to come up with a few simple stocking stuffers and today an idea hit me. I saw these cute little finger twister boards but was not about to actually pay money for them... I figured It wouldn't be to hard to make something similar on my own.

So if your interested in making your own go ahead and save these images to your computer and print them out on a regular size paper, they will end up being 5X5-6X6in' squares.

All you'll need is the images of the twister board and spinner that you print out, some sort of cardboard/chipboard(you could even use a cereal box), glue, a spinner, and a thumbtack.

You can make your spinner from cardboard or any stiff object you can think of...I got lucky and found these plastic arrows in our gogurt box(a free gift to help you roll your gogurt). ha ha Bet gogurt didn't know how perfect they would be for my finger twister board!!

First cut out your boards and glue them onto your chipboard. If by chance you are using spray glue like I did, make sure you spray the chipboard and not the paper(sometimes it soaks through the paper so I always spray the thicker material I'm using).

Trim up the edges and tack on your spinner. Make sure your thumbtack isn't pressed all the way in, so the spinner has room to spin of course. And to avoid being pricked by the tack, take some pliers and bend the bottom of the tack under.

And there you go, your ready to battle it out finger style!

(By the way my printer was running out of ink, Your colors will be way more vibrant)

Simple,fast and fun... perfect stocking stuffer for those game lovers!