Hand Painted Christmas Ornaments

Now that everyone has gotten their hand painted Christmas ornament I can show you what I have been working on every chance I get. Every year I make Christmas tree ornaments and Christmas cookies and give them as gifts to my family and friends. This year I got a flat porcelain ornament from Michaels and hand painted very traditional home scenery. I painted fourteen ornaments in three different style homes. No two ornaments are alike. Here are some of them I painted.

A night out with great friends.

Last night we went out to dinner at The Melting Pot with our dear friends. The Melting pot is a Fondue Restaurant. I happen to love the whole concept of Fondue. We had four courses of this wonderful food. We started out with a cheese fondue. Our friends had Cheddar mixed with beer we had swiss mixed with wine. This is served with cubed bread, a variety of vegetables and green apples. So, so good!!! Our second course was a wonderful salad. I have mixed greens with their raspberry vinaigrette dressing and Kimberly had their Cesar salad that she said was really good. The third Course was the main meal and they bring you the raw meat and fish cut into cubes. They offer several way you can cook it, either broth or oil. When you chose the oil method they give you two different kinds of batters you can dip your meat in and fry it. The both of us chose to batter our food and fry it. I am an old pro at the fondue technique. I ask for several extra fondue forks and get as much in the pot as I can fit. It cooks up in a couple of minutes and on to the next batch I go. With The meal they also serve raw vegetables, but my favorite vegetables are the mushroom caps. They have this wonderful cream cheese and chive mixture that you fill the mushroom cap with and dip it into the batter then fry it. They are soooooo good. The fourth course was the desert. It is off the charts good. We chose the cookies and cream chocolate fondue. It was chocolate and marshmallow that was Flambéed at the table. They topped it with Oreo cookies. Now comes the items in which to dip, cheese cake, strawberries, bananas, brownies, pound cake, rice Krispies treats, chocolate and vanilla marshmallows. Like I said… off the charts good to the last drop!!!! This was such a wonderful night. I just hope our friends enjoyed it as much. Even thought they had to cook their own food at the restaurant.


The whole dinner experience lasted three hours. It certainly fly’s by when you’re with good company. To top off this great evening Kimberly’s mom gave me the cutest ornament dedicated to me and my cookies. I love Christmas ornaments and this one was so perfect.
Thank you so much Sandy I absolutely love it.

Let the Games Begin

Yesterday was The Cisco Kids Class Christmas party and as one of the room moms it is up to us to plan all the activities and get the party going. We set up four different centers and the kids rotated every ten minutes to the next center. To prepare for the party I always like to surprise the kids by adding some extra special decorations. I love to see their expressions on their faces when they walk into the room and it has changed. I made about ten snowman and ten christmas trees. Not only are they great decorations but they are also great crafts for the kids to make. This time I used them as decoration and I hung them from the ceiling.
One of the centers was the Snow Center. This is instant snow you can buy from Walmart. All you do is add water and it expands into this white snow like substance. They loved the feel of it. It’s one of those things that you can’t stop playing with.
The second center was making reindeer food. I printed out a short poem and they all read a line from it. They mixed all the ingredients together in a plastic baggie, shook it well and put the poem inside so on Christmas Eve they can sprinkle it outside for the reindeer to eat.


Ingredients: Oats, bird seed, colored sugar sprinkles and a poem.

The third was a Reindeer relay race. But these reindeer were all Rudolph the red nosed reindeer. A red circle cut out was stuck to their noses with a dab of Vaseline and off prancing for a race they went.
The fourth was a Reindeer ornament. Very cute!!! They loved making them.



This was a great party and they all had so much fun.
Merry Christmas and have a great weekend.

Oatmeal Cookies full of Goodies

These Oatmeal cookies are so good. They are full of raisins, chocolate chips and walnuts. This was one of the new Christmas cookies I baked this year.
Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup of vegetable shortening
3/4 cup of sugar
3/4 cup of brown sugar.
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ½ cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups Quick cooking oats
1 cup chopped walnuts, optional
1 cup raisins, optional
1 cups chocolate chips, optional

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease cookie sheet or cover with a non stick aluminum foil. Beat shortening, sugar and Brown sugar until creamy. Add eggs and vanilla; mix well. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt. Add to the wet mixture and mix well. Stir in oats, nuts, raisins, and chocolate chips. Use a table spoon and drop on cookie sheet two inches apart. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Let cool slightly before removing from the cookie sheet. Cool on a rack. Makes 2 dozen.