I almost forgot!

One last Christmas treat. Gifts in a Jar. Easy, Cute, and a great gift for anyone! You can easily find recipes online ranging from brownies and cookies, to soups and dips. Of course being the sugar lover I am had to make cookie and brownie ones. But here are the finished products. Some cute ribbon, a tree ornament, and they are ready to go!

A little Flair!

I am in love with my sifter. I know a strange thing to be in love with, but it added such a cute winter flair to some classic home-made oreos, that there is no reason preventing the love! It's amazing what a sifter, and some cute snowflake stencils (thanks Mom!) can do! Since I love these cookies so much, I figured I would actually share the recipe that I use. Seriously, GREATEST COOKIES EVER!

Home-Made Oreos

1 box devil's food cake mix (Betty Crocker is best!)

3/4 C. butter or margarine, softened

2 eggs

1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened

1/2 C. butter

2 Tbsp. vanilla

2 C. powdered sugar

In a large bowl combine cake mix, 3/4 C. butter, and eggs. Chill about 10 minutes. Roll into small balls. Place on a greased baking sheet. Bake at 350 for 7 to 9 minutes. Cool.

To prepare filling, beat the cream cheese, 1/2 C. butter, and vanilla together. Add powdered sugar and mix together. Spread filling on top of cookie, and then top with another cookie. Makes about 2 dozen.

The cutest little Snowmen you ever did see!

It's not a secret, that I am in love with the Cake Pop idea that I discovered at Bakerella. I think they are just the cutest things ever!

I decided to take the Cake Pop idea and create my own design. No looking at pictures and re-creating this time, nope, they came from my little imagination.

So I started by making the basic cake pops and got them onto their sticks. I decided that before I would cover them in chocolate, I was going to make sure that the accessories were ready to add so that I could just stick them on without having to add more chocolate as 'glue'.

Step 1: I made the lovely little top hats out of a mini oreo, mini marshmallow, chocolate melts, green tree sprinkles, and red icing. And I have to say, I think they turned out super super cute!

Step 2: Have a bowl of shaved coconut (I felt that the snow needed to look like snow, and smooth white chocolate wasn't going to do it for me), and a bowl of mini chocolate chips ready to go.

Step 3: Sort through the candy coated sunflower seeds (purchased in bulk) to pull out orange ones that look similar to carrots.

Now the assembling. This is where it got a little difficult and messy. If you didn't work fast enough you needed more chocolate to work and glue, and if you worked too quickly, a lot of the chocolate would fall off under the weight of the coconut. A little frustrating, but the end result was worth it. I've even emailed a photo to Bakerella. We'll see what she thinks! But I have to say I think these little guys are super cute! And tasty too!

Oh Christmas Tree

So I did attempt to make a Christmas tree out of stars this year. Normally this would be made out of gingerbread, and it would also be taller. Mine looks more like a bush, but I sill thought it was cute!

I decided that I couldn't use regular rice krispies, because trees need to have brown. So I have to say THANK YOU to whoever it was that invented Cocoa Krispies.

I cut out a variety of star shapes so that I could stack them together to make my tree. After they were all stacked, It was time to make the lump of rice krispies look more tree like, by adding some leaves. And of course, since it is a Christmas tree, it needed a little snow, some decorations and a star to top it off! I feel it turned out quite cute! Not too sure how it ended up tasting. I used royal icing, which I don't really enjoy the taste of, but I guess that if the icing was scraped off, it tasted great. (I had a lot of left over rice krispie pieces, so guess what I did?? That's right.... ate them...)

Finally, The Christmas Goodies make thier appearance!

So here they are.... FINALLY! I've really got be better at updating this site. I have a few things I'll be working on in the next little while, and I promise to put them up faster!

I made up some Christmas treats for friends this year (with the help of the wonderful Ashley). We spent the entire afternoon decorating and having some fun. Nothing too extravagant, some rice krispies, mini cupcakes, and brownies. But it was still delightful!

p.s. I love how my picture of everything is slightly blurry, and then my close up photo looks like it was taken with a fancy camera. Huh. How did that happen?