Memories of Grandchildren exploring Grandma and Grandpa's house

The Christmas celebration is over, decorations are coming down, Christmas lights are finally off and the New Year will be here at the end of the week. The highlights this year were many. There isn't enough space to mention all of those highlights but I think attending Jonah's first birthday party and our family Christmas stand out the most.

Helping Sarah with all the preparations for Jonah's first birthday turned out to be fun as Sarah and I tried to figure out how to do things and make them work - like the green marshmallow trees. I laugh when I think of how we tried several things to make them stand up all by themselves and they turned out looking amazing.

Watching our three littlest grandchildren last week, seeing the wonderment in their eyes as they explored every nook and cranny of our house was precious. Noah and Chloe (2 1/2), and Jonah (1 1/2) noticed all the sparkly decorations, bows, greenery, and tree decorations. The three children shared toys, cars, books and other items together as each gift was opened and played with. The room seemed like chaos but this chaos was a controlled chaos and I sigh and just smile when I think of all that occurred during our special Christmas time with family.

I'm finding it hard to transition from Christmas to making any New Year's resolutions for the new year, but this next year I do want to focus on finishing my book and then hunt for someone to publish the finished product.

As for a recipe to share with this post, I am reminded again of that elusive little green marshmallow tree my daughter and I tried to make for Jonah's birthday. So if you find yourself wanting to make any green trees in the future, here you go with the recipe.

Green Marshmallow tree

1 bag of large marshmallows
12 oz of white premium chips
2 cups Rice Krispie cereal
1 bag of long pretzels
1 roll of Marzipan
green powdered color
brown color, either gel or powdered

Take some of the green color and toss with the cereal. This will turn the cereal green but keep the cereal dry.

Melt the chips until just melted.

Take a marshmallow and stick a pretzel in the middle, Next coat the marshmallow with the white melted chips. Immediately roll in the green cereal. Put the coated marshmallows into a container so they can stand up and harden.

Next, take a small amount of the marzipan and add the brown color to it. Do this by kneading in the color. Make a small ball of the marzipan and stick the pretzel end of the tree into the marzipan. Place the tree back into the container to again set and harden.

The trees should stand up by themselves and you've got something totally edible. Enjoy.

Christmas is here....Let the celebrating begin!!

This week is Christmas and first of all, I am reminded of the ultimate gift God gave to me in the form of His son, Jesus Christ. Without this gift I would be nothing and I would have nothing. Jesus has given me the strength to perservere when I thought all hope was gone. He also gave me the strength I needed to start a new life in 1985 with my daughter. Remembering back on those days of being a single parent to a 3 year old, I wanted the holidays to bring the best memories I could possibly give my child.

One of the traditions I had was to have my daughter go to bed on Christmas Eve and then when she was asleep, I'd jingle some bells and run into her room and tell her, "Santa just left and those were the reindeer I heard." She believed me until she turned older, and I think she didn't want to spoil my fun and didn't tell me for a few years just so we could jingle the bells and proclaim Santa came to our house.

I also remember those days when my dad would take my daughter shopping for a Christmas present for me. I was always humbled by my dad's actions because he would do this for Mother's Day as well.

When I started celebrating Christmas with my new "blended" family, I tried to make traditions by decorating EVERY (yes, I said EVERY) part of the house. I had theme rooms. Our living area downstairs was the Santa room with the tree; the family area where we spent most of our time was the angle and nativity area because this is why we really celebrate Christmas; and of course the kitchen and bathrooms were decorated with snowmen. I would even have our girls decorate their rooms with lights and fake trees so they would have something of their own. Of course their friends would come over and call my house, "the Christmas house" because of EVERY part of the house had something to do with Christmas.

Another tradition I started when our kids were small was to give each person (including the gentlemen) Christmas stockings in their Christmas stockings. (One of the first things I did when I remarried was to make everyone in the family their very own Christmas stocking. As our kids got married, I would make their spouse or their children a Christmas stocking to match.)

Since the kids have all left home, I haven't been decorating as much and in fact in the past few years, I haven't even done the outside lights. With the twins coming from Washington DC and our newest grandson coming from Washington State, I decided this year, I'd bring all the glory back to the house and make it kid friendly so the little ones will remember Grandma and Grandpa's house as a house of wonder and delight.

I'm also pulling out all the stops in the food area this year. We are having baby back ribs and turkey for our celebration plus Red Velvet Cake, cookies galore and all the favorites my family enjoys. So for this post, I'm going to give you my favorite sugar cookie recipe. I've mentioned before my grandmother would always put out sugar cookies at Thanksgiving time and I could never find the exact recipe she used, but I did find a recipe comparable. Enjoy and continue to make those traditions with your families as you celebrate this season of joy.

Grandma Reimer's sugar cookies

1 1/2 cups softened butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups sugar

Cream the above ingredients until light and fluffy.

Add 2 eggs and beat well. Add 5 cups flour, 4 teaspoons baking powder, and 1/2 cup milk and mix well. Regfrigerate for 3-4 hours until firm or overnight. Roll out to 1/4 inch thick and use your favorite cutters. Place on parchment lined cookie sheets and bake 10-12 minutes at 375 degrees.

Before these cookies are baked, you can sprinkle colored sugar on top or frost them and design them once they are cooled. Use a buttercream frosting.

Even Good cooks have a bad day!!!

Have you ever had one of those days when you go, "What was I thinking?" Sunday night I made cookies for the gun club as usual. I don't know whether it was because the time was the middle of the night, or I just "wasn't thinking," but I screwed up my own recipe. Looking back I just laugh at myself because even I make mistakes sometimes while cooking.

Even Good cooks have a bad day....

I made my original peanut butter cookies according to my own developed recipe because they are so good and I don't use a recipe book. I got to the flour mixture and I put in five cups of flour just like I usually do. The cookie dough didn't look quite right but I didn't think about it. After putting the cookies onto the cookie sheets to cook, I went to put the flour away.

Okay, so this is where the, "What was I thinking" part came in. I always keep a 1 cup measuring cup in the flour bin but when I got to looking at the cup, it said 3/4 cup. On no!!!! Instead of using 5 cups of flour I used 5 cups of 3/4 cup flour. No wonder the cookies looked different. Even my husband said they weren't as good as they normally were.

I immediately took the wrong sized measuring cup out of the bin and replaced it with the right size measuring cup. But I got to thinking, "Did I use the wrong amount of flour for my Thanksgiving rolls?" Or, "Was the last batch of cookies right???" Like I said before, I laugh at myself trying to figure out if I used the right measure of flour in the most recent items I've baked. You can imagine next time I make someting, I will make sure I use the right amount of flour and use the appropriate size cup for measuring.

This brings me to the recipe I'm going to share for this post. Christmas is right around the corner. Last year I shared some Mennonite German recipes. This year, I'm going to share my own original recipes I've developed over the years and the ones my family loves. This recipe does use only 3/4 cup of flour. (LOL)

Decadent orange brownies

1 cube butter melted
orange zest of two oranges, fresh
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon orange flavoring
2 eggs
3/4 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

Mix the above ingredients in the order they are listed and pour into an 8x8 square pan. Bake at 350 minutes until the brownies are slightly set. When cool, frost with an orange buttercream frosting, cut into squares and serve with ice cream.

Orange buttercream frosting

2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup softened butter
splash of cream milk or cream
1/4 teaspoon salt
zest of one orange
1 teaspoon orange flavoring
1/2 teaspoon vanilla flavoring

Mix together and add enough milk or cream to spreading consistency. These are so good and since I don't like chocolate sometimes, the freshness of the oranges make this a good holiday treat.