The Real Deal

Hi everyone! This past weekend was so  much more relaxed than my crazy weekend last week! Friday started out with breakfast with my brother and grandpa.  We went to one of our favorite breakfast places, The Original Pancake House.  I wasn't feeling pancakes this day, so I got a ham and cheddar omelet which was still delicious. When my parents got home that night, we made a fire and had a simple dinner of chicken, cheesy rice, and broccoli.  It was such a nice and relaxing evening! On Saturday, my brother and dad drove to the University of Missouri to watch the basketball game (a birthday gift for my brother), so my mom and I had a girls' day!  We started by doing something not so fun, though: taking down the Christmas decorations.  It's all down now except for our two trees, and let me tell you, our house looks so plain and sad now! We then went to the mall to do some shopping.  We could spend hours in the mall, but surprisingly only went to ...

Hi everyone! As the holidays are drawing nearer (just 2 more days!), it is officially time for my family to make some Christmas cookies!  We are hosting Christmas Eve at my house this year, so there is definitely a lot to be done.  Every year, it usually ends up just being my mom and I actually baking the cookies while my dad and brother end up being the taste testers! We made 4 different types of cookies, and first up were sugar cookies!  Since we had a lot to do today, we decided not to use cut outs for these, but instead we made normal, circular cookies, and then decorated them. While my mom started the next batch, peanut butter blossoms, my dad and I started to decorate the sugar cookies.  We used red, green, and white Betty Crocker icing, and a plethora of different types of Betty Crocker sprinkles. My dad even wanted to get in on the fun and helped me bake while my mom was mixing some dough for the next ones. As you can se...