Christmas Goody Bags

Last year my daughters started a tradition of making holiday goodies for Daddy's co-workers and other friends. We covered boxes with wrapping paper last year, but this year I found these fun "lunch bags" at Dollar Tree, and that simplified things greatly!
Each bag contains a popcorn ball, a baggy of Chex Mix, and 4 or 5 cookies.

The popcorn balls are easy to make. The girls popped up a big bowlful of popcorn. (We use a microwave popper that will pop regular popcorn. I usually add melted butter and salt after it's popped, but for this they didn't.) Then just melt margarine and marshmallows together like you would for Rice Krispy Treats, only substitute the popcorn for the Rice Krispys. Add a little red or green food coloring and form into balls with buttered hands.Our friends seem to like our treats... and the girls sure have fun making them!

Christmas Eve Mice

I made these cute little goodies several years ago, and I thought I had posted a picture to my blog at the time. I was telling a friend about them, and I couldn't find that post in the archives. So... I decided to post them again!

They are "Christmas Eve mice"!
My Aunt Lilly shared this idea with us in our family cookbook quite some time ago. They are fiddly to make, but not hard. The base is an open Oreo cookie. The mouse's body is a maraschino cherry dipped in chocolate. Before the chocolate sets, stick the cherry to the bottom of a Hershey's kiss and insert 2 slices of almonds for ears, then set your mouse on the cream filling of the Oreo. The tiny holly garnishes came in a small jar like sprinkles.

"'Twas the night before Christmas
when all through the house,
not a creature was stirring,
not even a mouse..."

White Christmas?

Remember my "cute" little faux porch? Well, here's proof that it's not really a porch, but is in fact, just a deck with no roof!
It's been snowing steadily for 24 hours and shows no signs of stopping any time soon... so I may have even more dramatic pictures than these before it's all over!

We got a lot of snow last winter-- much more than usual-- but it was later in the season than this, January and February. I guess this means it's time to hunker down and settle in for the winter. Somehow I think spring is a long way off.

In any case, we'll be having a white Christmas for sure!

Here's the view out the front door. Yes, there's a street out there somewhere!

Oh, and Dad? We aren't snowed in! Just thought you'd like to know that!

A Tale of Two Christmas Trees

We put up two Christmas trees in our home this year! I've heard of people doing that, but this is a first for me. I don't know if we'll ever do it again... or if it will become a new tradition! I guess we'll see.
One Saturday morning this past summer my husband and I decided to go to some garage sales in a really exclusive neighborhood in our town. One garage sale we stopped at didn't have a lot of merchandise for sale, but the people were very friendly--an older couple. I bought some nice throw pillows that they told us had come out of their new motor-home. They had it remodeled right after they bought it, and these throw pillows just didn't "go"! They also had two Christmas trees in boxes for sale for $20 each. The man wondered if we needed a Christmas tree. He would sell us one for $10! No, we really didn't need one. We had just bought an artificial tree a year or two ago, so we weren't in the market for another one.After we got back in the car Lyle said to me, "You know, our 6-foot Christmas tree is going to look pretty short with the vaulted ceiling in our new house." I hadn't thought of that. The Christmas trees at the garage sale were 7 and 9 feet tall, so I told Lyle to go back and we would buy one of them. I can't remember which one I told him to get, but he came back with both of them! He said the man told him to just go ahead take them both for $10!!We stowed them away in the rafters of the garage. We sure didn't need three trees, but we decided to hang on to them all for the time being, until we decided which one we liked best.

When it came time to decorate for Christmas, Lyle pulled the two "new" trees down out of the garage and we opened the boxes. I noticed that the 9 foot tree said "slender" on the box. I told Lyle that if it was slender enough I thought it would be neat to put it in the entry way, and we could put the 7 foot tree in the living room. As we began to assemble the taller tree, we decided that yes, that would work.Then we opened the box of the shorter tree. I was startled to discover it was plastic! I don't mean nylon... I mean plastic, like the old plastic artificial flowers people used to decorate with in the 1960s! Plastic-plastic! Can you see the shiny plastic-ness of it? We wondered if the tree was that old. If so, it was probably an expensive tree in it's day. Not only that, every branch had to be individually stuck into the trunk. I wasn't going to use it, but the kids wanted to put it together, so we let them. It is a nice full tree, and looks pretty good, except it's not really sturdy. The branch tend to sag with the weight of the ornaments (just like a live tree!) and the trunk wants to lean. I expect we won't try to use it again... but for this year it gets to be our living room tree! (We left the 6-foot tree in its box in the garage this year.)

Photography Workflow

Cynthia at Life is Good has challenged us to share our "photography workflow." She wants to know "what steps do you take to get your pictures from your camera to your blog and/or photo album?" And since I'm absolutely positive there has to be a better way than how I do it, I decided to participate in the hopes that some of you could give me to some tips on how to streamline the process! So... your input is welcome!

1. Take pictures. I'm still getting used to my new camera, so I try to take several of the same subject, using different settings and different angles. I don't always end up with what I had in mind, but I'm learning!
2. Pop the memory card out of the camera and plug it into my card reader. This is so much easier than having to connect the camera to the computer. (I don't have a dock for the camera, so I don't know if that would be easier or not.)
3. Select "open folder to view files" and then drag the files into this month's picture folder. (Pictures --> Lyle Cook Family --> 2008 --> 0812.) I have other folders for "Extended Family" and "Friends" where I store pictures people send me also.
4. Once the pictures are on the hard drive I put the memory card back in the camera immediately. I've learned if I don't do it right away I may forget and then get somewhere with "no film" in the camera!
5. Open this month's folder and click to view them with Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. As I look at them the first time, if any are blurry or bad, I just go ahead and click the delete X at the bottom of the viewer to get rid of that one right away.
   
6. Sort the remaining pictures into sub-folders for this month. I always have an "At Home" folder and a "Blog" folder, and then folders for special trips or events.

For blogging:

1. I edit pictures I want to use on my blog with Photoshop. I just leave them in the "Blog" folder until I'm ready to post on my blog, and then I'll open Photoshop and at least reduce the image size, if nothing else. Sometimes I'll add special effects or text.
2. I use the the Add Image feature on Blogger to add pictures to my blog. I almost always choose Center and Large for photos I've taken myself.

For albums I've mostly used a combination of Photoshop and desk-top publishing to design my own scrapbook pages in the past, but this year I discovered Smilebox and I love it! It's not as flexible or creative as doing my own, but they have a bunch of cool pre-made templates to choose from and it is super-quick! So here is how I currently do my albums:

1. Open Smilebox.
   
2. Decide what layout design I want for the pictures I am going to work with. Perhaps an outdoor theme for camping pictures, or a road trip theme for vacation, etc.
3. Drag the pictures for this batch into Smilebox.
4. Insert them in the boxes. Move them around or zoom if needed.
5. Add captions.
6. Send the finished album via email to my mother, my sister, and anyone else who might be interested.
7. Save jpgs of the album to my hard-drive.
8. Copy the jpgs to my thumb drive.
9. Give thumb drive to my husband and ask him to print the pages for me at the print shop where he works.
10. Receive printed pages from my husband. Insert them into page protectors from Staples and put into binder. (I usually make my pages 8.5x11" so they fit in standard page protectors and binders.)

I rarely print individual photos, like we used to with our film cameras. I mostly share pictures via email or online, and then print full pages for my albums. (I do still have years' worth of printed photos to scrapbook, though, from before we had a digital camera. Maybe I'll get caught up some year!)

I would love to hear your suggestions for further streamlining this process! Any tips for me?