Snow, Snow, Sun

It's not snowing here anymore and it is warming up nicely. I hear that it snowed last night in North Carolina though. Apparently it was thundering and snowing at the same time. I would expect nothing less.

These pictures are from the big snow in Colorado last month. We went to the holiday lights exhibit at the Botanic Gardens that night and must admit snow covered Christmas lights are amazing. I think this is all of my pictures from last month!

Chocolate Lollipops

I know I am extremely late at getting around to posting this, but I still wanted to share these pictures. For Christmas we made chocolate lollipops using this recipe from Ina Garten. They came our really good and were a great project for me to do with my daughter. She was able to be really involved without it getting frustrating because there wasn't anything she could mess up. Plus, she was really proud of them and liked to tell people she had made them.

Cookies

 A couple of weekends ago we had a cookie exchange. I made two of my favorite cookies. The first is from this blog (here is the recipe and here are some pictures I took of them a couple years ago). They are spicy and probably the most popular cookie I have ever made. Whenever I bring them anywhere people love them. Plus, they are vegan. The second cookie is from Smitten Kitchen and is a homemade oreo cookie. It truly tastes like the original only better. For half of these I added peppermint extract and red crystal sugar to make it crunchy and to differentiate from the others. I also made some shortbread cookies for my daughter to decorate. It always helps to have something for her to do while I am cooking.

We didn't have a huge turnout for the exchange, but we ended up with more than enough cookies to last us. I used the felt rose center pieces on the table and I was very happy with how they turned out. Overall, it was a fun time.