Holidays Holidays!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!  It flew of course and tomorrow is already New Years Eve.  This year was an awesome one for my family, ending in the beautiful culmination of our gorgeous daughter's marriage to our new son.

I baked some yummy delights, Italian Struffoli, or fried honey balls, red velvet cake balls, dipped pretzel rods, my fantasmic chocolate chip cookies!  These suckers are unreal.  You measure out the dough on a scale, I cut it back from an 8 oz cookie to 5 and then put them in the freezer to firm them up and keep them from spreading too much during baking.  I really like them to have height.  They are filled with not just chocolate chips, but chopped chocolate as well. I have never had the ones sold at Levain's bakery in Manhattan, but they look just as good to me.

Here are some pics -

Red Velvet Cake Balls covered in white chocolate, a couple in milk chocolate

Caramel/Chocolate Dipped Pretzel Rods -

Peppermint Bark -

Mega Chocolate Chip Cookies -

Struffolis can be tedious.  I made the dough the day before, then Sophia helped me roll them into balls and fry, you cook honey sugar and water then put the balls into that and coat.  Hubby helped me with the honey part. I use Lidia's recipe for this.

Here are pics of that -

Some family shots -

Our kids have been taking a Christmas pajama pic for years now, its become a tradition. 

My Christmas table and our tree -

That Santino is quite a clown!

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and that your New Year is full of happiness and health!

Teachers Gift and A Tag

I finished the mini-album for Santino's teacher.  It was made using white 6"x9" envelopes.  Again, Laura Denison's mini's were the template I used.  I picked my papers from DCWV Christmas Stack that I've had for at least 4 years, my cricut and lots of distress inks, stickles and some beads that my daughter Sophia has. and ribbon.  It had plenty of space and pockets for pics.  I hope she likes it.

Here are the pics -

Okay, the tag I did was for the 4th day of Tim's tags.  This sucker looks like the spastic brother of the tag that Tim did!!  I tried crackle paint for the first time, and the snowman I had just wasn't quite right.  Oh well, I have a few more I'm gonna give a go to ; )

Here's mine -

I like the crackle effect, but you really should use chip board or grunge board.  Cardstock just doesn't quite hold up as well.  I'm really improvising here, not buying anything to make these babies!

Here's Tim's.  What a difference!  Oy Vey! -