Christmas Dinner 2011

I am VERY happy to report that Christmas dinner was a 
S-U-C-C-E-S-S! Yipppeeee!! I had so much fun cooking all of the food we ate. 

Our menu included:

Hamloaf

Wax Bean Casserole

Stuffing

Turkey

Baked Mac and Cheese

Deviled Eggs (thanks to Amber!)

White Chocolate Peppermint Cheesecake (yummmm!)

Mickey and I invited our friends Amber and Kerry over. Kerry is Mickey's teammate, and Amber has become one of my close friends (we go to the gym together everyday..yay for a workout buddy!)

Amber and Kerry brought deviled eggs and a chocolate lovers cheesecake (since Kerry doesn't like peppermint...). Amber also brought two bottles of wine which were delish :)

And here is everything all on the table and ready to be eaten...it was delicious and made our Christmas feel a little bit more home-like :) Hope everyone had a blessed holiday.

love Christmas time!!

I cannot begin to express how EXCITED I am for Christmas day! Family at home may be wondering why I am excited since I won't be home with them this Christmas (I am very sad about that, and it is not the reason I am excited :P) The reason I AM excited because I am entertaining on Christmas day, and it will be the first true "entertaining" I have ever done!!! Mickey and I have invited our friends Amber and Kerry over for Christmas dinner and I am so excited to get to cook for everyone and try new recipes! I have been on Pinterest finding yummy recipes and ideas...OH THE POSSIBILITIES! 


I have decided to make a candy cane cheesecake by combining two really yummy looking recipes I found. I bought my first springform pan today! I can't believe I am even excited about that, but I am...who am I turning into!!? 


I also ordered my "hamloaf" meat mixture from our local butcher. Hamloaf is a Pennsylvania Dutch dish so the butcher here in Minnesota had never heard of it, but I told him what it was and he is making it for me...I pick it up tomorrow :)


I have a lot of other ideas as to what I am going to make, but once my menu is finalized I will post it here with recipes :) 


Until then...happy baking, eating, shopping, and whatever else you will be enjoying over the next few days <3

The Minnesota Vikings Christmas Party

Last night, Mickey and I attended his team Christmas party at the Mall of America. It was an absolute BLAST! The team rented out the Nickelodeon Amusement Park in the center of the mall and let us ride the rides all night! Crave catered the event and the food was delicious. They had ice cream stands, candy stations, popcorn stations, bars, coffee, and more. Here are some pictures from our fun night!

Mickey and me with our friends Kerry and Amber!

My favorite roller coaster in the park :)

Awesome ropes course that Mickey, Kerry, and I did! Amber was our photographer.

Gender Reveal Cupcakes I made for a friend!

A friend I met here in Minnesota just found out she will be having a little boy! She wanted to tell our bible study group the sex of the baby by having everyone bite into a cupcake filled with blue icing! I volunteered to make these cupcakes for her since she works and is really busy (and I am currently not working and have plenty of time to do fun things like bake!)


I found a few really cute cupcake ideas on Pinterest and decided to put my own spin on what I found. I went to a really cool store in our local mall called "Kitchens," and found a cupcake corer and purple sugar sprinkles. I then went to the grocery store and bought vanilla and chocolate cake batter. I decided to make my own vanilla buttercream frosting and cheated on the blue icing by buying good old blue icing in a can. I also bought reduced-fat vanilla wafers and black icing gel.


To make the cupcakes I followed the instructions on the box.


To make the buttercream I combined:
-1 cup butter at room temperature
-6 cups powdered sugar
-1/2 cup whipping cream
-2 teaspoons vanilla extract 
-Use a stand mixer and combine all ingredients to the desired consistency. Add more powdered sugar if needed!
**Also make sure you have a frosting bag or you will have to apply the buttercream to the cupcake with a knife, and they never turn out as pretty that way!


After the cupcakes cool, use the corer to remove the center of the cupcake (but only push corer half way in as you don't want the cupcake cored the whole way through!)

(The corer)

When you pull the corer out and push the plunger so the center of the cupcake comes out, save it because you need to put the top back on the cupcake! Fill the hole in the center with blue icing...

Then put the tops back on the cupcakes...

I put my buttercream frosting in a frosting bag with a regular tip on the end and applied my icing in a circular motion. I then sprinkled my purple sugar crystals on top (or any NEUTRAL baby color would work like green or yellow). I then used my black gel icing to put "?" on the vanilla wafers, and placed them on top of the cupcake!

and....WALLAH! you have delicious gender reveal cupcakes!! These are a great way to tell your friends and family the sex of your baby! Make sure everyone bites into their cupcake at the same time so everyone sees the blue icing at the same time! ENJOY!

New Minnesota Beginnings and Ugly Christmas Sweater Party!

Well, where do I begin with telling you all about our new life in Minnesota!? I would say that the biggest key to our new life here has been the Bible study we started attending a few weeks ago. Bible study has opened up so many new avenues in our life...we have met so many new people. I am so thankful for this bible study...we are growing our relationship with our Lord Jesus and also making new friends and awesome memories along the way!

This week our Bible Study had an Ugly Sweater Christmas party with a gift exchange. It was so much fun! Mickey and I went to a store called Rag Stock in the Mall of America to find the perfect ugly sweaters. After two hours of rummaging around the store, we came out with some pretty ugly outfits! (I also was the winner of the ugly sweater contest out of all the girls:)

(Unfortunately this came out blurry!)

We also thought long and HARD (and I mean a couple hours of searching online), for the best Christmas gifts. Each person had to bring a rapped, unmarked gift to the party to put into the middle of the living room. Each person in the room picked a number out of a hat and picked one gift to open. The game rules are long, but it ends up that each gift can be taken only 3 times total, and there is a lot of strategy involved. Mickey and I decided that one of our gifts should be a funny, not-so-desired type of gift, while the other should be a more expensive, nice gift. 


I will share what our funny gift consisted of...
Toilet Time Golf
12 pack of ultra soft toilet paper
Poo Pourri "Trap a Crap"
Poo Pourri Original
**We individually wrapped everything and placed it in a large wrapped moving box :)


The game was a ton of fun and everyone got a good laugh out of our gift. Mickey and I made out well with the gifts we ended up with! What a fun Christmas party and gift exchange! Here is a picture of our whole group! 

I hope everyone has an amazing holiday, and remember that Jesus is the reason for the season :) 

Greetings from MinnesOHta!

Well it has been awhile since I have been on Blogger!! I have been so busy lately because Mickey and I just moved to Minnesota for his job.The past few weeks have been packed with packing up our apartment in Florida, driving to Minnesota (its a LOOOONNNG drive from Florida to Minnesota), finding an apartment here, moving in, unpacking, etc. etc! This is the first chance I have gotten to sit down at my computer in a while, so I figured I would check in here in blog-land!


I am loving Minnesota's winter weather. It really feels like Christmas here (as opposed to Florida, where it did NOT feel like Christmas). We have had a few inches of snow and the best part is that its sunny here 98% of the time! Its cold and sunny, what could be better!?


I will be getting back to blogging, so stay tuned...I have some fun creations coming up! (Hint..I'm making gender reveal cupcakes for a friend and everyone will find out the sex of her baby by biting into them at Bible Study this week! yay!)


Have a blessed night!