Merry Christmas!

I hope that you all have had a wonderful Christmas morning!

Last night I took the dogs out for one last final walk and as I walked back down the driveway, I looked at my family home, that only hours earlier was bustling with family and friends.

I looked inside and caught my dad in the window setting up gifts and filling stockings.

By the time I came back inside, most of the family had gone to bed, but I sat for a little while looking at the tree with Whiskey on my lap, thinking about all that we have been blessed with this year. An evening with your loved ones can do that to you...remind you about what this holiday really is about.

Of course, I did take a peek under the tree to look at some of the presents too. How gorgeous is this wrapping paper that my mother found in the States?

Almost too pretty to unwrap. It sparkles when lit up by the tree. I used it to wrap a few special gifts :)

It wouldn't be Christmas Eve without piling on the couch with my sister and brother to watch Its a Wonderful Life. I always get a little teary at the end when the whole community gets together to help George Bailey. Oh how I would love to live in a place as pretty as Bedford Falls.

I'm looking forward to a quiet, relaxing day with the family. We did our big family dinner last night, so now its just time for leftovers and watching movies.

Hope that you all have a wonderful day. Merry Christmas!

The Sights and Sounds of the Season

Today I'm up early finishing the baking and helping with the cooking for our big family dinner this afternoon. Its our tradition to do the big meal on Christmas Eve with the whole family and then all the grandparents and great aunts stay over for Christmas morning brunch. I know that some year my mother wants to go to Hawaii or Florida for the holidays, but right now I can't picture Christmas without lots of family and lots of snow.

All week I've been getting into the holiday spirit, cooking, baking, humming carols, doing a TON of wrapping and of course, looking at all the Christmas light displays.

The boyfriend and I decided to bundle up and head out on a little Christmas date to take in all the sights and sounds of the season.

We drove to the town of Newmarket to see their Festival of Lights at Fairy Lake.

 All through the scenic park there are displays by some of their local businesses.

 I practiced my hoop skills with some jolly reindeer ;)

You can walk through the displays, or hop on the Tim Hortons Express and take a ride through the park.

We had a great time looking at all the displays and listening to the Christmas music.

Its hard not to get in the festive spirit with all the pretty lights and freshly fallen snow.

It was absolutely freezing outside, so the boyfriend was happy to pick up his free cup of Tim Hortons' hot chocolate, while I nabbed a mini candy cane.

I'm off to finishing getting everything ready for our big fun family dinner and looking forward to the end of the night when I can sit down with a nice glass of Bailey's while I watching Its A Wonderful Life. A perfect finish to one of my favorite days of the entire year.

Hope that everyone has a lovely Christmas Eve and that you wake up to everything you desire on Christmas morning!

Christmas Bootcamp vs. Baking Marathon

This year my friend Amy and I decided to do something a little different. Instead of spending most of our holiday days lounging around on the couch watching movies and eating chocolate, we decided to commit to a self-imposed Christmas Bootcamp. In other words, we agreed to motivate each other to workout most days during the two weeks we have off at Christmas......

....however, we had ALOT of baking to do this week as well.

I'm not kidding when I say "alot". Amy has been a baking fiend lately and she is so sweet about taking extra care to make things safe for everyone. She makes nut stuff, but then she dedicates a day to going nut-free for people like me and diabetic safe for people like her father. The time and energy to do it all just boggles me.

On this day we made 6 recipes, putting one in the oven and starting on the next one right away. With two blondes working in the kitchen we ended up making little mistakes on every recipe...twice as much green food colouring in one recipes, and extra cup of coconut in another. But they all seemed to work out great in the end.

These little guys are basically mint sugar cookies with a chocolate filling inside and a mint chocolate on top. They smelled amazing while they were baking. Mint chocolate has to be one of my favorite flavour combinations.

This is where things got dangerous....the extra pieces of chocolate.

We can't just let them go to waste, right?

My favorite dish that we made were these chocolate coconut bars. I'm hoping to grab the recipe from her and make a post about it soon.

Even though they weren't completely cooled before I left, I had to cut into them to get a little piece. Rich, decadent, chocolatey goodness :)

We also made white chocolate orange cookies with a little bit of Grand Marnier in there for kick.

Ever square inch of counter space was covered in goodies. It was so tempting to have some of everything.

But I knew that she needed all the goodies for her cookie tins, so I just grabbed one of the leftover Oreos and dipped it in icing like a grown up version of Dunk-a-roos.

Just look at all that icing! And this is where the Christmas Bootcamp becomes a predicament. Is it really doing anything to improve my health....or just keeping all the bad stuff at bay while I indulge during the holidays?

Morton Family Strata from "The Family Stone"

On Christmas morning we often have a slew of relatives who have stayed over from our Christmas Eve dinner the night before, and we always try to serve up a nice brunch to get everyone started on their day of traveling to other family events. So last year I wanted to try something new for a change and I remembered that there was a recipe on the DVD of The Family Stone for a delicious looking strata.

In the film, Meredith Morton (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) prepares her family's recipe for strata to serve to the eccentric Stone family on Christmas morning. If you have seen the movie, you undoubtedly remember the scene where this strata is dropped all over the kitchen floor! 

Despite being accident prone myself, I managed to avoid spilling this anywhere. It was a great dish to prepare for a brunch because it needs to sit in the fridge over night, so you get to make it well in advance and just pop it in the oven when you wake up on Christmas morning.

What you'll need:
8 slices of White Bread
8 ounces Mozzarella Cheese, sliced or grated
14 ounces Tomatoes, sliced
13 ounces sliced Mushrooms, drained (or sauteed fresh)
1 medium Onion, thinly sliced into rings
5 Eggs
3 cups Milk
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Oregano
1 pinch Garlic Salt
Parmesan Cheese
Black Olives, sliced (optional)

 Using a cookie cutter, donut cutter or lid from a jar, cut bread into shapes or circles. Set aside.

 Place bread scraps in bottom of buttered 13' by 9' baking dish. 

 Layer half of the cheese over bread. 

 Arrange half of the tomatoes on top of the cheese.

Add the onion on top of the tomatoes.

 Saute the mushrooms in a little bit of butter.

 Place mushrooms on top and cover with the rest of the cheese.

 Arrange the bread shapes on top of the cheese.

 Put slices of the tomato in the center of each bread shape.

Combine slightly beaten eggs, milk, salt, oregano and garlic salt. Pour over the bread.

Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and dot with olives if you'd like. Cover. Refrigerate for 6 hours or overnight.

Bake 1 1/2 hours in a 325°F oven, or until knife comes out clean.

 Let stand for 5 minutes or until firm.

Deliciously cheesy! 

Serves 8

Printable Version (coming soon!)

Homemade Peppermint Bark Jars

Every Christmas my family makes delicious Peppermint Bark. Its something I look forward to every year, so when my sister came up with the idea of giving it away this year on gifts, I was on board.

She found small glass jars, decorated them up and made handwritten cards with the recipe inside (with the leftover materials from last year's Holiday cards).

The ribbon was picked up on clearance at a local craft store. I like to check out the sales at the end of every year and pick up amazing post-Christmas deals.

We have plenty of little vintage wired pinecones at my parents' place, which made for adorable additions to the ribbon bows.

I decided to use a candy cane on my bows, which made for a nice little extra treat.

When I made the Peppermint Bark, I tried to break it into nice bite-size pieces. I may or may not have eaten a few myself ;)

This is a simple homemade gift that cost less than $8 for each gift including the chocolate, ribbon and jars. Each batch of Peppermint Bark makes approximately four gifts.

A sweet Christmas treat, with a personal touch.

Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

One of my favorite things about the season is getting to spent time with friends and family. Whether its dinner and drinks in the evening or even just meeting up to look at Christmas displays, its nice to share this time of year with the ones you love. Last weekend I was invited over to my friend Julia's for a little Girls Night In dinner. It was a nice evening spent with good friends and really got me geared up for the season.

When I arrived, I was so impressed with her table display! It was so festive and put me right in the mood (or maybe that was the glass of lethal punch that I had!)

Every detail was incredibly sweet, right down to the Christmas cards and presents on the table (more on that farther down!)

Julia is a big snowman fan, so it made sense that everything had cute little snowmen on them, including the placecards.

We had lots of yummy food which I totally overindulged on, including this cake that my friend Shauna made...from scratch! She put it in a wreath mold and then covered it in festive icing and sprinkles.

When she was decorating the cake, she realized too late that she didn't have green spinkles...so whats a girl to do? Well this smart cookie took white sprinkles and mixed them with a bit of green food colouring! Now why didn't I think of that!

When I mentioned the gifts earlier in this post, I knew that I had to take a picture of what was inside the box...

A pretty skating reindeer ornament from Crate & Barrel!

Its so cute and fits in perfectly with my red and gold tree this year.

I love it when people write their names and the date on the bottom of an ornament.

 I always do it when I receive one from someone because I like looking back at them years later and remembering that person giving it to you.

To conclude this post, I want to leave you with a funny Christmas tree story to start the weekend off with. It happened the night of our Girls Night In. All evening we were dancing around using Just Dance on the Wii (awesome game, by the way!) and then settled down to watch a movie. Before we knew it we were all wiped and hit the hay at 2am. Whiskey and I decided to crash on the couch, while my friend Courtney took the floor.

At 4am I woke up to a HUGE crash noise, only to look over and see that the entire (huge) tree had fallen just a foot away from Courtney. It was dark and she thought that Whiskey had knocked it over and then come running over to curl up by her. But Whiskey was with me.....so what landed all cuddled up in her arms? The angel! It came flying off the top and landed safely right in her arms.

Before we knew it, everyone in the house was in the living room trying to right the tree in the middle of the night. Thankfully no one was hurt and no decorations were broken, but it sure did take me a little while to get back to sleep. Maybe it was all that jumping and dancing around that we did earlier playing Wii that moved the tree, but whatever it was, it was pretty funny talking about it the next morning.

Today is my last day in the office, which means that in a few short hours I officially start my Christmas break! Two weeks off to enjoy a nice Christmas with the family and take a much needed break. Its a weekend full of Christmas parties and lots of shopping, but I'll have some great posts lined up in the final week before Christmas, so be sure to stop by!