white chocolate peppermint oreos

 I feel like December hasn't even started, and yet here we are just days away from Christmas. I have been trying to get in the holiday mood, but without snow on the ground or it even being cold out (I am really not complaining) I have been finding lots and lots of little things to do to make it feel more festive.

These are white chocolate and peppermint covered oreo cookies. They are incredibly delicious and super rich. Seriously, these things look and taste great and they are so simple. I suggest making them to impress your friends and family.

What you need:

Double boiler (but I used a pan with a stainless bowl over it in replacement)

Wax paper

A spoon

Food Processor (or anything that can chop up peppermint candy)

White Chocolate, about 20oz.(chips or almond bark)

Red food coloring (just a little if you want them extra pretty)

Oreos (I almost made it through one package)

First lay out your wax paper on a solid surface. Heat up pan with water in it, put double boiler/stainless dish on top and melt chocolate in it, stir frequently. The water makes it so your chocolate won't burn. In food processor crush peppermint candy (I used starlight mints because I had them, but candy canes work great). Once the Chocolate has melted, reduce heat and mix most of the candy into it (save the rest to sprinkle on the tops). Add a little red food coloring to boost the color already mixing into the chocolate from the candy. Drop oreos into chocolate peppermint mixture and thoroughly coat using a spoon to help. Shake coated oreo to make even and place on wax paper. Sprinkle remaining peppermint candy over covered oreo while still warm so that it sticks. Let harden for about an hour, or put in fridge to help it along. Pull off wax paper and enjoy!

ladies night

So awhile back I was invited to join some of the most wonderful ladies in town on a night out, and it was nothing less than entertaining. We had drinks and dinner and more drinks... oh and several emergency bathroom trips (maybe we won't eat at that restaurant again). But we made it to the end...note the bar stools in the back are already up. Oh and the booty shaking contest we witnessed added a certain amount of sophistication to the evening. Nothing but class here.

glitter, garland, and gluttony

Today just might be cookie day. I have been putting it off long enough so that I can still have some left for Christmas. Funny how I was super excited to get all my decorations up like a month ago but put those off because I thought it might be too early, and now they are piled up on the floor with glitter spilling EVERYWHERE (Seriously, my living room looks like the inside of a strip club). Lesson learned, decorate when you have the ambition to do it! Also, it is never too early to decorate for Christmas. I mean really why do we put so much time and effort into decorations if we are only going to have then up for a few weeks? That 30 feet of garland I have strung across the living room is not coming down for at least a month dammit! So I think a double recipe of Ethel's Sugar Cookies is in order for today. I am not sure if it's all the Martha Stewart I have been watching, or the hunger for sugar that is driving me, but either way cookies are getting baked.

long time, no cider

Well, that was way longer of a break than I ever intended on taking. Why you (all two of my devoted readers) may ask? I had a glass of apple cider sitting on my nightstand one morning, left over from the night before, and my husband's cat (I am still unwilling to say "our" cat when telling this story) had the clever idea to knock it off in order to get my attention. Of course my laptop was sitting on the side of my bed, leaned up against the nightstand, and subsequently was both hit by the heavy glass and doused in sticky cider. The computer worked at first and even hours later seemed okay, but things took a turn for the worse and it was pronounced dead two days later.

Have you ever seen the inside of a laptop, it's crazy! I ripped the whole thing apart before actually surrendering in defeat. It's sad because never has my computer, since the day I got it, looked so clean and nice due to my cleaning every part of it in the attempt to revive it. But now I have obtained a new shiny much faster much better (sorry old computer) one, and I now feel connected to the world once more.

eek!

Look who I found lurking around on my porch this Halloween.

This guy is pretty massive, and as long as he stays outside and not in my house he's cool with me. Maybe he'll scare away the trick-or-treaters. I didn't buy any candy for them so I hope that's the case. Am I the mean lady on the block or what? Oh well.

cheers to ten years!

So exactly ten years ago today...yeah that's right TEN... I met a boy that I later married.

photo by k. holly studios

The story of how we met is actually quite funny. The short version is that I was on a date with another guy who introduced me to my future husband that night at the movies. It must have meant something because he kept the ticket stub all these years.

It may have taken us three years after meeting to actually start dating, and six more past that till we were married, but I feel very blessed to have a decade of friendship with my husband. Love you!

mixed up

Top: Old Navy, Scarf: Forever 21, Jeggings: Target, Bag: Target, Boots: Target

So this morning I woke up with my husband's alarm and had every intention to make the most of the day. Then I fell back asleep. By the time noon rolled around I was feeling horribly guilty about what I had done with my day, which was absolutely nothing. So...I ate a bar of chocolate for breakfast and pulled myself out of lazy mode. Not that I really managed to get all that much done anyway, but I did reorganize my closet, no small feat. And I successfully, well in my opinion anyway, made meatloaf for dinner. Hot and on the table when the husband got home.

daylight savings

After many days of gloomy cold rainy weather we finally got a break. And I finally got a break from feeling super sick and gross. It was a much needed Saturday of sun filled errand running with the husband. It seemed like everyone needed this day. As we drove around town people were out and about walking dogs, walking babies in their strollers, laying in the leaves on the grass. Please please let this not be our last shot of delightfulness before long cold dark days set in.

My good friend asked me to bunny sit over the weekend so that was one of our stops. I cannot get enough of this cuddle bun. She is the sweetest. I don't think people typically think of bunnies being that social or playful of a pet to have, but man they are so much fun.

This is me patiently waiting for our takeout order to be ready.....patience...patience...

I was REALLY ready to eat.

Ummm...can you now understand why? This burger was sooo good and HUGE! I couldn't stop thinking about it all night and want another now. Pretzel bun, fried jalapenos and onions, oh the deliciousness, I may be in love.

cough it up

So I apologize for the lack of posts lately...but I have been sick and not really feeling mentally up to it. I don't know if it's the medicine I take or the congestion in my head that makes everything all fuzzy, but I am totally off my game right now. Today, for instance, is trash day and my husband always takes it out in the morning before he goes to work. Well, this morning he popped his head back into the bedroom to inform me that he had pulled silverware out of the trash and that I had done it. So I am apparently not with it these days. Never fear though, I shall recover, but until then, I think I will take my place snuggled back in bed with the cats.

red and glean

I went apple picking with my mom this afternoon, gleaning to be exact (picking the leftover apples after they have been harvested). It was soggy and muddy out there, but I think that made it all the better.

This year's apples are very sweet and very red. These are Galas.

I love finding a beautiful view that is uninterrupted by anything like phone lines or houses.

I found so many apples that I don't even know what to do with them all!

We found more than just apples out in the orchard. How perfect is the mud packed center of this nest? So amazing!

I love how it looks down the rows of apples.

  

I just can't get enough of these beauties. Nothing like a delicious Michigan apple!



suck it up



It is a sad and pathetic rainy sort of day out perfect for sitting in bed all day. I amazingly am out of bed, however, and am about to conquer the mess that is my apartment, ugh. I almost gave up on it, because the cable was out for a minute. I came to the reasonable conclusion that the chainsaw I heard buzzing away outside was surely the cause of it and I rushed to look out all my windows to see if a cable was cut somewhere. How could I do anything without my TV background noise pushing me along!? Then, it came back on...day saved! I like that my cat's follow me around when I clean as if they are "helping" me....even though most of the messes I clean up are directly or indirectly caused by them. They follow me until I get out the vacuum, then they run in absolute terror as if it was the end of the world and they were going to be sucked up into some black hole. Loud chainsaw, no prob, but a little vacuuming and it's hiding in the darkest corner of the closet tail tucked in. Even a hairdryer, blender, or a electric drill has no effect on them, but seeing me do as little as plug in the vacuum strikes fear. So now I must go on with my sad rainy day cleaning and traumatizing cats.



Irvin, on a much better day than this.



free time

This weekend was gorgeous outside. I know, I know it's fall, and I complain about fall. Why is it every ones favorite season? eh, well maybe in my old age I am beginning to see it's perks. Anyway, I enjoyed a very lovely weekend with tons of family. It concluded with some apple picking and a lovely walk with my brother and his family. Oh and it was all in my parent's yard. Seriously, people pay to go to these places to pick apples and walk around. I,on the other hand, go "home" and hang out for free and eat all the apples I want and chuck the cores into the woods as I walk. Simple things that make me happy, and make me want to live back in the country more and more.

awkward awesome thursday, the ups and downs in life

It's Thursday!!! Almost weekend time. Here is a beautiful list of the things that were both awkward and awesome that happened to me this week.

Awkward
- Almost falling down down the stairs because I sneezed at the top of them.
- Actually falling down the stairs like two days later because I wore slippery shoes, and it hurt real bad, and I cried, and I called my husband at work to calm me down. Did I mention these are solid oak stairs...yep they are, ouch! I have the most delightfully colored bruises now.
- Waking up from sleep to do a google search for the difference between your and you're because i was convinced there was a third one...my husband waking up minutes later to ask what i was doing and explaining to me that there is a third one, it's yore...not what i meant. Turns out I was thinking of there their and they're. Maybe it's time for an English brush up.
- Bringing my cat on car rides with me and having the neighbors stare at me like i am a crazy cat lady. So maybe I am, but not the scary old lady kind, i don't wear puff painted ironed on sweatshirts with kittens and my house does not have a cat smell, okay?
- Trying on a dress that my grandma wore when she was about my age and it fitting perfectly, then realizing that she had four children by that time. I have none, and it's not that I want the kids, but what size am I going to be if I have four children?
- Finding some sort of egg sack on shirt hanging in my closet that I had worn no more than twelve hours before. I quickly removed these spider? eggs and went into the bathroom to flush them when I turned and saw a spider hanging from the ceiling starting me down as if I was killing her babies in front of her. So I flushed her too. Sorry.


Awesome
- Getting clothes I ordered online delivered two days earlier than it said the estimated arrival would be.
- Sorting through old boxes at my parent's house and feeling like I am shopping because i am finding so many awesome things to take home with me that I forgot I had.
- Having the city send me a check in the mail for $155 because apparently I did my taxes wrong and they owed me. Sweet!
- Eating rice crispy treats for breakfast EVERY morning...it's cereal, it's breakfast food....right?
- Space heaters. It's cold, and I don't like to be cold.
- Ice cream with berries... fresh picked from my parents yard and smooshed up over vanilla ice cream. It's just about the best thing ever.

squirreling it away

Like a squirrel preparing for the long winter ahead, I too have been feeling the urge to stock up, so last night was pasty night in my house. Nope, not those little sticker things with tassels, although, I don't know which my husband would have preferred....hmmm. No, these are the super delicious, stuffed pastry, northern Michigan kind that you eat, and i made a ton!

The recipe that I roughly used told me that it would make about 20-30, so i cut it in half. Somehow, though, I still ended up with 20-30 filling mixture, and enough dough for only half that. The crust is just a basic kind of pie-like recipe.

The filling is made of a mix of ground beef and pork, salt and pepper to taste, melted butter, cubed potatoes, rutabaga, carrot, and chopped onion. So simple.

 

It was so much filling that I barely had a bowl big enough to mix it in.

We ate a bunch for dinner (although one is really the appropriate serving size) and then I froze the rest, including the excess filling to use later, for winter.

That is if I can resist their deliciousness until then ( had one again for lunch today!).

And like a good troll (a Michigander that lives under or rather south of the Mackinac Bridge), I give my pasties a generous helping of gravy. YUM! Oh and check out the creeper in the background of this last picture...it's my cat Irvin soooo wanting in on this.

falling in

Labor Day is the unofficial start to fall and it seems that the weather knows it, but I sure don't want to believe it, not yet anyway. A few days ago i broke into a sweat just sweeping the kitchen floor, it was 87 degrees in my apartment and over 90 outside. Now I am shivering under my covers in my bed; it's in the 40's this morning. Last night I drank hot chocolate while cuddling under a blanket. I just got the hang of summer and now it is rapidly slipping away. Fall has never been my favorite season. Why would it be? It's always been the start to school- yuck!(even though i haven't been in school for years now) and always begins the increasingly faster onset of winter, winter in Michigan. Everyone else around me, however, seems to think fall is the greatest. It's all about "hoodie weather" and apple cider and brightly colored leaves. All of those things are great, but give me spring any day with it's green grass and warm days, that really aren't that warm but just seem that way because we all forgot that outside temperatures could feel like that. The thing is, I do like this cold feeling right now. I like the heaviness of my comforter on me while I sleep. I like the idea of being able to turn on the oven in my kitchen again. I like being able to wear clothes in my house, something that 90 degree days don't always allow me. I had completely forgotten that i had sweaters, but in an effort to locate warmth, there they were in a part of the closet i don't usually venture to. I guess, like it or not, those sweaters are coming out, because fall is here and winter will soon be on it's way. So with the start of this new season, a season where I will have more inside time and dark days to fill up, i am starting this blog. I have no idea what the hell I am doing yet, so be patient please.