What a busy week we've had!  I can't believe Christmas is already over.  It seems like we prepare for Christmas for weeks and then it's just over in the blink of an eye.  Our two-state "Christmas Tour 2013" included visits to Kennett, Bloomfield, and Newport.  We saw lots of family and Katherine was able to meet new family members.  Katherine loved her first Christmas, even though she and I both were battling colds.

Here's a recap of our week of craziness:




Christmas as a parent is so much better than I could have imagined.  I can only image how much better it will get as Katherine gets older.  We all had a great Christmas.

"The Jam Plan."  Of course I'm referencing the episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S., where Monica tried to get over Richard by making jam ("The One with the Jam").  I hope you've seen it.  Anyway....

I received one of Ree Drummond's cookbooks for my birthday (The Pioneer Woman Cooks:  Food From My Frontier). In the back of the book, there are recipes for canning.  Her step by step instructions (with photos) made it seem like a piece of cake, and because I'm always trying to up my "domestic goddess" status I decided to make jam....and pickles.

I started with the pickles.  Sweet Lime Pickles.  They were a little harder and required more time.

{Ingredients}

{Slicing the cucumbers}

{Pickling lime}

{Adding all the spice}

{Ah.  Sweet satisfaction.}

Supplies:
Large Canning Pot (large enough to submerge the jars in water)
Tongs (I actually have a canning kit that comes with some useful items!)
Pint size mason jars with lids and screw-on rings (I ended up filling 10 jars)
Wide-mouth canning funnel
Canning rack to go inside the pot

Ingredients:
About 5 lbs of cucumbers
1 cup pickling lime
8 cups white distilled vinegar
8 cups of water
8 cups sugar
2 tablespoons pickling spice
1 teaspoon tumeric
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

What To Do:
- Chop off the tops and bottoms of the cucumbers and cut them into 1/4 inch slices
- Toss into a large pot
- In a separate pot or bowl, mix the pickling lime and water, then once combined, pour over the cucumbers.
- Cover the pot and place in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight- this makes your pickles crispy.
- Remove from fridge and rinse the cucumbers 3 times to make sure all of the lime solution is removed. If you are using the same pot to cook them in, be sure to wash it thoroughly as well.
- Place cucumbers back into clean pot and add vinegar, sugar, pickling spices, tumeric, salt and cayenne pepper.
- Bring the mixture almost to a boil and turn off the heat, stir and return to refrigerator for another 3-4 hours.
- Pull the pot back out of the fridge and back onto the stove boiling over medium heat for 40-45 minutes.
- In a separate pot, heat the pint jars and lids (not the screw tops)
- One at a time, remove jar from water and place the funnel in the jar, filling the jar with pickle slices.
- When you have as many as you can get in the jar, pour in enough liquid to reach 1/4 inch from the top of the jar.
- Place the lid and screw top on the jar, then repeat the process until all jars are filled.
- Place the jars in the pot of water and heat for 15-20 minutes.
- Allow to sit on the counter for 24 hours.  Over the next few hours, you should hear the lids popping.  This means they're sealing!  Yay!
- After that time, check to make sure that the lids are sealed, if any failed to seal, store them in the fridge.


Whew!  After ALL that, I decided to make the strawberry jam. 

{Ingredients}

{Not much to it.  Just makin' jam.}

{Jam}

I used this recipe for the jam.  I'm glad I started with the pickles.  The jam seemed easy after all the pickling.  Both turned out great!  I may try to make more jam after this.  I love the Jam Plan!

This is the final installment of "A Year of Chocolate Desserts."  Yay I did it!  December's dessert is Chocolate Peppermint Pie.  This is the perfect Christmas pie!  I love everything peppermint, so I loved this pie.  It was super easy to make too!

{Chocolate Peppermint Pie}

This has been a year long project.  So, let's review:

{Chocolaty Rice Pudding}

{Candy Corn Boo Bark}

{Peanutty Brownie Bites}

{Choco-Toffee Bananas}

{Smoky Road Fudge}

{Cocoa-Cinnamon Sorbet}

{Classic Egg Cream}

{Chocolate Cookie Stacks with Lemon Cream}

{Hot Fudge Easter Sundaes}

{Cran-Raspberry Truffles}

{One-Bowl Mocha Cake}

I've linked all of the recipes in the picture captions.  My favorite one from the year was....drum roll please......the Peanutty Brownie Bites!  The One-Bowl Mocha Cake and Peppermint Pie were close seconds.  I enjoyed making a new chocolate dessert each month this year.  I hope you'll try one (or more) of these recipes sometime!  Enjoy!

We woke up Saturday morning to a blanket of snow outside.  It was my favorite kind of snow.  Light and fluffy.  I love how snow makes everything so pretty outside.  We took this opportunity to take Katherine out in the snow for the first time. 

This wasn't her "first" snow.  It snowed several inches back in March when she was about two weeks old.  Obviously, she didn't go outside then. 

So, we bundled her up and went outside. 





Overall, she wasn't into it.  She had that look on her face that said Why are we outside?  It's cold.  I'm not impressed. 

After a few photos of her first time in the snow, we went back inside.  Oh well. 

On Sunday, we headed east to Illinois to have lunch with some friends at their beautiful farm.  It was Katherine's first trip to Illinois and her first time seeing chickens, peacocks, and a pig. 

We all had a great time and came home with a dozen farm fresh eggs.  I'm so glad we got to visit at Christmas time with snow on the ground.  It was so beautiful and peaceful.  Ah.  Now, with just a little over a week left until Christmas, let the craziness begin!

What was supposed to be a busy weekend, turned out to be mostly sitting around inside while it snowed/sleeted/drizzled outside.  While some of our plans fell through because of the weather, others went right on as scheduled. 

Sunday morning started with homemade French toast (recipe from The Joy of Cooking cookbook) made from fresh bread that I had made this week (I know, right?!).  Because it had been one of "those" weeks, I added chocolate chips. 

Sunday was the annual Christmas ballet, with Katherine in attendance for the first time. 

{Katherine and I before the show.}

Katherine also made her stage debut at the end of the show, where one of the tap dancers gave her a sweet reindeer headband. 


I was thankful to get out of the house for a little while on Sunday.  It's been so cold that I don't even like to walk to the mailbox.  So, so cold. 
 

Jason was away all week for work, so that meant it was girls week in our house.

On Tuesday, we went on a much needed trip to Sam's Club.  Then we met my mom at the pool for a little indoor swimming. 
 The dogs stayed glued to my side the whole week.  I guess they missed daddy.
Wednesday was pretty low-key.  I finished putting up the rest of our Christmas decorations, did some online Christmas shopping, and tried to keep up with the many Etsy orders coming in, while Katherine enjoyed playing with her Christmas themed toys and feeding herself bananas.   
I organized my scarf inventory on Thursday, while sipping Christmas tea out of my holiday Starbucks cup.  I also spent most of Thursday waiting to see if I would be able to bring mentioned inventory to Kennett for the weekend for the annual Adelphian Christmas Bazaar.  The winter weather put quite a damper on my plans, but not before Katherine and I got some snuggle time in. 



The weather man said snow, but I didn't see any until Friday morning. 
When Jason finally came home, I was completely exhausted.  It also became clear that I would not be making it to the Christmas Bazaar in Kennett that I had been working towards for months.  You win winter weather. 

I literally spent months working on t-shirt scarves to sell at the bazaar.  So I'm posting them to my Etsy shop, and having a "winter storm sale" this weekend.