My husband doesn’t eat sweets.  I know.  Ridiculous.  But, on occasion, he will eat a brownie.  So for Valentine’s Day, I made him an “I love you” brownie.  The leftovers were packaged up and sent off to friends.

I added some pink frosting trim to make them look more “Valentine’s-ish”.

I laid each one on a small square of cardstock, trimmed with pinking shears.  A little dot of frosting holds it in place.

Slide the brownie into a clear, cellophane treat bag.  I like to roll down the top and close with a staple or piece of tape.

I added a topper made of some elementary school writing paper folded over the top of the bag.  I printed out an I heart Brownies label on my computer and they were finished!  Not including baking time, the whole project only took a little over an  hour and I was in a hurry. (You can see the sleeve of my coat in this last picture-I was heading out the door as I finished up!)  If I could do it over again, I would let the frosting set up a little more before packaging.  You can see how smooshed the pink dots are in my final photo.  They still looked cute and tasted devine, but I prefer non-smooshed treats when it comes to gifts from the kitchen!  Sorry if you got a smooshed one-I hope you liked it anyway!

Valentine’s cards are nice, but Valentine’s Brownies are nicer!

We are getting ready for Valentine’s Day-but it’s always so busy this time of year.  These quick cookies were a great fix.  They are very easy, very yummy and the pink and red M & M’s and sprinkles leave no question about what holiday we are celebrating!

You can use your regular chocolate chip cookie for this recipe and just substitute the chocolate chips with Holiday M & M’s in pink, white and red.  Before the cookie bakes, sprinkle the pink and red sprinkles across the top and lightly press down onto the top of the cookie dough.  I wanted to use a more “cake-like” cookie for this recipe and tried out Martha Stewart’s Cakey Chocolate  Chip Cookies recipe for the first time.  With a few adaptions for my m & m’s and sprinkles, I declare that  it was delicious!

I took them to a sporting event at the school, and they disappeared in minutes!  I think the adults enjoyed them as much, if not more than the children.  Must have been the sprinkles.

RECIPE

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 14 tablespoons (1 3/4 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup packed light-brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 1 large bag of Holiday M & M’s (for Valentine’s Day use pink/white/red)
• 1 bottle of holiday sprinkles or nonpareils in appropriate colors

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour and baking soda; set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter with both sugars; beat on medium speed until light and fluffy. Reduce speed to low; add the salt, vanilla, and eggs. Beat until well mixed, about 1 minute. Add flour mixture; mix until just combined. Stir in the M & M’s.
2. Drop heaping tablespoon-size balls of dough about 2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper.
3. Sprinkle the sprinkles or nonpareils across the top of each cookie and gently press into the top to make sure they adhere.  Don’t press them below the dough, or they will dissolve and disappear into the cookie.
4. Bake until cookies are golden around the edges and set in the center, 10 to 12 minutes. Remove from oven, and let cool on baking sheet 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack, and let cool completely. Store cookies in an airtight container at room temperature up to 1 week.

Dear Santa, we loved everything!  These little Santa pancakes are a tribute to all of mommy’s your hardwork last night.  We appreciate everything you do for us, and we vow to keep Christmas in our hearts, all the year long! 

Merry Christmas!  Enjoy your day!

The cookies are frosted and the milk is poured.

Christmas Eve.   I do love you so. 

I also love my holiday bears.   They are by Vicky Smyers  and I bought them last year as a special little gift to myself-I had been very, very good, of course!  She has others, that are just as delightful  and I am hoping that somebody (mommy?) has one wrapped under the tree for me. 

“Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl.  But it warmed more than your body.  It warmed your heart…filled it, too, with a melody that would last forever.”  

~ Bess Streeter Aldrich (1881-1954), American author, ‘Song of Years’.

The only thing I can think of that is worse than getting a boring Christmas gift…is giving one.  That is the dilemma I found myself in this year.  Christmas towels sounded like a great idea.  They are a grandparent gift. They like practical.  Not much for frivolity.  Monogrammed towels!  Sounded fantastic when I ordered them. The fed ex truck zoomed into my driveway and dropped them off a few days ago and I can’t think of too many things I like more than getting packages in the mail!  I tore into the box with excitement and anticipation and immediately got that sinking feeling in the bottom of my stomach.  I can’t give towels out as a Christmas present.  What was I thinking?  Towels are not fun.  Even with a bright red monogram.   Hmmm…. I had a vague memory floating around in my head and then I remembered these and these , from Prairie Dog.  Can you believe these are towels?  I love clever little gifts like these.  Anyway, the idea for peppermint towel candies was born.

If you want to wrap up your boring towel gift like Peppermint Candy, scroll down or click here for the tutorial.

This tutorial will help you wrap your boring gift of towels, into a fun, delightful, present that everyone one your list will want to receive! Normally towels are wrapped into a cake form for wedding or baby showers, but this tutorial will help you wrap them to look like peppermint candies.

All you really need are towels and a few basic supplies normally used to wrap presents. I used big, white bath and hand towels with some red washcloths. You can actually use tissue paper for the inner color if you don’t have any colored towels. I recommend white towels with red or green accents for peppermint candies. If you wanted to do other candy colors, pink, yellow, orange, light blue would also work and would be very whimsical. I wouldn’t try it with un-candy like colors like burgundy or sage green-the effect would totally be lost. If you decide to do it anyway-please don’t say I gave you the idea!

Hand Towels and Wash Clothes

If you have both bath towels and hand towels to wrap, start with the hand towels until you get the hang of it! It is much, much easier to roll the smaller hand towel and if you start with it, then the bath towel will be a breeze when you get there!

1. Supplies: towels, tissue, scissors, ribbon, stapler, cellophane wrap (available from craft store)

2. Lay out your towel. If it has a monogram that you want to show off on the end product, you many need to adjust the way you roll up your towel, depending on the placement of the lettering.

3. Starting lengthwise, roll up your towel into a tight cylinder. It needs to be tight, but not too tight. It may take you a couple of tries until you get the right feel for it.

4. Next, roll up your red towel in the same way. If you are using paper instead of a towel, skip down to the bath towel for directions.

5. Place the red towel on top of the white and center.

6. Now, start at the short end and roll both towels up together, forming a coil. Hold it TIGHTLY! It may help to have a helper. (Make sure your ribbon and stapler are handy-once you start this step, you will need them before you can put the towels back down)

7. This is the trickiest part of all-wrapping around the ribbon the coiled towels to get it to stay in place! Pull it as tight as possible and if you have a helper it will be a lot easier. I try and balance the towel between my body and the table because if you let go even for a second, it will uncoil and will no longer look like a peppermint candy!

8. Slide the tip of the stapler under the ribbon and staple the ribbon together. I usually do two staples just to make sure. I staple the first one just to get it to hold so I can let go, then I pull the ribbon even tighter and staple again.

9. This is what you should now have:

10. Now, you are ready to wrap up your candy towel. Measure out a piece of cellophane and wrap around the towel with short ends meeting and long ends extending past the towel.

11. Tape the cellophane together very tightly all across the towel so there are no gaps. I tape it together, and then pull and tape again as tightly as possible. Remember, you are trying to make it resemble a piece of candy, so you want it to be taught.

12. Tie ribbons on the ends. Striped ribbon adds to the “peppermint theme”, but really, any coordinating color will work. I like to add those shiny stars on the wire too. It really catches the light and gives it that little something extra.

13. This is what you should now have:

Bath Towels

The bath towels start out exactly the same way, they are just bigger and bulkier, so you have to adjust your rolling a little bit. If you do it too tight, it will look distorted and if it’s too loose, then it won’t like a candy. Plan on experimenting a little bit with this one.

Also, I did not have any colored hand towels to make the colored swirl. So…I tried using a piece of red tissue paper, and you know what? It worked out great! I used tissue paper, but I think a ribbon, or even colored paper or folded wrapping paper might work too.

1. Because the bath towel is so much bigger, I started by folding it in half and then rolling up each long end to the center. When your rolled ends get to the middle, just roll them together.

2. Now, if you have colored towels to form the swirl, follow all of the directions from the hand towel section to roll up your towel. If you are using the tissue paper, tuck your tissue paper into the fold and on top of your white towel.

3. Carefully, and holding on tightly, roll up the short end to form the coil.

4. Wrap with the ribbon and staple together just like in the hand towel instructions above.

6. Wrap with the cellophane and tie off with ribbons.

You have just finished wrapping your boring towels into a fun and fabulous gift! Great Job!

Thanks for your orders!  Pillows are on the way and should be under your tree before Monday evening!

Burlap pillows.  Handpainted with Red Reindeer and Peace.  Embroidered in thick red, yarn around edges.

Look!  Look, what arrived for the me, I mean the children (Big sigh) last night!  I love it when surprises are delivered after dark, well after the time you have given up on the delivery man for the day.  This is a Mrs. Prindable’s Gourmet Apple.  Have you ever seen such a thing?  There are many imitiations, but this is the original, to die for, ultimate caramel apple, ever in the whole wide world.  Obviously, I highly recommend it! Williams Sonoma carries gourmet apples, usually in the fall, and because I do trust the judgement of Williams Sonoma, I have tried the apples they carry in the past. But, I have to say, they have nothing on Mrs. Prindable. Underneath this mountain of rich chocolate, walnuts and caramel is actually an apple.  I don’t know if the apple is good or not, because I just eat the dessert off of it. But how could you ever declare an apple of this magnitude anything other than outstanding? Even if you just base your decision purely on the fact that an apple can have the fortitude to grow this size. 

Thank you to my true Valentine for this wonderful gift for me, ahem, the children.

At 7:35 this morning, 18 chocolate delivery trucks pulled out of our driveway. I wish they were delivering candies to me, but they were on their way to school to serve as Valentine’s favors for the child, who so dearly loves parties. The back doors of the truck open and we put a piece of chocolate inside.  I tucked them all inside a big white boxed tied up bakery style with a big red ribbon that served as the handle.  The child was so happy carrying them into school letting the box swing by her side.  The pattern was provided by Marilyn Scott Waters who is so talented in her paper designs.  You can find her website here: www.thetoymaker.com. She has dozens and dozens of the most adorable patterns that she provides for her readers to download and use at their will. If you aren’t familiar with her illustrations and haven’t been to her site before, you will be amazed and what she can do with a simple piece of cardstock.  Thank you so much Marilyn for such a cute idea!

The boxes of cookies looked so adorable lined up on the table.  Of course, Gigi’s signature cookies were inside, goregeous in their white buttercream frosting.  I have exactly one cookie left and I promised it to my dear child.  I have been brainstorming all afternoon to think of something, she might find worthy to trade for it.  My fingers are crossed that she will forget all about it when she comes home from school.  If there is no mention of it by tomorrow morning when I send her off to school with a kiss, then I will declare it MINE and enjoy it with a cup of Breakfast Blend.

I just finished baking cookies for my daughter to take to her teachers at school in honor of Valentine’s Day.  These cookies are my mother’s signature recipe and have become a tradition in our family.  My mother, affectionately known as Gigi by her grandchildren, made her famous "heart cookies" every Valentine’s Day that I can remember.  From Kindergarten on up, she would arrive in our classroom to deliver a white basket full of the iced treats right before the Valentine’s card exchange.  I don’t know what I anticipated more, the paper mailboxes being filled up with the coveted little white cards, or my mom finally walking in the door with the sugar cookies piled high.  Every child who ever lays their eyes on the sweet confections, with the mile high frosting, knows they are something special, something to be honored and cherished. And any adult who is fortunate enough to understand how a cookie can change your life, falls in love at first sight.  After they take their first bite, time stops and they are smitten with pure pleasure.  Worries fade away and nothing seems to matter as long as the lingering taste of sweet butter cream remains.  These cookies are like nothing else-I can’t even begin to compare them to something you might know.  They have mended all types of bumps and bruises, fixed broken hearts, cured all ailments, secured real estate deals, and even sealed a marriage.  They are simply magic.  Rich shortbread with sky high butter cream frosting.  Oh, how I wish I could give you a taste, and then just for a moment you would wish my mother was yours.