11.20.2011 Panama City Adventures

Happy Halloween... And birthday!!

We have been working on putting together a party twin's second birthday. We've been out of town for a month, leaving us only a few weeks to plan, invite, shop, prep, and decorate! Making things even harder, is that we went way over budget on our trip 'home' and will be trying to keep the cost of the party down.
After endlessly searching the web for ideas, things are finally coming together. Granted, I've given myself and endless amount of work to do because I've decided the best way to keep the cost down, and still have things I like.... is to make everything myself.

First project... favor bags. Cost? $0.00. I found small paper bags in blues and greens in my craft bucket. Not exactly Halloween colors... how can I make them work? How about turn them into Halloween monsters!! I am SO happy with how these came out!

And then there were cookies...

I should just go jump onto the elliptical machine now. It's never too early to start making Christmas cookies... right? Well, it is too early when it's two weeks before Christmas and you are the only person in the house who eats the cookies in question. Nevertheless, my mind was playing non-stop peanut blossoms, and I could not help but start baking. I can not wait until my little bugs are old enough to start baking with me!
All of my cookbooks and recipes were lost during one of the eight moves we've done in the last few years. A google search brought me to allrecipes.com, where I chose the following recipe for Peanut Blossoms:

Ingredients

* 1 cup shortening
* 1 cup peanut butter
* 1 cup packed brown sugar
* 1 cup white sugar
* 2 eggs
* 1/4 cup milk
* 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 2 teaspoons baking soda
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 cup white sugar for decoration
* 2 (9 ounce) bags milk chocolate candy kisses, unwrapped

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the shortening, peanut butter, brown sugar, and 1 cup white sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, and stir in the milk and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; stir into the peanut butter mixture until well blended. Shape tablespoonfuls of dough into balls, and roll in remaining white sugar. Place cookies 2 inches apart on the prepared cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 10 to12 minutes in the preheated oven. Remove from oven, and immediately press a chocolate kiss into each cookie. Allow to cool completely; the kiss will harden as it cools.

The cookies are delicious. In fact, my peanut-butter-loathing husband came home from work and thought they looked so delicious that he took a giant bite out of one. What followed was a reaction so over the top that you would have thought I just tried to poison him by putting arsenic in his cookie. Nonetheless, I felt guilty and stayed up late to make him a batch of peanut-free chocolate chip cookies. 'Tis the season ;)

Time is running out!

For all of you "wait until the last minute" Christmas shoppers- there's good news! All orders from my Etsy shop that are purchased by Friday will ship this weekend. Just in time for Christmas!