Recipe Wednesday - Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie

For Christmas Eve dessert with Jason's parents and brother I made the most delectable pie for dessert.  I combined a recipe from the Birthday Girl and The Pioneer Woman to make this pie (used The Pioneer Woman's crust recipe and the Birthday Girl's filling recipe).  It was so good!  BUT, it is super rich so you don't need to cut big slices!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie

Crust:
25 whole Oreos
4 Tablespoons Butter, Melted
 
Filling:
1 cup creamy peanut butter
1 (8-ounce) package softened cream cheese
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 can condensed milk
8 ounces Cool Whip
 
Preparation:
 
Crust:
Crush the Oreos until they’re fine crumbs. Pour melted butter over the top and stir with a fork to combine. Press into pie pan and bake at 350 degrees for 5 to 7 minutes, or until set.
Remove from oven and allow to cool completely.
 
Filling:

Beat the peanut butter, condensed milk, powdered sugar and cream cheese in a mixer until smooth.
Add in the whipped cream and beat until smooth, scraping the sides as needed.
Pour filling into crust, evening out the top with a knife or spatula.
Chill for at least an hour before serving.

Christmas with Memma and Papa G

After Charlotte saw what Santa brought her and opened her stocking on Christmas morning we went down to Mom and Dad's to do Christmas with them and my brother.  By this point Charlotte had already opened presents multiple times and she was almost over it since she knew we weren't letting her eat the paper.  It also got to be close to nap time pretty quickly and so she started getting sleepy.  But she still enjoyed opening her gifts and playing with some of them!

Her BlaBla piggy from Memma and Papa G.  She LOVES BlaBla dolls! I would highly recommend them as a gift for someone her age.  This little piggy's ears were sopping wet from a certain someone chewing on them almost as soon as it was opened!

Can you see her sleepy eyes?  Sweet thing was just too excited!

Jason, Charlie, and Dad with new golf bags and a new 4 wood

After nap time Charlotte was much happier!

She loves Memma and Papa G!

Playing with her activity table with Uncle Charlie and Memma

Silly Mommy!

Then it started to snow! Big, huge flakes were falling from the sky!  We were all so excited because I think this is only the third time in my entire lifetime that there has been some form of snow on Christmas Day!  Because of this we had to go outside to experience it!

With Papa G.  I'm sure you can't tell but the white stuff in the bark in the background is the little bit of snow that stuck for a few minutes.

Family picture in the snow!

After Charlotte went back inside we took one of the two of us!

Santa Came!

On Christmas Eve we set out milk and cookies for Santa and carrots for his reindeer.  Here they are on Christmas Eve and then after Santa came on Christmas morning!

Looks like Santa and his reindeer were hungry!

On Christmas morning we woke Charlotte up at 8 am (her normal wake-up time).  We know that this might be the only year that we get to dictate when she gets up on Christmas morning so we took advantage of it!  If she's anything like her Uncle Charlie she'll set an alarm for 5:30 am every year until she's a grown up in her own house!

Once we woke Charlotte up we went into the den to see what Santa had left her!  Look how good she was this year!

Charlotte LOVES those musical instruments! Santa really scored big with them! The piano is her favorite and she will carry  it around with her while she rolls/scooches around the den!

Our family on Christmas morning!

Christmas Eve

We alternate holiday's with each side of the family which means that on years when we do Christmas Eve with Jason's side of the family we typically just get together with his parents since both of his grandparents do Christmas on Christmas day.  This year they came over to our house to celebrate and we had so much fun with them!

Uncle Kevin got to spend some time with Charlotte since he hasn't gotten to see her very often since he's away at college!

Just checking each other out!

Charlotte loves her new piggy bank! I know that it will be a favorite toy as she grows older!

Showing Mommy her new doll that KayKay and GrandDavid got her

With KayKay and the stocking that KayKay made for Charlotte.  Kay made a stocking for Jason and Kevin when they were born and then she made one for me the year that we got married.  Now Charlotte has one too!

We loved just spending some quality time with Jason's family.  They are so sweet and we love having them over.  The only downside was that Kevin's girlfriend didn't get to make the festivities!  We definitely missed Stefanie but look forward to hopefully seeing her soon!

Holiday Favorites...Gift Edition!

I thought I would share some things that I loved about the Christmas gifts that we gave.  You could incorporate these ideas into any gift giving occasion, not just Christmas!
1. Make your gift tags personal!

So personal in fact that you trace your child's hand onto a piece of paper, scan the image into your computer, and then use Photoshop Elements to come up with a cute design!  Always a crowd pleaser these gift tags were a huge hit! Everyone loved having one of Charlotte's hand prints! I actually saw people making sure to take the tag off of the bow before it was thrown away so they could save it!

2. Go personalized

These adorable melamine trays from PaperDoll Designs are super cute and practical (can you say dishwasher safe?!?).  They are so durable and yet pretty enough that you would be proud to take cookies on this tray to a group get together!

3. Make something that someone would love but doesn't have time to make themselves

If you missed my post about Blurb books and my intense love for them you can check it out here.  I knew that Kelly doesn't have tons of free time what with an energetic toddler and working as a pharmacist so I thought I'd put together a book of her blog posts.  I know I treasure my blog book and I'm pretty sure she was just as excited to receive hers!

4. Make it easy on yourself, make a system to group presents!

This year I found this adorable red and white houndstooth paper at Hobby Lobby.  I chose to wrap all of the presents (that I could find appropriately sized boxes for) in this paper so that I wasn't switching out rolls all the time.  Then I used a different colored raffia ribbon on presents for each family unit.  That way it was simply a matter of grabbing everything with the same ribbon color in order to get all the presents that we needed to take to a certain gathering! Make sure you make a key of your colors though otherwise you'll be running back and forth to the three to remember what color goes with which family! :)

On a sidenote, I bought two rolls of the houndstooth paper from Hobby Lobby.  I wrapped ALL of our extended family packages in that paper (there were a lot of presents!).  I still have paper left on the first roll! Their rolls are so long that it seems like they're never going to run out! So if you're in my family, be expecting houndstooth wrapped packages for years to come!

5. Start a collection

Jason is hard to shop for.  The things that he would like are usually things that I know nothing about (golf clubs) and so have a hard time shopping for.  I gave him a watch for his wedding present and he has always talked about how he would love to have a different watch to wear every day.  So this year I started his watch collection.  I shopped online sites like Gilt and Rue La La to find designer watches at discount prices!  And I was able to give him a new watch and a watch case for Christmas! Now, whenever I'm stuck on what to give him I can always find a new watch!

6. Start shopping early and shop discounts!

I'm not a big coupon person.  I'll clip ones for diapers or things that I always buy but I'm not one of those people that will do anything I can to save on groceries.  But I LOVE saving on presents.  Christmas can be so expensive and I don't like to scrimp on presents for others so I start shopping early.  This helps spread the cost out over many months but also helps me be on the lookout for deals on items that I know I want to get.  I've found that I end up spending more the closer to Christmas it gets because I'm more desperate to find a present and get the name checked off of my list!

This does take some organization because you have to be on the lookout for gifts a long time before Christmas but I've found that I can find more meaningful gifts that way.  I have also found online discount sites and how much they can save you!  Gilt, Rue La La, The Mini Social, and One Kings Lane are invitation only websites that sell designer items (think Kate Spade, Vera Wang, Melissa and Doug toys...) at hugely discounted rates.  If you are interested in an invitation to one of these places email me and I'll send you an invite because some of the sales are truly fantastic!

7. Pictures of your kids are always appreciated!

With the prices of prints from photographers reaching new heights every year prints of your kids are always a good bet.  Some photographers (the best kind!) sell a cd of all of the prints that you can buy and reprint from.  This allows you to reprint up to the allowed size and frame those prints for your family for presents.  Hobby Lobby has their frames (which are a pretty great quality with a good selection of frame type) half off almost every week.  You can reprint pictures at your local drugstore but I've found a site called MPix that prints professional quality photos and it's just as simple as uploading to one of the other online photo sites.  Your pictures will look much better printed from MPix than from elsewhere.  The prints are about 10 cents more than those printed elsewhere but MPix has a staff that color corrects your photo's and the higher quality photo paper is (to me) well worth the 10 cents.  Unless you were ordering hundreds of prints you're only talking about a dollar or two difference.  And the pictures get mailed right to your house in just a few days!

Just the Three of Us

Throughout the eight prior Christmases that Jason and I have been together we have never been great about waiting until Christmas to give each other our Christmas presents.  We're always too excited to wait!  But starting this year we decided that we now have to wait until Christmas for Charlotte.  But since Charlotte is still so little and we wanted to spend as much time as we could with our parents we did our Christmas on Christmas Eve Eve.  It was pretty close!  Next year we'll start exchanging presents to each other when we see what Santa brought on Christmas morning.

Opening her first gift! This is so much fun!

Looking at her new shape sorter.  Honestly, her favorite part was the paper and the box!

Giving Mommy a kiss after opening Love You Forever.  Charlotte will have to learn to read that one on her own until she hears the story again because I couldn't make it through the first page without crying!

Hanging out with Daddy!

Scooching excitedly towards her new elephant backpack!

We enjoyed watching Charlotte open the gifts that we picked out just for her.  It was probably the best gift opening expressions that we got from her all weekend because it was just the three of us and she wasn't overwhelmed with tons of people and mountains of gifts.  It was so much fun getting to share the start of Christmas with our precious baby girl!

Post-Christmas Rush

Are things crazy at your house because they sure are crazy at mine!

We had a delightful Christmas.  Charlotte got more toys than she could ever want and she is loving having new things to play with.  We're not sure if it's the new, big-girl toys or what but all of a sudden she seems so much older!  It was so much fun seeing her enjoy her first Christmas and seeing our family playing with her.  The only downer was that I've had some cold/virus junk for over a week now.  I finally got an antibiotic on Christmas night and finally today I'm starting to feel a little bit better.  Hopefully no one that we saw over the holiday's got it!

Since I'm still working on Christmas pictures I thought I'd just do a quick post with some things that I have going on.

1. I received The Pioneer Woman's cookbook for Christmas from my in-laws.  I finally felt up to reading through it yesterday and it's just as delightful as her blog is.  And the recipes, oh the recipes! So I've decided that I'm going to pull a little Julie and Julia goes country action and cook my way through the cookbook next year!  I'm thinking I'll do a recap post every other Friday starting January 15th to recap what I've cooked from the cookbook in those two weeks.  It will be a very unofficial thing but if you want to join in I'll post a Mister Linky with each of those posts for you to link your post detailing your cooking adventures also.  I'll get a button together also if you want to join.  If you want to join can you please leave a comment here and let me know.  I won't mess with Mister Linky unless others are going to cook with me.

2. Does it make anyone else sad to take down their Christmas decorations?  With all of our troubles with our tree we didn't get it up until a few weeks before Christmas so it seems so early to take it down!  But yesterday we got all of the ornaments off of the trees and most other Christmas decorations down.  Now the house looks empty because I haven't refilled my shelves or mantle yet! 

3. Have you ever seen clothes from Just Ducky?  They are super cute designs that you can choose your own fabrics, embellishments, monograms, etc to make one of a kind clothes just for your children.  I love that their patterns are basic and that you can CUSTOM design whatever kind of clothes you want.  Their clothes are also really well made also.  So in January I'm starting to host a home show to help you design your own Just Ducky clothes for your kids.  If you are interested in coming to the show please email me and let me know (talesofapeanut at gmail dot com).  If you are interested in ordering clothes but don't live near me and don't know me in real life I can always take orders over the phone or the internet and you can pay with a credit card.  I would cover the shipping costs to get the clothes to you so your order would still ship free.  Just a little plug in case you're on the lookout for cute, custom children's clothes!  :)

I think that's it.  I'm off to tackle dishes or laundry or Christmas decorations, whichever calls out to me the loudest!  And I'm working on a Christmas post.  Hopefully it will be up by June!

We're having a white Christmas!

Our Christmas has been full of fun and laughter, family, food, and fellowship.  We have enjoyed giving others gifts that we picked out just for them and have received lots of fun goodies in return.  We are loving our first Christmas with our precious baby girl.  And we received huge snow flurries here which is most unlikely and so special.  But mostly we are reveling in the love of our Savior and his birth for us.  This year we have so much to be thankful for, but we are most thankful for Christ's birth. 

Thank you Lord for coming to Earth for us.  Thank you for having such a humble birth so that you could speak to each and every person.  As we spend this first Christmas with Charlotte we have learned to appreciate even more the love that you had to send your Son for us.  What sacrifice.  Your love is truly amazing.  My soul rejoices in your mighty generosity.  Thank you.  The Mighty One.  The Holy One.  The Prince of Peace.  Thank you for coming for us.

We hope that you and your family are enjoying a peace filled day and night and reflecting on the beauty and glory of The One who came for you.

Merry Christmas!

From our family to yours.....

We wish you and yours a very, Merry Christmas!

"Halleluiah, the King is here, given for all men.

For today the Holy Son of God, is born in Bethlehem."

- Third Day, "Born in Bethlehem"

Pictures are copyrighted from our photographer and can't be reused without her permission.  Contact me if you'd like to know who our photographer was, she's great!

Little Moments

Just a few funny moments with Charlotte recently....

Charlotte has gotten really good about "crawling"/scooting around.  She uses her knees like she's crawling but puts her head down instead of her hands. She also throws a "worm" move in (pushing with her feet with her knees up to slide on her belly and bring her head up) occasionally.  She's pretty quick!  Yesterday she was scooting around the rug and I was just watching her.  Luca was laying on the corner of the rug and Charlotte saw him and started moving his way.  She got over to him before he noticed her and she reached out and touched his back.  He jumped up so quick!  And he backed away.  So she scooted closer and reached out and touched his paw.  He scooted back some more.  This continued until he was backed up against the couch and couldn't go any further.  I was with him and he just kept looking at me like, "She didn't used to be able to move! What's happened?!?!"  Poor Luca, I think his life is going to change even more than it already has soon because Charlotte LOVES Luca and Luca is unsure about another moving being that's about his size!

A few days ago Charlotte got the hang of blowing a raspberry with her tongue.  You know, where she blows out and her tongue rolls and she makes noise with it.  We are always applauding for her when she does it.  Last night my parents and brother ran over to show us Charlie's new car and Mom was holding her.  We wanted her to show them this new trick and so Jason did it and immediately Charlotte did it! It was so funny! And today she's started doing it and then looking at me if I don't immediately start clapping and saying "Yay!"  I think she's learning that if she does it she'll get applause and now she won't stop!

And then today has been the funniest of all!  Like I said before, Charlotte loves Luca and whenever she sees him her face lights up!  I was feeding her after her morning nap and she was sitting on my lap and I was trying to get her to burp.  Luca was laying down on the floor in front of us and she was looking at him smiling.  So I asked her if she could tell Luca hey and I started waving.  She just kept smiling at him and I kept saying "Hey Luca" and then she looked at me and looked back at Luca and put her left arm out and waved! Her fingers waved once and then she just kept moving her fist back and forth! It was the first time that I've seen her actually wave.  She wouldn't do it again but I thought it was so cute!

It's things like this that make me so thankful that I have the opportunity to stay home with Charlotte each and every day!

Recipe Wednesday - Million Dollar Cookies

If you've ever wanted a fantastic, to die for Chocolate Chip cookie recipe this is the recipe for you!  It is so good that I could eat these cookies all the time!  I recently made them for our neighbors and I hope they were as big of a hit at their houses as they are at ours!  The recipe is from my parents next door neighbor, Talitha, and they are really really good.  They do have oatmeal in them (a lot of oatmeal) so if you don't like oatmeal I would stay away.  But I feel like the oatmeal gives them the perfect taste and besides, I figure, with oatmeal in them, they could almost be considered healthy! :)  The cookie batter also gets really thick so I would use a stand mixer if you have one and if not, be prepared for an arm workout!  It's a workout just mixing in the chocolate so I can't imagine how much energy it would take to hold a hand mixer to mix the whole batter!

Million Dollar Cookies

Makes 5-6 dozen

1 c butter
1 c sugar
1 c brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 c flour
2 1/2 c oatmeal (instant Quakers)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 12 oz pkg chocolate chips (Hershey)
3 Hershey candy bars (broken)
1 1/2 c chopped nuts (optional)
Cream butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix in flour, oats, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Add chips, candy, and nuts(optional).

Bake 375 degrees for 6-8 minutes.

*I made a little over 4 dozen. I scooped my cookies with the medium sized scoop from Pampered Chef.
*I also don't add nuts.  I'm against nuts in sweets! :)

Seven Months!

Charlotte,

I can't believe that you are seven months!  These months are just FLYING by!  This next month is going to be super exciting for you, what with Christmas on Friday, New Years, and then our trip to California, but we have enjoyed your last month also.  We are having so much fun with you!  You do something new almost every day and interact with us so much!  We love hearing you babble and watching you move.  You are becoming more and more independent every day which makes us so proud but also breaks our hearts a little!  We wish that you would stay our little baby girl forever but we are so glad that we get to see you grow each and every day!

This month you are all about activities!  You love to JUMP, JUMP, JUMP in your jumper!

You love playing on the floor with your toys! You are thisclose to crawling and will get up on your hands and knees and rock back and forth.  You can roll from one side of the rug to the other in the blink of an eye and you love picking up your toys and moving them with you. 

You are also a great sitter now and can sit by yourself for a long time just playing with toys or watching the WonderPets!

You love to eat!  You are always happy to get in your high chair and play with whatever is in front of you whether that's a bib of a bath toy. You are a great eater unless what you're eating is green!  You love carrots, sweet potatoes, pears, applesauce, prunes, bananas, and pears with blueberries.  You're not sure about squash or anything mixed with corn.  And you are NOT a fan of green beans, peas, or peaches.  You eat baby food three times a day and still nurse five times a day. 

You absolutely love baths!  You sit up in the small tub filled with some water and your bath toys and just splish and splash and play with your toys.  You will pick one up and play with it and then reach for another.  It is so much fun watching you have so much fun!

It is getting more and more difficult to change your diaper because you want to flip over as soon as we put you down.  Sometimes its a real struggle with you and sometimes you are fine, I guess it just depends on how you're feeling. 

You love Luca.  You squeal in delight whenever he comes near you and will giggle and laugh if he happens to lick your hand or toes!

You are a big giggler now.  If we start blowing on your belly or making funny noises you will just laugh and laugh!  It is wonderful to hear you laugh and giggle!  Such a pure, delighted noise. 

You also love making funny faces!  We always laugh when you make your new faces! They are just too cute!

This month you celebrated your first Thanksgiving and have been to see Santa twice! You weren't scared of him at all, just wanted to check him out!

You especially love jewelry! You love necklaces the most but earrings fascinate you also!

You are our princess and we love watching you grow each and every day!  We love you sweet Charlotte!  Happy seven month birthday!

love Mommy

Christmas with Grandmommy and Pops

We had Christmas with my Dad's family on Sunday.  Now that we are married and are so blessed to have so many Christmases to go to it is nice to have one not on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day so that we can really enjoy it and spend time with the family.  It was especially fun since some of my cousins hadn't met Charlotte before!  She put on quite a show playing in the floor.  I think she got the biggest kick when everyone cheered when she rolled over!  We haven't cheered for her when she rolls over in a long time! :)

Mom, Dad, Charlie, Jason, Charlotte, and me in front of the Christmas tree! Look at that smile!

Our family!

Opening her present from Cousin Tom.  What great new books!

She's so excited to have new books to read!