Holiday Recap-Recipes, Pictures and More

It took me getting sick and camping out on the couch to find time to write this. Two kiddos, work, hobbies there's just not enough time in the day is there.

This year we hosted a dessert party, did a day trip to Houston and back on Christmas Eve, and managed 4 Christmas celebrations in 42 hours. Talk about controlled chaos. The new van came in super handy, the kids were fabulous and I enjoyed every minute. of course I kept thinking to myself on the road...if I had an IPad I'd be writing right now hehehe! Thanks to all the family and friends who showered me with gift cards I think there's an IPad in my near future.

The natives are restless so I'll keep this short and sweet!

My favorite holiday recipe...hands down it was the Crockpot Chocolate Pudding Cake I made for our dessert party. It was quick to prep, cooked while we were out and about and combined with the timer on our coffee pot, allowed me to arrive home minutes before our guests and have everything ready to roll!

Crock-pot Chocolate Pudding Cake (dairy free, gluten free, corn free, soy free options)

• 1 pkg (3.9oz) Jell-O Chocolate Instant Pudding Mix (or check out www.allrecipes.com for an allergy free recipe sub)
• 3 cups milk (regular, almond, coconut)
• 1 pkg (2 layer size) chocolate fudge cake mix (I use Cherrybrook Kitchen Gluten Free Chocolate Cake Mix)
• 2 squares Baker's Semi-Sweet Chocolate chopped (sprinkle Enjoy Life chocolate chips for dairy/soy free)
• 2 cups thawed cool whip or whip cream (Soy whipped cream if soy tolerant, or omit, I didn't mind the omission :))

To Make It:

• Spray your crock-pot with cooking spray, or lightly coat with shortening. (Some Pam sprays have soy so check labels). Beat pudding mix and milk in your crock-pot with a wire whisk for 2 minutes. The recipe calls for a 3 1/2 quart but I have the larger oval and it worked fine.
• In another bowl prepare the cake batter according to the boxes instructions. Slowly pour it over the pudding mixture. DO NOT STIR. Cover the crock-pot with the lid.
• Cook on low 2 1/2 - 3 hours (or on high 1 1/2 - 2 hours) until toothpick inserted comes out of cake clean. Top with chopped chocolate or chips. Turn off the cooker and let stand covered 30 minutes to allow the pudding to thicken. Serve with cool whip and dusted with cocoa powder or chocolate shavings.
  

My Must Have Kitchen Gadget for the holidays: Hands down it was my new Beka sauce pan. I whipped up quick quesidillas, chocolate sauces, you name it in there and was able to wash and reuse in minutes. The non-stick coating is amazing and a few more of these will be on my Christmas list for next year. And even better...this company has an environmental record that puts most other companies to shame. I just love them! Check them out here.

My 'Couldn't get dinner on the table without it' recipe sites: I have two favorites without question are Dinner Tool and All Recipes. Dinner Tool lets me meal plan, add my own recipes, create shopping lists and have a quick printout of my weeks plan. Allrecipes.com lets me search by ingredients so I can plug in something I'm trying to get out of the pantry or fridge and up pops a slew of choices. LOVE IT!

My favorite photo sharing site: With all the IPads, E-readers, and smartphones out there we've become a society of digital sharing. In most cases I'm right on that bandwagon but some vestiges of society are being lost in the cyber rush. I firmly believe it teaches real values for kids to recognize the generosity of Christmas and respond with a heartfelt thank you note. However I've found that over the last few years it is tough to interest my oldest in writing them. This year I stepped up my game and we used Smilebox to create digital thank you cards we could send to family. Normally this would have gone against my edict that thank you notes are personal and it's hard to get that touch with a digital card, but Smilebox allows you to add video clips to your card. So we sat down and recorded a bunch of 10-30 second clips on our Flip with my son thanking friends and family for their gifts. Each person got an individual thank you card with a video clip of Alex thanking them. Better than forcing him to sit at the table and write his name on cards he couldn't read, this worked great. He could relate to this and I loved the message he got from working with me to put it together.

Last but not least to catch me up over the last few weeks...Livi turned 6 months. It's been an amazing time with her and we are truly blessed to have such an angel living with us.

Personalize your own newsletter design

Stumble Upon how I love thee...

Image via Wikipedia

I love Stumble Upon. Basically it's a toolbar that lets you set preferences and then surfs the web for you pulling up sites that it thinks you will enjoy.

A few of my favorite finds today:

Presented by Online Education



Wall Tatoos...

Must Have Web Apps for the Hi-Tech College Student...


AMAZING Cupcakes (perfect for anyone like me who loves to entertain!)...


Cool online photo editing...

I love Stumble and the random neat things it brings to my attention!

Obsessively Organized

Ok I admit it I'm not always the most organized person at home, but I'm always trying to be more organized. However I absolutely stay almost obsessively organized in a few key areas :). One is my email. I have folders for all the major categories of info I receive, and then there are folders for all the people I regularly receive email from. I usually try to file emails as I get them but the last few weeks have been crazier than usual and the emails have piled up. So once this gets posted I'm off to file about 1250 emails away. LOL I'm also fairly nutty about my pantry and have been known on occasion to label it with masking tape to make sure everything goes back in its place.

For those of you always trying to be more organized here are a few of my favorite things :):
*Holiday Ideas and Organization
*Organizing Tips for Home (some neat green ideas too)
*Get Organized Now
*Discover Organization has great tips for organizing kids stuff
*Home Organizing Ideas has great room by room tips

Victory is Mine...It's a Great Morning Victory is Mine!

Any West Wing fans out there?

I've been trying for weeks to manage some decent, edible gluten free baking. My husband is one of those strange people who have endless willpower to give stuff up if he needs to (drives me batty!) and I feel bad when he eats the same thing day in and day out for breakfast. This is the third round of biscuits that I have tried and boy do I have to give a shout out to eat at joe's.

They were great biscuits, made up quick and the whole family gobbled them down. I was virtuous and only had one along with my protein shake the voodoo doctors are recommending.

I'm not sure I've mentioned my Voodoo doctors here. I have been struggling to lose weight ever since I was put on steroids a few years ago. Nothing seems to work and I have tried everything from Weight Watchers to South Beach. Atkins didn't go over well since I don't really like cheese that much, and Low GI foods work until the sweet cravings hit. My well respected nutritionists advice was to eat less and less until I was trying to figure out how to manage a workout routine on 1400 calories a day. Fast forward a few months and a friend recommends that I get my base metabolic rate tested to see how many calories I'm burning on an average day. Turns out that magic number is 1730 calories so eating anything less than that and I should be able to lay in bed all day and lose weight...and that's so not happening! I got my metabolism tested at an alternative pharmacy and the lady who tested it for me is a naturopath who for a measly $20 per visit can work with people to develop natural remedies to their problems (and that's right up my ally!).

I came home from a 2 hour consultation, several tests and some great recommendations to tell dear old hubby all about it. I could see the smirk before I even got to the cool test where I put my hand on a silver shaped disc and it analyzed my skin to see what I was nutritionally deficient in. Throw in there that they want me to drink special oxygenated water and I realized I had some convincing to do. It was about that point that he began calling them my Voodoo doctors and like all bad nick names it stuck like Elmer's glue.

On a randomly related note, if you like to read and like funny, witty, somewhat snarky books I'm currently laughing my tail off at Jen Lancaster's Such a Pretty Fat. :)

Cheerios and Milk

This morning Alex progressed to real cereal. Boy was he excited when he saw me pour the milk in the cheerios!  Kind of funny that we are regressing back to spoon feeding him but I just wasn't ready to have to mop up the whole kitchen again! :)

Speaking of mopping I got the mother of all deals yesterday.  While working out at Curves I mentioned that I wanted a steam mop to truly clean our floors since Alex considers the whole wide world a plate.  One of the ladies working out told me she had seen them on sale at Kohl's, so as soon as I finished my lovely 30 minutes I grabbed Alex and headed that way.  It's a good thing I did too since I got the last one on the shelf, and even better got it for 40% off the retail price.  Our entire downstairs is laminates or tile and this wonderful mop made short work of the entire thing.  This evening I'm trying it on the carpet. I love it and anyone looking for a great mop should check it out. 

Yesterday we met another neighbor and I am really happy to say that this family has twin boys around Alex's age and is super sweet.  The mom and I have careers that can help each other out, the boys all played great together and it is so nice to have friendly faces on our street.