Category: Uncategorized

Christmas Goodies


I’ve been VERY busy in the kitchen lately, and doing a lot of posting over at my food+crafts blog, Four-Eyed Girlie. In case you haven’t seen it, here’s what I’ve been making this Christmas!

“Elements of the Holidays” Gingerbread and Pumpkin Bread Mini-Loaves

My little side project, Four-Eyed Girlie, was started in hopes that one day I could market and sell the treats I like to make. My 1st experiment with this was offering the Gingerbread and Pumpkin Bread mini-loaves I made a few years back to my Four-Eyed Girlie Facebook Followers. I received my very 1st order and sold 20 to a friend so she could gift her co-workers in the office! I like calling them “elements of the holidays” because gingerbread and other spice breads are such a warm association with this time of year. Even better, a friend insisted I borrow her fancy-schmancy Kitchen Aid Mixer, so I felt like a real pro. Bonus points for the mixer being my favorite color – RED!

Triple Decker Maple Peanut Butter Pretzel Fudge

After finding this recipe on one of my favorite blogs, Sprinkle Bakes — I knew I wanted to make this fudge for my mommy friends as a special treat. It turned out beautifully and I decided I needed packaging that was just as beautiful as the product. I came up with gifting individually-sized bricks of fudge (so you could still see the pretzel stick detail) in a clear treat bag with a custom label I designed.


You can read more about it in this post on the Four-Eyed Girlie blog.

Old-Fashioned Milk Chocolate/White Chocolate Peppermint/Chocolate Walnut Holiday Fudge

I got together with my mom as usual to do our annual holiday treat-making day. We decided on fudge this year and I wanted to make three different varieties. It was really fun to do and I especially liked the way my Milk Chocolate Fudge w/Holly Sprinkles turned out. I used a fondant cutter to make the fudge pieces round, and I used tweezers to get the holly sprinkles just perfect!

Chocolate Covered Oreos in Poinsettia Flower Molds

Also on the day mom + I got together, we dipped double stuff oreos in red chocolate using a poinsettia mold she’d purchased last year. The oreos really came out stunning — and they were so easy to do! First, we melted yellow chocolate and painted it into the center of each mold with a paintbrush. Once the yellow chocolate had cooled, we poured in red chocolate and submerged the oreo. I think they look great, and would definitely love to try more of these molds in the future!

Buckeye Candy

My mom really wanted to make Buckeye Candy, and how could I argue? Buckeyes pay homage to our home state of Ohio, and they’re basically like Peanut Butter Cups in ball form. They are DELICIOUS. Good thing she left those at her house. Yum!

Chocolate Peppermint Cookies
I hosted a little cookie party for our little mom group, since we hardly ever get to just hang out and chat without having to stop mid sentence and chase the kiddos or break up some sort of incidient where toddlers aren’t sharing! I make these cookies of Martha’s almost every year — they’re just the perfect Christmas cookie! They’re chewy and chocolate-y, but have a crunch thanks to crushed peppermint candies inside. I love-love-love them!

Goodbye, Endeavor!

The end of the shuttle program is a very sentimental event for me, and one that has affected me even more than I thought it would.  I worked from home today due to deliveries coming to the house, and I used the occasion to take an extended lunch break to see Endeavor on its last flight with Ruby. Going to LAX today to see Endeavor touch down for the very, very last time was something I expected to be an emotional event for me. After all, as a kid, the shuttle program was the single biggest thing that inspired me to learn, explore, and discover. I knew practically everything there was to know about the shuttles as I pored over books and articles about the shuttle and by extension, the space program, astronomy, and science in general. It inspired me to dream of the unknown.

And so, decades later, this chapter of American space exploration is over. Watching it perform its low pass over LAX and later land for the last time brought up so many emotions: exhilaration, a little sadness that this chapter of space exploration is over, and uncertainty over what the end of the program means for the future.

After Endeavor performed its low pass, a little boy about five or six years old sitting on his dad’s shoulders excitedly exclaimed, “I’m going to be a scientist!!” That one comment was really pretty profound. This boy felt the same excitement that I did at his age, and it was inspiring him to strive to be an agent for the advancement of humankind. But with the shuttle program over, our nation has no firm plans to develop any more manned space vehicles. We may very well not see our country send humans to space again in our lifetime. We have let the Russians and the Chinese assume the role of taking humans into space. Sure, there are private entrepreneurs trying to accomplish manned quick joyrides for those with the means to pay for it, but the shuttle program was different: we as a nation decided to utilize a good chunk of our resources for the sake of science and exploration. The symbolism behind that was significant.

I know we are exploring Mars with Curiosity and the earlier rovers, but you have to admit there is just something awesome about humans leaving our planetary boundaries. As amazing as Curiosity’s arrival on Mars was, you can’t deny that it will be 100x more thrilling and awe inspiring when the first human steps foot on the red planet. After all, human exploration IS our heritage – always has been, and I think will always be.

Anyways, I guess I’m a little sad that today’s kids, Ruby included, will not have an American manned space program to inspire them in the way so many kids of my generation were. The priorities and thus budget just aren’t there, I suppose.

I’m just so happy I got to see it fly for the last time, and see it touch down for the last time – the latter event being the catalyst for all of these thoughts. As a parent, I’ll always work to instill that spirit of discovery and curiosity in Ruby that the shuttle program instilled in me as a child. As such, I’d like to think the shuttles’ legacy will live on in that manner.

Thank you to all the men and women of NASA who made the shuttles and their accomplishments a reality. You have inspired and continue to inspire, and you all RULE!