Helloooo Winter!

Even here, we don't normally get hit quite this hard for the first storm of the season - this was the view out of my bedroom window when I woke up this morning:

 

 

And it was still coming down!  My niece's birthday party was cancelled =(

 

After we got dressed I went out for a walk with Mom & Dude & took some more pics.  It's wet, heavy snow, so there were lots of broken & bent trees but also lots of pretty, snow-covered things.  Here's a taste of November in Minnesota:

 

Bearing in mind now, that it was 70 degrees less than a week ago LOL. Do you have snow yet where you live?

Thanks for reading =)

~Colette

25 Dozen Cookies Later...

I'm actually not exaggerating here LOL. And that's just the ones I was personally involved with baking, not to mention what the rest of the family made. I counted the sugar cookies yesterday after we frosted ... well, tried to count them, I lost track at 12 dozen. Then there were the 4 dozen PBBs for work, which I already showed you, 8.5 dozen cake balls, and 5 dozen fruity foldovers. I took some pics, so if you're hungry, turn back now & come back in a little bit when I will have nail pics posted & a new tutorial =)

Here are the sugar cookies after frosting ... you can probably tell some of the ones that I did LOL, and they apparently got me in the mood for some marbling on my nails:


My aunt made rosettes - there was another box in addition to this one & she said she'd make more fresh for Christmas Day:


Almond bark with pretzels & peppermint, made by Grandma:


Fruity Pebble/Rice Krispie bars, made by Grandma:


Cranberry walnut bars - also made by Grandma =):


Cake balls =) One of my contributions of course. The green are chocolate cake with mint coating, the red are strawberry/strawberry & my personal favorite combination to date:


Fruity foldovers - kind of a sugar cookie based dough with your choice of preserves inside, this is another of my contributions, and I chose apricot & blackberry gooey deliciousness inside:


Snowballs AKA Russian tea cakes, made by Mom ... I never eat these since they have nuts (I'm allergic):


Cardamom cookies, also by Mom. She had a heck of a time finding cardamom, it was sold out everywhere, and then the sugar sprinkled on top was this super-special kind that was hard to find & as you see not that impressive in the end. To top it all off, the consensus was that these taste pretty much like a snickerdoodle cookie LOL. I think Mom considered these a semi-fail on that account:


Stained-glass cookies, also by Mom. One of her favorites, kind of like fruitcake except it's a cookie ... and another one with tree-nuts:


I don't remember what these were called, but they had oatmeal, corn flakes, peanuts, and peppermint frosting, and this is ANOTHER contribution by Grandma:


So we took all that & made 16 various trays, for family & friends =) Here are a few of them:


Cookie day may be my favorite day of the year, even above & beyond Christmas itself. I literally cannot remember a Christmas without a cookie day, it's always been a tradition =)

Thanks for reading.

~Colette

A Christmas Tradition

Ever since I was a little kid, we would go to the Dayton's Christmas show, which evolved to the Marshall Field's Christmas show, and now to the Macy's Christmas show, over the course of various ownerships. The sad part is that Macy's only committed to 2 years after purchase, and this is the 2nd year, so they might kill the many years of tradition if they don't keep this up next year, which I think would just be sad in addition to absolutely stupid on their part because the free show brings so many people downtown to the store that would otherwise not make the trip.

For example, we wouldn't have come down for lunch if we weren't going to the show, and The Oak Grill is a pretty nice restaurant. This was a SUPER delicious meal, and of course I took pics =) as well as pics of the Christmas show. So here we go!

The Macy's in downtown Minneapolis is 12 stories tall, and one of the things on the top floor is this restaurant, the Oak Grill:


After you place your order, everyone is provided with a popover as an appetizer (kind of like the cheesy biscuits at Red Lobster ... but BETTER). This is an eggy kind of bread thing that reminds me a lot of like a panakuken, and served with honey butter:


I got Asiago Crusted Chicken, which came with the best mashed potatoes I've ever had & green beans:


My uncle started out with a bowl of Lobster Bisque, and then moved on to an Angus Beef Hamburger with fries:


My mom & my aunt both got this Thai Chicken Salad that came with peanut sauce:


And grandma had Shrimp Spring Rolls & a cup of the Lobster Bisque - & beer, which you can glimpse in the background =)


Of course, it's not complete without dessert & we got a bunch of forks & split these 2 around the table. On the left we have Chocolate Bread Pudding with vanilla sauce, which was super-good although not as chocolaty as I expected, and much denser than anticipated too. On the right is a Frango Mint Chocolate Ice Cream Pie with a cookie-crumb crust & a dollop of whipped cream on the side, which originally struck me as kind of boring, but was actually super delicious:


Boy, after all of that I really could have gone for a nap, but we still had the show to go to! So we went down from the 12th to the 8th floor, to check out:


This is actually the same as the show they did last year, although they added 4 new scenes. Another bad sign that this may be the last year. I didn't try to take pics of everything, because the lighting was so tricky ... using flash washed everything out & ruined the ambiance, using no flash a lot of my shots were turning out too blurry. So I just picked the cream of the crop to show you guys:


Do you have any Christmas traditions you look forward to? My next favorite thing is making cookie with my grandma, which I'll be doing Thurs, and decorating the cookies with the whole family, which I'll be doing next Saturday =) I'll have pics of those yummies for sure. Thanks for reading.

~Colette