Turkey Cookies

Gram and Grace got together the day before Thanksgiving and made some cookies to bring to the family feast. Grace was really looking forward to this "Gram time" and she loves making cookies, so she had a blast. The cookies were cute too.

Note the perfect aprons - Cookie Maker and Cookie Taster, which defines their talents nicely. Fun!

Recipe for Lisa

Here is the recipe for my cookies I made for the Good Things Cookie Exchange.

Cranberry Crackle Bars
By Cindy

6 cups tiny pretzel twists
2 T. packed brown sugar
½ c. butter, melted
2 c. dried cranberries
2 c. salted mixed nuts, coarsely chopped
1 c. white chocolate chips
1 c. granulated sugar
2/3 c. butter
2/3 c. light corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla
½ tsp. baking soda

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Spray a jelly roll pan with Pam. Combine pretzels, brown sugar and melted butter in food processor, pulse until mixture resembles crumbs. Press into pan and bake for 10 minutes.

Sprinkle cranberries, nuts, and chips over crust.

Combine granulated sugar, butter, and corn syrup in saucepan. Bring to boil over medium heat, stirring constantly (this will take 5-10 minutes). Remove from heat. Stir in vanilla and baking soda. Pour syrup evenly over cranberry nut layer.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until syrup is bubbly over entire surface. Cool completely in pan on wire rack. Cut into bars. Makes 60.

Store in airtight container. Can be frozen.

This is a modified recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens Christmas Cookie Magazine from this year. I doubled the amount of syrup, chopped up the nuts, and made it in a bigger pan to make a thinner crust layer.

Yummy!

I'm married!

There are about a billion things to do when planning THE social event of the season. I'm choosing to blog the creative few that I managed to take pictures of during the crazy season before my wedding. First, the cookies. NolaMom, the cookie-baking fanatic mixed up batch after batch of cookie dough, chilled it all, rolled it out and baked close to 200 wedding cake-shaped cookies. For a while there, cookies covered the whole house. Cindy and I got together and frosted and frosted and frosted and then we decorated the cake cookies to look just like the beautiful cake Melinda from Dede's Decor created for me. (I'll post those pictures as soon as I get them back from the photog.) The result:

After two whole days of packaging the cookies, I started work on the guest book. (I feel I should mention here, in the interest of full disclosure, that I started the book the day before the wedding) I do realize that you can hop on over to Michaels and buy a guest book for 12 bucks, and have little to no stress about the whole thing, but really, is that me? I think not.

I made a 6 by 6 album using just a few papers and embellishments, added photos from our engagement shoot and left space for my guests to sign. The result is so fun. I just can't stop looking at it. And, it is great that people wrote more than just their name. Instead of getting just a record of attendance, Gary and I have a book filled with wishes from our closest friends.

So... after guests signed the book, this is a little video of what they got to see, thanks to the oh so bouncy camera work of my co-worker, Shawn. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSum_ZN-S8U

I can't wait to show you the scrapbook I'll create for the wedding and the honeymoon. Want to know about the honeymoon? It was truly wild...

Sea lions in San Simeon, just across the street from the zebras. Yes. Zebras, right off the highway.