Christmas With Family 2009

For our Christmas gathering we decided to have snack foods instead of a sit down dinner type of meal. This being said, there was no shortage of food. I provided the sandwiches in the background (recipes in previous posts) and the cheese quesadilla wedges on the front platter with the two Tex Mex's in the middle.
Lots of finger food that the kids love to eat.

Below in the slow cookers are cheese sauce in the little one and little smokies in sauce in the big one. The silver bowl holds little hamburger rolls and under the foil are larger ones prepared by another family member.

Then there were deserts that didn't get touched till people were getting ready to leave.

For just having snack foods... everyone got their fill.

The Christmas tree had presents stacked all around it.

All the way down the wall and round the corner.

Hey! K-Monster! What's under there?

We lined the kids up in the living room and started handing out presents.

What? One for me? I can't take pictures and open presents.

Careful, don't trip with the big package.

They've only just begun, you can still see the rug.

Poor Boog dog. He had the cutest Christmas outfit. Earlier he had bells on his legs.

My brother's three grandchildren arrived and more presents came out.

The Nerf of this season was Nerf swords. This year was a little too cold for them to all go out and play afterward. The younger boys did have some mild Nerf gun wars back in the bedrooms though.

All the packages and wrapping was gathered and moved out of the way for a second round of presents. This was "the Big Present" or "Family Present". My daughter's boys each had a big present and my son's children had a family present in several packages.

Looks to me like they were all pleased with the 'big' gifts. The eldest grandson received his own personal desktop computer with flat screen monitor. The son's children received a Wii and attachments.
K-Monster received Guitar Hero's "the Beatles Rockband"... All were happy campers.
I hope you and yours had a Very Merry Christmas !

I Forgot the Olives

I thought my guacamole, cream cheese & turkey mix looked a bland. It obviously needed black olives.
Here's the two mixes the next day, side by side. They could be served in any number of ways. Rolled up on tortillas or placed out in bowls surrounded by crackers.

I spread them on wheat bread. I wasn't going for 'fancy' so I didn't remove the crusts.

And I stacked them as tightly as I could get them...

...so all of them would fit on one platter. This is what I made from one loaf of bread.

I didn't use up all the mix so I made up two roll ups and ate the rest with crackers.

Merry Christmas 2009

Are Your Presents Wrapped?

Finished up my Christmas shopping yesterday and got all my presents wrapped. It's a short stack of presents this year...
...but that's because we give out more money cards nowadays than actual presents.

With so many choices of things to buy it's much easier to just give them money and let them buy what they want rather than have to return something they might already have had or even gotten two of. I hope all your shopping's done so now you can sit back and relax and enjoy being with friends and family!

Turkey & Cream Cheese Snack Sandwiches

For our Golden Wheat AHSGR Christmas party I mixed up cream cheese with turkey and some other ingredients. I didn't have a specific recipe, I just got online to see what kind of mixtures I could find and what the main ingredients were. I had many requests for my 'recipes' so I promised I would write a blog post the next time I prepared them. I was thinking seasonal colors when I looked for ingredient blends. For green I knew I had some Deans guacamole in the refrigerator and was pleased to find many cream cheese fillings using guacamole. I don't have any measurements but in this filling I used One package cream cheese, lightly melted, half an onion and half a bell pepper, chopped, and half a pound deli turkey. A also added a little dried cilantro and some salad seasoning.
Mix well and refrigerate to let all the flavors blend together.

For red I thought about cranberries and most of the recipes I found for cream cheese and cranberries also called for honey mustard and Miracle Whip. For this batch I used craisins and a blue berry/cherry mix which I soaked in hot water before using. Again lightly melt the cream cheese to make it easier to mix, add a couple tablespoons Miracle Whip, 3 or 4 teaspoons of honey mustard. Then add diced apple and berry mix. Mix in the other half pound of turkey.

This mixture has a nice pink hue that doesn't show real well in this picture. Again refrigerate.

Christmas morning I will make sandwiches that I will quarter and put on a platter to take to my daughter's house in the afternoon.

Edit 12/29/09: A modification to the recipe HERE

Surprise!

The Princess had another basketball game yesterday but it was away and I did not attend. Instead I had her brother and sister for the morning and her parents took her. She came home with a teammate so her mom and dad could go shopping so I had all three. Another grandson arrived around 2pm. At suppertime I brought their food out to the studio where they were playing games with K-monster helping them out.
Here are the kids at the table with the place mats they made from old Christmas cards.

Since I had most of the grandchildren there I decided this would be an opportune time to through a belated birthday party for the grandson who's birthday is in November. Peoples schedules seem to keep getting in the way of having his party so I had frozen his birthday cake. The picture below has been photo shopped, not only to eradicate the name but to fix the frosting across the front. Prior to freezing all the frosting across the front just fell off. There's a small section on the back corner above the 'y' that did the same.

Here's the birthday boy with his cake and candles. I didn't have any birthday candles so I used tea light.

After singing "Happy Birthday" and blowing out the candles he opened his presents.

He really liked his matchbox cars. Now he and his cousin each had their own set.

There were several items in the birthday bag, I didn't see what all it was.

The last present for tonight. Last night we had given him his card and Chipmunk movie from I and his Grandpa.

A Nerf gun. If he'd been over at his aunt's house they could have had a Nerf gun shoot out.

After the presents they all had cake and ice cream. I believe he was pleasantly surprised and it all worked out quite well for not having been planned. A very nice surprise indeed.

Santa's Workshop

OK, so this isn't really Santa's workshop and those aren't elves.

But they are working on Christmas crafts/presents. These pictures were taken last week in my studio while the grandchildren were painting and watching a video.

The studio isn't completely finished yet. Parts of the loft and ceiling are still needing wallboard and it all needs to be painted. Then I need to get my shelves built.

In the mean time it's usable as is. The grands were over again last night and were gluing glitter on their crafts. Now there's sparklies everywhere.

After Christmas I'll post pictures of what it is they're making.

Grand Basketball

Saturday the 5th of December was the Princess granddaugher's first basketball game of the season. It was also her sister's birthday which is why I am only now getting these pictures posted.
The game was in the morning and was an away game.

Someone fouled her and she had a free shot... she missed but wasn't too far off.

They didn't win but they did score.

K-monster's first game was on the 3rd. He warmed the bench this game so this is the only picture I'm posting. His second game was the 10th and I missed it. He has his 3rd game on the 17th, but it is away so I will miss it too.

The Princesses second game was on the 12th...

One last goal for our girls right before the buzzer...

This game was rather fast paced from one end of the court to the other.