18 posts tagged “christmas”

All Natural Dog Treats

Well as I'd figured I would... I got carried away with my holiday baking. The plan was to make sweets for friends and family, but this year I've gone above and beyond... to the dogs specifically. I thought since my friends all adore their dogs as much as I love my Luna then they'd get a kick out of some home made dog treats too. So with a little peanut butter, flour and milk, I've made gormet dog treats. Luna has been my tester and she loves them, and since their all natural I even took a bite for myself, not bad! 

So for all my neighbors who love their dogs... enjoy the recipe! 

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Peanut Butter Pup Treats
Makes: 3 cups of mini treats

Ingredients

    * 1 cup Whole-wheat Flour
    * 1/2 tbsp Baking Powder
    * 1/2 cup Natural Peanut Butter
    * 1/2 cup Low-fat Milk

Method

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Sift together flour and baking powder. In a seperate bowl, mix peanut butter and milk. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, being sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl to ensure even mixing.

4. Turn out dough on a lightly floured surface and knead. Roll out to 1/4-inch thickness and cut out shapes. Place on a greased baking sheet and bake 20 minutes or until lightly brown. Cool on a rack and store in an airtight container.

I had been so excited to see all of my family on Christmas that I guess I had worked up my expectations. I thought this year would be more emotional, since my grandfathers passing, but it wasn't, in fact it felt a bit rushed and cold. People ate, in reality they stuffed their faces as quickly as possible, and rushed onto desert right after. This is nothing like Christmas in the past, it usually took about ten people to repeat that dinner was served before the others would quit chatting and pay attention to the food. After diner everyone would linger, sit down and talk some more. By the time it was all over most of us had soar throats from doing so much talking the whole day. It was eerily quiet, with a few awkward comments here and there.

I gave away the DVDs, Grandmom wanted a whole formal presentation, but people didn't respond the way I had expected, I recieved a couple of nice comments but instead of tearing off the bows and begging to watch the movies, like I had expected, they just set them down nicely beside them and went on to eat desert. My Grandmother was a little crushed because of everyones reaction so she nominated the idea that we sit and watch the DVDs, at that people started walking away and hinting that we open gifts instead. I'm sure they appreciate the work that I've done and I understand the hesitation and the awkwardness that people felt, but I would have so much rather had a bunch of crying emotional family members by my side than these lifeless silent strangers.

GrandKids

Emotions aside, it was a beautiful Christmas, the food was fantastic, it was sunny and breezy, everyone was healthy and looked happy. The grandchildren (my generation) seemed the carry the whole day, we kept the conversations going, we added life to our silent parents and it seemed to work well that way. It's amazing to see my cousins grow up so quickly, they are all in their twenties and all of them taller than me (the second oldest).

Since we are leaving tonight and will be gone over the holiday Jon and I decided to try something new, for the past week each morning we have opened one of our Christmas gifts, leading up to today. It’s so cute to see Jon waiting by the tree, as I’m rushing to get ready to go to work, “Come on, Terri! Aren’t we going to open presents?” in a whiny child-like voice. I keep forgetting because it’s just so different than our usual Christmas Morning unwrappings. I don’t think this year’s tradition will stick; it’s just so hard to open one gift and walk away, like eating a single M&M.

Today I was presented with the “big box” the one that has been taunting me for weeks! I can’t stop smiling because it’s the sewing machine that I had wanted! I couldn’t believe it, I opened the box, quickly rummaged through the contents, and then had to rush off to work, I wasn’t even able to play with it! It’s so shiny and new with all sorts of computerized buttons, all kinds of things for me to turn, press, click and hopefully not break. Not only did I have to put it right away, but tonight I have to pack and go to bed super early because around midnight we are hitting the road. So I’m not going to be able to play with it until I get back from vacation. It’s such a bummer, though I will be bringing the manual along with me to read while in the car.

On top of the sewing machine, Jon went above and beyond by getting me a snappy little fish eye lomo camera and the sigg bottle that I had wanted. These are things that will get a lot of use while we are in Florida. I'm just thrilled with this years goodies :)

My husband, Jon, has this horrible habit of ruining his Christmas surprises. He doesn't do it purposefully and he means no harm but damn it all to hell, it sucks when I had worked so hard to plan a gift and he finds out what it is early.

Christmas 2005, The Tattoo: Jon had been dreaming about getting a tattoo and casually talking about it for years, when Christmas came around he wanted to use his Christmas bonus to finally get a tattoo. I told him no and that I wanted him to think about it some more. He was upset because I was being a hypocrite, I have a tattoo, he is an adult and can make his own decisions and he had already been waiting, years in fact. I was telling him this not because I didn't want him to get it, but because a few friends of ours had chipped in and bought him a gift certificate for the best tattoo place in town. He was getting seriously upset and I had to spoil the surprise so that he didn't hate me and go out and buy his tattoo out of spite.

Christmas 2006, The Tools: I had saved up $500 by the end of the year to surprise Jon with a gift certificate to Lowe's, so that he could spend his hearts desire on tools. Once again, he received his Christmas bonus and wanted to run right off and spend it at Lowe's, I told him we needed to use the money on gifts for the family and again he was upset that I was telling him what to do with his bonus money. I had to explain and again ruin the surprise that I had already purchased the gift card for Lowe's and was hoping that he could keep the cash that he'd earned as a bonus to use at other stores, like sears or home depot so that he could shop around.

Christmas 2007, The Guitar: I was so proud of this gift, he would have never been able to guess that I would be buying him a travel guitar, not in a million years. I had purchased it online and it was delivered yesterday. I came home planning on how I was going to wrap the gift. When I walked in the door Jon yelled "I swear I didn't mean to!"... I went out the back door to look on the porch where the package was left and sitting on the porch in the bright manufacturers box with big bold lettering and a photograph of the guitar. The bastards just stuck a shipping label on the regular box!

Another Christmas surprise... gone by.

I've been dying to enter MOO's Super-Duper Holiday Card Competition. It's been so hard to find the time to design for fun when I'm so busy designing for hire but I did manage to squeeze out two entries. These designs are available to purchase and customize online, just go to the MOO website and in the search for flickr user field enter the name "helloterrio", choose from hundreds of online contest entries or create your very own!

I'm hoping to get a few more done before the deadline of December 1st but with the holiday rush who knows how much time I'll have, at the moment I'm just thrilled to be able to participate and really happy with what I've done so far.

Holiday Card Design

Holiday Card Design

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