Snow + More Snow = Hot Cocoa!

Alright everyone, winter has decided to arrive. Why it couldn't come a week ago I'll never know. I would have been much more excited about it then! But now... not so much. 

Mom can be seen here looking out the window as the street plow drives by to put more snow at the end of the driveway. We had just finished shoveling out the first round... *sigh*

Green Bay got 13.2 inches of snow, according to a weather post on facebook. Usually we get less than the surrounding areas, but this storm we actually had the most snow! And of course I was scheduled to work at 5AM, yeah that didn't happen.

But I still ended up waking up at 4:00 this morning, so decided to have a Star Wars marathon (episodes 4-6 to be exact). We saw the Force Awakens last night during the blizzard. It was quite fun trying to drive home cuz it was still snowing and already inches deep, luckily mom was driving and not me. Ha!

 So snow always means Hot Cocoa to me!

I actually made a mix from scratch for a few people for Christmas this year. I wasn't sure I was going to have enough for everyone so I did a double batch. Ended up with a SEA of hot cocoa mix!! It was like sand dunes in that GIANT pot!!

I also crushed up some peppermint pieces and packaged some marshmallows to give with the jars of mix. 

 

Made some tags as well with Christmas paper and wrote the directions for how to make a delicious cup of hot cocoa! They turned out better than I was expecting! :)

And the Christmas presents are DONE! 

 The hot cocoa tastes pretty darn good too, made myself a cup after shoveling out the end of the driveway today!

So I'm done with snow for the year... if it decided not to snow again the rest of the winter I would be OK with it. 

13 inches is enough, thanks!

Anyways, enjoy the rest of your evening!

 

Taylor Kay

NEVER Enough Cookies!! :)

Hello All!

So, I think the title of this post makes it pretty self explanatory. Haha! Yes, mom and I went to Marshfield last Saturday and we made MORE COOKIES!!!

PART 1

We went to Bri's house first and she had a couple cookies she was making

 

 Up first was an Egg Nog Cookie! Oh man, they tasted super good! I made an egg nog frosting to top them with and it basically made it seem like you were drinking a glass of egg nog. YUM!

 Up next was a Brown Sugar Toffee cookie! This here is just the cookie part. Once they were cooled you have to dip them in chocolate and cover with toffee bits. Unfortunately I was unable to sample the final product... :( Oh well, hopefully there will be some when we go there for Christmas Celebrations.

 

 Part 2

Next, we all went to Gramma's house to make

 EVEN MORE COOKIES!!

 

 

We were joined by my 14 year old cousin, Evan! And we put him to work too! He was a great help when it came to coloring the cookie dough. :)

He tried hiding from the camera... didn't work out too well for him... or the chair. Haha!! It had about 20lbs of sugar/flour on it, so that didn't help. ;)

Gramma made her Cherry Thumbprint cookies, Evan halved the cherries for her. And, by the way, unlike my thumbprint failure they turned out WONDERFUL! They really are one of my favs! Got the recipe now and we made some more at home that actually came out good. YAY! 

Also made some sugar cookies! And they did not taste like onions I might add!... Prolly cuz I didn't have much to do with making them... Ha! Naaahhh, but seriously tho. ;)

So here it is, the ARMY of COOKIES! You've got Pumpkin Penuche cookies in the top right corner, Russian Tea Cakes next to them, and Cream Cheese Mint Thingys. Then you have some Cherry Thumbprints, Candy Cane AND Peppermint Candy Cane Cookies, and Sugar Cookies to finish. 

Holy Yummy Goodness! :) Very fun time, but I don't think any more cookies need to be made this year... Haha! I think we actually do have enough

 

Well tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and I probably won't do another post till after so I hope you all have a Wonderful Christmas! :)

Taylor Kay

Christmas Time Is Here!... Almost.

It's only ONE WEEK until Christmas Eve!

So we are watching our Christmas classic! The Muppet Christmas Carol has been a holiday favorite for as long as I can remember. We had a VHS copy of it all through my childhood and I bought the DVD for my mom a few Christmases ago. I know a lot of people watch It's A Wonderful Life each year, but to be honest (and I'm not too proud to say it) I have never seen that movie in my life... I probably should sometime. But I think the Muppets will continue to be the film I am sure to watch each year! :) That and Jim Carrey's The Grinch

Last week I started baking Christmas cookies!

Look at this mess... good thing mom was at work and I had most of it cleaned by the time she got home. Haha! Yes, I baked at my parents house because I didn't have the recipes... or the pans... or the room in my apartment for such a big project.

First on the list was Sugar Cookies! When done correctly, they will melt in your mouth. I think the batch I made turned out great!... Until you ate from the second pan I used... So, to really drive home the fact that I am a terrible baker, the pan I assumed was clean really wasn't. UGH! And of course it had a bunch of chopped onions on it that had been frozen and then thawed... All my cookies tasted like onions... :( 

So, half of them got tossed. RAWR!

But my next batch of cookies turned out great! Russian Tea Cakes, which happen to be my dad's favorite cookies. Lovely little cookies filled with walnuts and covered in 

powdered sugar.

They are kind of a chore, because you have to roll them twice in powdered sugar. First when they come out of the oven, which isn't fun cuz they are hot, and then again once they are fully cooled.

On Sunday Bri, Ben, and Leila came to town because Ben went to the Packer game. We made even more Christmas cookies that day! But I didn't get any pictures of that, only video. We made Candy Cane cookies and Cut Outs! We also attempted to make what we thought were Cherry Thumbprints... but they were NOT! They didn't turn out at all... they basically turned into dust in your mouth, you could barely even pick them up because they would just crumble. :/ Hmph.

Bri is the professional Candy Cane cookie maker! They are so tedious and she has perfected the art as you can witness in the video above. :)

 

Anyways, while I've been writing this post the Muppets has been playing, AND THEY CUT OUT A SONG FROM THE DVD!!! >:( NO! I hate it when they do that!!! Why do they cut things out when they switch VHS to DVD?!? It makes no sense to me... Then dad reminds me that usually the VHS copy is better than the DVD. Ugh... Oh well.

Well, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your evening!

 

Taylor Kay

What's On Your Needles?

What's on Your needles tonight?

I am currently working on a blanket!

This picture is the best one for the color I'm working with. It is gorgeous and I love it! It is a very crisp dark green

Here is a picture that better shows the pattern, a zig zag. It is actually a very simple pattern and I know it's pretty popular. I see it quite a bit, whether the same technique is used or not I'm not sure.

I bought the yarn from Knit Picks! It's brava sport, which has become one of my favorite yarns actually. This particular color is called Dublin.

 Do you think I have enough yarn? ;) Haha! Hopefully...

So anyways, let me know what projects you are working on! :)

Taylor Kay

Oh Christmas Tree

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

How Lovely Are Thy Branches

 Put up the Christmas tree the other day! I had to try something different this year because I got a new little kitten and wanted to make sure she wasn't going to destroy my ornaments. On my actual tree I only have ornaments that I'm sure will not break if somehow the tree ends up on the floor.

So, I bought some garland to hang across the giant window in my livingroom to hang all my breakable ornaments on. I actually like how this turned out. Kind of scared that the garland will eventually fall down and break everything I was trying not to. Wouldn't that just be how it goes. Ha!

 I've also hung up lights on some of the shelves in my livingroom. Once they were up, I thought it would be pretty cool to hang some ornaments off of them too! This here is my bird shelf, so I hung my bird ornaments on it! 

 And on my horse shelf I hung all my fairy ornaments! I love these fairies!! Aren't they just the cutest?? My grandma started me on this series years and years ago, they come out with a new one every year. She also started me on the 12 Days of Christmas series (which are the bird ornaments in the last picture).

 Now that the tree is up, I wrapped the first Christmas presents last night! It's one of my favorite things to do, wrapping all the presents. :)

 My attempt to have the kitties pose by the tree. Haha!

Kitten Fuzz (left) and Little One (right)

Kitten has signed my presents by chewing on the bows.. Grr. Ah well! Cats will be cats!

Anyways, hope you enjoy your evening!

I will continue to watch the Packers lose to the Lions... These Packers... What am I gonna do with them..?

Taylor Kay

Love Me Some Pie!

Good Evening All!

So, as everyone knows this last Thursday was Thanksgiving. It is one of my favorite holidays, cuz there's not much that's better than Family and Good Food. :) Each year my mom (and I) make my absolute FAVORITE pie. A Cranberry Cherry Pie! YUUUM!! So, I had decided to document the experience with pictures.

I actually mixed the filling this year. Usually I am a complete fail when it comes to mixing things. Any other person would have used a smaller bowl, because that big blue one was not actually necessary. But, knowing me, both mom and I agreed to go with the biggest bowl in the house to avoid spilled filling all over the counter! ;)

Mom is the professional pie crust former! I had tried to do the pinching thing to make the sides look all pretty and stuff... kinda didn't work. HA!

While this particularly delicious pie was baking, we made a Pumpkin Pie as well!

Thanksgiving just isn't complete without some Pumpkin Pie! I always eat mine with about 3 scoops of whipped cream on top :)

 All Done! And man were they delicious! There's still 1 piece of the cranberry cherry pie left, which I plan to eat as soon as I'm done with this post. Haha!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

And Pie cannot be talked about without Supernatural Gifs making an appearance ;) Cuz all Supernatural fans know just how much Dean loves his pie

 Enjoy the rest of your evening!

Taylor Kay 

Random Ramblings Of A Movie Lover - Testament Of Youth

Hello All!

So the movie I am going to ramble about tonight is 

Testament of Youth. 

This is a movie that is based off of a World War I memoir by Vera Brittain. Her book is widely known in Europe (so I'm told), and I would have to believe that because everyone I have mentioned it to here has not known what I was talking about. Which is kind of unfortunate because it is a very good memoir, or at least the movie that it is based on is very good. Ha! I don't read much... So whether it is a good rendition of a book to movie, well you will have to ask someone else. This is just a movie ramble. Haha!

Anyways, this movie became known to me because I follow one of the actors who is in it. And that actor would be Colin Morgan. I've basically been waiting for this movie to come out for about a year now, because the U.S. isn't cool enough to get movies at the same time as Europe so I had to wait an extra 9-10 months... Yeah, it came out in January overseas but only just came to the U.S. maybe like 2 weeks ago or something. I totally was not expecting to see it at the Family Video and just about flipped out when I did. Haha! I was very very excited. 

So, I hadn't done too much digging into who else was in the movie besides Colin Morgan and I was very surprised that there were actually quite a few people who I do enjoy watching!

Here you have the 3 men of the film (from left to right):

Kit Harington as Roland Leighton

Colin Morgan as Victor Richardson

and Taron Egerton as Edward Brittain

Vera Brittain is played by Alicia Vikander 

I think she is a really good actress. I haven't seen her in too much but what I have seen I've liked. (Ex. Anna Karenina and Seventh Son) 

I believe she did a splendid job in this movie! In my opinion, this probably wasn't the easiest role and she passed with flying colors!

And we got a surprise visit from Hayley Atwell! 

I was definitely not expecting to see her. Haha! I love her as Agent Carter :)

This movie starts before World War I. These 4 friends are about to go back to school, their whole lives are ahead of them, they see a wide future, everything looks good. Vera and Roland even develop a serious relationship. Then the war breaks out. All the men join the army and Vera decides that instead of studying she would rather help. She volunteers as a nurse and deals with some pretty heavy things. (Yes, I know I'm being vague but I don't want to give anything away.) She is at the hospital when Victor is taken there, injured and blinded. She does end up going to France, near the front, where she finds Edward nearly dead but helps bring him back. She eventually gets called home because her mother was not well. She did not go back to the front, the war ended while she was back at the hospital at home. She does go back to school, but has a hard time with it. Even though others may want to forget, she vows to remember everyone and everything that happened. 

Thus, she wrote her memoir.
  
I think what I have taken away from this movie is what you have to do to move on after dealing with difficult situations. How do you go back to the way things were before? Basically, there is no going back. There is only learning to live and accept that these things have happened and to learn from them.

I like that this movie took the perspective of a young woman during the war. It's not something you see too often. I very much enjoyed it. I would recommend it to anyone, but it's probably not everyone's cup of tea. It is a bit heartbreaking, a tear-jerker (I cried like 6 times), but what can you expect from a memoir about WWI. 

So there is my ramble. It has put me in the mood to watch it again, so that's what I'll probably do when I get home. Haha!

Hope you have a wonderful rest of your evening! 

Taylor Kay